Talking to pagan kids about death...

I think that death, like sex and political corruption, is one of those things parents can't wait to have come up in conversation with their small children.

Um...ok, maybe not.

I officiate at funerals pretty regularly, if not frequently, and we attend those as a family, so Jack is pretty familiar with the whole 'death' concept.

But this last year and a half has been one of rather more intense focus on death. Over the course of 12 months, we said goodbye to 21 or 22 people. (After a while, I stopped counting.)

The year of deaths gave us many opportunities to think about and talk about death, with each other and with Jack.

It all started around the 18th of December 2007 and I had hoped that the curtain have been lowered on the epoch with the births of grandchildren to two close friends a few months ago.

And then on Saturday, as we returned home to water the garden on our way between Solstice adventures, we found a bunny flopping around in the back yard. It clearly had a broken leg and there was blood on its fur. While I watered the garden, Jack watched it and murmured encouragement, and then offered it lettuce from our garden and some water in a cup.

We discussed how Hazel had had a similar injury, in Watership Down, and we decided to name out little friend hazel so maybe some of that healing luck would be spread to him. But we can't afford a vet bill right now, so all we could do was wish the poor little thing luck. We did agree that if it managed to survive until next day, we would see whether the Rabbit Rescue can help with a wild bunny. (They mostly rescue tame rabbits from what I understand.)

By the time we got back at 9pm, though, there was no sign at all of our little Hazel. Jack and I decided to believe that he had made it back to his warren, and that he was now resting safely and healing, but we know and discussed that he is even more vulnerable to predators while he can't run away and that he could die from his injury.

Hazel turned out to be a herald, though. Early Sunday morning, we learned that Rod's older brother is within days of ending his fight with the cancer that has ravaged his body. And so the topic of death comes back. Far from being afraid, our little pagan boy is accepts death as a part of the cycle in a way that will be harder to do for most of us adults.

He spent much of yesterday singing dirges about his own death and his next life, and proclaiming that he's pretty sure that Uncle Carl has more time before he leaves. He told me at dinner, if Dad seems kinda quiet, it's because his brother is dying and he's sad.

Death. Yup. BIG topic of conversation lately.

So, how do you talk to a kid, a pagan kid, about death? First of all, it will come up sooner or later. No need to rush things. It might be an animal by the side of the road. It might be a book they read. It might, knock wood, be something far closer to home. But the questions start.

What does 'dead' mean?, Are you going to die? When? When will he come back? Does it hurt to die? Will I die?

Next, be careful to answer the questions the child is asking. Understand that as emotionally loaded as these questions are for us, to children, they are no different than other questions they ask to try to understand their world and depending on their age, the questions may be more mechanical and less existential than you might be expecting. Answer the question at hand, and don't overwhelm him or her with a lot of heavy emotional and intellectual stuff. When they're ready for that, they will ask.

It's important not to put your children off when they ask these hard questions. The best you can do is answer patiently, gently, and consistently, as many times as the child asks. (If their timing really sucks, explain that this is not a good time for that discussion, but be sure to get back to them within a short time with an opening to ask again.)

Once the questions start, there is no perfect answer.

The physical facts of death are pretty straightforward. Death is final. We all die eventually. Whether it hurts depends on how we die. Generally, we don't know exactly when our turn to die will come.

The harder questions, "why do we die? What happens to us after we die? Why does everyone cry when people die" The answers to those will depend a lot on what you believe about death. Whatever you say, how you feel about death, your fear or comfort, is going to be communicated to your child much more strongly than anything in your words. The best thing to do is to decide ahead of time what you think about death. If you can't deal with that (and many people can't go there) then decide what you want your child to believe.

You should probably base your answers on your spiritual path. Death is a very emotional topic, and if you try to wing it in the moment, your answers can be pretty confused and confusing and children ask again and again to see whether they understood. If your answer keeps changing, it doesn't help.

Our beliefs include reincarnation, and that has made it easier to answer Jack's questions.

What does "dead" mean? Dead means that our bodies have stopped having our soul living inside. Our bodies are like clothes for our soul, and when our soul is done with this body, it "takes it off", leaving the meat part of us behind. But the body can't keep going without a soul, just like your jeans can't run without you in them.

