Beware fat-hating pitchfork mobs

There was recently a flare up of concern about the overall physical health of the pagan community due to the early death of a young community contributor. I'd like to touch on that from a slightly different angle, and possibly explain it in a different way than was done in order to smooth some raised hackles I have seen from various opinions and contribute to a more constructive dialogue.

Firstly, there is no fat-hating pitchfork mob descending upon out-of-shape Pagans to take away their processed foods and force them onto a treadmill. There is no sense of smugness or skinnier-than-thou among vocal Pagans who are on the thinner or "more fit" side, at least as far as I have seen and read. I just want to get that out of the way.

I can speak only for my wishes to see discussions of health and well-being injected into Pagan dialogue. I see physical health in all its forms as integral to our sense of universality and connection that we cherish so much as Pagans. There is so much focus on healing via ritual and herbs, and yet, I see resistance and even hostility when it comes to suggestions of eating healthier and exercising, the popular clamming up of "its none of your business" ringing in the air.

When did it cease to become 'our' business? Why can we recommend herbs for headaches, charms for fertility and conduct healing rituals for cancer, but not invite our brothers and sisters to try yoga for strength, flexibility and joint relief, or encourage dishes of fruit salads and roasted chicken to pot lucks instead of cupcakes and macaroni and cheese casseroles?

Tagging along with "its none of your business" tends to be "religion has nothing to do with physical health." I disagree. In the same way that religion affects sexuality, child-rearing, mental health, and other important facets of our lives, it too can affect the way we care for our bodies. I'm not going to wax poetic about "harming none" or respecting the sacred vessel that is our flesh, but however you slice it, one's spirituality can greatly impact the way he or she deals with the body. After all, can you really contemplate the universe and your place and responsibilities within it without thinking of the complexity and care of the body with which you experience said universe? There is room in the discourse for frank and honest discussion of physical health, and I believe it is our responsibility to encourage a wholly healthy community in every facet of life. 

Uncertainty and kittens

So today Mr. Luckey has an interview which will put a shiny stamp on his head which says management and HR endorses him to be a supervisor at his company. He is going to start applying for jobs at the end of this month, when several upcoming locations will open their applicant pools. He will be applying for San Antonio, Medford (OR), and Cincinnati. We are very much hoping for San Antonio -- I’ll be putting in a couple applications for various positions at that location as well. Wherever we go, it’s going to happen in the next 2-6 months. 


Since we will almost definitely be moving within 6 months, we are buttoning up our living space and paring down our stuff as best we can. I just did a pretty brutal Goodwill sweep. I am trying to keep our living space hyper-organized and tidy. We even took a serious look at our pet population and re-homed two of our birds, leaving us with four pets.

The newest of our four pets, Ophelia. Photo by Ben Durham.

The uncertainty really takes a toll. It has taken Mr. Luckey longer than he was originally led to believe to finally get his endorsement-- originally it was October, then it was right after the Holiday season, and now, finally, April. I am looking forward to settling down somewhere, and relaxing a little. Wherever we go, it won’t be incredibly long-term-- maybe 2 years and he’ll either go to a bigger, busier store for that experience, or he will start applying for Assistant Manager positions.


One of the most difficult things about our situation is the balancing between the two of us for careers. I am hoping to make a career with the same company as Mr. Luckey, but I’m not putting all my eggs in one basket. However, I have to wait until I know where we’re going before I can apply for anything else. Knowing that we’re not staying in Houston makes it very difficult for me to entertain thoughts of taking a second job. If we go to San Antonio, I may see what kind of jobs the local park service has, since they have so many historical sites there.

A certain historical site in San Antonio.

Another “gig” I’ve just begun is that I am now involved with the Pagan Newswire Collective’s Texas bureau. I’m currently working on a project to re-launch an organization database and calendar, and create a couple of legal and civil resource pages for users of the site. It is, of course, a volunteer gig. Despite that, it is getting me in contact with some very influential people in modern Paganism. As it turns out, I can still study and write for and about Pagans without being in academia any longer. Maybe one day I’ll get to go to the American Academy of Religion conference as a Pagan journalist.

We shall see where this new ride takes us.

Where My Witches At?

I’ve noticed something in the two-ish years that I’ve been making a somewhat enthusiastic effort to “get involved” in the local Pagan community: the number of people who actually network and come out to “meetups” and the like are dwarfed by the number of people who do not. I can’t quite figure it out. There seems to be a core of fairly regular and devoted attendees to the Houston area Pagan events, and a smattering of coordinators that range from store owners to Pagan clergy. However, I routinely feel demographically out of place at many of these events-- there simply aren’t many young adults (18-30 [granted, I’m on the older side of that spectrum now, 27]) who are making the effort to become involved in the community. It isn’t that there aren’t young adults who identify as Pagan, hardly so; I met many people my age at college, I meet them while at work, hell, I meet them at cycling events and at the grocery store. We exist-- we’re on the blogosphere, on facebook, on reddit, on livejournal...

