Miserable ATHEISTS

Today I found myself riveted to Richard Dawkins' rad website, where a group of devout atheists cranked out explanations of what they do at Christmas aka "Christ's mass."

Here's a small, tasty sample:

"As a miserable atheist I shall of course be alone over christmas. After breakfast I will spend the next three hours tearing pages out of a bible and cursing anyone who has the temerity to ring or call (I will save the quran for Boxing Day). Having loaded my air rifle I will take pot shots at birds and cats that enter my garden. Just before dusk I will spend an hour or two breaking into cars and if I am lucky, stealing children’s presents, I don’t want them of course so I will throw them into the nearest waste bin having stamped on them first...."

I hold a sweet place in my heart for all the world's Atheists (I was one myself -- between being born into a daddy/sky/war-god family and moving on to the Mother/Earth/Peace-Goddess).

A metacool thing about Atheists is that they are our allies in the war to break the fist-clamp the father/sky/war gods* hold over us.

In other words, once Atheists become cool to everyone, it'll be easier for Pagans too to hold our heads up high (without worrying about getting them smushed into the nearest cement sidewalk by some busted daddy-war-god dude).
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*Mainly Jehovah, Allah and Yahweh, but also the Hindu daddy war gods
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thnx to Ramon Gris for the foto; go HERE to see more of his work.

THE GREAT MOTHER'S Prayer

Our Mother who art the Earth
Nourishing are thy ways
Thy web of life be woven
Thy ways be found within
As it is all around.

Thank you this day for our bread and sweat
And forgive us our misuse of you
As we forgive others their misuse of us
And lead us not into exploitation
But deliver us from lording it over you
And over each other and over fellow creatures.

For thine are the waters of life
The feeding, breeding, seeding ground
For now and as far as close to forever
As we shall ever come.

Blessed Be!

~ from Zsuzsanna Budapest's Dianic University website

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Thnx to AJ Franklin for the pic of "Rainbow over strip mines." Go HERE to see more of this fotographer's work.

AJ says, "The coal companies ran roughshod over NE Penna, tearing out whatever they wanted and making it look like the surface of the moon. These are the same bastards that are in the oil business today, and want to do that to the ANWR...If they were given half a chance."

WINTER SOLSTICE Blessings

From Vicki Noble:

At this sacred holy-day, I like to remember Charlie Murphy's Solstice song, Light Is Returning, to express the relief that we profoundly feel as the light is birthed again within the darkness...

Light is returning
Even though this is the darkest hour
No one can hold back the dawn

Let's keep it burning
Let's keep the light of hope alive
Make safe our journey through the storm

One planet is turning
Circles on her path around the Sun
Earth Mother is calling her children home

Title: Light Is Returning
Lyrics by: Charlie Murphy
Recorded on: "Canticles of Light," Charlie Murphy, Jami Sieber and the Total Experience Choir (Out Front Music, P.O. Box 12188, Seattle, WA 98102)

Blessings to all of you on this eve of the day the light returns!

Love,
Athana
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thnx to epantha for the pic; go HERE to see more.

RICK WARREN: Dominionist DUDE?

It's bad enough he's anti-LGBT, anti-woman and anti-abortion.

But worse -- and something few are talking about -- is that Ricky Warren, the Jumping-Jehovah dude Obama picked to open his inauguration, seems to be in bed with Christian Dominionists.

Dominionists want to kill democracy, the presidency, and the Constitution. "Time to go back to kings," they say. But the "king" would be their cutie little dude-deity, Jumpin' Jehovah.

Instead of the Constitution, all our judges would thumb through the Old Testament to decide right from wrong -- and the "right" punishment for each "wrong," including the death penalty for looking at a parent with disrespect in your eye.

You think I'm kidding here, doncha? You think these Dominionist dudes are are only a few scattered loony-toons who have no power, don't ya? Hows come then Sarah Palin -- a Dominionist -- got so close to the White House? Think that was just an accident?

And hows come Ricky W. gets to usher in the Obama admin.?

If we hafta have Ricky, then Judith Laura over at Medusa Coils has the best idea I've heard all week:

If we ... really want to be inclusive, we should look for a woman who is clergy in a non-Christian religion.... Selecting a lesbian to be the other invocation-giver would send a clear message that Warren’s presence is truly meant to be inclusive and not an endorsement of his views.

Shooting OURSELVES IN THE FeeT?