Why do we die? Sometimes bodies get very old and worn out or very sick, and it becomes impossible for them to keep going. Other times, we have finished what we came here to learn in this life, and our souls arrange for an accident. But it's not our personality's decision, and it's no one's fault. Our soul decided a long time before we were born what it wanted to learn from this life, and once it's done, it wants to move on to the next life and the next lesson. (This doesn't account for murder but we hope that one doesn't need to come up in our lives.)

Does is hurt to die? No, death doesn't hurt, although the accident or illness that comes before death often hurts a lot. Pain is part of having a meat body. Dying feels wonderful, because our soul gets to go through the light tunnel to the Summerland, which is a place full of love and light where sadness doesn't happen and nothing hurts anymore.

Are you going to die? Often this is a bid for reassurance. We answer it by saying that yes, we are going to die someday, but we hope it's a LONG time from now, after Jack has grown up and has a partner and children to love him. We also assure him that, should we die sooner than we hope, we have arranged for Auntie Celeste and Auntie Dame to be his "spare mammas". They will take care of him, and teach him, and love him. We also assure him that we will be watching and loving him from the Summerland until he's grown. Then, perhaps we can come back as *his* children, and then it will be his turn to teach us.

When will Uncle Al come back? Well...he won't. Not in Uncle Al's body, anyway. That body got all used up, even though he seemed to be fine. We don't know when his soul will come back, or where. Or even if he wants to come back. Some souls decide that they have learned what they wanted to know about living in a meat body, and they decide to stay in the Summerland.

Why do people cry at funerals? Well, we know that the soul we loved is going to the Summerland, where they will be very happy. But we are still going to miss them a lot. So we are crying for our sadness at losing the hugs and smiles and jokes of someone we love.

What is heaven? Heaven is the Christian version of the Summerland. It is where Christians go to be with their God forever. It's beautiful and no one is ever sad there and no one ever hurts there. Just like the Summerland. The big difference is that Christians who go there to be with their God, aren't going to come back to live again in a new body.

Where will I go? That is your soul's decision. As a pagan child, I think you will probably go to the Summerland, but if you decide to be Christian and spent the rest of forever with the Christian God, you could decide to go to Heaven.

Your answers will be different, because they will be based on your own beliefs, but I hope this has helped you to figure out how to approach the questions.

Happy solstice everyone!

Today, the sun crossed into the sign of Cancer, heralding in summer for this year. Last night and tonight are the shortest nights of the year, and traditionally, this has been a day of great celebration -- especially in Northern Europe, where winter can mean a few short hours of daylight between 18 hour nights.

Because it is only a few days off from my own solar return, I have long considered this day a new year of sorts. As things stand on this day, so they often go for the entire year.

Last year, my oldest cat had just died, and she was one in a long string of deaths around me in the previous six months. My garden was a shambles and I was struggling to keep up emotionally.

This year is different. Although there is plenty of illness in our world, there are a lot more signs of hope than there were. My garden looks like it has mainly made the commitment to grow and give fruit. The last week has brought birth announcements, wedding and graduation invitations, and other signs that life goes on and there is still hope in the world. The potential loss that remains seems much more a part of the natural cycle than it did last year. Not my favorite part of the cycle, and very hard because this time the illness is much closer to home (see Rod's post above)--but still balanced.

This year may have some hard moments and some very painful losses, but it will be balanced by some good things, I think, and this is life.

I hope you all see a tip of the balance for the better this year -- Happy Solstice!

What the Aunties started ...

The Aunties, Auntie CeCe and Auntie Dee (Jack's Goddess mothers and parental pinch hitters) invited us over for dinner last night.

As always, the company was amazing and the food was delectable. (Auntie Dee treated us to what she called "Georgie-style, African American, cuisine": chicken cacciatore!) and Auntie CeCe pulled out all the stops and made a strawberry shortcake for dessert! Yum!

Toward the end of the evening, Auntie CeCe brought out Jack's Yule present. Ed Masessa's Wandmaker Guidebook. Now obviously, I had seen this series in stores, but the price was pretty high when I saw them, and I am ashamed to admit that I saw how beautiful they were and just assumed that all the effort had been put into the graphics and the content would be very poor. That has, after all, been largely my experience.

