Celebrating Winter Solstice with the family

There is a page describing family-oriented Winter Solstice celebrations at Circle Sanctuary here. I will post the general overview, but if you visit the Circle Sanctuary web site you will find a lot more of the "nuts and bolts" details about creating your own Winter Solstice ritual: - Focus of Celebration: consider first your purpose(s) for the celebration, such as: Strengthen family bonding with each other - Expand upon existing patterns of family celebrations - Attune family to Nature's cycles - Attune family to its membership in the community of all life on planet Earth - Connect with ancestors - Celebrate ethnic/cultural heritage(s) - Educate about ancient and contemporary folkways - Extend the celebration of Christmas, be an alternative, or expand upon it - Deepen understanding about spiritual renewal and love - Have fun Even though I am Episcopalian, I really like the idea of having a ritual to mark the Winter Solstice. Bummer that I have to spend the day running and don't have the time to do something "intentional" for the Solstice. But I remain aware of it, and I thank Diana and SallyCat for sharing their thoughts on the holiday.

Winter Solstice

A diary by SallyCat at Booman Tribune... Merry Meet and Bright Blessings at Yule Many have asked about the celebrations and traditions of Yule / Winter Solstice and I will try to answer as generically as possible. I follow a Celtic Path, with a focus on the Goddess, but not exclusively. There will be others that follow different paths - and their celebrations and histories will have variations. Yule begins on the shortest day and the longest night of the year. This year Solstice begins at 1:35pm est on December 21, 2005. Celebrations in many homes will begin at sunset on Yule. Yule - Winter Solstice Typically beginning on December 20 or 21st, Yule spans twelve days ending Yule Night on December 31st. Using the Julian calendar it would occur on December 25th. Yule is the first of the solar festivals and the first Sabbat of the new year. This is also one, if not the holiest of the 8 Sabbats, depending on your Path. The most accepted of the Celtic tales of Yule begins when the Holly King battles the Oak King in a fight to the death. The Holly King can be associated with many aspects of God. The year that has passed, or Father Time, death, or if you look at the king through nature, he can be associated with the old stallion who must fight for his position as the head of the heard. In the battle, the Holly King loses to the Oak King. Who represents the new year, the young stallion claiming his position over the heard. He is also called the Divine Child. The newborn aspect of God. As a Pagan celebrant, it is a time for each of us to put to rest the old lessons, battles and issues that need to be released. It is a time to let go of those things that hold you back and move on into the new year with a fresh view and perspective. Click here for the rest.

Adorable puppy, multiethnic children wage war on Christmas

By now, just about everyone must know that there is apparently War on Christmas this year. I was  feeling fairly confident that I, myself, was not engaged in such a war. Because frankly, I'm just not that brave. I'm more the type to hold really still and avoid eye contact with Christmas, in the hopes of getting through the colorful, boisterous season of sensory overload in one piece. I'm certainly far too intimidated to actually "wage war" on it. Or so I thought. Imagine my shock when I discovered that just using the words "Happy Holidays" makes on part of the war on Christmas. As it turns out, Demetrius and I have been waging war on Christmas for a couple years now, and we've even enlisted the deviously cute assistance of a collection of multi-ethnic cartoon children, and an adorable, large-headed cartoon puppy. Oh, the humanity! Anyway, I suppose I should confess the extent of our guilt... First of all, we've got this web site for kids called Letter Lane--we created it a few years ago when our oldest was deeply into the alphabet. On the front page of the site, you can see the first hint of the anti-Christmas assault in the words "H is for Holidays". But it gets worse. Go ahead, click on the word Holidays, and you are greeted with this bold, full color proclamation that Christmas is only one of the December holidays. And if you do visit this page, you know, just to find out how bad it is so that you can report back to the jolly Fox News elf and help him save Christmas, you'll see that we don't just do the usual nod to Chanukah and Kwanzaa, but even Solstice for cryin' out loud. I know, you're getting "the vapors" about now, aren't you? But alas, I'm not through confessing, yet. Over at Puplinks: All About Dogs, if you click on Winter and Holiday Pet Safety, you are greeted with this abomination. Happy Howlidays? That's not even a word! So I totally couldn't blame you all if you felt compelled to report the part we have played in the War on Christmas. You should especially report www.puplinks.com to people who have dogs (or are considering getting one) and www.letterlane.com to people who have young children. You know, all in the name of saving Christmas. ;-)