HERE'S an article that caught my eye today. It's about how Muslims are leading the world around like a cow with a ring in its nose, 'cause we're all frightfully frightened of the fatwa, and about how the West started the whole shebang all by its lil' ol' lonesome self:

"The lesson of the Rushdie Affair ... is that liberals have made their own monsters. It is the liberal fear of giving offence that has helped create a culture in which people take offence so easily."

What's to blame, says Mr. Kenan Malik the author, is our "abandonment of the politics of universalism in favour of ethnic particularism, the shift from the politics of ideology to the politics of identity." All this sly shifting and abject abandoning happened in the 1980s.

OK, I'm a liberal, but I part company with my liberal friends over the idea that every trait of every culture is a sacred cow. The fatwa, IMO should be stomped into the dust ASAP with every ounce of energy the world possesses, along with harems, human slavery, and the frequent ingestion of roasted caterpillar skins. The earth's too small now to stand for such nonsense spreading and getting the upper hand -- or should I say foot?

Pass THE SEED, PLEASE

HERE'S a good article on how "religious" people breed like flies. "Religious" people pump out more babies -- in many cases a *lot* more babies, says this author, Andy Gottlieb. And, those babies typically adopt their parents' religion.*

By "religion" Andy of course means daddy-god religion (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist). So, what Andy's really saying is daddy-god people have more babies.

Next Andy scratches his head and says, "Nobody knows why!"

Well, dear hearts, we know why, don't we? Typically, Daddy God tells his dudes to throw "their" women down on the floor and fill them full of seed. Tons of seed.

Here -- anybody want seed? Daddy God has it gushing out his galoshes. He's tickled pink to pass it around, all over everyone. He does adore his seed. Seed, seed, seed.

And what this means is, the daddy always has extra bodies lying around he can beat the rest of us up with. It's a problem.

This little drama, of course, has been marching across the stage for six millennia. Although Daddy started as a small group of a few dozen 6000 years ago, he's now spread like lice in thick hair, all over the globe.

Today, well over half the world worships Daddy.

It's a problem, and what we can do about it is this: get to Daddy-god's young while they're itty-bitties and teach them what kind of deadly world plague their parents are trying to pass off onto them -- and all the rest of us.
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*"Faith Equals Fertility," by Andrew Gottlieb, on moreintelligentlife.com

ACADEMIA AND THE Bogeywoman (i.e., GODDESS)

HERE, in an old issue of Goddess Pages, is a great article by Max Dashu on the way in which "objective" academia shakes in its shoes when confronted by Goddess.

Thnx both to Max and to Geraldine at Goddess Pages for all you each do for the Goddess Movement.

DEAR ANONYMOUS AMERICAN Soldier

Dear Anonymous American Soldier who left a comment today on my old 1/2/06 post, "Bible Verses for the Kids to Memorize",

First, I adore you, and the Goddess adores you.

Second, I beg of you -- don't threaten me with Christian promo propaganda like "I only hope you will realize the truth in God's word before judgment day comes." It makes me laugh and giggle til my stomach ties itself into crampy little knots.

Third, I can't even begin to tell you how grateful I am you are willing to sacrifice everything to protect me and others. You are my hero in all caps. Whatever any of us feels about the justification for the war in Iraq, the fact is, in the primitive war-based world of today, we still need to protect ourselves at times against armed aggression. Without guys like you, we'd all be toast faster'n you can say "trip over my toes and tell me thank you."

I know you aren't paid to sit around and second-guess your commanders. You're trained to do as you're told. That's how our war-god armed forces work, and in our present culture, I seriously doubt our military'd work otherwise. So I deeply and totally honor your commitment to protect.

Third, you're right -- you are fighting for my right to believe what I want, even if you'd sooner drown what I believe in a bathtub as look at it. Your religion, however, is based on the idea that if I do believe what I want, it will shoot me down into a vast underground torture prison -- to be tortured hideously, with no release at any point in time. Ever. Pretty, harsh, dude, wouldn't you say?

You think you're fighting for democracy in Iraq (if that's where you are), but your religion is fighting to dump democracy here in the U.S. -- and around the world. Members of your religion are fighting as we speak to take over the U.S. and make it a theocracy.

If you want to learn more about this, root around and read a few of the other posts in this blog.

Sixth, as a soldier, I know you need to pray. But you're praying to a scam. I hate to break it to ya, dude, but your god is a primitive desert god-substitution pieced together by ancient con artists to scare the bejeezus outa people so they'd do their bidding.