We have found that the content is actually pretty good. The history is deep enough to trigger conversations and the cautions and what "magic" there is, isn't so far off that we can't work with it. It has turned out to be a truly excellent trigger to get Jack really interested in studying the finer details of our way of life.

The book talks about creating your own magical space to work in, and Jack and I immediately had to redo Jack's altar. The one he'd had since he was three was simply "too baby-ish". The new one still has those dreadful power cords messing up the energy, but we do what we can. He now knows more about what his altar is for and what needs to be there than I had been able to get across to him.

Next, time we sat down with the book, we learned that one must never trust store-bought oils (not an unfamiliar concept around here), so I taught Jack how to make his own oils.

We decided after some research that orange oil sounded about right for his wand, so we chopped up an orange peel while we talked and then stuffed the entire peel into an herbals bottle. Then we used an eye dropper to fill the bottle with extra-virgin olive oil, charged it, and it is now sitting in an east-facing window to absorb the energy of the sun and the moon until Imbolg.

So, we are working our way slowly through the book, going back to revisit critical points every so often. Jack is fascinated by the little pockets with 'secret" information in them, and seems to really be coming to grok that magic is 9/10 patience.

(It helps so much that the book that the Aunties [fonts of all wisdom] gave him says so!

It's after midnight. The last of the thank you notes is written, and we have learned more about magick tonight than we have in a LOOONG time. I'm exhausted, but I am also content to have been here to see the moment of inspiration that has allowed us to explore these things...

Thank you, Aunties! We love you!

Happy Ostara!

Ostara, the season of new life.

I was so ready -- no, in need of -- this season this year! The dark season was indeed dark for us and we felt our middle age creeping into our bones a little more with every loss. The return of the light brought with it the deepest loss yet.

But now comes the time of new life -- the planting of seeds and the return of song birds. Maybe even eventually some warmth.

We took Jack to a children's Ostara circle on Friday and he absolutely loved it. They meet regularly at the Sabbats, and Jack wants to join them for Beltane as well. He loves circle, and the very idea of a circle aimed at his age, in which it was perfectly OK for him to dance around inside the circle while everyone was participating in their own way was a dream come true! Interestingly, he had been behaving less well in adult circle of late and I noted that when we celebrated at home later, he actually did much better than he has been. I'd have expected the opposite...

Yesterday started with Jack's discovery of a basket of gifts on his place mat. Since we don't usually use the parlour until later in the day, that took some time. He was pleased to find a CD of Mozart and another of Beethoven, and a Mary Pope Osborn novel (Dinosaurs before Dinner). A little more digging revealed not one, not two, but three dinosaurs! He played his CDs and read the first chapter of the book -- but the title of the second chapter was "Monsters", so he thinks maybe he needs company to read the second
chapter. He has a lot of trouble with books that have much emotional intensity.

As an example, _Five Run Away Together_ by Enid Blyton had to be out away for another time because the The Stick family was just so abusive that he couldn't take it!

Anyway, the chapter called Monsters in this latest find suggested that it might be scary, so we'll read it together.

Eventually he spotted his first hidden (plastic) egg -- and then the day became a flurry of egg-spotting. I didn't hide them very carefully this time -- next time, I think I will. Jack had found all of them within an hour and he ate all the chocolate as he found them. Needless to say, we needed a kite string on his ankle to make it through the rest of the day!

Later in the afternoon, Grandpa John came over and we had our Ostara celebration -- a very perfunctory circle, the work of which was planting our seeds for this year. I got a couple of things planted, but I also spent a lot of time helping Jack with his seeds and helping the guys get the balance of soil and "plant baby food" right. It's not that finely detailed a process, but if you didn't invent it, I guess it's a little weird.

After dinner, we chatted a while, but we were all feeling pretty sleepy so John left early. After a couple of hours, we started to feel more awake and we went off to hang out with Shelley for a while and then we came home and finished up our planting project.

In the end, we got 75 containers planted. A good start. We'll put the carrots and other things that don't want to be transplanted in after the snow has melted.

Edited to add: not all of those plants will go in our own garden. Some are also for friends.

Between the company, the circle, and the seeds, I am feeling more alive today than I have in some time.

