Hello, Constitution? Fuck off! Sincerely, Congress

This came to me via a friend of mine who found it on GovTrack:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=hr110-847

H. Res. 847: Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith

Full text of the bill is here.

How is this not a violation of the Establishment Clause? How is this not a slap in the face to every non-Christian living in this country—which was founded on religious pluralism and government non-involvement in religion?

Here is the text of my letter to my representative, who voted YEA on this resolution:

Rep. Miller;

As somebody who has voted for and supported you during your Congressional career, I am more than a little dismayed by your support of HR 847, passed on 6 December of this year.

The Founding Fathers of this country have made clear through their writings that no one religion should be endorsed or promoted over any other religion in this country. They made it clear through a Constitutional prohibition of the establishment or endorsement of any religion, be it Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Asatru, Wicca or Santeria.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut "…religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions…" (here is the link for your perusal: http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html) He wrote that while sitting in the White House as the 3^rd President of the United States.

Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli of 1796 clearly states "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." (again, here is a link: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/barbary/bar1796t.htm#art11) Given comments that have been made to the troops about God being on "our side" in the Iraq War, I find this passage rather darkly ironic.

More recently, recently-retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said in her opinion on "McCreary County vs. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky" that "When the government associates one set of religious beliefs with the state and identifies nonadherents as outsiders, it encroaches upon the individual's decision about whether and how to worship."

Religious freedom is what this nation is founded on. When one religion is favoured over another, whether via resolution expressing sentiment or via force of law, people who do not adhere to that belief system are made to feel insignificant or unwelcome. It's human nature. The wording of HR 847 differs markedly from HR 747 (recognizing Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated by Hindus and Sikhs the world over) and HR 635 (recognizing the Muslim holy month of Ramadan) in that it specifically promotes Christianity. Furthermore, the resolution's author, your honourable colleague Steve King of Iowa's 5^th District, has gone on record as saying that "the foundation of this nation and this culture is Christian", and that the resolution was intended to assert this status in the wake of "an assault on Christianity."

Rep. Miller, I do not assault Christianity when I wish somebody a Joyous Yule during the winter holiday season. I do not assault Christianity when I wear a Mjolnir pendant (one of many symbols of my faith, Asatru) or use the heathen origins of the days of the week. I do not assault Christianity when I procure a small tree for my living room so that I can decorate it with garland and lights as my ancestors did centuries ago. Yet I am feeling assaulted when people like your colleague from Iowa use language in a resolution that sends the message that non-Christians are somehow unwelcome in this country.

I do not appreciate being made to feel unwelcome or unnecessary because of my religious beliefs, Rep, Miller, and I am certain that the other non-Christian constituents in North Carolina's 4^th Congressional District feel the same way.

Sincerely,

AQ

I think that about sums it up, don't you?

Yuletide update

OK, so Yule isn't for another two weeks-ish. Deal.

Anyway: I no longer work at the Stop-n-Rob, for reasons that I will not go into in this public forum. I now have my weekends and evenings back, so I can once again have a life.

What this means is that I'm actively getting ready for Yule this year and planning to spend time with my fellow heathens, rather than spending time in a convenience store in a rough neighbourhood wondering if this will be the day I get plugged by some wannabe who's upset that I carded him for a dollar blunt.

Yesterday evening I was at the SuperTarget near where I live. I heard a couple of middle-school age kids talking, and one of them said "What does 'yuletide' mean? Like, you hear it all the time--but what's it mean?" I was going to explain it to them, but they left before I got up the bollocks to turn around and tell them about Yule and the pagan origins of Christmas trees, holly, mistletoe, and so forth. All those fun holiday traditions that the Christianists claim are under attack by us wicked pagans.

And speaking of holidays: this time of year is always rough for me, because I'm so used to spending it alone. Either I've had to work, or I've been by myself (because I was single or--after I got married--because the husband just sleeps all day). So it's always been very painful for me, especially when the alternative was always family drama.

This year, I'm trying to do different. Leave some porridge (well OK, some Malt-O-Meal) out for the wights, try to make some kind of gifts (read: baked goods and other comestibles) to give to local friends, try to clean the house (which is always hard when you have trashed joints and low energy)...I want to do something other than mope, knowhutimean?

And I'll have another craft update soon.

Hail The All-Thumbs!

I've been woefully neglectful of this blog--must attempt to rectify that.

Recently, I came to the decision that I wanted to make something. This amuses my family greatly, because (to be quite honest) I am woefully incompetent when it comes to artsy-craftsy stuff.

But do I let it stop me? Of course not. Like any good heathen would, I decided to make a valiant attempt to craft something. For personal betterment, just to say I could do it, and because I wanted to find some way to honour the Aesir and Asynjur. So I settled on the one thing that I am least qualified to do:

I'm going to try embroidering an altar-cloth for my harrow. For somebody whose last attempt at embroidery was several disastrous (not to mention injurious...for me) attempts to do cross-stitch when I was 14, this is quite an ambitious undertaking. After all, a 4x4 altar cloth is much different from a simple little "WELCOME TO OUR HUMBLE HOME" sampler done from a kit.