Why not pray to a real deity, the Great Guiding Mother Goddess? She loves you no matter what you do, and takes you back into Her loving arms and womb when you die -- no matter what. Or, pray to god while you're at war (I know it's hard to change when you're under stress), but think about what I say here. And when you get safely home, consider switching to a real deity -- the Great Goddess.

Hate to break it to ya, but with your 'god' chances are big-time good you're going to Hell. Have you read the entire Bible? Do you know how many ways you can slip into Jehovah/Allah/Yahweh's Eternal Torture Chamber? What if when you die, you go to where you think you'll go? Whew, bud, are you taking some big risks!

Seventh, read the rest of this blog. Or better, buy my book, Switching to Goddess: Humanity's Ticket to the Future, which I wrote simply because I can't cover everything in one sitting about why the world needs to drop "God" like a hot potato and take up again with the only real deity we've ever known, The Great Guiding Goddess.
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thnx to one lucky guy for the foto; go HERE to see more.

LONESOME DOVE Meets GODDESS

Last night after watching the award-winning movie Lonesome Dove, I cried so hard a river now runs through my living room.

What is it about the ending of this movie that makes it almost as bad as watching a best friend die?

And then it hit me. I think Lonesome Dove taps into the old Goddess world.

Lonesome Dove happens in the Old American West. When two ex-Texas Rangers, Augustus "Gus" McCrae and his longtime partner Woodrow Call drive cattle to Montana, they are joined not only by several cowhands but also by Ms. Lorena Wood, the prostitute half this group is moony-eyed over. Only after learning his old heartthrob Mrs. Clara Allen now lives near Montana, does Gus agree to ride along. One of the cowhands, a young orphan raised by Gus and Woodrow, finds out on the trip that Woodrow is his father.

On this blog, I have always said that compared to god people, Goddess people are sensual, nurturing, emotionally-mature risk-takers with galloping senses of humor. This is Gus McCrae to a tee. While Woodrow often pokes fun at Gus for Gus's love of pleasure, Gus pokes at Woodrow for being a party-pooper.

Gus loves love-making, but since Woodrow's long-ago fling with the orphan Newt's mother, Woodrow has been celibate. Whereas Gus is often seen lolling naked in a river chewing on a reed, Woodrow's never even seen without his hat -- let alone his clothes.

Gus nurtures like a Mother Goddess -- even when it leads to grief for himself. He nurses Lorena back to health after she's been manhandled by Blue Duck and his gang. This means bringing her along to Clara's ranch -- and may be partly why Clara cold-shoulders Gus's marriage proposal once again. The anti-nurturer Woodrow, on the other hand, can't even tell his own son he's his dad -- leaving Newt with deep scars.

As the Goddess is present all around us, so Gus is emotionally present, expressing his emotions easily, quickly and often -- to pigs if no one else is around. Woodrow is as emotionally distant as a sky god, never showing anything but anger. Woodrow rarely even speaks.

While Gus has a sense of humor in spades, not one drop of humor runs through Woodrow's daddy-god veins. Woodrow the god-man runs his cowhands like a dictator -- except for Gus, who "governs" himself. Gus is an emotional risk-taker; doesn't scare him a bit to ask women for love. Emotionally Woodrow is as dry as the desert he crosses with his cattle.

So. Anyone else a lover of Lonesome Dove? Do my ramblings here make sense?
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*Lonesome was first a Pulitzer-Prize-winning book. This book was made into TV mini-series that won seven Emmy Awards and was nominated for 13 others.
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Clips from Lonesome Dove
(Hit the triangle in the lower left until it becomes two vertical bars)


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A Tribute to Gus

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thnx to rasputina2 for the foto of the bird-footed Goddess; go HERE to see more.

Tangling THE COVERS

Want a thoroughly entertaining yet damnably depressing picture of exactly how Big Money is using YAJ* to decimate the US? If so, put your paws on a copy of John Grisham's The Appeal.

What a read! I finished it late last night -- and tangoed through a night of tossing, turning and tangling the bed covers until I "woke" the next morning at the first sign of light in a window.
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*YAJ is short for YahwehAllahJehovah. Most think YAJ is three separate gods, but he's not. He's just one schizoid god with three separate personalities. Unfortunately for us, these three personalities are always at war with each other, dragging us into war after war on his/their coattails.

Dancing WITH THE MALE GODS

Yesterday, anti-thesisofreason asked, "So do you think we should get rid of all male deities? Are there any that would be worth keeping?"

