tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16380264731988392662024-03-13T13:31:11.874+00:00Pagan ChaplaincyReflections, suggestions, questions on being clergy in a religion with no priesthood.Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.comBlogger101125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-83340912481543882122012-03-12T15:23:00.001+00:002014-03-05T17:19:24.461+00:00"If you want to be loved and liked, don't go into psychotherapy."<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Take a look at this article about the doyenne of forensic psychotherapy, </span><span style=" font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/17/estela-welldon-speak-mind-patients-psychotherapy" target="_blank">EstelaWelldon</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b><i>The field often attracts "do-gooders", says Welldon, who are singularly ill-suited to it. The only physical attack she has ever witnessed at work took place when a colleague comforted a client by patting them sympathetically, prompting an explosive reaction. "Touching them?" she says, "No way. Also, if somebody's saying nobody wants them, and wants to talk about the parts of themselves that are bad, or hateful, they don't want to hear: 'You're actually really nice.' Fuck you! I mean, honestly, it's so condescending, and you're not seeing what the patient wants to give you.</i></b></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">My first exposure to psychiatry was when as a very new student nurse I chaperoned a doctor one night as he spoke with a young woman, about 16 or 17 years old in the Sisters Office. Looking back on it it’s clear now that she had been raped, was in shock and possibly a little dissociated. The psychiatrist was all technique, at one point noting that the woman glanced at a picture of fairies that was propped against a wall and wondering if she’d like to join them. Happily, his bleep went and he left the room. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Having not yet learned that professional means detached, I said something along the lines of “Well thank Christ that load of old rubbish is over. What happened to you?” The doctor hailed me as some kind of miracle worker when he returned and the young woman was able to speak about the evenings events.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">When we treat patients as poor souls in need of our expertise we distance ourselves from them and patronise them. As a matter of principle, we are all equals. And it’s dead true that therapy attracts do-gooders, people in massive need of care themselves who find satisfaction in exerting control over others. Therapists come into training because we’re interested in our own inner lives above and beyond almost everything else; we’re a desperately solipsistic lot and we’re all a bit bonkers. Therapists have to accept that about ourselves to keep the privileges that we’re given under control. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b><i>[Welldon] says she has an "enormous amount of violence myself, and I think the patients know that too.”</i></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Hoorah. Many of us are seething with violence a lot of the time but we’ve learned to tone it down, disguise it, pretend it’s something else because that’s what gets rewarded and it’s why so much of Paganism is pathetic. Sitting with some friends the other day one said, ‘If one more person tells me I’m strong, I’ll scream.’ Another replied, ‘Tell them you’re not strong, you’re violent, that’ll shut them up,’ and we laughed with recognition and pleasure. Religions in particular tell us we must be meek and mild, totally accepting, utterly non-judgemental and it’s a very rare person who can come close to that even occasionally. Patients who are wild with fury, often very justifiably, don’t want to be met by someone who would really like them to talk about rainbows and puppies and the power of forgiveness. Whilst it’s often important for a woman patient to have a woman therapist there must also be room for a woman to meet with a male therapist who’s au fait with his responses to sex and gender and is comfortable with a woman who needs to rage or talk honestly about her dangerous feelings around her children. I’ve met too many women therapists who make their fear and disapproval of women’s rage and violence all too obvious.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">We all walk a thin line between professional, cold, and over-involved and we’re not always going to get it right. Good training, a good attitude towards authenticity, excellent and rigorous supervision all help, as does having people around us who are also authentic, who are settled enough in themselves to allow us to be vulnerable, livid, clever, committed, successful. Who are wise enough to allow and accept our humanity in its entirety. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-2792823998844312152012-03-03T17:27:00.003+00:002014-03-05T17:25:42.152+00:00Abuse ExcusesThe media is <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16955554" target="_blank">heaving</a> with news and opinion on the conviction of Eric Bikubi and <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">Magalie Bamu, the three day torture and murder of Magalie’s brother, Kristy aged 15, and the torture of Kristy’s other siblings.</span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">This case has been simmering away for a year but it was only after sentencing that pictures of the flat in which Kristy was murdered were allowed to be shown. I’m very unsentimental, detest sentimentality in others and fairly hardened to life, but I was aghast at what I saw on the news last night. Suffice it to say that the people whose duty it was to sit through details of this misery and pass verdict have been exempted from jury service for the rest of their lives.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Commentary is starting to focus on the socio-economic situation of the perpetrators – Bikubi and Bamu lived in a council flat in Peckham, an area of deprivation. The words ‘council flat’ in populist media are code for poverty and general shiftiness and also, to paraphrase a number of talk radio responses, “We’re giving council flats to asylum seekers who bring their strange and dangerous foreign ways over here.” Not only were they poor, they were African and therefore doubly troglodyte and unable to know the difference between right and wrong. Which misses the billions of poor people, African people and people in social housing who would not dream of being abusive.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">The people who tortured Kristy to death were respectable members of their British communities. There’s the clue to what was really going on:<br />
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</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><b><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17241960" target="_blank">“People</a> who knew 28-year-old Eric Bikubi have spoken of their shock to learn that the promising football coach . . . who showed no sign of the barbaric nature that was to emerge . . . killed a teenager.”</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">I’ve worked as a domestic violence counsellor for many years and the same issues arise there too. Perpetrators are very often respectable, charming people well liked by their co-workers and neighbours. In fact, the more charming and well liked perpetrators are the more likely it seems that they will kill, sometimes indulging in f<a href="http://www.philliphodson.co.uk/family_annihilators__why_men_murder_their_own_children_september_2008" target="_blank">amily anniahilation</a>. Their motivations are power, control and a sense of entitlement.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">When you meet with abusers it’s very easy to be drawn in by their charm. Abusers are almost by definition manipulative. It’s never a matter of ‘losing control’ because abusers are absolutely in control of themselves, they don’t attack their friends and neighbours or strangers who accidentally get in their way as strangers will from time to time. They choose to ‘lose control,’ that is, they choose to become abusive. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"> They will say that they blacked out and have no memory of what happened; that the violence appeared out of the blue (“I’m not a violent person”); they deny their victims humanity (“A slut, a bitch,” “A Witch.”) Their entire perception of events is centred around themselves: if the victim hadn’t have done something to them they would not have had to defend themselves, or the police were called in order to punish them rather than to protect their victim – they’re classic narcissists. They have an enormous sense of entitlement and will want to talk about their victims’<i> behaviour</i> and their own<i> feelings.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">Alcohol and stress are often used as excuses for violence. Yes, they can lower inhibitions but they’re also used ritualistically, as a precursor to violence. The scene is set, “I had a drink,” or “I’ve been under a lot of stress.” The abuser blames the victim for causing the stress or for not soothing stress.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">Psychological instability is often used as an excuse, either a momentary insanity or because the perpetrator had an abusive childhood. In fact, the link between experiencing abuse as a child and perpetuating abuse as an adult is not clear and, again, discounts the vast majority of children who were abused who do not go on to become abusers.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">I’ve no doubt that Bikubi and Bamu will use the ‘cultural belief' in witchcraft as an excuse for their behaviour. At least for a while, until they realise that the UK mental health system is inherently racist and will not tolerate any cultural expressions of distress at all. Whatever their eventual diagnosis part of Bikubi and Bamu's crucible of healing will be to acknowledge that they are child killers and child abusers: it has nothing to with witchcraft or kindoki</span><span> style=, or any other 'cultural' practice.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div>Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-69958905451595466542011-08-26T17:15:00.000+01:002011-08-26T17:15:02.432+01:00You Need This BookThree years ago it was Mindfulness. In the late '80's it was Project 2000. I've lost count of the stuff in between but at least this says what it means: Be Intelligent. And Be Kind. I'm hopeful that this will go some way towards altering the industrialisation of looking after people because it addresses it. It might be kinder if this book was not £25 but it looks like being a good investment. Here's the review from the <a href="http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/publications/books/rcpp/9781908020048.aspx">Royal College of Psychiatrists.</a><br />
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<em>Intelligent Kindness: Reforming the Culture of Healthcare</em><br />
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<em>Intelligent Kindness</em> is a powerful new approach to healthcare reform. Ballatt and Campling argue that the NHS is a system that invites society to value and attend to its deepest common interests; it is a vital expression of community and one that can improve if society, patients and staff can reconnect to these deeper values. To do so will improve quality and patient experience, as well as morale, effectiveness, efficiency and value for money. <br />
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</div><div class="BasicParagraph">Relentless regulatory and structural NHS ‘reforms’ have failed to avert scandals and left many health service staff feeling alienated. Industrial and market approaches to reform, whatever their merits, urgently need to be balanced by an applied understanding of what motivates and assures compassionate practice. The authors examine this topic from a wide variety of perspectives, including psychoanalytic thinking, group relations, neuropsychology, social psychology and ethology.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This book calls on policymakers, managers, educators and clinical staff to apply and nurture intelligent kindness in the organisation and delivery of care, and offers advice as to what this approach means in practice.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><strong>Readership:</strong> This book will be essential reading for health service managers, clinical leads, politicians, policy-makers and health journalists.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><strong>About the authors:</strong></div><strong>John Ballatt</strong> - Independent consultant advising on health and social care and organisational systems, Leicester.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><strong>Penelope Campling</strong> - Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist at Francis Dixon Lodge (a therapeutic community), Leicester.</div>Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-26372896387590414202011-06-06T06:13:00.000+01:002011-06-06T06:13:08.508+01:00Carers Week: Caregiving and Truth Telling<blockquote>Sick people are grumpy and often angry. Wise Elders can turn bratty and difficult when they feel less able and under threat. I knew that going in. The trick was not to match these moods with more of the same, which, by and large, I avoided. </blockquote><br />
From Sia's <a href="http://fullcirclenews.blogspot.com/2011/06/caregiving-and-truth-telling.html">Full Circle</a> blogClare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-44980517614054340312011-06-03T13:57:00.003+01:002012-03-13T07:15:27.230+00:00It's The Economy, Stupid.Voluntary Euthanasia is going to become legal in the UK within, please Goddess, my lifetime. Elderly people live longer, we don't want to pay for their wellbeing and we don't want to care for them ourselves because we've been told that being employed is far more important and that caring is someone elses job. But we can't bear to hear the endless story of elder abuse in hospitals and care homes either.<br />
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Many illnesses that would previously have killed us have now become chronic conditions and the health service was never designed to care for infirmities that can last 50 years. That's not to say that it shouldn't - it absolutely should - but whether we like it or not it all costs money, and our population is growing, aging, becoming more and more unwell . . .<br />
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The London School of Economics is <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2011/06/03/assisted-dying/">discussing</a> it. Is there a Pagan thealogy of assisted suicide? Because there certainly are any number of Christian takes on the subject,<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-martha-r-jacobs/dont-plead-with-me-not-to_b_870919.html"> some</a> of them not as hardcore as we might imagine.<br />
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/us/04kevorkian.html?_r=1&smid=fb-nytimes&WT.mc_id=US-SM-E-FB-SM-LIN-DJK-060311-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click">Jack Kervorkian</a>, a poineer of assisted suicide, died today aged 83.Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-78493803266475716102011-05-31T10:55:00.000+01:002012-05-21T06:30:42.357+01:00Spare A Thought For Carers<i>A guest post from Sue Vincent</i><br />
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There are over six million unpaid carers in the UK alone. They range from small children to old age, and care quietly for family, friends and neighbours. In 2006 it was estimated that this silent workforce saved the UK economy around £87 billion that would otherwise had to be spent on social and medical care.<br />
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The 30th May is a Bank Holiday in England. I, and my fellow carers, will not get a day off, nor get paid extra, or at all,<span class="text_exposed_show"> for working.<br />
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Carers are often forgotten, hidden, silent and isolated. Children who cannot learn to grow and play with their peers, because they care for their parents and siblings. Skilled and talented people who cannot work or create because their days, and often their nights, are spent caring. There is no time, nor is there energy for a social life. Holidays are rare, if ever. Careers, dreams, hopes and futures are surrendered daily, silently, to meet the needs of love.<br />
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As carers, there are 'rights', legislation, policies... and little support except from peer groups. Pride goes out of the window as poverty is enforced in very many cases. There is not a vast package of welfare benefits available to carers, as many people believe. Caring becomes a lifestyle. So does begging.<br />