Which brings me to my fledgling hypothesis. I am on the older side of a generation who learned most things about their chosen spirituality not from their parents, nor from covens or even group experimentation -- not from people, in person -- but from the internet, and from the many books now available that were not yet in the 60s, 70s, and to a lesser extent, 80s. Paganism is suffering from a generation gap whose major symptoms seem to be a jeopardized physical community, and a lack of cohesive education.

I recently read a blog which addressed the lamentable and incessant drought in Pagan fundraising. I believe Eldyohr, the author of The Pagan Perspective, correctly identified a major issue in the attitude of many Pagans, their anti-establishment nature exacerbating a rejection of financial commitment to causes they believe in. However, I think in addition to that, anti-establishment nature couples with increasingly solitary and independently learned spiritual practice, which is leading to a lack of communitas for young Pagans as a demographic.

A major factor in this is the selective self-education of many young Pagans. With the exception of those of us who choose to pursue Pagan Studies as an academic subfield, the younger Pagans I have met both in person and on the internet seem to have extremely limited knowledge of our history as a family of religions. It nagged on me for the last few months as I attended a few local meetups, but it was something I couldn’t quite place, simply a feeling that the information I focus on -- history, theory, cosmology, anthropology, sociology -- differed greatly from the type of reading some of my peers do -- magick, symbolism, and hearth and elemental witchery. I do not bring this up in order to pass judgement on reading choices, however, there seems to be a heavy leaning toward the “what” and the “how” of Paganism in these genres, instead of the “why,” “who,” and “when”.

It actually hit me while watching an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race-- in one of the “behind the scenes” type clips, a young Queen is talking to two of her older competitors, in their 30s or 40s. The young one admits that she hasn’t taken the time to educate herself about gay history, she doesn’t know anything about the Stonewall Riots or what led up to them, or much else about gay history. The same issue is happening with young Pagans-- we aren’t taking the time to educate ourselves about the history of our community, and as a result, there is a disconnect between this generation and the last.

This brings me back to The Pagan Perspective. I lament that I found his blog as late as I did, about a month after his initial posting about the subject of education and academia entitled Of Pagans, Scholars and Cognitive Dissonance. I admit, I don’t see quite the schism that the writer sees, nor the simmering near-animosity between academia and lay pagans; instead, what I see is a dangerous splintering of community worsened by a lack of historical belonging or identity. I think it is ignorance that divides us, an ignorance that can be easily remedied by communal education.

Paganism grows and changes with each generation. But by allowing a disconnect from our history and community, we risk separating ourselves as the torchbearers of our spirituality from the generation forthcoming. In order for Paganism to stay a viable, legally protected and culturally diverse and vibrant spirituality, we must embrace our sisters and brothers, learn what we do not know, and teach each other what we do.

Candy corn for breakfast

Here I am, looking into the precipice of the 4 weeks I have been dreading since the summer. Not dreading in a “walking over hot coals” way, but that dread you get when your roller coaster car starts to slow down and the time between the chain-clicks gets longer and longer right before you crest over that really huge hill and gravity takes over.

The reason I’ve been dreading this span since summer is that October-November are always insanely busy as it is. Add in an 18 hour graduating semester and all the corresponding homework and research projects, starting a new job, 2 friends’ weddings out of town (one of which I’m officiating), our annual weekend at the Renaissance Festival, and a 5k, and you pretty much have a time warp to the end of November. *whine* Essentially what this means is that all of my school- and house-work that I’d normally do on the weekends are going to be crammed into Monday through Thursday spans, as Friday through Sunday are largely going to be occupied.

 (Oh and in case it got buried in that run-on sentence of an itinerary, I got a new job! I start work at REI on Saturday. Huzzah!)

I find Hyperbole and a Half to be relevant often...

 Something that is really important to me during these times of intense stress is taking care of myself mentally. I have found through trial and error (lots of error) that if I don’t do this, even if it is at the sacrifice of other obligations, things will crumble around me. I must get sleep. That’s a big one. When I was working at a Large Coffee Chain, I was going on extreme deficits— 4 hours a night and hopefully a nap in between – and found out the hard way that my body does NOT react well to having its sleep messed with. Also, knowing myself and how I react emotionally to stress helps me prepare for and thwart attitude shake-ups that otherwise would derail my hard work.

 This ties in with my fitness goals, which are going rather well. I believe that mental fitness is extremely important to physical health. With all of the things I have going on, I can’t possibly neglect my mental health and expect my fitness goals to happen! So in addition to The Domestic Pagan’s 3rd mini challenge to analyze cravings (saallltttt), and keep taking measurements, I am going to take a more active approach to my mental health.