Personally, anti, I believe there are tons of male gods worth keeping. Last winter, we had quite a party on this blog about male gods, with lots of people chiming in on the topic. [See "Goddess and the Good Gods" from last March]

And after reading Sannion's Written in Wine: A Devotional Anthology for Dionysos, I've fallen in love with this old Greek "counterculture god." [Go HERE to see reviews of Written in Wine on Amazon.com]
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Thnx to Clair-de-lune for the foto of Dionysus; go HERE to see more.

Balance: MOTHER GODDESSES v. Not-MOTHER GODDESSES

A few weeks ago, Kristina dropped off a little note* announcing that trading gods for goddesses would drag us straight down that ugly, weedy path of "imbalance."

Now, I was sure Geraldine Charles' recent article over at Goddess Pages had taken care of this piece of trouble "balance" already.

But what do I know.

Kristina, I'm wondering: How do ya define "imbalance"? Is dropping too much love on a baby an imbalance? Isn't it all in how you define "love"?

Howza bout being heterosexual? Isn't that an imbalance? (From what I've heard, ancient Greeks didn't even have words for "heterosexual" or "homosexual." To them, love was just love, all of it just as fine and dandy as peach hair.)

In Switching to Goddess** is a section saying the ancient Goddess-centered Neolithics might not have marked a difference between males and females as much as between mothers and not-mothers. So as someone who's never been a mother, for example, I would be lumped in with the men and the pre-teen women.

If I'm right about this, as long as Neolithic pantheons included mother- and "not-mother" deities, then to our ancestors these pantheons would count as balanced -- even if the not-mother deities were mostly female.

Whew! Wrap that around your brain and shake it six times!
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*On the October 31 post, "Back to the Goddess by 2035: Can We Really Do It?"
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thnx to Metronomad for the foto of Diana the Huntress; go HERE to see more.
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To purchase copies of Switching to Goddess: Humankind's Ticket to the Future, visit your favorite online bookstore. Or, for an autographed copy, send $28 ($25+$3 S&H) to Jeri Studebaker, P.O. Box 162, Westbrook, Maine, 04098.

Bopping THE GODDESS

Even though the Great Goddess has been bopped around a lot over time by the daddy gods, these bad daddies have never won the war they've waged against Her.

Oh, sure, they've tried hard to crush Her into dust, but every time they knock Her for a loop, She just bounces back again, in their faces, laughing.

Here's a look at just one of these bat-down, bounce-back sessions:

It didn’t take Jumping Jehovah long to see he had to sit on Mary just as he had Isis. And sit he did. As a result “Christian art of the first five centuries showed Mary in a position lower than Jesus, even lower than the Magi, who wore haloes while she wore none” (Walker 1983: 611). But for all the good it did him, Jumpin’ Jehovah might as well have sat around sipping frozen margaritas. To the people, Mary went right on being a totally awesome goddess, as shown by this story told by Caesarius of Heisterbach: “A knight of Liege needed money and so made a pact with Satan. When asked to curse and renounce God, he did so willingly. However, when the demon required him to renounce the Virgin, he refused, horrified. Therefore the Virgin later intervened to save him from damnation” (Walker 1983: 608).

And then J. saw that people were threatening to walk off his ball court totally. So after grumbling and spanking the wall a few times, he invited Mary back into his Church. “In the sixth century, the great temple of Isis at Philae was rededicated to Mary. Aphrodite’s sanctuaries on Cyprus became churches of Mary, whom the Cypriots continued to address by Aphrodite’s name…. Ecclesia, ‘the Church,’ was one of Mary’s titles” (Walker 1983: 609). Mary may have been lower than Jesus at first, but when the goddess temples closed, the “Goddess herself was not so much ousted as absorbed” (Walker p. 455). [FROM Switching to Goddess: Humanity's Ticket to the Future, Chapter 7, "Fight"*]

For the past six millennia these whomp-down, bounceback sessions have been happening all over the world.

The upshot of all this is, the Great Mother has never -- and never will -- abandon us. When we're ready for Her, She's ready to sweep us all up into Her loving arms again -- no questions asked.
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*HOW TO GET A COPY of Switching to Goddess: 1. Get a signed copy by sending a check or money order for $24.99 + $2.99 S&H to the author: Jeri Studebaker, P.O. Box 162, Westbrook, Maine, 04098. 2. Go to Amazon.com and buy it, by clicking on the Switching to Goddess cover to the right.
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thnx to Roozbeh Rokni for the foto; go HERE to see more.