Building a library for a young pagan child

Building a pagan children library has certainly gotten easier than it was 27 years ago when I started. I have to say, though, that I am still not finding the rich resources that I would have expected, given the number of extremely creative pagan parents I know.

Then again, I haven't done a whole lot to add to the resources, so I can hardly complain. (One book that I have finally found an artist for will be published as soon as she's finished -- but that's not a lot!)

Still, I have found some truly wonderful stuff, so I figured that I'd share what I know about, in hopes that other would do the same and we can all support the writers and artists who are supporting us and boost our kids libraries.

Pagan Books for Kids

For the real littles, I have found only The ABC Book of Shadows by Katie Lydon Olivares -- an alphabet board book full of pagan vocabulary and sweet art. (A is for Altar, B is for Beltaine, etc.) It's a nice start, but the book seems to be out of print and can be hard to find. (It took Amazon 6 months to find a copy for me.)

For the bigger kids who are ready for stories with chapters, W. Lyon Martin has written and found a publisher for two books aimed at early school-aged children: An Ordinary Girl; a Magickal Child and Aidan’s First Full Moon Circle. Ordinary Girl follows the adventures of a little girl called "Rabbit" as she explores her families paganism, starting with an explanation of what paganism means and continuing with Rabbit's own paganing ceremony. She briefly explores God and Goddess, Magic, Circles, the Wheel of the Year, discrimination and how to cope with it, moon cycles, and family magick like house blessings and banishing bad dreams. It's a sweet book and Jack and I enjoy reading it from time to time.

We only got Aidan this Yule and we haven't had a chance to slow down and read it yet, but the reviews say "Aidan and his parents have been solitary witches for as long as he can remember. At the rising of the Harvest Moon, his family is invited to a local coven’s Full Moon Esbat celebration. Aidan is jittery about joining a Circle full of strangers. While he is enjoying himself around the bonfire, the High Priestess and his mother cook up a plan to get him involved in the Harvest Moon ritual. Aidan learns he is an important member of the Pagan community." Sounds good to me. Of course, Jack has celebrated in community all his life, but the idea that not everyone does is a good thing to share. If Aiden lives up to Lyon Martin's previous book, it will be a treat for us to enjoy when life slows down in the new year.

Anika Stafford has given us Aisha's Moonlit Walk , in which little Aisha celebrates each of the eight Sabbats with her family a friends. It's similar in outline to Magickal Child, but different enough that Jack and I enjoy reading them and comparing how different families celebrate and comparing that to how we celebrate.

Finally, we come to A Witches Primer, Grade One by Lorin Manderly. It's not a story book but a young children's pagan curriculum for use by parents or children's circles. There are a little over 150 pages with no pictures at all, so it probably won't hold the attention of the very young. (Jack loves to read, but it doesn't really keep his attention yet at four and a half.) I do find it useful to read myself for ideas about how to explain some complex concepts for really little kids, though. Even when I don't entirely agree with her, Manderly helps me to find ways of explaining my beliefs that Jack can follow. I look forward to hearing that Grade Two is available, as well.

That pretty much sums up what I have found that is specifically pagan. Of course, there are plenty of less specific books that we enjoy.

Non-Pagan Books for Pagan Kids

I have no idea whether Ellen Jackson is "one of us"; probably not, but I find that hers is a name to look for.

So far we have Earth Mother, a lovely story about the balance of all the earth's creatures that seems like it might be based on a traditional African story. Man thanks the Goddess for giving him yummy frogs to eat, and complains about the pesky mosquitoes. Mother listens calmly and patiently, and then moves on to frog, who thanks her for the yummy mosquitoes to eat, but complains about the pesky and dangerous man. Mother listens calmly and patiently, and then moves on to mosquito, who thanks her for the yummy man on whom she feeds, but complains abput that pesky and dangerous frog who dines on her. Mother listens calmly and patiently, and then moves on, and nothing changes. The world is perfect just as it. The art is lovely, and the message is a very good one for teaching littles about the interlocking of all earth's creatures before we dtart trying to explain the ethics of magick.