Why look, its relevant again.

 Things that have been successful with my plan include doing two things I wasn’t sure I’d ever do: start a food/exercise diary, and beginning the training for a 5k which I will do in November. Eek! I’ve done 2 5k training sessions so far—I plan on doing another one tomorrow (I’m loath to say that I’m “going jogging,” as so far walking happens more than jogging). Session #2 left me with much less desire to die than #1 did, and hopefully #3 will continue that trend. The food diary thing is going OK, except that it really shows how much of a “college kid” diet I’m on right now. Doing all right on nixing the diet soda, but that wasn’t a big challenge to begin with.

 So, there we are right now. Things are going well, if extremely busily, with only an acceleration on the horizon. I’m already planning the things I’m going to do after graduation, some of the first being “play Xbox,” “read for fun,” and “sew”. I can’t wait!

"Get Off Your Broom"

Amidst all of the other hullabaloo I have going on this Fall, I’m (voluntarily?!) adding one more thing to the pile—working toward better physical fitness. It is really easy to say “I’ll do it when I graduate,” because I really would rather just push everything off that little bitty extra two and a half months.

What a 2003 Marin Larkspur may look like.

Alas, it is not to be. This weekend found me with a second-hand Marin road bike and about 45 miles of cycling. I may as well roll with it. The problem for me to find an exercise activity is that I hate the vast majority of them. I am, however, learning to like a few things, like cycling and yoga. I like mountain biking, but I am not fond of flirting with injury. I hate running. Always have. 

Today I was perusing blogs and found this, a pagan blogger who is “hosting” a fitness challenge for other pagan bloggers. I thought, why the heck not. Let’s make it official. Besides, if this blog is identifiably about nothing else, it at least hits the topics of paganism and doing stuff [outside] pretty regularly, so there’s a bit of cohesiveness.

The Hostess of the challenge, Athenina, is offering up weekly mini-challenges for this, the first one being to take a “before” picture of myself, document my current measurements/weight, make up a plan/goal. Before I list any goals, however, I would like to back the challenge up a week and note the things that I’ve done quite recently to improve things.

Pre-challenge changes of Awesomeness.
- stop eating out casually at school
- bicycle more (45 miles this weekend yesss)
- take the school shuttle less (walk more)
- reduce alcohol consumption (that stuff has calories, evidently)

Here are my measurements:
Bust: 37”
Waist: 31”
Hips: 39”
Thigh: 21.5”
Arm: 10.5”
Weight: 144.2 lbs.(okay, that one hurt a lot more than the measurements did)
Height: 5’8”

Major goals:
See abdominal muscles.
Fit a pesky pair of pants I have.
Do/prepare for a major cycling event (maybe the MS150).
Do Warrior Dash in November.

Things to do immediately:
- No more soda. I’ve been flirting with diet soda lately for the “need caffeine but don’t want to drink regular soda or I’m tired of coffee”. Needs to stop. Coffee or tea only.
- Lots of water. Already do this, but with decreased soda will come increased water.
- Increase effort at eating vegetarian when it is practical. (when surrounded by burgers, sometimes you just have to eat a burger.)
- Do some manner of physical activity every day, even if it is just walking to class instead of using the shuttle.
- Plan out cycling routes with good mileage.
- Suck it up and do core abdominal exercises like a big girl (I hates them).
- Do more power yoga in addition to relaxing yoga.

I don’t have any sort of comprehensive prescription for success, or an agenda-ed schedule of exercises, because I know that just won’t work for me. Yesterday we rode another ten miles on our bikes. In the next 5 days, I am going to try to get out and do a tiny bit of the aforementioned despised running.

Here goes nothing.

Mulching trails, like a boss.

Mr. Luckey, shoveling mulch like a boss.

Saturday was National Public Lands Day, so Mr. Luckey and I went to a local nature preserve and helped with some trail maintenance and habitat preservation. It was a lot of fun, and a great way to educate young people about the need for healthy ecosystems. We laid mulch for an entry trail, other folks watered some important trees (we are in the middle of an “exceptional” drought, so we are having to give some assistance to trees that otherwise we would never have to), and yet others helped clear, then stack deadfall for prey hidey-holes.

Here in Texas we have a slightly different relationship with the fall equinox (which was Friday) than many other, more northerly, climes do. The fall equinox, for us, simply meant the end of 100+ degree temperatures (we had over 30 100+ days this summer); today, the 25^th of September, we beat a record for our date by hitting 98 degrees! We also, of course are back under a wildfire weather warning due to low humidity and high winds.

Mulching a trail!

