For today’s blog post, we bring you Mansplaining, Pagan-style, with an extra-crunchy dab of “some of my best friends” white, male privilege for good measure.
Turns out that Pagan mansplaining is quite a bit like other kinds of mansplaining. It consists of a “helpful” suggestion (aka known as a threat) that women must adopt the man’s viewpoint (in this case, described as “evolve”) or “perish.”
Who knows what motivated this bout of Pagan mansplaining? The “controversy” being discussed is several years old. But there’s no need to let that come between a privileged white man and his patriarchy-given right to mansplain.
To pre-answer questions:
First, if I have to define what kind of Pagan I am, I say “Witch,” and if I have to say what kind of Witch, I say “mostly Dianic,” but what I really like is something that I once read attributed to Cora Anderson: “I believe in trees and being sensible.”
Second, I wrote about this topic when it was current and indicated that I can see more than one side to this (to coin a phrase) circle. As I said there, I honor Z Budapest as an elder and am grateful for her books and many of her teachings. She, like, well, a whole, whole, whole lot of other people, has also said some things with which I disagree and used some terms that offend me. As she’s gotten older and has come under more strident attacks, she appears to have gotten worse about it.
Which has exactly nothing to do with the right of Pagan groups everywhere to define themselves as they like, to practice as makes them most comfortable, and to evolve their practices as they — not some outsider wading in with his penis and his privilege — see fit.
While Peschecat soaked up every last bit of warmth from the laptop (it HAD been a cool Spring, but Gemmy refused to turn the heat back on; instead, she bundled up in sweatshirts and socks, but Peschecat simply didn’t look like the kind of cat who’d take kindly to being “dressed”), Gemmy wandered into the kitchen and began to pack tomorrow’s lunch. As she cut the brown spots off an apple and chopped it up to go into her yogurt, she remembered wandering into the Bonsai House at the arboretum.
Now Gemmy, my dears, had spent her life studying, working with, and getting to know many kinds of trees: trees in forests, trees suitable for suburban yards, trees that could thrive in the heat and pollution of an urban neighborhood. And she knew, of course, the basics of bonsai: how the art form had started in China and moved to Japan many hundreds of years ago, how bonsai masters pruned leaves, branches, and roots to keep the trees small even as they encouraged the trees to look aged and wind-blown, how small ceramic pots and special clay-containing soils were used to control the size of the trees. She’d just never been that interested; the whole thing had, as Gemmy’d once sniffed to a friend of hers who ran a nursery, “more than a faint whiff of foot-binding about it.”
And, yet, when a sudden thundershower drove her from the outdoor herb garden into the small building that housed the arboretum’s bonsai collection, Gemmy found herself entranced by the tiny trees. The building was silent; Gemmy had the place almost entirely to herself. She moved slowly into a meditative state, often stopping for more than a few minutes in front of one tree or another, or, in a few cases, groupings of trees that had been growing together for decades. She walked to a small bench and sat down, content to simply breathe, be, and open herself to the trees.
And, then, she saw it.
Even in its miniature state, Gemmy recognized it as a white pine. “You’re old,” she thought to the tree, which, off dreaming of something else, was slow to notice Gemmy.
“And you’re young. Yet you’ve come here because you’ve lived through a blast, just as I did,” the tree emanated to her.
Gemmy sat with that for a long minute. She got up slowly and walked over to stand next to the tree, well, as next-to as the rope barrier allowed.
A small plaque explained that the tree had been cultivated since 1625, originally just outside the city of Hiroshima. The atomic bomb blast at the end of Word War II somehow spared the ancient pine and, in the 1970s, the family that had tended the tree for centuries donated it to the arboretum. Somehow, all that Gemmy could think of was The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, a play she’d seen years ago on a trip to Philadelphia.
“The radiation didn’t change you,” she thought to the tree. “Being made bonsai changed you, but the radiation didn’t.”
“And yet,” the tree emanated, “none of us come through a blast unchanged. As you have reason to know.”
Gemmy wanted to cry. She’d been working so hard to hold it all together, to make a new start, to not dwell on the past. It had always been like this, ever since she could remember, ever since her mom had passed away and it’d been just her and Dad. She was fine until someone showed her a little bit of sympathy and then everything came flooding to the surface.