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Carers need to be nurses, secretaries, chambermaids, housekeepers, cleaners, gardeners, taxi drivers, psychologists, counsellors, cooks, personal shopper and PA. Carers are companions, lifelines and advocates. We get no training, we learn through neccessity. <br />
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Carers are often exhausted, get little sleep and are expected to carry on. We are human, we get lonely, frustrated, irritated.. then feel incredibly guilty because our problems are so much less than those of the person for whom we care.<br />
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Carers are at risk of depression, isolation, injury and poverty. You cannot solve all these problems, but there IS something you CAN do. Many carers find any kind of social contact difficult, through time, expense... or the fading away of their social networks. Many rely on email and phone to stay in touch and remind ourselves we are human. An empty inbox can be a body blow when you are down. <br />
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All I ask is that you look at your friends and aquaintances and identify the carers among them. I can almost guarantee that you know at least one! Then pick up the phone, write a letter, send an email, a joke, a smile and LET A CARER KNOW YOU CARE.<br />
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Please, if this makes sense to you, pass this around.<br />
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Thank you.</span><br />
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The creaking wakes me.</div>
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Four a.m., and again I am poised,</div>
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Ready to rise from the sofa bed,</div>
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Conscious of the steel strut against my spine.</div>
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Above my head, in the room once mine,</div>
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The bed that was mine once upon a time</div>
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Grinds against the wall.</div>
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He is wakeful again.</div>
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Another bad dream?</div>
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There are many.</div>
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There are tears.</div>
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There is fear and ‘what if’s?’</div>
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Every day.</div>
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Even the wonderful dreams hold pain,</div>
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The pain of loss and memory</div>
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The pain of what was and what should have been.</div>
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Reality is his nightmare.</div>
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“It is shit being me,”</div>
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I can dream too.</div>
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I can watch the flaying of a loved one,</div>
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A mangled body, broken in hate,</div>
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Love disembowelled by madness.</div>
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I stifle my screams in the pillow</div>
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Or sob in the bathroom, quietly.</div>
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Even now.</div>
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I can see the scars on his chest</div>
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The tubes went in there, and there, and there..</div>
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No escape from heartache and memory,</div>
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Even in hope.</div>
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Body aches,</div>
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Mind is tired,</div>
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Bones hurt,</div>
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Muscles beg for peace,</div>
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Wedded to exhaustion.</div>
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The last shreds of youth</div>
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Leached away</div>
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Worry is my bedfellow.</div>
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Yet, how dare I complain?</div>
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How dare I feel tired?</div>
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He should be dead,</div>
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Fighting each day,</div>
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Hunting life with passion,</div>
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Pursuing the impossible,</div>
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Grasping its tail</div>
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With paralysed fingers.</div>
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I the squire, he the knight,</div>
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The dragon of disability</div>
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And the worm of despair,</div>
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The quest, the grail of normality.</div>
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Our shield is laughter</div>
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And gentle lunacy.</div>
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Our armour a refusal</div>
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To accept pain as answer.</div>
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My sin is hope,</div>
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My sin despair</div>
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Poised on the knife edge</div>
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Razor sharp, each step cutting.</div>
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My burden, guilt.</div>
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Failure to protect</div>
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To prevent the unpreventable</div>
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Failure to heal the unhealable</div>
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Illogical, ridiculous.</div>
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Yet human.</div>
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Because I am his Mum.</div>
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And because I care.</div>
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<i>Sue Vincent </i></div>
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</div>Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-45012428622124378752011-03-28T10:35:00.001+01:002011-03-28T10:36:09.380+01:00Moral Cretins<style>
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<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">A guest post from Mogg Morgan</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">The so-called Kidwelly Sex Cult Case probably raises all sorts of mixed emotions amongst the UK’s many occultists and Pagans. It has just the kind of lurid details that make it difficult to focus on the core issues in the case and the temptation must surely be to keep one’s head down and hope the scandal blows over. And after all, rational discourse largely stops as soon as the boogeyman of Aleister Crowley or to give him his full name “Mr Aleister Satanist Crowley” or “Sir Aleister Notorious Crowley”, enters the narrative. </div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">Let me say right out that I think the culprit Colin Batley and his accomplices are moral cretins (The same term was applied to Karen Mathews – who faked the kidnapping of her own neglected daughter in order to claim some putative award). People like Colin Batley claim they are following the imperatives of the Devil, Satan or Aleister Crowley for the bad they do. And the courts and the media are happy to accept that the long dead libertine Aleister Crowley and his works are somehow responsible for the wrong people do. I’m not sure if they ever bother to discover which came first, the Batley’s violent, abusive personality or his interest on Crowley and his Thelemic religion – it is just assumed that one must have caused the other. But I say that in the end the evil people do is down to their own moral failings. </div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">The details they are reported from the trial show to my admitted practice eye that these people have misinterpreted and misunderstood Crowley and more especially his Thelemic Religion that has many thousands of law abiding modern disciples. Contrary to what you may hear in the press and indeed even in some Pagan commentary, in my opinion Thelema is not an immoral creed. Its famous axiom “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” (reported as “Do what thou wilt” in some new reports) is an ideal intended for an enlightened community of refined adults. Its core myth is found in the Early European novels of Rabelais, where he envisions an ideal community as an escape from the chaos, crime and madness of the times. Its motto is indeed “Do what thou wilt” (Fais ce que voudras) but this commune can only function if certain kinds of behaviour are excluded. In other words perverts such as Colin Batley would be excluded from the Thelemic community, for the simple reason they are dominated by their most base desires. </div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">Crowley emphasises this very point in a pamphlet called Liber II, widely circulated amongst all true seekers of the Thelemic religion. He is at great pains to emphasis that “Do what thou wilt” is not the same as “Do what you want”. In comparative religion this approach is more akin to yoga and indeed it is in the widely despised Tantrik texts that the explanation of Crowley’s system really lays. But in short Thelema aims to develop enlightened, compassionate human beings. </div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">For a more modern version of the rules of an ideal community – see John Rawls’ “A Theory Of Justice” which contains a “thought experiment” not unlike Rabelais’s “Abbey of Thelema”. The whole is the subject of the Harvard University’s first freely available online course on Justice – see www.justiceharvard.org/</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">For press reports of the trail see http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2011/03/13/aleister-crowley-s-influence-on-colin-batley-and-his-followers-91466-28326466/#ixzz1GToHTpW9</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">The Kidwelly group’s actions show them to know none of this. They are merely venal criminals who use the widespread fear and ignorance of Paganism and magic as a smokescreen for their abusive personalities. This case has very little to do with any genuinely held religious beliefs but is about one person using his power over others to fulfil his own perverted needs. I venture to guess that his personality was formed long before he ever heard the name Aleister Crowley and absorbed the popular myths about Satan and the Devil, As 'cult leader' he found a way to gain power over other gullible or otherwise vulnerable people.</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">It is easy for us to be sidetracked by the sensational details, which shows just how powerful the image of “cult leader” is in mainstream society. The details of the trial make me seriously doubt that he ever had contact with a genuine, Thelemic or Crowleyian group or was aware of the appropriate training in the tradition. His knowledge of Thelema is superficial and minuscule and based on unsupervised reading and uninformed secondary sources, perhaps even the media. I have no problems condemning what Colin Batley has done and feel sure I am not alone in my condemnation. </div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">Mogg Morgan with contributions from Kym and Floortje</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
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</div>Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-70319811272215307472011-03-28T10:34:00.000+01:002011-03-28T10:34:00.919+01:00Caring For The Pagan Patient<div class="MsoNormal">Thank you for your regular readership - who'd have known that a such niche subject would have so many people returning to read about it?</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">It makes me hopeful that the wider community of Pagans can contribute to the non-Pagan understanding of the needs of Pagans in hospital. Well over a decade ago I wrote a small booklet on the subject that has been thoroughly plagiarised and it's overdue a revamp.</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">But any information will be so much more meaningful if it comes from the horses mouth rather than me simply giving my limited experience and understanding of what the greater body of Pagans might need.</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">So if you've ever been in hospital, please share your experience <a href="http://caringforthepaganpatient.blogspot.com/">here</a>, at a sister blog, Caring For The Pagan Patient. If you know someone who has been or is or will be an inpatient, let them know about this resource and encourage them to contribute. Ask the question on your own blog or webpage. When you have your next Pagan gathering, bring it to your friends attention: ask them to consider how they might get their spiritual needs met if they have to become an inpatient, ask those who have been patients how it was for them, what, if anything, they would have done differently, what they really needed and didn't get, what they didn't expect and were pleasantly surprised by. You know the kind of thing - what would you want your non-Pagan carers to know about your needs?</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">It's been impossible to get this project going in the past but with 540 hits in the last couple of weeks - I know, we should all write about Satanic Abuse if we want a massive increase in traffic! - I'm hopeful we can move this along a little.</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">Enjoy the huge Full Moon and consider how simple and satisfying it is to contribute to the health and welfare of your sisters and brothers.</div>Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-83218961259355747592011-03-28T10:31:00.002+01:002011-03-28T10:32:53.327+01:00Japan<style>
