Pagans v Christians

Awhile ago, I reviewed a book called Thy Kingdom Fall that portrayed Pagans as godless villains out to take over the world and do away with all other religions.  The book made me so angry, I wanted to hurl my Kindle across the room.  It’s bad enough that so many Christians paint Pagans as Devil worshipers, but this man vilified us in a novel, portraying us as the exact opposite of who and what we are.

Yes, I am a Pagan.  I was raised Lutheran, spent eleven years as a Catholic and am now Pagan.  I believe there’s a power greater than myself.  I believe that power has both feminine and masculine energies and I honor both.  My patron Goddesses are Diana and Rhiannon, and my patron God is Dwe (a Celtic God/King whose symbol was the dragon—ironic, eh?).  Wiccans believe in karma and the power of three—what you send out will come back to you threefold.  That adds some punch to the Golden Rule.  You’d better think thrice before you send out negative energy.

As for Jesus, I think he was a great man, and that the Nicene Council edited out a whole lot of his life and message. The Gospels they kept in the New Testament were not written down when he lived—they were written decades, even a century later. Have you ever played Operator? How garbled was the message by the time it got around the table? How garbled do you think Christ's message may have been by the time it was written down a century after he gave it? Or after a power and money-greedy Roman Emperor and his cronies got through with it? There are eighteen years gone. Do you really think the kid who sat in the Temple in Jerusalem discussing theology with the elders of the church for three days and never missed his parents went home and worked as a carpenter with his dad for the next eighteen years? Isn't it possible he traveled with his uncle, Joseph of Arimethea, to the East? Could the Catholic concept of going to "Purgatory" to "work off a few demerits before you get into Heaven" (as my ex explained it to me when I converted) possibly be the same as reincarnating until you work out your issues and go to Nirvana? Only "Purgatory" gives more control to the leaders of the church. After all, one of them sold tickets to get out of Purgatory and into Heaven faster when he wanted to raise money to build St. Peter's Basilica, thus prompting Martin Luther to say, "Hey, that's wrong! We need to reform the Catholic Church." Which, of course, got him ex-communicated, started The Reformation, and the entire "Protestant" movement. I didn't become Pagan because I knew nothing about the Judeo/Christian paradigm. I guess I knew too much about it.

I advocate the separation of church and state.  I think it is inappropriate for the words “In God we Trust” to appear on our currency.  So did President Theodore Roosevelt.  The words “under God” were not added to the Pledge of Allegiance until June, 1954, when everyone was afraid Communists were lurking around each corner.  The country did fine without those words in the Pledge in the decade prior to that when it first became official, and had done since 1892 when it was first composed.

I advocate these actions not because I want to wipe out anyone else’s religion, but because these words fail to honor the freedom of religion upon which our country was based.  That freedom is guaranteed in the First Amendment of our Constitution—a document I took an oath to uphold and protect.  As it stands, including them goes against the principle of separation of church and state our forefathers advocated.

The United States is home to people who practice a plethora of religions, calling their deities by a multitude of names, including God, Yahweh, Allah, Great Spirit, Buddha, and Vishnu to name a few.  Yes, I included Allah in there, even though many people consider Arabs to be our enemies right now.  Most people don’t realize it, but Muslims and Judeo/Christians worship the same God.  That’s why they fight over Jerusalem—they share many sacred religious sites.  Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael.  The Israelites descended from Isaac, and the Arabs descended from Ishmael.  They all worship the God of Abraham.  The difference in name comes only from the difference in the development of their languages. For that matter, extremist groups like Isis and Al Qaeda are to Islam what the Ku Klux Klan is to Christianity.  They aren't practicing the tenets of their religion any more than the Klan.  The Koran does not tell Arabs to kill non-believers.  It says Allah will punish them. Again, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." It preaches the Golden Rule, just as the Bible does.

I even knew a person in a Twelve Step program once who called her higher power Irving until eventually she said, “Well, maybe there’s a God and maybe I can stop calling him Irving.”  I knew someone else who simply referred to “H.P.”  That was my nickname for the deity during my transition from the Judeo/Christian belief system to paganism, and I still often say, “Thanks H.P.,” when I’m grateful for something.

Pagans won the right to have Pentacles carved on our headstones in National Cemeteries.  It took us a couple of decades to win that right.  We did not request the government remove the crosses, stars of David or any of the other thirty-some symbols allowed.  All we asked for was recognition of our beliefs.  Austin Dragon, author of Thy Kingdom Fall, along with many conservative Facebookers, portrays us as trying to rip the crosses out of that hallowed ground.  We do not do that.

Pagans are accepting people.  We do not judge; at least we try not to.  Nor do we proselytize.  When was the last time a pagan knocked on your door at some ridiculous hour of the morning or in the middle of your supper and tried to convert you?

Thanks for visiting.