Gemmy sat back down, swallowed her tears, and thought, “Yeah, well, not exactly a nuclear bomb, in my case, but, yeah, I know what you mean. It felt like a slow-motion blast: first my job, then our home, then my marriage, then moving away from my coven, then moving to this new place in winter, this living paycheck-to-paycheck, then Deena selling “my” tree . . . . It’s been rough and I don’t spend much time thinking how rough; I just keep trying to keep trying. I haven’t had much time to think about how it’s changed me.”
“You have time now,” the tree emanated, and slipped back into its dream.
Gemmy sat a while longer, took a picture of the tree with her cell phone, and said, “I’ll come back to visit soon, if I may,” but the tree was silent. As she got up to walk back outside, something inside of her shifted; she felt as though her soul had been aired out.
Gemmy washed and dried the piece of aluminum foil that she’d been using for several days and wrapped it tightly around her peanut butter and pickle sandwich. “There,” she said to Peschecat. “I can sleep an extra five minutes in the morning — if you don’t wake me up.”
A chime sounded from inside Gemmy’s purse. Her friends knew not to text her unless it was important — texts cost money. “Who could that be, at this hour?” Gemmy wondered.
Peschecat got up from the now-cool laptop and walked soundlessly from the room.
* Stop whatever you are doing and go read The Indigo Vat right now. You can thank me later. I really want to have someone do this up in calligraphy so I can frame it and hang it where it will be the first thing that I see every morning:
You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.
Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
~ David Whyte
* For all of the gardeners who feel themselves flowing in the river of time: enjoy.
* Byron’s somewhat south of me, but I hope to harvest my nettles this weekend. Maybe Byron will post her nettle soup recipe by then!
* Don’t buy seed from Monsanto. SCOTUS blew its decision, big time, on farmers’ ability to harvest and use seed from crops grown from Monsanto.
Farmers who buy Monsanto’s patented seeds must generally sign a contract promising not to save seeds from the resulting crop, which means they must buy new seeds every year. The seeds are valuable because they are resistant to the herbicide Roundup, itself a Monsanto product.
The month of May was come,
when every lusty heart beginneth
to blossom, and to bring forth fruit;
for like as herbs and trees bring
forth fruit and flourish in May,
in likewise every lusty heart
that is in any manner a lover,
springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds.
For it giveth unto all lovers courage,
that lusty month of May.
* I keep a few low drawers in my kitchen full of arts and crafts supplies — everything from scissors and glitter glue, to crayons (one of the big! 64! colors! boxes), to stickers, to coloring books, to odd little cardboard models that I find at Michaels. (You know Michaels, right? World’s greatest Wiccan supply store? Also known as the Parents’/Grandparents’ best friend?)
G/Son can be over here a dozen times and not open those drawers, but then we get to a weekend such as this past one, when he’s lethargic from a lingering cold, it’s rainy, grey, and cool outside, and Nonna’s kitchen is the brightest, coziest place to be. Then, he’ll open up the drawers and start pulling out projects, working happily for hours with only an occasional juice box, or bowl of popcorn, or help opening a well-sealed packet of stickers needed to keep things going. Music from WETA helps, too, especially if turned on without comment.
If you have children in your life, I recommend arts and crafts drawers.
If you live alone or with other adults, what would you put in a drawer for you and/or your housemates? My own drawer would have bath bombs, a scented candle, cool yarn, a new poetry book, a tin of madelines, some tiny bottles of absinthe and glitter, incense that I don’t normally use, . . . .
* The other thing that G/Son and I had fun with this weekend was a box of Fairy Berries:
Best. Bath. Toy. Ever. G/Son always tells me that he doesn’t want a bath, but a few of these thrown into the tub and he never wants bath time to end.
* Landscape Guy turned me on to this lovely idea for lavender wands. I’m hoping to have enough flowers this year to try a few. Meanwhile, the sage in my herb bed is out of control, so I’ll definitely be making lots of smudge sticks to use and give to friends.