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<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"Several well known Pagans have joined with <a href="http://pncminnesota.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/well-known-pagans-join-in-japan-relief-effort/">Peter Dybing</a> in his effort to raise $30,000 to assist victims of the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Selena Fox, Starhawk, Patrick McCullum, T. Thorn Coyle, Anna Rowe, M Macha Nightmare, Star Foster, Jason Pitzl-Waters, Morgana, Ivo Dominguez Jr, Holli S Emore, and Katrina Messenger have all made statements in support of this charity initiative.</b></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Dybing has set up a fundraising page to gather donations from Pagans to send to Doctors Without Borders. This organization has teams on the ground in Japan and is setting up medical treatment centers."</b></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">Like everyone else, I am speechless at what has happened - what is happening - in Japan. As well as passing the message on about Doctors Without Borders, if you're on Facebook take the time to read <a href="http://www.facebook.com/notes/jun-shiomitsu/japan-quake-as-seen-from-twitter-translated-by-me-so-quality-questionable/10150121176733830">these translations</a> of tweets from Japanese people.</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">This earthquake has reminded me of that Japanese goodness that had recently become harder and harder to see. Today I see no crime or looting: I am reminded once again of the good Japanese spirit of helping one another, of propriety, and of gentleness. I had recently begun to regard my modern countrymen as cold people … but this earthquake has revived and given back to all of us the spirit of “kizuna” (bond, trust, sharing, the human connection). I am very touched. I am brought to tears.</b> </div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">We're living through extraordinary times, many of us are facing unpleasant futures one way or another, and the Japanese are showing that grace under pressure is possible, none moreso than the people who have been working in the nuclear facilities for a week. More, that just allowing our natural urge to reach out and work with and for each other makes life infinately more bearable, whether that's committing a slow and fairly certain suicide to try and avert meltdown or cheering people up by offering them a toilet and a place to rest. It's a natural instinct in us. If <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8386123/Loyal-Japanese-dog-leads-rescuers-to-mate.html">dogs can manage it for each other</a>, so can we.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div>Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-55491331199725700632011-03-28T10:30:00.003+01:002012-08-05T06:46:12.906+01:00Pagan Complacency<style>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Of course, it doesn’t help when Paganism is associated with this behaviour as it is in today’s <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/03/10/kids-victims-of-evil-pagan-sex-cult-leader-115875-22978515/">Daily Mirror</a> but theology has to be considered and created without PR in mind. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Over the last couple of days I’ve heard Pagans saying things along the lines of, “I don’t see what Satanic abuse has to do with Paganism, do we really want to be associated with that?” and I find my heart just sinking. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">It’s as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satanic_ritual_abuse_allegations">Nottingham, Orkney, Cleveland and Rochdale</a> never happened. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/jul/16/childprotection">Ian and Penny Campbell,</a> both Wiccans, after being found totally innocent, were as welcome in their community as a fire in an orphanage. Their children were put into care.<a href="http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_lewis1.htm"> Here’s</a> a transcript of part of the first four-hour formal police interview:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Police Officer: "Do know anyone else who, or have you heard of anyone else who, practices the occult?"</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Ian Campbell: "No. I don’t know of anyone who practices that kind of religion."</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>PO: "Have you any knowledge of the use of statues in practicing the occult? What about the ritualistic killing of animals? Ritualistic dress, as in gowns, that type of thing? Do you have any books about witchcraft?"</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>IC: "Umm, Wicca witches and things like that? Yes in the kitchen?"</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>PO: "Wicca witches? What’s that?"</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>IC: "Well paganism, you don’t know about paganism?"</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>PO: "I don’t."</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>IC" "It is not against the law. Paganism is basically about people who believe in mother Earth. It’s not witchcraft as in, you know, flaming voodoo sort of things."</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>PO: "I have information that you were involved in devil-worshipping ceremonies. Have you ever been into devil worship?" </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>IC: "Not at all."</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>PO: "The information we have is that it has taken place and that you did use it to dress up in a long white gown and wore masks, as did your wife, and that you carried out some sort of ceremony during which there was dancing, and that your children were dressed up in a similar manner to yourselves and there was music being played, described as Indian music. And also that during this, some form of chanting and praying took place. Further to that, there was information given to us that whilst this was being conducted, it was being videoed on a camcorder. Have you been in a position of seeing any videos which would depict serious sexual abuse? People being killed, and I’m not talking acting here? Have you ever drank the blood of a chicken? Have you ever witnessed anybody else doing that? Ever drink the blood of any other animal?" </b></span></div>
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And <a href="http://www.dramatis.hostcell.net/SRA/BCOBE/bcobe.html#advo">here's</a> one from a (discredited) Channel 4 documentary</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #616d7e; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">JOURNALIST: Do you remember the interview with Bea Campbell? The one that was filmed for the Channel 4 programme? </span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #616d7e; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">JEAN: Yes. </span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #616d7e; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">JOURNALIST: So, are you a witch? </span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #616d7e; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">JEAN: No. I’ve never been into ought like that. </span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #616d7e; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">JOURNALIST: Then why did you tell Bea Campbell that you were? </span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #616d7e; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">JEAN: She came to see me at work. She had Chris Johnstone the social worker in tow. I was really angry about it. I’d only just got the job and the last thing I needed were social workers turning up and asking to speak to me. I told them I didn’t want to be in their program.</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #616d7e; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;"> JOURNALIST: What happened then?</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #616d7e; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;"> JEAN: Chris Johnstone said that if I didn’t do the interview and say that I’d been a witch, I’d never see me kids again. I was trying to get them out of care at the time. So I agreed to do it. I just thought I’d get me kids back.</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #616d7e; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;"> JOURNALIST: So then you did the interview?</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #616d7e; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;"> JEAN: First Bea Campbell took me to a bank and cashed a cheque and gave me £150. JOURNALIST: If you lied for Bea Campbell, why should we believe what you are saying now?</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #616d7e; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;"> JEAN: Because now I know the truth. Chris [Johnstone] lied to me about getting me kids back. I was never going to get me kids back. And I were never a witch. </span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Geoffrey Dickens, MP, tried to pass a bill on April 15, 1988 that would prevent children attending Pagan ritual. As he made his <a href="http://www.saff.ukhq.co.uk/cookdate.htm">statement</a> in the House of Commons he mentioned Chris Bray, the owner of a Pagan bookshop called the Sorcerers Apprentice, by name and Bray was hounded by the local and mainstream media and had to have police protection. On August 13 1989, Fundamentalist Christians broke into the shop and burned it to the ground. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Pagans who don’t think the myth of satanic abuse is a problem for Paganism need to wake up. If you hadn’t noticed, the UK has become very Right Wing and one in 6 of us is <a href="http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/research/nlt_research/2364_literacy_state_of_the_nation">functionally illiterate</a>. Membership of conservative and extreme Christian groups has exploded. As a society we are unsettled, scared about losing our public services, our jobs, universal benefits, pensions, having to work longer for less. We’re being taught to find scapegoats – immigrants, people on benefits, asylum seekers, any minority group will do. In other words we’re primed for (oh the irony!) a witchhunt. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Actually, you just have to read a paper or listen to the radio or <a href="http://chalcedon.edu/research/articles/ritualistic-abuse-fruit-of-neo-paganism-and-target-of-christian-reconstruction/">read</a> some <a href="http://endritualabuse.org/about/abusive-witchcraft-sacred-ground/">pages</a> on the internet on S<a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3PkKrgn2CrUC&pg=PR11&lpg=PR11&dq=satanic+abuse+robe&source=bl&ots=jAK5NQsQ0H&sig=WKNOyTdxXPbMko4q584sxyw0i0Q&hl=en&ei=AYt7TfSSMcW7hAeu-ajsBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=satanic%20abuse%20robe&f=false%20%20%20">atanicRitual Abuse</a> and<a href="http://www.movieguide.org/reviews/movie/halloween-trick-or-treat.html"> Paganism.</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Bear in mind that this is just the state of affairs in the UK. US and African Evangelicals have a direct influence on what British mainstream Churches believe and do, and they can be both hysterical and politically influential.There, jurors, lawyers, the whole <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41959553/ns/business-us_business/">shebang</a> are <a href="http://www.wm3.org/News/view/NEW-EVIDENCE-ARISES-IN-1993-TRIPLE-MURDER">childishly prejudiced.</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Those of us who were Pagans in the 80’s and 90’s and had small children were pretty concerned. We noticed that the majority of the people who were accused of Satanic abuse weren’t Pagan which was selfishly reassuring, but what was desperately concerning was that the people doing the accusing were <i>mainstream</i> doctors, police officers, social workers, therapists, people in good standing with their professions and peers. 25 years on what I’m increasingly concerned about is that Satanic Ritual Abuse is totally accepted by many intelligent professionals with no apparent religious roots at all. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Interestingly, being intelligent people, they are also feminists and there’s a strange link between SRA and 1980’s feminism – which is when I learned both feminism and Witchcraft. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Patriarchy is known to hurt men as well as women, children, the Earth and all creatures on it. We forget that in the 70’s and 80’s married men were officially Patriarchs, they were the head of the family, and it was evident that this paradigm of men-in-power was bringing us all to the point of Silent Spring and mutually assured destruction. Feminists fiercely resisted this, developing our own family and community structures, creating relationships beyond dominion or submission for ourselves and for the natural world. This is the fertile grounds from which non-Wiccan witchcraft sprung. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Other feminists took a different route, one of genuine man hating, which saw all men as rapists. <a href="http://www.dramatis.hostcell.net/SRA/BCOBE/bcobe.html">Beatrix Cambell</a> was one of those feminists. She was implacable in her belief that the family was the source of female oppression (which it often was) <i>therefore </i>fathers were routinely anally raping their daughters and the government was part of a huge conspiracy to cover it all up. She caused 112 children to be removed from their homes, invasively examined often more than once, and put into care. 14 months ago, she’s <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/06/shannon-matthews-kidnap-childprotection">still going on about it</a> in a mainstream broadsheet, with an OBE. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">My colleagues aren’t mad or stupid but they probably read the Guardian alongside other papers and, being about 10 years older than me, they’d have experienced the full, exciting, creative force of second wave feminism. In all it’s aspects. Of course, that Satanic Ritual Abuse and Recovered Memory Syndrome are being taught in universities is another really worrying reason. We expect teachers to teach truthfully, but how much do any of us vet 'experts' who've written books and done other lectures, and who look and sound not at all like a frothing loon?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">So Pagans who think satanic ritual abuse has nothing to do with them had better wake up. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">We don’t need to make a fuss, though not so long ago the Pagan Federation would have automatically written to the Mirror to object to the word ‘Pagan’ being used in relation to the Batley's </span>and have put out a press release making clear what Paganism does and doesn’t do. We’ve become complacent. We assume that, well, <i>everyone</i> knows SRA is a load of discredited old rubbish. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">They don’t. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">ADDITION: Nearly two years on Jason over at Wild Hunt has written about the subject <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildhunt/" target="_blank">"Those Dark Satanic Mills</a>: The moral panic that won't die" and, presumably because it's been written by a big name American, people in the Pagan Federation have woken to the possibility that it might be an issue. </span></div>
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<br /></div>Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-23510486587439865882011-03-10T13:46:00.016+00:002012-03-13T07:29:35.457+00:00Lost Lambs?<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">I'm sorry for the horrible non-editing on this post - for some reason blogger won't allow me paragraph returns or a decent font size. Life can be that random. Thanks for bearing with it.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">----------------------------------------------</span></div><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2011/03/10/satanic-sex-cult-paedophile-guilty-91466-28312166/">Here</a> we have a number of people who have done absolutely dreadful things over a long period of time, to each other, to children and to other adults. In <a href="http://paganchaplaincy.blogspot.com/2009/03/everyone-is-disgusted-by-pictures-that.html">March</a> and <a href="http://paganchaplaincy.blogspot.com/2009/04/pagan-theology.html">April</a></span><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://paganchaplaincy.blogspot.com/2009/04/pagan-theology.html"> <style>
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</style><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: small;">2009 I wrote two entries for this blog, one about my principal that, given particular circumstances, I am as capable of heinous acts as any other person and that to forget this puts criminals into the role of Radical Other. Making people Other denies their humanity and limits the expansion of our own capacity to make contact: if I claim to be in contact with the Spirit of Tree or Land or Ancestor, how can I not be in contact with these people who raped and prostituted children?</span><span style="font-size: small;">
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">The April entry was about my understandings of Pagan theology which helps me define my own personal boundaries. Because I believe that the sexual aspects of our life are sacred then sex crimes become exceptionally dreadful. Because I believe that the people I visit are essentially my equals and not little lost lambs, then my role is not to save them. Because there is no hell then there’s no eternal damnation to save them from. Because there’s no hell I can’t grant absolution; each individual has to seek our own right relationship with the world and with ourselves. </span><span style="font-size: small;">