My Aviation History

I’m a baby boomer, a child of the space-age.  Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier two years before I was born and I was six when the Russians launched Sputnik and the Space Race was on.  To me, flying was as natural as walking or driving, if you had enough money to do so.  My family wasn’t poor, but we weren’t rich either.  We were part of President Eisenhower’s vast Middle Class, although I saw us as part of the lower half because my dad drove a truck, my mother worked in a factory (much to my embarrassment), and we lived in the city, not the suburbs.  Oh, we had a TV, and Daddy bought a new car every two years.  We lived in a house, not an apartment, and I was in Girl Scouts and choir and I got new clothes every spring and fall, and I heard the usual admonitions about children starving in China if I didn’t clean my plate.  I got a transistor radio when I was ten and my own stereo when I was twelve, and every summer we visited my cousins in the country, so maybe we were upper middle class in terms of income.

When I was ten, I went to visit my cousins over Spring Break.  My uncle drove me up to Iron Mountain, Michigan from Chicago, but then his plans changed and he couldn’t drive back.  How could my family get me home?  I don’t know who came up with the idea of flying me home, but my aunt put me on a North Central Airlines flight.  I flew on a converted Douglas C-47. The plane was a troop transport during World War II, converted from a DC-3 passenger plane.  After the war, many airline companies bought the surplus planes and re-converted them to passenger planes.  Like Sydney Bellek and Elian Davies in M. S. Spencer’s Lapses in Memory, I received my “wings” on that flight.

My next flight was aboard a Cessna.  I don’t recall the model.  My sister, brother-in-law, and their best friends rented a cottage in Eagle River, Wisconsin and took me along to babysit.  That was a disaster.  I was fine in the city, but when a raccoon got into our garbage outside the only door I could have used to go for help, and I was stuck in the woods without a phone, this city girl panicked thinking it was a bear.  The next time the adults went out, they got a sitter for me.  But I digress…  We went on an aerial tour of the resort area, and at the age of twelve, I got to sit up front, next to the pilot.  That was so cool!

I didn’t get to fly again until I graduated from high school.  My graduation gift from my parents was a trip to Los Angeles to visit an aunt and uncle out there.  I got to see the mountains and go to Disneyland, but I didn’t get to see the ocean.  That was my first experience on a jet.  I believe it was a Boeing 707.  I had a few flights on those and 727s—a couple more vacations, and then my flights to and from Boot Camp and the Navy Hospital at Oakland, California.  The difference is in the engines.  A 707 had engines on the wings, while 727s had them on the tails.

I discovered the Boeing 737 Baby Jet when I was engaged.  My fiancé was stationed in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and it took two flights to get there from San Francisco.  Three, if you counted the chopper service across the San Francisco Bay!

Yes, I’ve even flown on helicopters.  San Francisco and Oakland Helicopter Airlines made sixty-two passenger flights per day across the Bay between the two airports, using Sikorsky S-62^[3] turbine helicopters.  They even had flight attendants who would make sure each passenger’s seat belt was properly fastened.  Once we were airborne, they would jump up, pass out mints, sit down, buckle up, and we would land.  It was much easier to get to the San Francisco airport than taking busses.  I had to really hang onto my wedding gown when I went home to get married.  It got caught in the updraft and was headed for the rotors!

The weekend of my twenty-first birthday was quite an adventure.  I flew home on a hop out of Travis Air Force Base on a C-131 cargo plane.  We sat backward and instead of a flight attendant, we had a burly sergeant telling us how to don our parachutes and pull the oxygen tanks off the wall in case of an emergency.  (Yes, I used that in Rock Bound.) There was a trailer on board in which some brass were flying across country for some sort of meeting.  We stopped at an Air Force Base in Kansas while they met with someone there.  The sergeant took inside the trailer.  He said it was the one used by the Apollo 11 astronauts during quarantine when they returned to Earth.  I didn’t appreciate the historic significance at the time, because I didn’t realize he meant Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins when they came back from the Moon.  I thought he meant one of the later missions.  Eventually we made it to Scott Air Force Base near St. Louis, and I caught the last civilian flight to O’Hare.

I couldn’t catch a hop back to San Francisco, so I grabbed a civilian flight.  It was a Boeing 747 with a piano bar, and since it was my birthday, I didn’t have to pay for my drinks.  Flying from Central to Pacific time, my twenty-first birthday was twenty-six hours long.  Sydney and Elian spend time aboard a 747 with a piano bar in Lapses of Memory.