Another great way to use up extra sage is pears (or apples, or bananas, or mangoes, or sweet potatoes, or . . . well, you get the idea) in sage butter.
* On Saturday morning, G/Son and I bundled up and drove to the local farmers’ market. Nonna got asparagus, strawberries, yogurt, and radishes. (Someone else, who shall remain nameless, blew all of HIS spending money on apple cider doughnuts, hot off the doughnut machine, covered in cinnamon sugar. To be fair, he enjoyed every single one of them, including the ones that Nonna warmed back up on Sunday morning.)
As we were leaving the farmers’ market, G/Son said, “Nonna, you should come here and sell all of your herbs.” Nonna said that Saturdays are usually her one day to sleep in a little bit and that people who sell at the farmers’ market have to get up early on Saturday to cut their herbs, set up their stalls, etc. G/Son allowed as how he could help me to cut herbs, and set up, and could even make change (which, again to be fair, he honestly can do, by now), but that he would need at least “fifty percent, Nonna, literally, fifty percent; that means half.” Which is not a bad partnership proposal.
But Nonna said that she prefers to give her extra herbs to friends and family. Maybe when Nonna retires, and G/Son is older, we’ll have a stall at the farmers’ market, selling herbs, smudge sticks, lavender wands, Nonna’s knitting, and the odd tarot reading.
Another way that I use up extra herbs is in butters, which can be made with tarragon, dill, parsley, oregano, sage, thyme, and even mint. You soften the butter, chop up the herbs, mix them up with the butter, spread the mixture on a marble or wooden board (my cutting board works great), semi-chill it, and then use small cookie cutters to make lovely little pats of herb-butter. They freeze really well, and are perfect for tucking inside the skin of a roast chicken, atop a grilled fish, in between layers of mushrooms and potatoes for a hearty casserole, atop a steak on the grill.
* I grew garlic this year, as an experiment, and it has produced beyond my wildest dreams. Next year, I’ll grow a lot more: DiL and I both use a lot of garlic. I grew, and plan to grow, hardneck garlic because it produces garlic scapes.
Here’s one way to “braid” it:
I’ll let you know how it works.
* Whenever he’s over here, I read G/Son a chapter of so of The Secret Garden once he’s tucked into bed. (Pro tip: Seven-year-olds will listen to anything you like if it delays “lights out” for even a few minutes. It’s a way of helping them to listen to something that they like but can’t admit that they like if they’re to remain cool.) Next, I’m planning on Little Lord Fauntleroy, by the same author.
All that most people know about this book is that it’s about a little boy who lives as a cossetted English lord. But it’s actually a hugely populist novel, especially as espoused in the character of Mr. Hobbs, the New York city grocer, who always reminds the little lord that most property is stolen, and who shows up to save him in the end.
* Another silly thing that G/Son and I do is to play card (that kid is an Uno card shark) and board games. Hi, Ho, Cherry-O! was a favorite when he as a toddler. As he’s gotten older, G/Son’s come to especially enjoy The Magic Labyrinth. Chutes and Ladders and Chinese Checkers are close runners up.
Card and board games are wonderful for the face-to-face interaction that they allow and for the story-telling that goes on during the game (which you won’t get with X-box or Wii; they go too fast). Whenever we play a board game, G/Son asks me to tell him the story of how his dad and I would play Scrabble on snow days, since, as a teacher, I always got those days off with Son. I tell G/Son how Nonna would always make a pot of soup or chili or would roast a turkey (29 cents/pound back then!) while she and Son played Scrabble and watched the snow. He likes the part where Son would try to sneak in words that weren’t in the dictionary.
When he’s a bit older, I’m going to introduce Scrabble, Pictionary, and Trivial Pursuit.
Who knows what G/Son will remember about me when I slip through the veils to the Summerlands? But if all that he remembers are long, sunny mornings on my porch playing Calvinball Uno in our pajamas and bathrobes, eating farmers’ market strawberries, and telling stories, well, I think that I’ll be very ok with that.
What’s your favorite board game? Your favorite game memory? Did you play anything with your Nonna?
RT @SandraFluke: Deplorable that we're back at this point over a year later! All male House panel legislating limits on women's health.http… 10 hours ago