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">It’s well within the bounds of possibility for one of these people to request a Pagan chaplain. They’ve used the The Book of The Law and Egyptian iconography to dominate and control their victims, I’d put a fiver on a bet that they’ve used the pentagram, circle and quarters. They’ve demonstrated the need to feel different from the rest of their community, as well as the sense of superiority that the Occult can offer. Since our definition of A Pagan is someone who calls themselves A Pagan, then aren’t they entitled to a Pagan Chaplain? </span><span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;"> </span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;"> </span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">I’d say a very definite no. Paganism is not a religion of turning the other cheek, wise though that Christian philosophy can be. Paganism is not a religion of unconditional love, no matter what our New Age members say. Neither are we a religion of retribution, an eye for an eye has no place in our way of being. Since we share a concept of some kind of peaceful learning after death, then we can trust that learning to take place peacefully after death if it doesn’t happen before. Since we need no intermediary between our Gods and ourselves we can communicate with those Gods for ourselves.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<span style="font-size: small;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">Should this be a once and for all decision? Probably not. Perhaps after some years of good therapy and personal introspection these people might be ready to take full responsibility for what they did, without excuses, becoming changed in a manner that allows them to be useful and positive in the world again. The veracity of these feelings is incredibly hard to judge: to survive prisoners have to manipulate people and the Batleys are already past masters at this game, a game that the manipulator has to make themselves believe for the deception to be successful. People who have truly accepted their culpability, who have stood in the crucible of public and private shame and guilt, are rare. Might it be appropriate for what is in effect shunning or excommunication to be reversed so that being genuinely contrite (for crimes committed rather than for getting caught) has a purpose? Otherwise, why bother with painful introspection and personal growth? </span><span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;"> </span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;"> </span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">If we are anything, we are a religion of interconnectedness, relationship and balance. This doesn’t mean that we have to accept and absorb all human behaviour, it means we have to attend to the balance of our connections and relationships. Some people put themselves beyond the pale in one group and find healthy connection and relationship in others, but there are some behaviours that, on a purely ecological level, damage all human groups. Rape is one. Child sex is one. Massive abuse of power is one. Not all societies agree with those limitations, but all varieties of Pagans do, and it’s what makes Paganism as a philosophy more healthy than many others. </span><span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;"> </span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;"> </span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: small;">When Colin and Elaine Batley, Shelly Millar and Jackie Marling were caught they woke up from their reality in which they were all-powerful. It was a lack of balance and interconnectedness that allowed their world to exist at all and now, being back in relation with the rest of the world, they’re suffering the rebalancing effects of imbalanced actions that all Pagans, all thinking people, find abhorrent. Who am I to get in the way of that natural law? Apart from anything else, who on Earth do I think I am, if I believe I can?</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-47221592351187449412011-03-08T13:57:00.010+00:002014-03-05T16:03:44.527+00:00The Depths Of Human Darkness<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Regular readers will know that I become mildly peevish when Pagans dive into the realms of fantasy and hyperbole. When fiction effects how people view us, how we view ourselves, our place in the world <i>and how we treat others</i> then flights of imagination and exaggeration have to be called to account.</div>
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The reason I’m writing about this today with some sense of urgency is because claims of Satanic Ritual Abuse are steadily working their way back into the therapeutic mainstream. Every single one of my colleagues is well educated and sensible, many have extensive experience of trauma and abuse work, and a number of them understand Satanic abuse to be a fact. </div>
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During my training as a psychotherapist we endured 2, two hour sessions with a woman who described sexual abuse and Satanic abuse in frothing detail. The class clearly experienced trauma, people were weeping in each others arms at the end of her descriptions of systematic forced abortions, child and animal torture for the purpose of Satanic ritual. She gave us all her contact details so we could arrange therapy privately with her. She dismissed all questions with a statement along the lines of, “You need to decide if you’re an abuser, if you’ve been abused yourself, if you want to do anything about abusers or just leave children to be sexually tortured to death.”</div>
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Unusually, our tutors left the room for both sessions, presumably because they knew the content was traumatising. One solemnly told us that she was counselling a number of people who had experienced Satanic abuse. The other was subdued and asked for our discussion to be confidential when I presented him with a folder full of evidence that Satanic Abuse does not exist.</div>
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Today my email contained a piece from a woman with high status within counselling, advertising herself as an expert in ‘satanic abuse, mind control and programming.’ It astonishes me that David Ike is dismissed as someone with florid delusions but the very same content has become mainstream in counselling in the UK. </div>
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So I want to be clear about nomenclature, what has been proved and what has not been proved, and how this might affect those of us who work with people who have experienced horrific abuse. Everything I’m going to write about here is easily referenced but I’m not going to reference anything because it’s important that you do your own research. Find legal, Intelligence and government reports, research the subject yourself – everything is very readily available on the internet.</div>
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Because what is happening now is that one person who believes that Satanic abuse exists teaches 3 people, who talk to 15 people, and so on. This is how myth is made, how peoples lives are wrecked and how people who really have been abused are further abused. You need to find, read and understand this information for yourself, weigh it up for yourself.</div>
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<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Satanic Ritual Abuse is supposed to be abuse for the purpose of worshipping Satan. People who describe it depict ritualistic acts of extreme abuse and a highly organised conspiracy. </li>
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<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Some abuse is indeed ritualistic. The use of ritual during abuse is not an indication of Satanic Abuse. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ritual in abuse is used as another means of control.</i> </li>
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<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>There is no evidence for Satanic abuse, anywhere in the world. Scientific, forensic, medical and law enforcement agencies have not found one shred of evidence for the claims made by people alleging Satanic abuse. <style>
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<span lang="EN-US">Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, Rose and Fred West subjected their victims to unspeakable tortures and deaths because they were psychopathic sexual serial killers, not because they were Satanists.</span></div>
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<li>Claims of Satanic abuse have been so thoroughly disproved that social work and therapy as professions suffered a loss of credibility. Too many social workers and therapists had made Satanic abuse their priority, creating a hierarchy of abuse in which Satanic abuse was so important that ‘ordinary’ sexual, physical and psychological abuse was ignored. </li>
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<li>Proponents of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) having lost credibility, are still pushing their wares as Sadistic Ritual Abuse (SRA). Sadistic ritual abuse occurs, but as a phrase it is almost always used by people who actually believe in Satanic abuse. They are almost always Evangelical Christians. Increasingly, they are mainstream therapists taught by organisations that hide their Evangelical Christian background.</li>
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<li>Religious abuse does exist. Exorcisms are a growing phenomena occurring predominantly in African Christian communities. The abuse is so great that in the UK Project Violet, a special police unit, has been set up to work with these communities. Other specialist charities have been set up to address African Christian groups who torture and murder children predominantly, but also elderly women and occasionally men who are perceived to be possessed. Abuse of children and adults, particularly women, has been and continues to be widespread throughout religious institutions. </li>
</ul>
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<blockquote>
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<li>Just as people who identify as members of any religion may use their religion as a way to control the people they abuse, so there will be people who identify as Pagan who will use Paganism as a way to control the people they abuse. </li>
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<blockquote>
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<li><b>The issue is abuse rather than religion.</b> </li>
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<li>Ritual in abuse exists beyond religion. Religious iconography and terminology are used to control victims, to force their submission and their silence. </li>
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<ul>
<li>Paedophilia has always existed but repeated reports on this practice have led to it becoming less unbelievable and paradoxically more accessible to people who might not have considered it as a practice before. Extreme abuse has also always existed and proponents of Satanic abuse have served to give abusers new ideas.</li>
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<li><span lang="EN-US">Louisiana, Illinois, Texas and Idaho have passed laws against specific acts that are often used in ritual abuse. These acts do not prejudice any religion. Other States are in the process of creating something similar.</span></li>
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<span lang="EN-US">Therapy has a shameful history in the myth-making of Satanic abuse. There is money to be made and status to be gained from writing books, offering counselling, supervision, teaching and talks. Time and again ‘recovered memory syndrome’ has been debunked by straightforward psychology experiments and this is what therapists who've ‘recovered’ memories of Satanic abuse in their clients were doing. This is recognised in current Crown Prosecution Service guidance to therapists who deal with abuse of any kind. <b>It's resulted in children and some adults who've been abused being denied counselling or psychotherapy until after their court case has finished, which can be years. </b></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">To admit that what you have been doing as a therapist is not only morally, ethically and intellectually wrong but very clearly harmful; is based on nothing but pornographic tracts that have been systematically discredited; that you’ve made a deal of money from this, leads to profound and painful introspection, potential sanction from professional bodies, potential legal action and certainly loss of income. Who wants to go there? How much easier it is to defend your practice by saying it’s all a conspiracy and therapists who don’t believe it are either stupid, in denial or part of the problem.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I’ve worked with a number of people who were abused in ways that are so horrific that they became quite mad and quite dangerous. It’s clear that highly organized paedophile rings do exist and that paedophilia crosses all classes and social groups, so I’ve no doubt that people of influence are involved in some organized paedophile groups. Working ritual with these young people was delicate and heartbreaking. To begin with I had no idea of the depth of abuse that they’d been exposed to and I thank the Goddess with all my heart that I was training in Person Centered therapy, which purposely hands over power to the client. I didn’t require that ritual happen for any festival but brought the ritual stuff along so that we could do it if the patient wanted to. Reclaiming the beauty and simplicity of ritual was a very small part of some patients healing. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> I give thanks that I have a sound and solid understanding of ritual, psychologically, socially, spiritually and as an act of relationship. I thank the people who trained me as a Witch that I have an understanding of sexuality, sex, gender and their endless, healthful, joyful permutations, concepts that are still growing, healthfully, joyfully as well as at times with difficulty.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> I give thanks that I’d been around as the Satanic panic of the 80’s and 90’s burst and was discredited, so that I could speak knowledgeably and sensibly with patients and staff – and I give particular thanks to the Pagan individuals and groups who did so much to bring sanity to the debate.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I give thanks to my husband who attempted to ritually purify me every time I returned from those early encounters with patients, traumatised, contaminated and with a terrible (minuscule) empathy for their experience of the very worst of human nature. Human nature as part of it demonstrably is, without need for goats or knives or human farms, can be so infinitely destructive that we don’t need the fiction of Satanic abuse to explain it.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US">It’s curious that so many fine, upstanding professionals need Satanic Abuse to explore the depths of their own darkness. Perhaps they can frame studying Satanic Abuse as more professional and intelligent than buying sensational pulp books about witch crazes or concentrations camps or Fred and Rose West? But I wish they’d do it without dragging very vulnerable people with them into the filth that unexamined darkness becomes, and making them pay for the privilege.</span><br />
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Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-48991567161331155712011-02-23T16:45:00.000+00:002011-02-23T16:45:08.936+00:00Professor with terminal cancer uses illness to teach<a href="http://images.publicradio.org/content/2011/02/22/20110222_professor-monte-bute_33.jpg" rel="lb-trigger" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Sociology professor Monte Bute contemplates a reading in his class at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minn. Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011. (MPR Photo/Jeffrey Thompson)"><img alt="Larger view" border="1" height="90" src="http://images.publicradio.org/content/2011/02/22/20110222_professor-monte-bute_1.jpg" width="120" /></a><br />
<a href="http://images.publicradio.org/content/2011/02/22/20110222_professor-monte-bute_33.jpg" rel="lb-trigger" title="Sociology professor Monte Bute contemplates a reading in his class at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minn. Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011. (MPR Photo/Jeffrey Thompson)">Professor Monte Bute</a><br />
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<br />
Bute has terminal cancer, and he' been <a href="http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/02/23/dying-professor-death/?refid=0">using his personal</a> perspective to enlighten students on the process of death and dying in a class called Life of the Mind.<br />
<br />
Students in this master's level course dive into philosophy, medieval history and literature. <br />
In a recent evening class, they watched the film "The Seventh Seal," by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. <br />
<div class="thumbnail"> <div class="photo"></div><div class="caption"><a href="http://images.publicradio.org/content/2011/02/22/20110222_professor-monte-bute_33.jpg" rel="lb-trigger" title="Sociology professor Monte Bute contemplates a reading in his class at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minn. Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011. (MPR Photo/Jeffrey Thompson)"><br />