Summer Solstice, Celebrating the Harvest/ The Autumn Equinox, Winter Solstice, and Celebrating the Greening of the Earth/ The Spring Equinox are mainly scientific and anthropological but it's good to have books that acknowledge our holidays and talks about the history of people celebrating them through time, anyway. ;)

In a similar vein to Jackson's seasonal books, Wendy Pfeffer's The Shortest Day explains what the winter solstice is and how it has been observed by various cultures throughout history. It is a more or less astronomical and anthropological review, but again, having books about one of "our" holidays is helpful and this one incorporates a few exercises you can do with your older children.

Eileen Spinelli gives us I Know It's Autumn. In it, the narrator, a child of six or seven, tells all about the signs in her (rather rural) life that Autumn has come, from the change in the light, to pumpkin muffins on the breakfast table, to the harvest at the market and the appearance of winter coats again. It's a simple picture book that younger children will enjoy and older children can read for themselves. Again, I like the fact that it focuses on the changing of the seasons, and although the scene isn't described in much detail, the family does go to what looks like it may be a Sabbat circle or a powwow at one point. It's kept vague enough that a child who is accustomed to those ideas will respond to the familiarity, but a child who isn't won' t miss much.

Chris Van Allsburg's The Stranger is just plain cool -- and my kids and I have long thought that surely the stranger is a weather sprite or a Pan-like god in charge of wild-life and weather.

Brother Eagle and Sister Sky A message from Chief Seattle isn't neo-pagan, and there is a great deal of controversy about how much resemblance it bears to anything Chief Seattle may have said, but Jack loves it and it certainly send a message of the importance of honouring the earth. That's good enough for us for the time being. I don't encourage Jack to think of it as representative of Native American spirituality, except, perhaps in spirit -- just as it's not neo-pagan spirituality, except maybe in spirit.

In a more classical vein, I highly recommend Mordicai Gerstein's Tales of Pan, a book of silly stories about the classical world's favorite mischief maker.

So, that's what I found one one quick perusal of the book shelves. What books have helped you to educate your baby witchling? Please do share, in comments or in e-mail!

My views on Halloween

Every October 31, we make our annual pilgrimage to Tony Packos in Toledo.

You remember Tony Packos? In the M.A.S.H. television series, Corporal Klinger mentioned it often. It's a Hungarian restaurant, and Klinger waxed eloquent about their hot-dogs. We stopped in the first time because we were in the neighborhood and we wondered whether it would live up to the hype. It didn't. It's OK -- pretty mediocre, but not outright bad. But it is an adult oriented restaurant.

So every October 31, we go there. Mostly because it's an hour away in Toledo, making it easier to be busy and out of the way of the "festivities" we don't want to expose ourselves to between 6pm and 9pm. We darken the house, close the gates for the only time all year, and drive for an hour, eat for an hour in a restauramt that blessedly seems to have fogotten what date it is, and then drive home for an hour, arriving home after the last of the revellers has gone home to bed or out to the bars.

Why all the effort? As witches, aren't we supposed to love Halloween?

Well, a lot of witches do love it, but frankly, Rod and I don't enjoy Halloween at all. I find the whole thing disturbing and somewhat offensive. I don't particularly mind that people who see it differently than I do want to celebrate, especially now that they've stopped trying to insist that I have to play, too. But I really want no part of it, myself.

Like so many other holidays, Halloween started out as a pre-Christian celebration. The Celts called it Samhain, and it was the celebration the final harvest and of death. When the Christian church entered the scene, they preferred to call the day All Saints Day or "Hallowed evening". But the the notion of dead folks wandering around wasn't so easy to quash, and the church had to find a way to deal with it. The combination of fear and misunderstanding between very different cultures left us with a mish-mash of ideas, none of which make a lot of sense when thrown together out of context.

The celebration of the final harvest and the honoring of the the dearly departed has morphed into a candy-fest featuring horrific images of death and highly fantasized images of magic and witchcraft.

Our major objection to Halloween as it's celebrated now start with the whole problem of the glorification of violence and the desecration of death's sacred nature. This time of year is indeed focused on death, just as spring is focused on birth. We honour the entire cycle of life, including death. Making one part of the cycle (birth) "sacred" and another (death) "scary" seems wrong. Add to that the "devils night" antics and the destruction of property that seems to have taken root in this time of year and the whole thing becomes pretty repulsive.

