Cousin 1: Your church is weird.
My sister: No it isn’t!
Cousin 2: Uh-huh, they roll around on the floor & talk funny!
Other sister: Well at least our church isn’t boring!
Cousin 1: Well, at least in our church they don’t clap like this. (insert highly exaggerated ridiculous clapping here)
Me: Well, at least in our church we worship God instead of a religion like you do in your church!
::blink:: Where do children get this stuff?!
That comment ended the fight & made my cousins cry in the process. It also got me called in front of Mammaw. Oh gods, I was shaking in my shoes. Now, Mammaw only ever spanked me once in my Life, just once, but she had this LOOK. You know the one, yeah, that one. She gave me that LOOK and asked “Well, do you believe that we worship a religion in my church?” In my church, she’d said. I hadn’t realized I was talking about Mammaw’s church. I would never talk bad about Mammaw or anything she was involved in. Mammaw hung the moon & the stars. Tears welled in my eyes & I managed to choke out a weak “No”. She looked at me in disappointment & I began to cry. She shook her head & sent me away with a wave of her hand and an admonishment to apologize to my cousins.
That, boys & girls, was my first lesson about making broad statements and about considering how I really feel about a topic before fighting about it. (Thank you, Mammaw.) I didn’t really believe that Baptists worshipped a religion; I was trying to win an argument.
Fast forward almost 30 years & you have me, sitting in my cubicle at work glancing at my Twitter feed in between reports & phone calls & emails, and reading a string of tweets from a Pagan guy that I have only been following for a month or so. It was a rant about a local (to him) group that had served “stale tortillas & warm margarita mix” in the Cakes & Ale part of a public ritual he’d attended. Recently, apparently, he’d been told that they used RC cola & Moon Pies in another ritual. He ended his rant with “And if you believe that RC cola & Moon Pies have a place anywhere near a Witch’s circle I don’t want to know you.”
Boom.
Immediately I unfollowed him. Didn’t even bat an eyelash. No thought about it. I realized, with that single tweet, he dismissed & alienated himself from a lot of people, including me, simply because he has (apparently) strong & inflexible ideas about what is appropriately sacred enough for use in Ritual. That someone else wrote, hosted & led.
::blink:: Where do people get this stuff?!
I have done this before. I have, no doubt, hurt people’s feelings & pissed people off. I am still learning & some days I struggle. In frustration, I have sneered the word “Wiccan” with an eye roll probably as much as “Christian”. But experience breeds understanding and understanding breeds compassion and that is my goal. It seems hypocritical somehow, to strive for understanding & compassion, and at the same time be completely intolerant of intolerance. Maybe it is, but if so, I want to be a good hypocrite.
I’m gonna serve RC cola in my next Ritual. If I could find some gluten-free Moon Pies, I’d serve those too. I’m sure your home brewed wine & hand-made honey cakes are delicious, but my gods, like me, have simple tastes. Imagine that.
Sacred is what you make of it.
Magick is where you find it.
We all have our own Paths to walk.
Remember to keep your sense of humor, kids. You lose that & you lose your ability to relate.
Namaste, bitches.
~Cootie
4 Responses to “Drawing Down the Moon Pie”
BGTNJeff
September 26th, 2012 at 12:55 pm | edit
Perfect.
You have to wonder what would upset the gods more: individually wrapped snackin’ cakes and a cola beverage… or indifference and disrespect?
Which would you rather have?
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Cootie
September 26th, 2012 at 2:06 pm | edit
I’ll have the cake, thanks. :)
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morgana268
October 1st, 2012 at 6:44 pm | edit
Tortillas and margaritas would totally work for me. This totally feeds into what we were talking about at last Circle. The elitist attitude that goes along with “traditional” wiccan belief. This is where I fell away from wicca previously, because no matter what I might be studying at any given time, I cannot nor will I be pigeonholed into doing something someone else’s way simply because its THEIR idea of right. Spirituality, religion, magick.. its all intent and personal truth. It’s not some overpriced book at Crystal Visions telling you you’re “wrong” because you went off-script.
Side note…may be un-southern of me but I’m not a fan of the moonpie, but if by gods ya’ll are gonna go off-script, count me in. If nothing else, I think maybe Loki would approve.
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Mari Adkins
October 7th, 2012 at 2:22 pm | edit
Remember to keep your sense of humor, kids
Amen.