</a></div></div>"Anytime I feel very Lutheran and tortured I try to watch it," he said.Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-57183499200908614112011-02-19T18:56:00.000+00:002011-02-19T18:56:06.951+00:00Summerland Project<style>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS";">THE SUMMERLANDS PROJECT</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 11pt;">Offering accessible spiritual support to dying and bereaved Pagans across Lincolnshire …</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 11pt;">and awareness training to those offering that support</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Some of you reading this may have already have found yourselves approached about conducting a Pagan funeral service, or in the sad situation of spiritually supporting a dying friend or loved one. For others reading this, those unasked for things may yet be in the future. For those who have already had to face up to performing such services, without knowing quite how, you may have got through those difficult times, but wondered what more you could have done.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">The Journey So Far …</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">The Summerlands Project was instigated back in 2004 as a result of requests for Pagan funeral services in Lincolnshire. Although others had confidence in me as a Priestess, I felt ill-equipped to provide these services. The writing and performance of rituals for large groups were familiar to me from many years of conducting open celebrations. My initiatory experiences had also revealed death to me to be a truly spiritual passage; so my own faith was strong, even in the face of others’ doubts. Where I felt lacking was in my ability to offer comfort and support to shocked and grieving families. Just what do you say, when suddenly thrust into the heart of a grief-stricken family, one you have possibly never met before?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">I felt my way through those early services and followed them up with what amounted to bereavement support, although I knew nothing about bereavement support at the time. One of the questions asked of me by a grieving widower, was why local funeral directors had access to contact details of the Pagan Priesthood while the local hospital didn’t. While dying of a brain tumour, his wife had requested a Pagan Spiritual Advisor and was told by the Hospital Chaplain that they didn’t know of one. Upset at the thought of someone seeking and being denied meaningful spiritual support at such a difficult and frightening time, I promised to rectify the situation, without any clear idea about what exactly such spiritual support might entail!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">In trying to answer the question of what was needed, the Summerlands Project was born. Throughout the Autumn of 2004, a group of a dozen or so of us met in a local Chapel to discuss the issues of death and dying as relevant to Pagans. Some weeks we had guest speakers – mediums, funeral directors, healers etc. Some weeks we held discussions, shared meditations, etc. The aims of these meetings were:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">To support those of us wishing to work with dying/bereaved Pagans by examining many of the issues surrounding death and dying</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">To work together to come up with a training plan covering the various services needed</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">To identify and provide an accessible network of Pagans across the county who were willing to provide that kind of service/support</span></li>
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Since those meetings ended, the group has been largely internet based, but work has continued on developing resources, and an awareness training plan. We’ve worked as a community on painting wall hangings of the Sun, Moon and Stars and these have regularly been used as a backdrop to funeral rites. Members individually have been gaining experience in different fields – developing healing skills, undertaking bereavement support training, etc. The group now numbers over twenty, and is very diverse, with different people bringing different ideas and skills to the group. Membership is not limited to Lincolnshire, and includes various PF Officers from the East Midlands and beyond. We also have hospital and hospice workers and a range of healing practitioners within the group, while recognised Pagan traditions represented here include Druidry, Shamanism, Heathenry and Traditional Witchcraft. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">In the intervening years since 2004, sadly, several of us have been involved in providing funeral rites for friends, and, where necessary, ongoing bereavement support for their loved ones. In 2008, Alan, a long-time friend and an active Summerlands Project member himself, passed into the Summerlands after a fourteen month struggle against cancer. And I suddenly realized I really didn’t want to help people to die, but to live! Since then, Alan has been an inspiration and an encouragement to me. As a result of the time I spent with him in his last months, my own journey has included a lengthy detour into natural healing, and to qualifying in 2009 as a Clinical Hypnotherapist. Knowledge and skills which I have since been able to use to help support others.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Where We Are at Now …</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">The PF and I parted company for several years (long story), but recently the President, recognizing the need for an accessible network of Pagan funeral officiants has pledged to support the Project and I have been persuaded to rejoin. So, after several years of not being sure how to proceed with our aims, we are now at an exciting point! At the risk of boring those of you in other counties, I’ll outline where we are at, and what we are looking for. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Lincolnshire is the second largest county in England. It has ten hospitals, three hospices (one covers virtually the whole county), and six crematoria. We are hoping to find at least one (and preferably more) volunteer to cover each of these facilities. Making this task harder is the fact that Lincolnshire falls into three different PF Districts – the bulk being in the East Midlands, but with North Lincolnshire falling in the North East, and the southern part of the county in the East Anglia region.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">At present, we are focusing on identifying those willing to undertake the provision of funeral rites. Given the increasing number of requests for Pagan/alternative funeral rites, we felt this needed to be our priority. Currently, we have five volunteers (introduced below, with their approximate area) who are willing to cover Grimsby, Alford, Boston and Lincoln crematoria, and we are actively seeking volunteers in the Grantham and Scunthorpe areas. Although four of our six crematoria are covered, in real terms, further volunteers are always required as each crematorium has a wide catchment area, which doesn’t always translate to the area a Project member would ideally choose to cover.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Officiants are often ambassadors for Paganism, bringing as they do our spirituality to the wider world. Therefore, we need not only to be caring and compassionate, but also professional in what we do. Good inter-personal skills, confidence in writing and performing rituals, and being comfortable with the idea of death are good starting points. An understanding and appreciation of different Pagan traditions is also useful.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Once a few more willing officiants have come forward, a series of awareness raising/training sessions will be held. These proposed sessions include discussion, role play and the putting together of individual portfolios of resources. Within the Summerlands Project are individuals who don’t feel able to perform funeral rites themselves, but who are willing to support those who do. In the past, I have found this kind of support invaluable – from friends who played/sang unaccompanied at services, to those who helped with Pagan wreaths, and the layout and printing of “order of service” sheets. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">These services have truly been community efforts, and the Summerlands Project itself is a community project. It isn’t intended to replace the in-depth (and often prohibitively expensive) training of other organizations – the BHA, or Life-Rites, but is more about a community coming together to discuss, and work out how best to serve and spiritually support those within that community – and then doing just that.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">It is my wish by Midsummer for us to be in a position to contact all funeral directors in the county, offering contact details for a Pagan officiant within their locality.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Later, we intend to address the need for spiritual support in Lincolnshire’s hospitals and hospices. Already within the Summerland Project membership we have individuals in employment in several of these organizations. It is not necessary to work within a hospital or hospice to volunteer as a Pagan Spiritual Advisor, or “Resource” as our local hospital termed it, though. And anyone who feels they could offer these kind of supportive services in hospitals or hospices, and would like to explore the possibility and learn more, are welcome to join the Project. We are hoping to receive clear guidance and support from the PF in achieving a cross-county hospital/hospice ministry.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">But the Project is not just about going into institutions such as hospitals and hospices, but about evolving the best and most appropriate ways to spiritually support members of the community who are facing their own death, or the death of a loved one. While this undoubtably involves hospitals and hospices, it also involves supporting and working with people in their own homes. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">With this support in mind, an awareness training plan has been developed, running to twenty sessions. The initial sessions are a comprehensive (and sometimes uncomfortable) look at death – the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of it, and acknowledging our own fears about it. We then move onto looking at ways in which we can support others going through this process, looking at existing transitional programmes, counseling skills, energy and other forms of healing, co-meditation, relaxation and guided imagery, etc. From there we move onto more “magical” ways of working – looking at Tradition-specific imagery, “death workings” (pathworkings created for use at the time of death), holding vigils, performing “Last Rites”, blessing the body after death and a variety of other things. In time, the awareness training moves onto funeral rites, bereavement support and working with the spirit after death. We are not claiming to “qualify” anyone to do these things, but merely to raise awareness of the many issues and possibilities inherent in the work. As a group, we are here to support and encourage those who feel drawn to this kind of ministry. To help with this, we not only have the internet forum, but also have a substantial library, and various other resources which are available to all members. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Hopefully, this article has kindled a spark of interest in some of you, and you feel inspired to join us in providing these invaluable services. If so, please drop me an email at <a href="mailto:mavisenderby@yahoo.co.uk">mavisenderby@yahoo.co.uk</a> Alternatively, you can apply for membership by visiting - <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/summerlands_project/">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/summerlands_project/</a> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">In summing up, I'd just like to say that the past six years have been a journey of discovery for me and although the work is often challenging, it is also very rewarding. And I've learnt, whatever skills and abilities we may have, often the greatest and most appreciated gift we can give is the gift of presence.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div style="border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 4.0pt;"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 4.0pt; padding: 0cm; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 4.0pt; padding: 0cm; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">This article is dedicated to two founding members of the Summerlands Project</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 4.0pt; padding: 0cm; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">… our dear friends, Alan and Ken … </span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 4.0pt; padding: 0cm; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">who now dwell beyond the Veil.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 4.0pt; padding: 0cm; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">With love and gratitude to you both.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 4.0pt; padding: 0cm; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Copyright M A Lawrence (c) 2011</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-12195622087152893752011-02-15T17:15:00.005+00:002012-05-21T06:51:45.155+01:00Self Care<style>
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<span lang="EN-US">I’ve felt quite tearful and fragile today spending much of it wobbling around ineffectively trying to get some work done. My morning began with two counts of bad news: <a href="http://www.nspcc.org.uk/news-and-views/our-news/nspcc-news/11-02-15-report-launch/nspcc-stats-launch-event_wda80813.html">one in five</a> children have experienced severe abuse and (as if we didn’t know) the elderly are <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/jeremy-laurance-a-service-that-cant-care-has-sown-the-seeds-of-its-own-destruction-2215048.html">routinely being abused</a> in the NHS</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">A round of hand-wringing, more reports, outraged defense of nurses, the usual nonsense will ensue. I left nursing partly because I didn’t like nurses too many of whom had unresolved personal issues and no sense of personal power which led to them using patients to abuse that power rather than defending patients as a matter of basic humanity, never mind professional ethics. They wouldn’t strike on behalf of patient care because they couldn’t be bothered to think about complex issues and because taking action worked against their view of themselves as angelic martyrs.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I used to be a Royal College of Nursing steward, gods help me, and it was simply impossible to get any of our colleagues interested in the issues that faced the NHS at the height of Thatcherism. There was one glorious march of 6,000 nurses – out of a total of 70,000. I see little change now, other than that the majority of carers on wards are no longer nurses and are less able and less willing to think for themselves. A streak of <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/christina-patterson/christina-patterson-nasty-nurses-tell-me-something-new-2215918.html">intentional cruelty</a> has entered the profession, and not just in elder care.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">So that’s the NHS. Everyone knows patient care (as opposed to generally good medical work) on anything other than acute and high tech wards is pretty rubbish and getting much worse. But to discover that one in five children has been abused left me reeling. If we can’t care for our own children then it’s a given that we can’t care for needy strangers. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Happily, a good friend came round, she too was delicate calling the news a ‘pyrrhic vindication’ of her stance against the flood of crap that she’d endured as she complained about the disgraceful lack of care her mother had suffered to indifferent and defensive nursing home, hospital and administrative drones. She too felt hopeless, that our entire population had apparently become brutish, futile and terminally isolated from ourselves and each other. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">So we ate pancakes with Iberico ham, mozzarella, pesto and rocket, and more pancakes with strawberries, banana, lemon juice and sugar, and a large amount of tea. We moaned at each other and listened, and cared for each other and empathized and felt somewhat better.