For us, the fall equinox is not the start of fall so much as it is beginning of the end of summer. Sure, the oranges and browns are in the craft stores, corn and pumpkins grace the front stands of the grocery stores, and otherwise abandoned retail outlets get that temporary “HALOWEEN EXPRESS!!!” banner splayed across the whitewashed signs. But here in south Texas, fall is really just a pined for dream that will only come around halfway to the winter solstice.
For example, a scant hour after we left the nature preserve, we were on the road to Galveston for a beach 5k obstacle run (Mr. Luckey did that… I went with the intention of reclining most lazily with an Adult Beverage in hand, but instead got roped into some guerilla babysitting). The beach! September 24! Swimsuits! Adult Beverages! Sunburns! Exclamation points!

Most recent I could find. Sheesh.

Ah well. That’s life in the southern US. Now that October is in one week, though, being outside will be much less heat stroke inducing, so we have some outdoor stuff planned like bike rides and camping. And, of course, the Texas Renaissance Festival starts in two weeks! We are going Nov. 5-6.

Also, for those of you who do not live in Texas, here is some perspective to our environmental situation—we will be under a burn ban for at least one year solid by the time Mr. Luckey and I go camping again, except this season it is even more stringent. One year banning ground fires, excepting stoves, firebowls, etc. contained fire, and this season (as of this writing), everything except canister stoves (not even Colemans—we’re talking JetBoils and the like only) are banned. No cigarettes except in newly designated areas with strictly enforced disposals. Last year, Halloween weekend dipped down to almost freezing overnight… no campfires will be lame. :(

So, here is our relationship to the equinox. Heat, fire, parched trees, beach runs and fall decorations.

 Not to end on a somber note, I am so rocking my last semester of my Bachelors’ degree. Just FYI.

Don't Worry, I'm an Anthropologist.

What a bad blogger I’ve been. I tried so hard over the summer to be regular with my postings! I promised myself that I’d keep up on it.

Last fall's book tower. This fall's looks similar.

But then life got in the way in the form of my final grueling 18-hour college semester.

That’s right. I ought to be reading about Hinduism, Native American history, Christian Ethics, Aging Life-narratives, and possibly studying for an Archaeology exam. Meh. (No, I’m actually fairly well on top of things. You don’t jump into an 18 hour semester without an executable game plan) But instead, here I am!

This semester has already been eye-opening, and not just the hopped-up-on-caffeine-doing-research-until-4am kind. I am addressing the reality of exiting college with my Bachelors’ degree, yet not doing what a lot of people in my department do—proceeding directly to graduate school. There are a number of reasons why I am not doing so, but chief among them is finances. The amazing Mr. Luckey has been supporting us financially to an unfair degree, and I owe him some economic teamwork after the last two years.

What I am doing instead is attempting the improbable in the current economic climate—beginning a career.

People react with puzzled expressions when I tell them the nebulous cluster of career possibilities that I am considering. Cultural education? Interfaith dialogue? Museum studies?
What are you, some kind of wizard??

I was told in no uncertain terms by a sociology professor whose career is as close to “interfaith dialogue” as one can be (she writes books, travels, talks, etc. on the subject) that not only is there no real career market in the field, but moreover, my interest in minority religions is way too ahead of the times. We’re just trying to get Christians and Muslims talking, and you want to throw in tiny religions?! Polytheism? Not happening.

I tossed around the idea of diversity training, for corporations and whatnot. Itty bitty niche. Meh.

Museum studies sounded cool, except that there are virtually zero jobs in the field. Primarily, this is due to the fact that museum curators stay museum curators FOREVER. I’d have to start out in the gift shop. Not happening.

I was poking around the interwebs one day, Googling things like “anthropology careers,” and I found a list of job keywords from one of the anthropology networks. And I saw it:

“Park Ranger”

What I am going for with this is essentially an outdoor museum curator who teaches people about the awesome stuff and history at a given park, and also helps them have a fun time camping and enjoying nature. ("Interpretive" is the type, as opposed to "Protection") The upstart might be choppy—seasonal work at whatever national park or forest they want to throw me at—but I think it will work.

So, I have spent a lot of my down-time this semester doing career fluffing things, like revamping my resume, learning interview skills, consulting with a university career counselor, etc. I’m also working on doing things now that will help me in the long run, like volunteering for outdoor projects (is it still altruistic if its for personal gain?), and hopefully soon starting a job at a place that will foster that growth (not naming names… yet…).

Mr. Luckey and I have also made the difficult decision to stay living with my mom (not that it is difficult living with her, so much as it is difficult to not have the complete autonomy of our own apartment) for a few more months—at least until I graduate. This is so we can hunker down and save some serious money. After that, we are laying plans to move somewhere else in the country, for his career advancement and mine.

So, this is my life right now. Working my tail off at school, set to graduate in December (oh, and there will be pictures), working a few hours a week at a Big Retail Pet Store (there will not be pictures), and laying careful plans for my future. I can’t wait to be done with the degree and to get my life back. I also can’t wait to start its new chapter.