Activists protesting immoral '06 budget arrested

I just found out about this today, in a diary at Street Prophets which asked "Why doesn't anybody care about this?" Anybody, meaning the mainstream media--and people quickly came to the conclusion that "budgets aren't sexy". Still, if there is a "war on Christmas", I think the ongoing assault on the poor is it. Singing "Caring for our neighbors, we shall not be moved," the peaceful demonstrators were frisked, photographed and booked on trespassing charges by Capitol Police officers. The misdemeanor carries a $250 fine or 90 days in jail. The demonstration was the most direct action by churches who have made the budget their highest domestic priority, and it reflected the continuing tussle between liberals and conservatives over what constitutes "moral values." Congress is rushing to finish a compromise budget that includes $50 billion in spending cuts approved by the House and $35 billion passed by the Senate. Protesters said that those cuts will primarily hurt the poor. The House has also approved a bill to cut taxes by $95 billion. Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners, said that it was immoral to cut taxes for the wealthy as Christians prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, whom the Bible says came to "bring good news to the poor." "There is a Christmas scandal in this nation ... but it has nothing to do with shopping malls saying 'Happy holidays' instead of 'Merry Christmas,'" Wallis said. "The Christmas scandal is the immoral budget coming out of this Congress. Hoping to match conservatives' use of religious rhetoric, Wallis and others said that the budget would take the song of the Virgin Mary when she was told of Jesus' impending birth - "He has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty" - and turn it on its head. "This is not just bad public policy," said the Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, the general secretary of the Reformed Church in America. "This is morally disgraceful." Read the rest here.

Celebrating the Virgin's Birthday

I posted about the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Monday, focusing on how the Blessed Mother in general and Guadalupe in particular has become more significant and meaningful to me. But I have never attended a celebration of that feast day, so I was interested to read this diary at Booman Tribune by DucttapeFatwa... Celebrating the Virgin's Birthday For those who do not know the story, in 1532 a man named Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin of the Chimecheca tribe saw a vision of a lady on the spot where the Spanish invaders had destroyed the temple of Tonantzin the corn goddess. She gave him miraculous roses, imprinted her image on his cloak (the Tilma), and instructed him to tell the local Bishop that a cathedral should be built on this spot. This particular December, I was privileged to attend such a celebration. Of course there was food, traditional Mexican platos like chile rellenos, cochinitas piviles, mole, and the Caribbean contingent made sure that no one lacked for black beans and rice, or those little knots of pork loin that only Cubans can make. But there were also wots from Ethiopia, huge dishes of rice with raisins, almonds and spices, lamb in cream, all from Kashmir, ground nut stew and corn cakes from Africa, chicken with pistaschios and saffron and cous cous from Yemen, pink potato salad and latkes from Russia, crunchy pakuras and spicy curries from India and Nepal, challah and tabouleh and falafel from Palestine and Israel, spaghetti and meatballs from Italy, little meat pies from Scotland and Jamaica (and lively discussion over which are best), dumplings and duckling from China, spring rolls and beef pho from Southeast Asia, and this year, crawfish etoufee, pralines and red beans and rice cooked with andouille, thanks to the Katrina survivors. Every item with a horizontal surface in the house and several surrounding it had to be brought in to accomodate the abundance of comestibles. Click here for the rest.

Vengeance is Mine--you can't play with it any more!

