As well as my Pagan affiliations, I am also a member of a Unitarian Universalist Congregation. Recently I let that community know of my blog and my “benevolence fund” process via that community’s list serve. And, although several other people in the congregation are trying to earn or augment livings via artisanal endeavors, it appears…
You might have noticed that my blog now has a “donate” button on it. The idea is to fund myself as a researcher, writer and teacher through donations from interested parties, to whom I would send, via email, longer essays and monographs. We haven’t worked out all the details yet. Those of my acquaintance who…
As readers will know, I have been agonizing over the issue of indigenaity, in relation to spirituality and “immanential devotions”, through all of the postings so far. As a deeply Pagan person, the two core strands informing that conflicted spiritual orientation are: the Pagan heritage of Northwest Europe – what H.R. Ellis-Davidson identified as the…
Several months ago, I attended a conference called “De-colonizing the spirit” at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education – OISE. Much about the two day conference was commendable, uplifting, inspiring and thought-provoking. Especially thought-provoking. What came through loud and clear was that First Nations opinions represented there and Afro-Canadian opinions represented there had found…
“Indigenous” is a word fraught with peril. It is usually used as a synonym to “Aboriginal”, and in Canada, with “First Nations” and “Metis”. In addition, it is part of the vocabulary within which is discussed the thorny issue of whether (or not) and, if yes, then how, former colonies have managed to move past…
Very recently the Mariensky Ballet company came to our town and I rather desperately wanted to go – but, alas, could not. I ended up going to see the movie, Black Swan, instead and, just to salve my wounded spirit further, rented out from the SML, the video of the Royal Ballet version of Swan…
In my first post, I stated that “Immanential Devotions” held to a “lateral” orientation rather than a “vertical’ one. I have since been asked to clarify that idea. Again, it’s easier to think about this in comparison. Transcendental meditation, like prayer, is directed upward (by definition: beyond the immediate environment), the “sender” is an individual in an…
What in the world are “Immanential Devotions”? The best way to explain what they are is to reference them to “transcendental meditations” from which they are opposite; rather than being about the sacred beyond the manifest cosmos, the immanent sacred is about the divine within the cosmos, in particular about the divine in the immediate…
Ysabeault d'Valar-Alba 