Reach out and touch someone....

As far as firearms go, I figured I'd come out as something from Kalashnikov. Here was the top choice:

Which Firearm are you? brought to you byStan Ryker

and the second best match:

Which Firearm are you? brought to you byStan Ryker

I didn't expect national origin to play quite so prominent a role. :-)

(no subject)

It has been a really nice day, and not just because i didn't go to work, but hung around the house with alexander. He's such a nice little boy, and quite often i don't think i give him enough credit for being as good as he is most of the time.
Did some graphic design today, and wrote a little essay about my beliefs, reproduced below for those few readers of mine who won't see it anywhere else:
Religion is something that is both intensely personal, yet in some ways publically visible in the way we behave and respond to events which effect us but are beyond our control.

If there is one thing I've learned, it is that there is no absolute universal truth. There is spiritual fulfillment out there for everyone, but it's not something which we can recieve in a pre-digested form- in many ways, the journey and the path are one, and that we only can really believe by working through the evolutionary process of figuring out how we relate to the Divine in a practical, everyday manner.

Discovering that things have changed in our beliefs, then, is not a negative thing, but rather an indication that we've confronted what to many is impossible to challenge- ourselves- and found it in some way lacking an element that was vital to our personal fulfillment. Having the courage to change our beliefs and our relationship with the spirit of the Divine is part of that, which to me, defines what ties the larger community of those who describe themselves as pagan.

Personally, I apply the label "Celtic Reconstructionism" to classify my belief structure, but the term itself is pretty vague and indefinite, with lots of room for growth. In its personal incarnation, it means this: I have a relationship of sorts with some of the
Divine Ones known to have been revered by the Celts before the conversion of the Six Nations to Christianity. More specifically within this, my primary deities are Brighid, the Morrigan, and Manannan. The majority of attributed ancient practices which have worked themselves into my belief structures are from Ireland or Scotland, and Gaelic is a language which I'm working at learning to further my understanding of the cultures of these areas.

Although I know several people who term themselves as "Celtic Traditionalists," reflecting the importance of living culture in their beliefs, I find the religious expression of these well-intentioned folk to dangerously approach worshipping the culture of their chosen Celtic nation at the expense of spirituality in the sense of a relationship with the Divine. All too often, these same individuals decry an approach which includes elements outside of the cultural matrix as neo-paganism, and hostile to the survival of the living cultures; or insist that it is not possible to create authentic Celtic spirituality outside of that matrix.

In counterpoint, I'd observe that it is equally impossible for one to build a relationship with the Divine when constraining the way that the Divine Ones are allowed to manifest themselves.