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Self care and self respect are ethical priorities for carers, not by any means a luxury. This is not to wallow in a vision of oneself as a martyr that no one must question - if the job's so awful, don't do it. Neither is it to attack reports and people who question whether some people could do a better job, as if you are uniquely perfect in the world. </span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US">Almost every time I come into a hospital in a Chaplaincy role I begin to get burned out. I find myself wanting to cut corners or feeling guiltily grateful if a patient isn’t available, yet working with patients is fulfilling, interesting, pleasurable. Some of that is the stress of not knowing where this ward is or how that policy works. Becoming trusted and part of the team alleviates some of that stress and makes my life easier which makes my work with patients more fulfilling – I’m not having to work at putting distracting feelings and thoughts aside.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">When I first began doing this work regularly I was, frankly, freaked out. Being confined in airlocks, having endless locked doors between me and fresh air made me frantic with claustrophobia, which I had to work bloody hard at disguising so that I could spend time with patients who spent months in that environment. The naked suffering and anguish that many patients were experiencing, the knowledge that many of them would never be free of it, a growing, horrified understanding of deeply shocking pasts, blew my mind. I would come home staggering, leap straight into the shower and pray, sometimes flat on my belly, for strength.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">In time I became more resilient but not in denial of all those things that distressed me. My experience of overwhelming panic and anguish offered me a brush of empathy with patients – this is how some of them feel, sometimes. So it was a useful and fruitful experience and one I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I wouldn’t suggest it as a way that hospital chaplains should learn their trade.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">But there was nowhere Pagan to go for wisdom, understanding, even sympathy. Getting support in a form that suited me rather than suited people who wanted to impose their reiki or crystals or chanting or other stuff that they desperately wanted to do at me and that drove me berserk, was impossible. My non-Pagan friends gave me very, very welcome tea and sympathy, a non-Pagan counselling supervisor gave me non-Pagan supervision, my Gods felt far away and I felt absolutely useless. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Where I found support was with Christian religious, nuns and monks who listened in a detached kind of way, accepted and felt no need to stop my weeping jags or <i>make</i> me feel better. Just suggesting the obvious, that my Gods were very close to me as they’re close to everybody, was a great relief, and that was offered so tentatively, so respectfully that I spent some more time weeping again at their graceful humanity.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Support is something that’s best done in community, allowing others to genuinely care for us because they love us rather than because our job title renders us automatically worthy of respect, to lovingly say, 'You're not working at your best. What do you need to address that?' I know this viscerally and yet can’t seem to access it within Paganism and after years in this game I don’t believe it exists. Just as I don’t care about the excuses that nurses will have for not washing a patient for 13 days or routinely dehydrating and starving patients to death, so I don’t care about the excuses Pagan communities have for not materially supporting the people who are doing important work on their behalf, whether that’s chaplaincy or childcare or interfaith work. If you know of a good, existing model of ongoing Pagan support then let us know about it here. I would be absolutely delighted and not a little relieved to be proved wrong.</span></div>Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-82220315229437474222011-01-31T20:38:00.001+00:002011-01-31T20:43:54.501+00:00Thousands Killed In British Nursing HomesThe Office for National Statistics have compiled a <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hs5k2M_tUGN0astJzZuFwo5mdmbg?docId=N0450291296447751455A">report</a> into deaths over the past five years in nursing homes. <br />
<blockquote><br />
<b>Analysts found there were 667 victims of dehydration, 157 of malnutrition and 1,928 deaths linked to superbugs. Some 1,446 died suffering with pressure ulcers, otherwise know as bedsores, while 4,866 died with septicaemia, or blood poisoning. Another 4,881 had fatal falls.</b><br />
<b>According to the figures, the number of deaths linked to dehydration doubled, while those involving superbugs rose sevenfold during the previous Labour government's rule.</b></blockquote><br />
It's easy to make snide political points as the Tory Care Services Minister does, but the situation is not the same in an economically and culturally similar country, Ireland, which suggests that the problem is not entirely financial. There, the whole concept of caring for the elderly is perceived very differently. The vast majority of Irish nursing home staff speak the same language as the people in their care which is not a requirement here in the UK, their elderly are valued culturally and Catholicism perceives sacrifice and charitable love as virtues. It's not a perfect system but the UK warehousing and euthanizing of our elderly is bitterly shameful, attracting minimum wages and deeply unskilled workers whose efforts are not valued in any way.<br />
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Is there a link between UK secularism, where our only value is in how much we consume and can be taxed, and the ways in which we treat each other? I tend to think there is. Paganism has lots to offer society but we don't yet have a thealogy of caring for people - we're great at planting trees - and since we're not getting any younger we need to spend some time discussing that.Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-42120124463473971642011-01-30T14:14:00.000+00:002011-01-30T14:14:28.585+00:00Voices of The Sacred Feminine<h6 class="uiStreamMessage" data-ft="{"type":"msg"}" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="messageBody">Join Macha live on Wed., Feb. 2, at 6 pm PT, for a discussion of Pagan culture: Pagans in interfaith; Pagan seminaries; creating institutions for children and parents (schools, camps, etc.); creating (renting or purchasing) community space; caring/providing for our elders; growing Pagan elders.</span></span></h6><h6 class="uiStreamMessage" data-ft="{"type":"msg"}" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="messageBody"><br />
Listen at http://<a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/VoicesoftheSacredFeminine">ww<span class="text_exposed_hide"></span><span class="text_exposed_show"><span>w.blogtalkradio.com/Voicesofth</span><wbr></wbr><span class="word_break"></span>eSacredFeminine</span></a></span></span></h6><h6 class="uiStreamMessage" data-ft="{"type":"msg"}" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="messageBody"><span class="text_exposed_show"> </span><span class="text_exposed_show"><br />
Show archived for later listening.</span></span></span></h6>Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-47008830377052959572011-01-24T19:32:00.000+00:002011-01-24T19:32:22.547+00:00Pagan Clergy Ministering in Hospitals<div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div><b>A guest post from Terry Riley . . .</b></div><div></div><div> I am the founding High Priest of the Southern Delta Church of Wicca - ATC. established in 1994 in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Over the years I have ministered to my congregation in the hospital many times. I have found there is a need for pastoral work in this area, even for Pagans. Most people when they are in the hospital have a desire to know that someone cares about them. Sometimes there are Spiritual rites and prayers that people need. This I believe is the duties of Clergy.</div><div> Overs the years I have been called, sometimes in the middle of the night, by members of my Church in need of counseling, healing, prayers, and even Last Rites performed while they were in the hospital. I have always been willing to answer my calling as Pagan Clergy. At the SDCW - ATC in our Clergy training courses this has always been expected as part of the pastoral duties of Ordained Clergy.</div><div> This is sometimes difficult to do since most Pagan Clergy are not paid and have to work full time jobs. That's why I believe that this job is a calling rather than a choice. It means submitting yourself unto the will of yours Gods and fulfilling Divine Labor.</div><div></div><div>Rev. Terry Riley</div><div>HP/SDCW - ATC</div></div>Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-46063063711859285432011-01-16T18:23:00.005+00:002011-01-16T22:09:08.821+00:00Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2k2u13RjFVc/TTM3nnOp8FI/AAAAAAAAAS4/FXCd6LQqa1U/s1600/apollo1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2k2u13RjFVc/TTM3nnOp8FI/AAAAAAAAAS4/FXCd6LQqa1U/s320/apollo1.gif" width="241" /></a></div><br />
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In the UK, many older hospitals were <a href="http://users.ox.ac.uk/%7Epeter/workhouse/">built</a> on the <a href="http://www.imperial.nhs.uk/aboutus/ourhospitals/history/index.htm">sites</a> of <a href="http://www.ncl.ac.uk/iah/campus/history/workhouse.htm">workhouses</a>.(For further information Google 'hospital workhouse')<br />
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As late as 1984 I worked in a ‘mental health unit’ that still had one elderly woman who’d been born into that institution when it was a workhouse. The destruction of her entire being was pitiful, not helped by crazed attempts to find some personality with the help of ECT.<br />
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If we have any concept of Spirit of Place, then perhaps some of the misery experienced by destitute and despised people, separated from their spouse, parents and children has seeped into bricks, floors and window frames, becoming as much a part of the fabric of these old institutions as the mortar that holds them together. <br />
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Hospitals, new and old, are liminal sites, one of the places we go to when we’re not capable of living as part of the Apparent world. Hospitals and religious institutions are surprisingly <a href="http://www.thegreathospital.co.uk/history/medieval/background.shtml#intro">close in function</a> attended by a priesthood attempting to cure illnesses caused by our sins, whether that’s blasphemy, gluttony or smoking so that we can return to our communities renewed.<br />
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Regular readers will know that I resist and contest any nonsense about Communing With The Spirits ™, ‘Healing’, Bringing Into The Light and other dreadful bollocks. Grave upset, often centuries of it, cannot be ‘healed’ by someone warbling breathily with a rattle or by planting crystals. I do wonder, however, about the land under the foundations, the foundations themselves, the accumulated experience – not all of it painful – of the hospital environment. In some of the older hospitals I’ve visited the natural places, places where gardeners spend time, are comfortable and often very pleasant to spend time with. Gardening has been used for centuries as rehabilitation, particularly for people with chronic conditions, and it would seem that these little precious spaces are glad to be tended, will give themselves in return. <br />
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One of the hospitals I worked in was set in acres of impeccable grounds, from a commercial golf course to minute atria, duck ponds to wilderness and there’s no doubt that this very old site can absorb suffering and genuinely offer healing to patients, visitors and staff. Simply walking from one unit to another via natural surroundings that are valued and sympathetically tended is more restful than marching down neon-lit corridors or hemmed in alleys lined with dodgy refuse skips and drains. It also demonstrates that the people responsible for the hospital also value things that others might consider peripheral to medicine, like aesthetics, nature, colour and environment.<br />
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Personally, I’ve always experienced older hospitals as more accepting, more en-souled than new builds. New hospitals are undoubtedly better designed, probably cleaner, possibly easier to get around but they’re a bit too sterile for my taste, a bit youthful and brash. It’s as if the fabric of an older institution has seen so much kindness and cruelty, pain and healing, care, death, birth, emergency and tedium; has soaked up centuries of therapeutic intent that it has settled down into a kind of positive melancholy. They remind me of landscapes that have been lived with and farmed sympathetically for centuries, interaction between us and the Land creating a new Being that is neither wilderness or slave monoculture, but which has a personality and rhythm of its own. <br />
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Just as we can pay attention to the Spirit of Place in woodland or wheat field, so there is something to be learned from the Spirit of Place of a hospital, old or new, and there’re different ways to be present to it. Walking through the corridors at night gives a sense of presence. In all traditions, sleep and dreaming are important for health and for hearing the Gods; the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans used <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepieion">dream temples</a> as a <a href="http://www.hypnotherapistregister.com/The%20roots%20of%20Hypnosis.htm">kind of hospital</a><br />
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All these people, perhaps hundred of them, dreaming together, entering the Otherworlds together. Those few souls unable to sleep. Still rooms, empty operating theatres, the building breathing out and resting. This is the time to hear the voice of the Genius Loci, the protective spirit of place and to the voices of people, events, history. You don’t need holy water or smudge sticks or to Command Restless Souls or to do anything other than be aware and receptive. Just as you would when wanting to hear the voice of any place, make clear your intent, set your boundaries, make the invitation to all benevolent Beings, and wait. <br />
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Later in the day sit quietly in one of the hospital entrances. You are a liminal person sitting within a liminal space, inside of another liminal place. Watch people come and go, people who belong and don’t belong, who don’t want to be there and who are very grateful to come in and to leave. Doorways are sacred to Janus who also rules over beginnings and endings, and to Cardea who is also a Goddess of health. <i>“Her power is to open what is shut; to shut what is open,"</i> (Ovid) attributes that have applications in healing. Hecate, too stands in these places, She who cares for women in labour and children being born, the dying and the dead, places that are neither one thing or another which may also include people under anaesthetic or heavily sedated, and Who guards those who ask for Her protection.<br />
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I distinctly remember being amazed that I wasn’t freaked right out, but instead was aware of a sense of connection, of lineage. For <a href="http://www.kch.nhs.uk/about/history/">70 years</a> nurses had been clacking up and down the corridor, entering and leaving that office and whether it was <a href="http://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/whats-your-best-108202.html">The Ghost of Nurses Past</a> or a repeating memory didn’t matter: something strange had happened, we couldn’t explain it and none of us felt frightened. We’d experienced what today would be called Shared Personal Gnosis (SPG) a supernatural event sensed independently by two or more people. After a moment of wide-eyed silence we accepted that it was likely that this had been a ghost, just as we might accept any other fact, and got on with work. This acceptance was as much part of the experience as hearing noises and finding an empty office.<br />