The cloth isn't going to be anything really super-elaborate. No petit-point, no latter-day Bayeux Tapestry, nothing like that. Just a simple red jersey altar-cloth with Mjolnir stitched in black on a circular gold background, with the Elder Futhark embroidered in black around it on a white ring. And a silver border, because I like silver. A friend of mine jokingly suggested I work a little Stanley Cup in there somewhere, but that is a project for another time.

In preparation for the task, I have been attempting to embroider various runes (on pieces of the cloth that I'll be using for the big project) with satin-stitched backgrounds. They, of course, look like ass.

I'm well aware that this post is useless without pictures, but please bear with me--the computer that my digital camera hooks up to is currently on the blink, so I can't upload anything yet. I'll do my best to keep you updated on the progress of the work.

Please, friends--try to contain your giggles.

Prison Ministry Revisited

An argument is breaking out on a mailing list I read. One member who has "convict" in his screen name posted, asking about blots and other events in his part of the Southeast and saying "I have been away from my people for too long". The response was light, and I didn't bother responding to him at all because it was pretty clear to me that he was more than likely in the joint.

Day before yesterday, he posts the following:

hope all had a great blot and plenty of mead. hail the 14 words and
hail odin.

The response he got from another listmember was rather..."forceful". Simply put, he was told where to go and what to do with his "fourteen words" when he got there--a sentiment that I agree with, to be honest.

(For those who don't know: "The Fourteen Words" refer to the white supremacist slogan "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children." It's often shortened to 14W, and is sometimes paired with "88", which is shorthand for "Heil Hitler"--H being the 8th letter of the alphabet.)

This has sparked a great uproar, with several people defending the racist and saying that those of us who flamed him aren't being hospitable. One of those people is a member of a group that has a very active prison ministry--which readers of this blog know is something that I am dead-set against--so of course his comments didn't exactly win me over.

So I find myself forced to wonder: when, pray tell, did it suddenly become okay to welcome outlaws into our midst? Outlawry certainly does still exist, folks; the only difference between outlawry today and outlawry 1000 years ago is that today's outlaws are sent to prison rather than left to the less-than-tender mercies of whoever happens to come across them.

Were I in prison, would I want access to a godhi/gydhja and ritual items? Of course--but I certainly wouldn't expect them, and I'd know full well that as an outlaw, the gods wouldn't want anything to do with me. I know my ancestors certainly wouldn't! Prison ministry is a fool's errand, in my opinion. I don't want to be associated with outlaws and dirtbags, and the responsible thing for any heathen to do (in my opinion, of course) is to stand up and tell these luckless pieces of garbage "Sorry, but you're on your own until you have paid your debt to society."

Just because Hospitality is a virtue of our folk, that doesn't mean that we have to be hospitable to outlaws.

On Faith

I was chatting with a friend about the aforementioned video--which led to a conversation about faith and religiosity and what makes a "real" believer.

I made the point that a lot of Christians do speak out against charlatans like Benny Hinn, but nobody listens to them because it's apparently easier to laugh at the silly Christians as a whole than to say "not everyone is that way".

That should sound very familiar to us heathens, by the way--remember it the next time you see a Nazi with a valknut tattooed on his face plastered all over CNN.

Melly was telling me about how she went to a Catholic service when she was 12, and was creeped out by the ritualistic chanting and mass praying and so forth--it all smacked of brainwashing to her. I told her about how, when I was a born-again, I was quite neurotic because I was never able to give in to the mass hysteria--a whole church full of people would fall down shaking or speaking in strange tongues, and all I could do was stand there and wonder why I wasn't being "slain in the spirit". Did Yahweh forsake me?

The answer, of course, is no--I simply am one of the few people that is highly resistant to mass suggestion and hysteria. Were Benny Hinn to blow on me, I'd just stand there and tell him "Dude, Altoids--look into them."

But the whole thing gave me a neurosis. I used to kneel in my room at night and beg Jesus to save me, crying that I didn't want to go to Hell and begging for an answer about what I was doing wrong--the answer, of course, was that I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was simply immune to fakery. That, and Yahweh in all his three forms wasn't my god to begin with--so of course he wasn't going to talk to me. Sure, he'd listen--but the response was pretty much "my dear, I have all the sympathy in the world for you but you're really barking up the wrong tree."

One common thread throughout my spiritual life is that the trappings of religion never appealed to me overmuch. Pouring out an offering to one of the Aesir or Vanir (or to the spirits of the land or ancestors or what have you) has never been a super-formal thing to me. I'm just sharing a drink or dinner with them--which is what an offering is.

"Thor, I brewed this fine Imperial Stout, and I'd like you to have the first drink."