I didn't have anything of my own to say about the impending execution of Tookie Williams, for pretty much the same reason Pastor Dan at Street Prophets says he refrained from comment, there were others who could say it better, and more succinctly. Well, that, and the fact that I didn't feel well enough versed in the particulars of the case to comment intelligently. Now that the execution has taken place, the discussion of the death penalty in general continues. Over at Blog for America, Demetrius commented: Understand that at the time the typical response to someone putting out someone's eye would be to take *both* their eyes, the eyes of everyone in their family, and the eyes of anyone who looked at you funny on the way there. "An eye for an eye" means *just* *ONE* *eye*! This was a radical concept. In my EFM classes, I have been learning about the book of Genesis, the different sources it is believed to have come from (at least four distinct sources), and what it tells us about how the Hebrew people understood their relationship with God. One thing I remember from my reading is that the concept of revenge really did get out of control exponentially so that, yes, saying ONLY one eye for an eye was clearly an effort to put the brakes on. On the page about revenge at Answers.com, I found this: Revenge is a hotly contested ethical issue in philosophy. Some feel it is necessary to maintain a just society. In some societies, it is believed that the damage inflicted should be greater than the original one, as a punitive measure. The Old Testament philosophy of "an eye for an eye" (cf. Exodus 21:24) tried to limit the allowed damage to avoid a series of violent acts that spiral out of control. Detractors argue revenge is more like the logical fallacy "two wrongs make a right." Some Christians interpret Paul's "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord" (Romans 12:19, King James Version) to mean that only God has the moral right to exact revenge. Of the psychological, moral, and cultural foundation for revenge, philosopher Martha Nussbaum has written: "The primitive sense of the just - remarkably constant from several ancient cultures to modern institutions ... - starts from the notion that a human life ... is a vulnerable thing, a thing that can be invaded, wounded, violated by another's act in many ways. For this penetration, the only remedy that seems appropriate is a counterinvasion, equally deliberate, equally grave. And to right the balance truly, the retribution must be exactly, strictly proportional to the original encroachment. It differs from the original act only in the sequence of time and in the fact that it is response rather than original act - a fact frequently obscured if there is a long sequence of acts and counteracts" ("Equity and Mercy," in Sex and Social Justice [Oxford University Press, 1999], pp. 157-58). The interpretation of Paul's words makes sense given what I read about the history of revenge. According to the story that has unfolded up to that point (and continues today) humans have proven incapable of handling revenge in a responsible manner, without misusing it. When our kids are having a loud, headache-inducing squabble, and it turns out that some *thing* is at the center of the problem, it is not uncommon for Demetrius to say, "Okay, bring it here. Put it on my desk. You can have it back when I think you can handle it responsibly." It's not that big a stretch, for me, anyway, to see vengeance as something that humans have proven incapable of administering responsibly, justly, and without excess.

A Prayer for the New Year

A Prayer for the New Year (2006) By Dr. Antonios Kireopoulos, Associate General Secretary for International Affairs and Peace National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA www.ncccusa.org and www.faithfulamerica.org Our Father in heaven Lord, sometimes we forget that you created us, and that you watch over us from above, and from within our hearts. Is there any doubt as to why we sometimes go astray? Hallowed be your name. Holiness is something foreign to our everyday reality, Lord. Perhaps this started when we began to abuse the earth you gave as a gift to sustain us, and in which we once readily beheld your wonder. How do we recover this sense of awe? Your kingdom come, Your presence, Lord, is the very meaning of peace: in our hearts, in our communities, in our world. Your scriptures continually remind us of this blessing. Now that you have engaged us through faith, do we have a responsibility to help establish peace? Your will be done Lord, your will is to see justice done among your people. Today, we hear that torture is committed against those we perceive as our enemies. How can we reconcile what you expect with what we do? On earth as in heaven. Iraq would be a good place to start, Lord. So many conflicts in the world are evidence of our denial of your will. At least we can stop the war in Iraq. Do we have the will to do so? Give us today our daily bread. You know, Lord, that the survivors of the tsunami in Southeast Asia, the hurricanes in the U.S. Gulf Coast, the mudslides in Central America, and the earthquake in Pakistan, could certainly use such basics as food, shelter, and medicine. How far must we go to help restore them to well being? Forgive us our sins Often we read, Lord, of your love for the poor and the oppressed. Just as often, thankfulness for our own comforts leads to our neglect of those in need. How can we help them most? As we forgive those who sin against us. This is a tough one, Lord. We all have shortcomings, we all have contradictions. We all need mercy, and yet we don’t always remember that it is up to us to also show mercy. What is it that we need to do to see that self-righteousness only breeds arrogance toward others? Save us from the time of trial, We are always afraid of how we might be judged by you, Lord, especially when we say one thing and do another. Genocide is taking place in Sudan; we know it, and we haven’t done much yet to stop it. Could this be the test of this generation? And deliver us from evil. Terrorism is a terrible thing, Lord, for the violent death it seeks to bring, often in your name. Certainly human dignity requires only respect, love and understanding for one another. How do we stop this insanity, and our inclination toward vengeance? Amen. Lord, to say “Amen” means we agree with what has been prayed. Our eyes are now focused on you and your desires. They are a challenge, a mighty challenge. Can we, individually and in unity, begin to tackle them in the coming year?