We also don't like the idea of children being fed on pounds and pounds of sugar. Yep, it's their parents call, and we honor that. But we don't want to poison your children and "healthy" treats will be thrown away, so we'll just opt out, thanks. (We have at least one friend who offers books to the children who come to her door -- and that is a great idea! If we ever get past our other objections, that's probably something we'll adopt.)

The idea of begging from strangers isn't a really great model to give kids, either. We prefer that our child be raised to be a contributor because in the end, that will make him much happier. If this was a once a year phenomenon it might pass muster, but name a single day of the year for which the children aren't conditioned to expect to be indulged ...

Then there's the commercialization problem -- people spend hundreds of dollars on this non-event every year! Hundreds of dollars for two hours of revelry on a holiday that has lost any real significance. It's insane!

What about the costumes? Those, I just don't understand. I think playing dress-up is great, but why limit it to once a year? And why focus on someone else's idea of a good costume, when there is a whole world of good ideas outside the costume shops? I have one friend whose children dress in costume on any day they wish -- now *that* is fun and imaginative! Jack hasn't shown any particular interest in costumes so far, but if he ever does, he won't be limited to this one day a year.

Rod adds to this list his objection to the appeasing of the spirit world with gifts, the trivializing of magic, and the typecasting of witchcraft and the supernatural as something perhaps frightening, or evil, but most definitely "other".

No we are not Disney Witches, nor even a Hogwarts graduates. This godawful trivialization, distortion, and commercialization of death and magic is something we just don't want to be a part of. So, we're going to enjoy our journey to Tony Packos.

See y'all tomorrow, when some semblance of sanity has returned.

Values

As my favorite astrologer has been explaining to clients for several months now, since just before my birthday, Venus retrograde means values re-examined.

That transit is coming to an end next weekend, so we can expect the effects to heat up for a few days. What that means in realistic terms, for those of us who don't spend a lot of time watching the stars and being introspective, is that all summer long, a lot of the people around us have been annoying, or annoyed -- or both. That's likely to be even more the case for the next few days, especially if we haven't figured out how our values are shifting.

It is from the people who have annoyed us most that we have something to learn. If you think for a moment about the people who have annoyed you this summer, you'll probably find it all boils down to one factor, and that tells you something about what you value. Something you may not have been specifically aware of or are not living up to. A value you may not have consciously realized was important to you.

Now, I have always been a pretty opinionated person.

This summer, who do you suppose has gotten on my nerves the most? Not opinionated people specifically, but opinionated people who feel the need to preach. People who feel like they need to be "in your face" with their opinions.

(The corollary is that this summer I have come to deeply respect the handful of people in my world whom I know to have strong opinions but who are confident enough in their opinions that they live them with little fuss. People you have to ask questions of to know what they think about the things that matter most to them.)

I have been that kind of "in your face" opinionated. I didn't expect people to agree with me, necessarily -- but I did expect them to understand and accept that I had strong beliefs on my pet subjects. Why that was important to me, I can't begin to say. It simply was. (Is?) I didn't feel I was being judgmental, since I was happy for people to have and hold their own opinions and I was happy to hear about why they thought so, but I see now that from the outside that looks like a VERY fine line. The "need to share" at length with anyone in ear shot can come off as intolerance.

I value tolerance and this Venus retrograde has taught me that I want to be someone who can hold strong opinions while being *actively* tolerant of those with different views. That means not mouthing off so much.

Can I do it?

That's another question entirely. I don't know, but I intend to try. Of course I am not promising not to "mouth off" here. I have to have *some* platform to feel heard. But I hereby give you my explicit "permission" to skip anything that doesn't interest you and not to feel that I am judging you if I state opinions that you know I know you disagree with. Unless your opinion is one I see as "intolerant" I probably don't feel that way. My being opinionated is actually all about being heard and understood, and I'll try to make that clear.

But I sure am glad Venus goes direct next weekend.

An old essay I came across...

I wrote this back in 1999 -- came across it this morning and thought you might be amused.

Blaming it all on Karma

by Misti Anslin Delaney (1999)

The Samhain morning murder of Ronnie Raub has a lot of people in our community thinking and talking. How, we wonder, could this happen in "our little family", the community of pagans who we prefer to think of as "good" people and "like us".