That's such a beautiful thing, an offering like that. Such an uncomplicated and wonderful thing...and something that I think a lot of people lose sight of. Ritual is nice, sure--it helps to focus the mind. But I think that some lose sight of the why when they get caught up in the what.

Hmm.

Getting back to "faith versus religiosity". To me, faith is life and life is faith. They're inseparable. I try to do the right thing, always. I try to live by the virtues that many heathens hold dear: industry, loyalty, honor, truth, hospitality, discipline, perseverance, courage, and self-reliance. Sure, I'm not perfect--but I fully and freely admit that. I don't pretend to be better than I am or try to be something that I'm not. I am who I am: somebody who's trying to live a life that her descendants (in this case, my nephew) will be proud to look back on and be inspired by.

And hopefully making a little luck for the little bugger doesn't hurt, either.

I don't need church for that. I don't need a hof or formal blots or anything for that--they have their place and their time, and I like being involved with them whenever I can, but I don't see them as requirements to be heathen.

I just wish more people would understand this.

OK, this is funny.

Before I post this:

Regardless of what one thinks of Christianity (or how broadly one wishes to paint her tarbrush over those who claim that belief system), this video is quite funny. Charlatans like Benny Hinn have been exposed repeatedly by other Christians who don't care for hucksterism and fakery by those who choose to abuse their faith to make a buck or advance a particular agenda.

Gee, guess heathens aren't the only one that don't care for fruits, nuts, and flakes.

Let The Bodies Hit The Floor

Meet the new boss, just the same as the old boss.

In the last few weeks, I've been pondering Forseti--or, if you're Frisian, Fosite.

Forseti, so the Eddas tell us, was the arbiter of the Gods. The other Gods could go before Him with their disputes, and he heard both sides and reached a decision that all sides agreed was fair. The Great Mediator, Stiller of Strife. He was the wisest and most eloquent of the Gods, and it's said by some that he was a god of truth just as much as he was concerned with justice--for without truth, one cannot have justice.

The truth, however, is rarely gentle or free from pain. The search for truth is something that I hold dear--whether it's scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth (to steal a quote from "Star Trek: The Next Generation"). Sometimes, I wonder if I don't wield the hard truth of what I see like a woodsman's axe, hacking through things willy-nilly in an attempt to get people to understand the truth that I see.

I'm far from eloquent, and not as wise as I wish I was--but I try to live an honest life.

And sometimes, truth and its brother honesty are a little hard for some to take.

The Heathen Who Came In From The Cold

Bernulf, good to see you back--believe me, I understand what you're dealing with.

In other news:

Hrafnkell makes a most excellent post in his blog about the need for we heathens to defend ourselves from attack by the Christian Right--who, in case you haven't noticed, have been engaged in a Jihad against the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment for the last few dozen years. You know the one: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion Yeah, that one.

So. I made a comment that, in hindsight, came across more as "let's lie low" than "I agree: rather than just call names and sling mud, let's engage the Christians and fight their attempts to outlaw other religions."

And so here we are: The Evangelical Right holds that anything that doesn't favor their belief system is "an attack on Christianity", while the rest of us look at them and say "all y'all are out of your minds."

And really, they are all out of their minds. I could say that Christianity is a plague on society--but that makes me no better than a preacher who uses his pulpit to bludgeon people over the head with the idea that government exists to help Christianity stamp out other faiths and the born-again who steadfastly refuses to accept that the Founding Fathers were Deists who did not intend for this country to be Christian-only. Do I think that Christianity is a plague on society? No. But some of its followers--the Christofascists--are not much better than the Islamofascists over in the Middle East...except that the Christofascists aren't forcing their religious point of view on anyone by force of arms or sending martyrs to blow themselves up in crowded markets.

But then, what's the difference between force of arms and force of law? Either way, blood will wind up being shed if the Christofascists have their way.

Odin help us all.

Comfortably Numb

A friend of mine asked me once if I was secure in my faith. I replied with "yes, I believe I am" (the first time I've ever been able to say that, by the way).

So then she asked me "Then why are you so antagonistic towards Christians?"

And the more I thought about it, the more I understood her point; why go out of my way to antagonize those whose faith is so antipathetic to my own, if I'm secure in my belief system?

Does that mean that I can't or won't defend myself if I come under attack? Of course not. Several times I've come under attack, and several times I've replied the way my ancestors would have: "You've got your religion and I've got mine--you go worship your god and just leave me be."

Mind you, this doesn't always work and I have to get more politely forceful with those who refuse to take the hint and continue babbling at me about their desert god...but I no longer feel the need to go on the offensive.

Of course, this makes me wonder why the worshippers of YHVH-1 are so adamant about aggressively spreading their faith like a virus throughout all of creation. Are they that insecure in their beliefs that they feel the need to aggressively attempt to stamp out and oppress other faiths?

They've got their religion and I've got mine--as long as they stay away from me and my kin, we won't have a problem.