My last interesting flight was the hop I caught to Hawai’i.  It was a Lockheed Orion P-3 used by the Navy for anti-submarine and marine observation operations.  I was assigned the starboard observation post.  Being the only female aboard was fun.  I got to sit in the catbird seat behind and above the pilot and co-pilot and watch the sun set over the Pacific.  The navigator let me speak to a picket ship in the middle of the Pacific whose only job was to steam in a tight circle and speak to aircraft to let them know they were on the right course to Hawai’i.  They hadn’t heard a female voice in months.  The drawback was that since I was basically a hitch-hiker, they didn’t bring along a bucket for the head.  Translation—there was no ladies’ room.  And, because the P-3 flies low to spot submarines in the water, it’s not a jet aircraft.  It’s powered by four turbo-props, so it’s slower than a jet.  A flight that takes about four hours by jet takes six hour in a P-3.  Yup—six hours with no restroom.  I didn’t care about seeing my husband when we finally landed.  I just needed to find the facilities.  The crew wanted to wash the plane and put fuel onboard.  I convinced them to let me out at the fuel tanks.  My husband, who had been in the control tower when we landed, was on the stairs and missed my sprint across the tarmac. He was quite flummoxed when the plane finally taxied to the terminal and I wasn’t on board.  The pilot told the tower I was on the flight—where had I gone?

It’s been awhile since I’ve felt the power gathering beneath me, the G-forces pushing me into my seat as we tear down the runway, and the sudden smooth freedom of flight.  I miss it and hope to feel it again someday.  But if I don’t, I hope you will.  And no, I’ve never joined the Mile High Club.  For me, flying’s fun enough.  I cry on takeoff for sheer joy.

The Chicago Blackhawks Dropped the Flag

The City of Chicago is celebrating, but I'm not.  Our hockey team, the Blackhawks, have won the Stanley Cup.  Apparently that's the equivalent of baseball's World Series, which I will celebrate when the Cubs win.  Yeah, I know—I'm not holding my breath.  Back around the Turn of the Century (the last one, 1900 or so) Sam Sianis of Billy Goat's tavern tried to take his goat to a baseball game at Wrigley Field.  The Wrigley's refused to allow him to bring the goat into the ballpark and he cursed the Cubs.  They haven't won a World Series since.  I'm not sure if they've even played in one.  In my lifetime they've come close to winning the National League pennant twice, but lost to the New York Mets in 1969 and the San Diego Padres in 1984 (darned clay infield!).  Mr. Sianis' nephew brought a goat into Wrigley Field at the Millenium, but the Cubs still haven't made it.  Apparently his uncle had some pretty strong mojo.  After all, he was the inspiration for the Saturday Night Live "Cheesburger, Cheesburger" skits.

I was raised as a Cubs fan and my heroes were people like Ernie Banks who patiently played first base and hit balls into the bleachers and out onto Waveland and Sheffield Avenues without once ever playing in a World Series game.  Back then players were not free to leave a losing team in favor of a winning one or tell their agents to "show them the money."  Nor did they fight with the umpires (much) or hurl obscenities at the umps or the fans.  There was such a thing as sportsmanship, and that's why my family watched baseball and not hockey.  They didn't approve of people beating each other up with the implements of their sport.

But that's just a part of the game and always has been, apparently, and I wouldn't bother to blog about it.  I'd be glad our Chicago team won and go my own way as I usually do when any of our other teams win.  I am, however, angry at the Blackhawks.  A few years ago I was at the United Center for a performance of the circus and I was dismayed when I was caught in the concourse during the National Anthem and everyone out there but me ignored the song.  I wrote an essay called "The Flag Drooped," and submitted it to the National Veterans' Creative Arts Competition where it won a Bronze Medal.  Well, the flag practically lay on the floor during the hockey playoff that I witnessed on TV when I was caught at Buffalo Wild Wings playing trivia during a recent playoff game.

It was bad enough that very few of the fans bothered to salute properly during the performance of the Star Spangled Banner.  There was a murmur in the background that almost drowned the song out.  People weren't even keeping quiet.  I've grown to expect that.  If they teach respect for the flag, the Pledge of Allegiance, or the National Anthem in school, those lessons don't seem to last past the schoolyard gate.  But one would at least expect the athletes to stand still with their hands over their hearts during the performance, as my Cubs used to.  I realize these are not intelligent people and I'm not suggesting we idolize or deify them, but they're the guys on camera and the fans do idolize them.  Companies pay millions of dollars to advertise their wares during these games, and these men make millions of dollars to skate around and hit a piece of rubber with wooden sticks.  The least they can do is stand still with their hands over their hearts during the National Anthem.

I realize many of these guys are not from the United States.  I get a lot of e-mails from my very conservative sister about how people who drive around displaying the flags of other countries from their car windows should get with the program, get green cards, learn English, pay taxes, and display the US flag or go home.

Well, these guys have green cards, they speak enough English to do TV interviews, and they have accountants to evade taxes just like all the other millionaires in this country.  And there they were, on camera, every one of them holding their hockey sticks in their right hands and fidgeting throughout the Star Spangled Banner.  I was absolutely disgusted.

I do not congratulate them on their win.  I am ashamed that they play in my city.  As far as I'm concerned, the flag didn't just droop—the Chicago Blackhawks dropped it.  I forget how many demerits that would have cost a company when I was in Navy boot camp, but I think it would have meant at least an extra week of boot camp doing nothing but cleaning toilets with toothbrushes.  Maybe someone should make the Blackhawks do that.