Jason,
Thank you for spreading the word about this years Pagan Values event, your work here is one of the influences that encourage me to start the blogject and to try encouraging these conversations.

Peace,
Pax

So I checked out the documentary and liked it over all.

I liked that you didn't hear the "we aren't ...." arguments. I liked that it had good production values and that the participants were not dressed like some sort of Sci-Fi or Fantasy conventioneers. I liked that they were trying to focus on what the Pagan faiths agree on, including values, and how they emphasized what we have to offer the world.

Didn't see much regarding the Recon branches of the Pagan family tree... which is a shame because if what we share are values then acknowledging that the discussion of values is a continuum from pre-Christian times to the present is important.

Ironically enough, so many of us have been saying that to you for years now.

Lori,

No one is saying that people should bankrupt themselves or send their families headlong into poverty or degradation. All that is being suggested is that people be willing to put the time energy and effort forth to get on the path they seek, rather than the all too common whinging because the path isn't snaking its way to them!

And for the record if someone was in as dire financial situation as that you outline above, and Goddess knows that's been my life many a time, I would tell aim them at several resources and be a friend and advisor, but I would also tell them "Why don't we try to get your financial house in order first?"

Peace,
Pax

Apuleius & Robin,

First, Apuleius, again, let me appologize for my recent comments re: genocide. They were rude, petty, and uncalled for.

You, and Robin, have given me a lot to think about this week as I tried to understand just why it is that I have such a powerful emotional response when the two of you start writing about other religions, mainly but not limited to monotheistic ones. My reaction is often one of not just no, but a sometimes very angry "Oh Hell to the No!" In my anger and outrage I have sometimes gotten rude and petty and pissy, again I apologize.

The more I think about it the more I have realized that when one of the two of you starts to vent your ,admittedly well written, spleen on the topics of monotheism the two of you remind me of nothing so much as Jerry Fallwell or Fred Phelps or Anita Bryant or any of the many others who have tried to tell me all my life that as a Gay man I am evil and vile and worthless and without worth and value and values and that I don't deserve the same basic legal rights as others.

There is the exact same sort of righteous anger, and venom. The same willingness to deeply research matters as long as the facts you find match your preconcieved notions, and to casually sweep aside anything that is counter to your set opinions. There is the exact same cruelty and condescension to any and all who disagree with you, and the same willingness to comdemn them as wrong or suspect of representing "the enemy'. There is the same eagerness to force your opinions onto others. The same willingness to play the martyr card the second that the system isn't playing in your favor. The same sort of tactics, the same sort of fanatic zeal, the same sort of hatefullness, and the same sort of bigotry.

Then again the two of you aren't all that much like any of the fanatics I've named, after all neither you nor Robin has ever showed the courage of your convictions to attach your legal names to your little opinion pieces, either on here or on your blogs. You are content to cower behind your pseudonyms while spraying your negative opinions about like a cat marking its territory.

I do take comfort in the fact that for many, although admitedly not all, of the readers of this forum you and Robin represent the same sort of place within Paganism, that Fred Phelps or the Church of Christ Aryan occupies in Christianity.

So spout your hatred and vent your spleens, but do not for one moment think that others are going to simply stand by and not say something. For many of us the kind of bigotry, pettyness, and anger that you and your ilk represent are absolutely NOT what the Paths of the Pagan Movement are about.

Sincerely,

Pax / Geoffrey Stewart
Witchery = "witch*er*y/ n. 1 witchcraft. 2. power exercised by beauty or eloquence or the like." ~Oxford American Dictionary of Current English New American Edition (2000)
http://chrysalis1witchesjourney.wordpress.com/
and
http://paganvalues.wordpress.com/

I ended up reading that excretion of a book "Wicca: Satan's Little White Lie" years ago and recall getting angrier and angrier until the part where the writer does a point by point comparison of the Horned God and Satan followed by something along the lines of....

"If it walks like a duck, and looks like a duck, and sounds like a duck, it's a duck, a very Satanic duck!!"

...at which point I decided I might be taking this particular writer a little too seriously...

So whenever you start hearing some media-twit or another start spouting off about lascivious midnight bonfire orgy rites of the Witches and Pagans.... I find myself wondering...

"Who do THEY know?! The best I seem to be able to find is clumsy and fully clothed dancing around a hibachi in a meeting hall parking lot or a public park!?"

;-)

@ Baruch: They already are.

Ed,

A little confused here, aren't you the same gentleman who reported from the Parliament of the Worlds Relgions recently, and now you smearing all Christians with the same tarry brush as these Repent Amarillo nutbars?

Fair enough,

You still have yet to reply with any actual evidence, as opposed to admittedly well written disdain, to Baruch's request that you actually back up your assertion that Unitarian Universalism is a net negative to Paganism.

I find the exact opposite, not only in terms of U.U.s commitments to Freedom of Religion and Separation of Church and State and Civil and Human Rights. At the congregation of which I am a member, whether they engage in a religious relationship with the Earth or Gaea, every single house-hold at Church recycles, uses the recycling dumpsters on Church property, the building and grounds committee has committed to using Florida native plants and to organic and earth friendly materials and methods, the Green committee works not only to identify green options for Buildings and Grounds but works on Earth and Social Justice issues like responsible and sustainable farming issues... I have seen a heck of a lot more respect for the earth in my U.U. congregation than I have ever seen in my face to face experiences in the Pagan community. So I would have to disagree with you.

A big part of the hesitancy to change the language to "revere" is out of respect for the atheistic and secular humanist members of our congregations whose presence and history within Unitarian Universalism predate but are no less important than the influence that Paganism has brought to this faith tradition.

Are your opinions actually based on a direct person to person observation and experience of Unitarian Universalist's or are you simply making some grand sounding ivory tower assertion?