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A greater part of this acceptance was probably due to the demands of nursing – there wasn’t time to discuss it or to generate the fear and excitement that often goes with talking about ghosts - and there was also something about the way in which we simply agreed that ghosts exist and we’d just witnessed one. To this day I can't rationalise it.Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-22841375891256171762010-12-22T12:00:00.003+00:002010-12-22T17:29:02.042+00:00Welcome Yule<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2k2u13RjFVc/TRHnqIiLY8I/AAAAAAAAASw/pFbD2ZZACN0/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2k2u13RjFVc/TRHnqIiLY8I/AAAAAAAAASw/pFbD2ZZACN0/s320/images.jpg" width="222" /></a></div>There are times when you can almost hear the machinery of the universe creaking as planets align. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere tonights solstice coincides with a lunar eclipse and if the clouds stay away we’ll see the shadow of the earth move across the moon. Light and dark in movement and balance.<br />
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We’ve been living through interesting times for some years now and people are getting weary. I’m noticing that when people say that they’re feeling under the weather they can get buried by unsolicited Good Advice of incredible banality: have a cold? “Here’s a great idea! Take some honey in a glass of hot water!!” Feeling a little miserable after some days without sunshine? “Get on out there! Breathing that cold winter air will cheer you right up!!!” The value of simple commiseration seems to be lost in a tidal wave of <a href="http://thesourcemag.net/index.php?option=com_seyret&Itemid=71&task=videodirectlink&id=201">“If you’d just do something</a> positive you’d feel so much better!!! Get up, get going, get on with it! God helps those that help themselves!”<br />
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We’ll build a small fire tonight and extend our circle to encompass everyone else who will be celebrating this longest night, people at Stonehenge and other sacred sites, people who celebrated solstices in the past and those who will celebrate in the years to come. My Ancestors remind me that I too will die and all the echinacea in the world isn’t going to change that. My Descendants remind me that whilst teaching and advice is all very well simple love and attention creates at least two better people. The eternal movement of massive celestial bodies moving into and out of alignment helps put all striving and ambition into perspective.<br />
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Lets share time with each other for the sake of it, giving presents because we truly want to, consciously receiving the valuable, life-saving gift of comfortable company. Just spending time with people in hospital, not talking about spiritual things or doing Pagan things but just hanging out, can create a lot of warmth and pleasure and remind people that they’re more than a patient or a container for illness. You don’t have to do anything at all. You just have to be. That really, truly is good enough. And so are you.Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-34650245825797650532010-11-28T10:49:00.003+00:002011-01-14T16:15:25.800+00:00UK Hospital Death Rates<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2k2u13RjFVc/TPIyum3gkHI/AAAAAAAAASo/Jb9FAWgBOis/s1600/iStock_000009955305XSmall%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2k2u13RjFVc/TPIyum3gkHI/AAAAAAAAASo/Jb9FAWgBOis/s320/iStock_000009955305XSmall%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Some years ago I had to have a very minor examination at a local hospital. The waiting room was filled with other people waiting for the same exam and we all sat there mutely as the minutes ticked past our appointment times. A fat, slovenly nurse swaggered backwards and forwards doing bugger all and in the end I asked her sweetly what the wait might be about. She looked at me with disdain and actually turned her back and walked away. I minced off to find her boss who, when I eventually found her, told us that the doctors weren’t on site. Like attempting to open an oyster I continued to ask this woman questions until she finally told me that the doctors would not be in at all that day. <br />
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A little later I needed another small exam in a different hospital. Same kind of hanging around, same kind of nurses filled with loathing and I kept my mouth shut almost as a kind of spiritual exercise. Until I couldn’t stand being treated so rudely, so roughly any more – this was just getting ready for the exam rather than the exam itself. In the end I simply woke up and said, “What’s your name?” A tense conversation ensued encapsulating the hospital policy on name badges, this woman’s behaviour and – the clincher – the fact that I used to be a nurse in this hospital. The shift in her attitude was polar; she couldn’t have been more attentive and apologetic. It was this that really got my goat: she was capable of caring but actively chose not to.<br />
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Visiting people in hospital I’ve seen nursing staff handle patients roughly, seen an elderly person stumble and put a hand onto a nurse for balance only to have that nurses face writhe with revulsion and push the patient off shouting, ‘Don’t touch me!’ I’ve heard a desperately ill patient in a cold ward ask a nurse to pull the covers up around his shoulders as she strode past yelling, “Do it yourself.” My neighbour wept and desperately called out to be taken home, such was his distress at his treatment. I’ve supported a friend as he made complaints about the treatment his father suffered and at every point the administrators were incompetent, abused their power and treated my friend as if he was an idiot.<br />
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The NHS is very good at emergency care. Our nurses, having to participate in regular professional development, have never been more professional. And hospitals are, as any person who’s been in a hospital recently knows, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8584600.stm">killing patient</a>s. <a href="http://johannhari.com//2011/01/14/this-is-my-grandmother-what-happened-to-her-in-the-last-ten-years-of-her-life-should-be-a-national-scandal?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook">What goes on in care homes is beyond description. </a><br />
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What has this to do with Pagan hospital chaplaincy?<br />
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The simple presence of a chaplain on the ward makes people behave better. I doubt that there’s any research to support this assertion because it would have to start with the proposal that some ward staff behave badly and as any researcher knows, ‘That which is observed, changes.” That’s partly the point, that when a chaplain, a person with power, authority and legitimacy, walks onto the ward (rather than a relative who has legitimacy between certain hours and no power or authority) things change, particularly for people who have any kind of faith. <br />
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We have the same responsibilities as any other person, whatever their professional designation, when it comes to reporting cruelty and bad practice, and making the judgment about whether to report or not can be difficult for all kinds of reasons. But chaplains, with our fantastic, transformative gift of liminality, have the power to talk with people in ways that other staff feel unable to. A part of our job, just by our presence, is to remind everyone that they’re individual human beings with all that this entails. The machine world has always existed, all of us use each other to validate our worldview, but sometimes just by saying, ‘I see you. I see you as a person rather than as a collection of qualifications and a uniform,” creates a massive shift in attitude. It reminds us that we exist. More than that, it reminds us that we are alive, warm, sentient and have the capacity to do a lot of good and also the capacity for self-awareness and appropriate shame instead of always submitting to our place in the hierarchy of ‘Just doing my job.’Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-42983000335949785972010-11-22T08:58:00.001+00:002010-11-22T08:58:59.334+00:00Death and Other Love Songs: On Midwifing the Death of My FatherA guest post by Jacqui Woodward-Smith<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><b>Northern Star</b> (for my father)<br />
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Your journey is not mine to choose,<br />
manipulate, to change or bend <br />
Life’s spiral path must have its way<br />
Its aim unclear until the end<br />
<br />
You drifted deep inside your mind<br />
A second and the veil reached out<br />
I stand upon the distant shore<br />
My call a futile, wordless shout<br />
<br />
I call to you my joy, my father,<br />
as priestess, to the Blessed Isle<br />
As daughter, call you ever homeward<br />
to stay with me for just a while<br />
<br />
My soul shrinks to a grain of sand<br />
To see your hard-fought words unborn<br />
And yet your smile, my northern star,<br />
Would bring the honey to the dawn<br />
<br />
I call to you my joy, my father,<br />
as priestess, to the Blessed Isle<br />
As daughter, call you ever homeward<br />
to stay with me for just a while<br />
<br />
Words lost in too many words<br />
The meanings far from tongue or ear<br />
But I will listen in my dreams<br />
and in my heart your words I’ll hear<br />
<br />
For you have walked the bitter edge where<br />
fear and love entwine in wild embrace<br />
And you have kissed Her blood red mouth<br />
and gazed upon Her stone deep face<br />
<br />
I call to you my joy, my father,<br />
as priestess, to the Blessed Isle<br />
As daughter, call you ever homeward<br />
to stay with me for just a while<br />
<br />
A deep-root oak, your spirit stands<br />
Around we spin in praying dance<br />
To pull you back from dark confusion<br />
To sing you home from endless trance<br />
<br />
Will you surface from Her cauldron<br />
Lost and caged or changed and healed?<br />
Will life’s choices branch before you<br />
Or has Her kiss your future sealed?<br />
<br />
I call to you my joy, my father,<br />
as priestess, to the Blessed Isle<br />
As daughter, call you ever homeward<br />
to stay with me for just a while<br />
<br />
But heron comes to show the way<br />
through misty marshes of the mind<br />
The edge of love, the edge of fear<br />
The connection we were born to find<br />
<br />
And when Crone Mother finally calls you<br />
to rest and change in dreaming womb<br />
I will rejoice that you are with Her<br />
But always feel you left too soon<br />
<br />
I call to you my joy, my father,<br />
as priestess, to the Blessed Isle<br />
As daughter, call you ever homeward<br />
to stay with me for just a while<br />
<br />
Your journey is not mine to choose,<br />
manipulate, to change or bend<br />
But it is my joy to walk with you,<br />
my father-child, your daughter-friend</div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">©Jacqui Woodward-Smith, July – September 2007</span></div><br />
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<b>Death and Other Love Songs: On Midwifing the Death of My Father*</b><br />
by Jacqui Woodward-Smith<br />
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In memory of Ronald Henry Smith, 14th September 1929 to 17th August 2007 and for ‘She who births us, and waits for us at the end of a life, to take us to another shore’<span style="font-size: x-small;">1</span><br />
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<blockquote>And when life can no longer hold you let the red and white springs sing you home …<span style="font-size: x-small;">2</span></blockquote><br />
I thought long and hard about whether to write this article; death is such an intimate, personal thing that I thought perhaps it would be a betrayal of my father, who I loved more dearly than I can ever say. And yet, when I think about the days and months before his death, about the honesty, openness, dignity, and humour with which he approached his final moment I know that he would say that it was ok. That if it helped others to be less afraid then his death should be shared. Ultimately, his final journey was his alone, and I can only relate my experience of it, so perhaps there can be no betrayal after all. The secrets of that journey have gone with him and I can only share what I know. From my own perspective I do know that death should not be hidden, as is so encouraged in our society, and that the strongest memory I have of those last hours, and the days following it, are of the savage beauty and fierce love to be found at the heart of the Crone.<br />
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My dad, Ron, was diagnosed with prostate cancer following a stroke in 2004. I don’t think that I had ever realised what a strong and determined man he was until I saw him fight his way back to health after the stroke but that was also the first time that I ever saw him cry and perhaps the first time that I really saw him as a human being and not just ‘dad’. In a way, I think that there are few things that have shocked me more than seeing my father cry but, through his recovery, we did develop a stroner and more honest connection, for which I am ever grateful. During that time he had many strange visions and in one he saw me shape-shift into a heron, which made him laugh, but made me think of the bird that guards the liminal spaces between life and death. It was then that I first began to consider the role that I might, as best as I was able, play in midwifing his death when the time came.<br />
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I saw him battle that stroke and win and he approached cancer in the same way; with dignity and a determination to be well. He was a fierce protector of his family and he would have considered it a betrayal of us to give in, no matter what the personal cost to himself. In the years to come I often wished that it were otherwise and that he would let go, but that was not his way. As time went on and I saw his health failing I, feeling the brush of the heron’s wing, found the courage to talk to him about death and what we both thought it would be like. He became more and more open to talking in a way that he never had, about the past and memories of his own parents and siblings, about his dreams and disappointments, and about how proud he was of my brother and I and I told him that I loved him many times (which was something that we had never really said). During this time my brother began to research our family tree and dad cried when he saw the names of all the relatives that he had never known but hoped that he would meet some of them when he died. He was also disappointed that no serial killers or highwaymen had revealed themselves! Over time I saw the masks that he wore melt away like autumn leaves and I saw the kind, funny, strong, wounded, and gentle man beneath. It was an honour to share that time with him.<br />
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Eventually, in July 2007, he was admitted to hospital with acute kidney failure and, although his kidneys improved, he was told that, as the cancer had by then spread to his bones and lymphatic system, there was nothing more that could be done for him. He received this news with courage and good humour (as he put it he had “both feet in the last chance saloon and Marlene Dietrich was singing ‘Boys in the Backroom’”!), and I think a degree of relief because the responsibility he felt to carry on fighting had been removed. He then went about giving us his final messages (mainly about looking after one another and telling us how proud he was of us) and preparing for death.<br />
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A week before he died I attended the Glastonbury Goddess Conference in honour of the Crone. It seemed so perfect to me that we would be journeying with the Crone this year and I learned much about Her nature, and my own, in that week. I had felt for months that our family was being held in a liminal space waiting for death and, through my own intuition and talking to others, found that to be very like the time of waiting for a birth. Both death and birth are transitions into another state of being and it was as though all my attention became focussed on that one thing. When I left for the Conference and said goodbye to dad in the hospital I thought that I might never see him again but I knew that we had said all that needed to be said (despite that fact that I would rather have been able to say those things to him over and over again until the end of time). At the opening ceremony I read out ‘Northern Star’, the poem that I had written for him at the time of his stroke and, by phone, asked the nurses caring for him to tell him that many people had cried. He was a man who never felt ‘seen’ and I wanted him to know that he was seen and mattered before he left.<br />