Domestic violence and murder go against everything that most of us believe. Nonetheless, Paul Raub - who considers himself a witch - beat his wife, Ronnie, pretty regularly, according to police reports, and now it seems he may have killed her.

Unfortunately, we in our little pagan community are just humans, and as humans we have the usual range of strengths and flaws. We'd like to think we have the inside track on wisdom, kindness, and truth. But really, we have only one of many paths to those ideals and it guides us only as well as we're ready to be guided, just as the better known religions guide their followers only as well as those followers are ready to be guided. The wise will find the essence of truth and beauty in any path, and the unenlightened can corrupt even the most wise and beautiful of faiths and philosophies.

A long time ago, a non-witchy friend asked me how anything bad could possibly happen to witches, since we know how to use magic and we can call on our powerful Goddesses and Gods. This friend knew me in a time when everything that could go wrong in my life seemed to be intent on going wrong. (It was my first Saturn return -- what can I say?) She was questioning the usefulness of my religion in light of the way my life was going at the time. I was poor, unemployed with no job skills, and the single mother of two rambunctious young boys. At some points I was technically homeless, though thanks to very, very dear people who went far beyond the call of the duty of friendship, I was never literally on the streets. I did cry along with my babies as they cried themselves to sleep from hunger on far too many occasions, when my friends didn't know the situation.

Another friend of mine, a witch, lost custody of her children to the vicious man who killed two of their children "in utero" by beating her. She found herself wondering why The Goddess had turned her back and wasn't answering her pleas to bring her children safely home.

So, why do bad things happen to good witches?

Well, why do bad things happen to anyone? People have been asking ourselves that since we first had the words to ask. That question may well be the whole reason we invented religions in the first place. And we've never found a deity or a way of life that would protect us completely - perhaps because, as Edith Hamilton once said "Man was not made for safe havens".

Some people try to blame every tragedy on karma: "I wonder what she did to deserve that?"

That attitude always annoys me. Whenever anything horrible happens to someone in our community, whether it's Ronnie's murder or the loss of custody of our children, or just a string of really bad luck, at least one person is bound to wonder aloud what the victim did to deserve it.

That's not so very different from the attitude people have long taken toward rape victims. What was she wearing, where was she, and what was she doing to invite this kind of treatment? Although it's far from extinct, this attitude is changing toward rape victims and I think it's high time we reexamined it in the rest of our thinking about tragedy.

Why doesn't being a witch, one who knows how to shape reality, one who can call on the might of our powerful Gods and Goddesses, always save us from life's tragedies? Why don't the Goddess, our loving Mother, and the God, our strong, protective Father, protect us from the fateful "bumps and bruises and broken limbs" of this world?

I'm convinced that, in part, it's because we're not here to live a safe little life in swaddling clothes. We're here to learn and to grow beyond what we arrive here as, and sometimes the learning is tough.

Just as a good mother lets her infant son take the occasional tumble as he's learning to walk and lets her young daughter take a chance on falling when she's learning to ride a two-wheeler, our Cosmic Mother lets us experience life fully, even with all its difficulty and pain. The experiences that what we survive make us who we are. Challenges toughen us to face greater challenges. Challenges that kill us also teach our greater self something... and death isn't final; it may be a major cosmic bruise, but we know we'll be back to go on learning.

Sometimes we go through hard times because we're being taught what we'll need to know to accomplish the task we're here for. The greatest of teachers and counselors are often forged in the "fire" of tragedy.

Sometimes, as in major weather disasters, we're caught up because we got in the way when the needful was happening. From the cosmic point of view, it's not a disaster, but a readjustment. Yes, a few lives were lost - but in the grand scale they mean less than the overall balance. When the rivers flood, they bring nutrients back to the land; if we've been foolish enough to make our homes in the flood plane, then that's just how it is. When a hurricane, tornado, or forest fire comes through, it tears up and destroys old growth to make room for the new. The cosmos we live in is much grander than our frail little human brains can encompass. (That's why Deities present themselves to us in the limited forms in which we know them!) There are forces at work in our world that we can only barely perceive. There is no more evil or malice in storms, floods, and fires than there was when I destroyed my toddler son's "finger painting in shades of food" on the dining room table. He was heart broken, but it needed to be done. That he didn't understand about germs and the basic necessity of cleanliness didn't make me evil or the destruction of his art malicious.

