Driving to Yule
Dec. 19th, 2010 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabrinamariMy friend Peggy (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eoma_p) is learning Blue Star.
For the last 20 or so years, she's been one of my closest Christian friends. She was raised in small towns all over the south, and spent her teen-aged years in southeastern Oklahoma, maybe an hour and a half from where I grew up as a teenager. I've gotten used to thinking of Peggy as my really cool, surprisingly unconservative southern Christian friend.
Peggy has always been accepting and supportive of me. She sent her daughter Rose (lady_daegonna) to FSG under my care for many years, and she's always been very comfortable with Paganism. Still, her recent discovery of the Craft/festival part of my life and her entry into it has really thrown me for a loop.
So now, she's learning Blue Star. It's going kind of like this:
Peggy: "Why do you call the quarters?"
Me: ::Brain stops::: Thinking: "It's possible not to call quarters??? Really?"
Me: "Ok, it's gonna take me a minute to answer that one. That's sort of liking asking an anthropologist, 'What exactly is culture?'"
Then I explain the idea that the quarters, or the elements, are the building blocks of the universe as we know it, and are arguably even more basic to Pagan thought than the Gods.
There is a moment of silence.
Peggy: "That's a metaphor."
Me: "Well, I think of it as something that applies on every level."
Peggy: "Sabrina, chemistry disproved this idea years ago. It's based on an old medieval model of the world. Water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. Fire is rapid oxidation."
Silence.
Me: "Peggy, I love you."
***
For my more cautious friends: this post was Peggy-approved. If you don't want to be featured in my lj or, for that matter, in my classes and talks, I encourage you to tell me so. That way, you can feel safe in the knowledge that your part in my life is truly private.
eoma_p) is learning Blue Star. For the last 20 or so years, she's been one of my closest Christian friends. She was raised in small towns all over the south, and spent her teen-aged years in southeastern Oklahoma, maybe an hour and a half from where I grew up as a teenager. I've gotten used to thinking of Peggy as my really cool, surprisingly unconservative southern Christian friend.
Peggy has always been accepting and supportive of me. She sent her daughter Rose (
lady_daegonna) to FSG under my care for many years, and she's always been very comfortable with Paganism. Still, her recent discovery of the Craft/festival part of my life and her entry into it has really thrown me for a loop.So now, she's learning Blue Star. It's going kind of like this:
Peggy: "Why do you call the quarters?"
Me: ::Brain stops::: Thinking: "It's possible not to call quarters??? Really?"
Me: "Ok, it's gonna take me a minute to answer that one. That's sort of liking asking an anthropologist, 'What exactly is culture?'"
Then I explain the idea that the quarters, or the elements, are the building blocks of the universe as we know it, and are arguably even more basic to Pagan thought than the Gods.
There is a moment of silence.
Peggy: "That's a metaphor."
Me: "Well, I think of it as something that applies on every level."
Peggy: "Sabrina, chemistry disproved this idea years ago. It's based on an old medieval model of the world. Water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. Fire is rapid oxidation."
Silence.
Me: "Peggy, I love you."
***
For my more cautious friends: this post was Peggy-approved. If you don't want to be featured in my lj or, for that matter, in my classes and talks, I encourage you to tell me so. That way, you can feel safe in the knowledge that your part in my life is truly private.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-12-19 05:04 pm (UTC)Death: WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM
Susan: Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?
NO.
"Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact."
THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.
She turned on him.
"It's been a long night, Grandfather! I'm tired and I need a bath! I don't need silliness!"
THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.
"Really? Then what would have happened, pray?"
A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-19 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 02:54 pm (UTC)(Thanks to jeneralist for confirming my unspoken suspicion.)
no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 02:51 am (UTC)But magic is metaphor, really. It's why it's an Art as well as a Science... it's a poetry of reality, a way of engaging our minds with the Universe, meshing in with the flow of what is becoming, homing in on the sensitive dependencies on initial conditions so that we can nudge at just the right place and change the world.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 02:51 am (UTC)And the rest of this dialogue, too...