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Often as a priestess during the conference I found myself holding the energy around the doors in ceremony and reflected on my role as gatekeeper for him as he came closer to death. I felt unprepared for the task but hoped that my priestess training and some of the energy of the conference would stay with me and get me through what needed to be done. In the end though I think that it is love that helps us through; there really is nothing more that we need. Before I left the Conference I attended a ceremony where priestesses embodied the Goddesses of the Wheel of Brigit-Ana and gave oracles. I went to Cerridwen and asked Her to give my father a gentle death. Her reply has stayed with me; “he will have his own death with its own dignity” and those words seemed to free me from feeling that I was responsible for making it ‘alright’ and allowed me to let go of expectation and react to what was happening around me, rather than constantly worrying about what it ‘should be like’.<br />
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After the Conference I went straight to see dad and we talked about my experiences and his poem being read; he told me again that he was proud of me. It was a warm and lovely afternoon and, looking back, it was the last time that we shared that connection before he began to let go and journey into death. The next few times that I saw him were more difficult, as he was becoming irritated with life in hospital and frustrated that he was no longer able to help with some difficult issues that were happening in our family. He began to close down, becoming angry and uncommunicative and looking frailer by the day. I was saddened by, what seemed to be, the loss of the warm connection that we had found but reminded myself that it was his journey and that my role was as a witness. I had always felt that he would struggle to die, that he would find it hard to let go when the time came, so perhaps that ‘winding in of the threads of connection’ was exactly what was needed at the time. Whatever the reason I trusted the wisdom of his dying.<br />
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As a final gift I took a plastic box, which I labelled ‘Ron’s Box of Love’, into the hospital with some pens and paper and asked everyone to put their ‘love’ into it. On my last few visits I, with dad more often asleep than not, spent my time writing thoughts and memories on slips of paper and placing them in the box. My niece and nephew also placed things inside, as did my brother and even one of the nurses caring for dad. It felt important to spend the time expressing our gratitude for all the things he had given us, even though he was perhaps unaware of us doing so (after he had died his nurse told me that she had read some of the notes out to him and that he had smiled). One night in bed, after a particularly difficult visit, I pulled my ‘crow cloak’, which I wear to work with the energy of the Nine Morgens, over me and I heard their voices. They told me that the Death Mother was circling but that the time was not right for Her to descend. Instead they said that dad was “with the earth one”, learning about the experience of being in a failing body and how to let go of it. I also saw a vision of beautiful autumn leaves decaying back into the earth and felt comforted. The Morgens helped me to see that dad’s journey was unfolding as it should and I began to see the gifts that even something as seemingly terrible as cancer can hold in allowing us to fully experience letting go, if we have the courage to do so. I reflected on the added pain and fear that might come from a sudden and unexpected death and felt grateful that my dad had been able to, as much as possible, experience a gentle end to his life.<br />
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In the following days I returned to work but also made another short trip to Glastonbury, where I collected water from the red and white springs and communed with the landscape to gain further strength for the days to come. The morning after my Glastonbury trip I packed my bag for work as usual but also felt that I should pack the sacred spring water and some other items from my altar to Cerridwen (which I had created on my return from the conference). I had only been in my office for a few hours when I received a phone call to say that I should come to the hospital; dad had developed a chest infection and he, and those caring for him, had made the decision not to treat it. It took me two hours to get to the hospital and, by the time I got there, he was virtually unconscious, probably because of the drugs that he was being given. My mother was there, later my brother came, and we all sat together, not saying much but glad to have one another. Eventually mum needed to sleep and my brother took her home before he had to return to his own family. He said that he would return in the morning and so dad and I were left alone.<br />
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It is almost impossible to describe that night, although I still remember every moment. Dad had been moved into a side room that morning and so we were more or less left alone, the nurses only coming in a few times to check his drip. As soon as mum and my brother were gone I set up a simple altar on a side table. I felt right to create a sense of sacred, despite being in the hospital. If we had been at home I may have been more creative (lighting candles etc) but perhaps that simple collection of objects was all that dad would have wanted; he was a man who appreciated simplicity. I called to the Death Mother, Cerridwen, asked Her to be with us and sat wondering what to do then. I held his hand and told him that I loved him, that he had done all that he needed to do and had kept us safe, that he was brave and that I was proud of him, and I told him that when the time was right he could let go, that he would know what to do. I know that he heard me because I felt him squeeze my hand and a tear rolled from his eye. I repeated the same things several times during the night and also told him all the things that I had been too scared to say, knowing that this would be our last chance in this lifetime. Often I sang to him quietly but most of the time it felt right that my only role should be as a fully present witness. I wanted him to know that I was there but didn’t want to interfere.<br />
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What I learned was that death is hard work and is something that we do, not something that is done to us. The Death Mother is our partner in the dance of death and we do have our role to play. Dad was busy that night and was constantly moving his hands. I didn’t hold his hand for much of the time because it felt important that he should be able to move as he needed to. He appeared to be making something and mumbled that he had to go to work, a place perhaps where he had been most himself and had felt most creative and appreciated. He had been a toolmaker and a few days later I mentioned some of the movements that he had been making to an ex-colleague and she gasped and said that they were the movements that he would have made at one of his machines! A few times he appeared to take some food and ate it, at one point seemingly picking some fruit from a tree. I was reminded of Leslene della-Madre’s account of her mother’s death; that her mother had burrowed into the pillow as though searching for the breast.3 It seems that there is something that sustains us even in our dying and it was quite beautiful to watch. Dad worked, and I witnessed, for many more hours; he was sometimes peaceful, sometimes busy, and sometimes set his jaw with the determined expression of a small boy. I cried many times but I smiled many times too. He only opened his eyes once more and looked at me sadly, not as father to daughter but as friend to friend. I felt that that was when we truly said goodbye and I smiled at him for one last time.<br />
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Several hours later, when his breathing had remained the same, I began to think that he would live for another day and eventually slept for a few hours. When I woke his breathing was slightly shallower but still strong and I sat singing to him softly for several more hours. He continued to work with his hands and appeared to be having a discussion with someone, his face showing questioning or approval of what was being said. I began to sense that he might have become ‘stuck’ somehow; he was a strong man who had fought all his life to do the right thing and to protect his family and, although he had accepted death, it seemed that some part of him was not ready to go. It felt right to call all the goddesses of the Wheel of Brigit-Ana, which I work with as a Priestess of Avalon, into the room. I called the Mothers of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth and Maiden, Lover, Mother, and Crone, with Brigit-Ana in the centre. I asked each of them to bring their individual gifts to dad’s last moments and to help him let go when the time was right. I told them that he was a child of their soil, that his feet had walked their sacred land all his life, and asked them that they care for him and show him the way one last time. Finally I called to our ancestors and particularly to his mother, Annie, who he had spoken of so often in his final months. I asked her to come to him and take his hand. I told him again that he was brave, that he would know what to do when the moment came to let go, and that all our love would go with him to be joined with the love of our ancestors in the Otherworld; from love into love. I began to sing but, even as I began, he gave three breaths and died. The room was completely still and I felt a deeper peace than any I had ever experienced before. It was as though there was a presence of a great and luminous darkness that was both light and dark all at the same time. I believe that, at the end, the Goddess, who is Mother of us all, and his ancestors came to show him the way. There are things that I would have wanted to be different; he had wanted to die at home, perhaps there was too much sedation, perhaps there was more that we needed to say to one another, perhaps I could have been better/different/more but these are just questions and don’t matter now. All that matters is that his was a good enough death; Ronald Henry Smith died bravely and well and I was, and am, proud to be his daughter.<br />
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I sat with dad for another hour before I called the nurses and the great feeling of peace remained with us. I felt privileged to have been allowed to witness the death of another human being. Sometimes I also felt angry; if the Goddess could have taken him so easily why couldn’t She have let him stay? But I knew that all was exactly as it should have been and that She had come with love and compassion and taken him back to Her womb, which is ever changing and ever the same.<br />
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When the nurses eventually came I asked whether I could help them wash his body and was able to bless him with water from the red and white springs before he was wrapped in a shroud and taken away from me. My brother came and we went home to tell mum; life took over once more and I was deeply comforted by the feeling of family togetherness that we had for those few days. Eventually dad’s body was brought to the funeral home and I again requested to wash his body. I had expected them to say no but they seemed pleased and gave me everything that I needed. I was left alone with him and was able to bathe him and rub peppermint oil into his body. I also washed, dried, and combed, his hair, which felt like such a deep and tender act of love that it makes me cry just to think of it. When he was placed in the woven willow coffin that he had requested I was able to visit several times to sit with him and fill the coffin with fresh herbs, my mother offered a yellow rose, my brother photos of his children. Just before the lid was sealed for his funeral I marked dad’s brow with red ochre and wished him a gentle journey in the Cauldron of the Goddess. His coffin was decorated with daisy flowers and greenery, as though we had gone out into a meadow and collected them that morning. Rosemary was woven into them for remembrance. Someone who saw his coffin said that it reminded her of a Moses basket.<br />
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After the funeral I, and several of my dear friends and fellow priestesses, watched his coffin being committed, as he had requested, to the flames and the creative and transformative fires of the Goddess, and loudly sang ‘We all come from the Goddess’. It all felt very ancient, very right, and somehow comforting, and I like to think that dad would have been pleased (and probably highly amused).<br />
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I never believed that I could sit with someone in their dying, that I could wash their body after death, that I could stand and watch them taken by the fires, but I found that I could and I will be forever grateful to my father for allowing me to learn so much about both life and death. I wasn’t able to do this because I am a priestess but because I loved him and because I know that none of us can ever be whole until our lives, and within that our deaths, are touched by the Sacred Feminine, who has been so long denied.<br />
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I was ‘high’ for several weeks after dad died; as though the stardust that clings to those who have just given birth was also clinging to me, but now I journey with grief and mourning and sit in the cave of the Morgen Crows as they tattoo the story I shared with my father into my skin; I won’t pretend that it doesn’t hurt. I don’t know how long I will stay with them but I do know that everything has changed and that I, like my father, have been through an initiation whose effect is not yet clear. There is much pain and fear in dying, there is much sorrow, but, if we can learn to see through that fear, if we can question all that we have been taught, if we can sit with the Goddess in our dying, then something deep and wounded will be healed; just wait for the brush of the heron’s wing.<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
©Jacqui Woodward-Smith, Samhain 2007</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">1. Leslene della-Madre, Midwifing Death: Returning to the Arms of the Ancient Mother (Plain View Press, 2003) p.59.<br />
2. Jacqueline Woodward-Smith, unfinished poem<br />
3. As 1. p.56.</span><br />
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First published in Goddess Pages 2007 and reproduced with permissionClare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-57375788262790500622010-11-16T14:02:00.001+00:002010-11-16T14:03:32.248+00:00Pagan Health SurveyFrom the excellent <a href="http://www.wildhunt.org/blog/">Wild Hunt blog</a> news of Dr Kimberly Hendrick's <a href="http://apha.confex.com/apha/138am/webprogram/Paper227683.html">survey of Pagan health. </a><br />
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Not surprisingly, she demonstrates that many Pagans tend towards a more holistic approach to health care than do many health care professionals, which leads those Pagans to seek alternatives.<br />
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Is this a uniquely Pagan stance? How enduring is this attitude? If I get knocked over I'm not sure I'd look to lavender oil and crystals to sort me out and not many Pagans I know would either. Discrepancies between Pagan and conventional understanding of mental health are particularly apparent and interesting.<br />
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Listen in to the <a href="http://imbleedingprofusely.com/">podcast on Friday 19th</a> and hear it from the horses mouth!Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1638026473198839266.post-74913829325798151492010-11-01T06:37:00.002+00:002010-11-01T06:58:10.735+00:00Happy Samhain<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2k2u13RjFVc/TM5kqtGpaAI/AAAAAAAAASg/j2NLq-VURhE/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2k2u13RjFVc/TM5kqtGpaAI/AAAAAAAAASg/j2NLq-VURhE/s1600/images.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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Whichever Pantheon we work with the story is the same: the Goddess moves from Her younger aspect into the older. She seems more brutal and distant but remains the arbiter of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsQbsSMeFV4&NR=1">ultimate justice and inevitable change.</a><br />
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May our decent into the dark womb of Winter be warm and rich. Happy Samhain!Clare Slaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14937627339653914404noreply@blogger.com0