Sometimes we go through hard times simply because we got in the way of someone else's lessons at the wrong time.

Blaming the victim, though, even if he or she provably has a karmic debt, is never productive and is always cruel. I think it's a defense mechanism we use to convince ourselves that we needn't fear being victimized. We, you see, are "good" people. We've never earned the kind of karmic debt that would cause something like that to happen in our lives, so we're safe.

I have news for you.

You just don't know, can't know, exactly what your entry in the Akashic record looks like. None of us knows for certain about anything prior to this life. And for that matter, we aren't always aware of exactly what we've done and all of its results in this lifetime. Where karma is concerned, the only place we can make a functional difference is here and now. Maybe we racked up a lot of karmic debt in another lifetime, maybe we racked up a lot of karmic credit. Either way, we can neither know for certain, nor do anything to change it in the short term. From this moment forward, though, we can live with awareness. We can tip the scales for later in the direction of credits. But that won't protect us from all life's growing pains.

And bad things do happen to good, pure people all the time. Life's like that.

Our magick lets us shape reality, but this isn't Bewitched - magick takes time and planning and hard work in the real world. Sometimes things happen too fast for us to do more than hang on tight. Our magick, too, is always subject to the influence of other wills.

Sometimes it obviously works, and sometimes the results are subtler and to all appearances didn't work or didn't work out the way we'd planned.

The strength of our religion, beyond our deities and our spells, lies in its ability to give us a broader view in which to understand the events in our lives. That's one of the main premises I use in my counseling. Perspective can make all the difference in how well we cope. How we interpret things makes the difference in how we see our options. How we see our options make the difference in how we react and in how quickly we learn.

As I said before, sometimes the greatest of teachers and counselors are forged in the "fire" of tragedy. So how do they survive and thrive and come out stronger where others are broken? They allow themselves to be transformed by the experience—they use the joy and humour of our way of worship to conquer the bitterness. They use their knowledge of the accumulation of many lifetimes of lessons in the growth of the human soul to get some perspective on their situation. And they know, deep within their hearts that without some bitterness, the sweetness of life would be meaningless. They refuse to be conquered by self pity and they ground and center and go on, either in this lifetime or the next.

Ronnie found herself in an abusive relationship. Why?

We can't know. Did Ronnie somehow deserve to be killed? Did Ronnie Raub, at some karmic level, deserve all that she experienced? No, I doubt very seriously that she did. Or did she stumble into someone else's cosmic lesson? It's not our place to say. What was she supposed to learn from her killer's betrayal? I don't know. I don't think it's any of my business. Perhaps it was the payment of a karmic debt, perhaps it was a life's lesson about learning to have the strength to leave an unacceptable situation, whatever the cost - whatever the situation arose from, Ronnie did a brave and dangerous thing. She determined to remove herself and her children from a violent relationship. That would seem to have resulted in her death ... as is far too often the case in abusive relationships. (The most dangerous time for an abused woman is after she makes the decision to leave and within the first year after she leaves. That's when most abusive partners kill their victims.)

If it was her lesson, does that mean that Paul ought to get off, even if it was he who killed her? Absolutely not! We can't know what path Ronnie was walking, and we can't know what path Paul walks. But murder has consequences and a part of a murderer's path is surely to suffer the consequences of his or her acts.

But I firmly believe that Ronnie will be back, stronger than ever, to be an even greater teacher than she was in this lifetime. Her strength and compassion were obvious to all who knew her, and to many who knew only of her.

So maybe one life's lesson that we should all be tackling is to stop blaming karma for everything that happens. We need to take responsibility for our actions, to accept what life assigns us and deal with it well (whether it's a major lesson or just the way life gets sometimes), and to take proper action to help those around us when they deserve it, rather than judging them.

I grew up Catholic, and one of the few things I still find of value from that faith is the prayer of Saint Francis (paraphrased):

Give me the strength to change the things I can,
The serenity to accept what I cannot change,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

It seems to me a valid prayer in any religion.