When is Helping Out Being too Clucky

I visit my mum & dad once a week, with my dad not being in a good state, unable to string a proper sentence together & finding day to day tasks harder to do so that he has carers around to help him shave, shower & get him changed I do feel protective of him, but I also don't want to appear clucky or for that matter too distant or unhelpful. Finding that delicate balance is difficult. I try to be helpful but not mollycoddle but sometimes I'm wondering if I am not doing enough. I help when he is indicating something by either pointing or putting together as many words as he can, but he can be hard to understand now as he will lose the words he is trying to think of which sometimes aren't clear. The problem is, is distinguishing what is the frustration of not being able to communicate & physically cope with things as well as he used to from the frustration of being fussed over, seeing as though he was very independent.

Through all this though I try to keep the humour up & try to make him laugh at least once when I am there & talk to him as if we're having a normal conversation as I feel that it is important as he loves a good wind up, good jokes & a decent conversation, without talking down to him as he is still the same person. I help out with some housework too, so hopefully it is of use too both of my parents who are struggling at the moment, but there are times which I feel I should be there more, but would that mean I'm becoming a nuisance as other friends & family members come to visit & I don't to crowd him, plus I realise I can't put my life on hold either. i guess I'm just venting trying to find out my place in all this, thanks for listening.

The Atheist who was allowed to stay

Today I was delighted to hear about a guy who was allowed to stay in this country on the grounds that if he went back to his home country he would be put to death because of his new found faith in atheism. Although it is not my faith, I believe that everyone has the the right to their own faith & should not be afraid to follow it, should not be forced to follow a faith that is not right for them through peer pressure. I do not agree that your religion should be determined by law either whatever your religion. As long as you live a good life, don't harm anyone & show respect to others it doesn't matter. I changed my faith, I found one that was right for me & 18 years on I'm still following it a it i right for me, I don't expect it to be right for everyone however, so this is why I am proud of our legal system & us as a nation, that this young Atheist man has been allowed to stay.
Some people may wonder why I refer to Atheism as a faith, I do so as it is still a belief system even though it does not have belief in a god. No one has yet proven categorically there is a god of any description that is scientific, a more scientific mind will believe there is not one, they should not be judged on this as I believe that they should do the same in return, but to do that we all need to learn respect.

Wild Weather & Climate Change

Sorry I haven't posted for a couple of weeks I have not had a day off to do so. You would have to have been asleep or permanently high not to have noticed that nature has been a bit rough with us over the past couple of weeks. My prayers & thoughts go to the victims & their families of the affected areas. It appears that our weather is becoming more erratic in recent years & now even scientists are agreeing that global warming is happening & causing catastrophic effects with our weather. For all the money we spend for overseas aid to help the people who have been affected by the devastation, we may need to start thinking about what money we can put to reducing our own personal impact on the planet as far as carbon footprints are concerned. It may be as simple as making sure appliances are turned off when they are not in use or buying local & organic. Sourcing responsibly sourced items or buying in such disposable trends. We can all do our bit by looking at what we can do at home, sometimes the little things can make all the difference because if everyone did them it would no longer be a small thing being done. It would be good to see that if we all act together responsibly that such things won't get too commonplace in the world as no one should have to go through what the people in the Philippines, Illinois or Sardinia. 

Sorry for the none posting of late

It has been a while, I'm sorry I have been a bit angry young man with a lot of things that happened & I wasn't entirely sure that my annoyance at the world wouldn't end up with me sounding like an arsehole. The Murder of Lee Rigby & the backlash from the EDL & other right wing facists, which was about couple of psychos not an entire religion, as I saw no one have a go at all Christians when a couple 2 years ago killed a child because 'it was a witch' & 'it was all done in God's Name'. Then the subsequent attacks on innocent Muslims riled me, including a recent terrorist attack on a Mosque not too far away.
Then there was the badger cull, tighter restrictions on livestock movement, & improved checks & immunisation are all moves that would be more effective if done together than what a cull would do & it wasn't the badgers that started it in the first place.
And finally Russia whose stance on LGBT rights was OK but not brilliant to down right persecution, I feel for the LGBT people of Russia & hope they get a new president soon who is a free thinker & stop turning their country into a one to avoid listed country.
So Sorry about the absence I had my reasons & believe me this post was a long time of making it not sound like I'm calling for a Battle Royale scenario with all extremists in the world, though that could be an option. But on a serious note I did need to be in a calmer place before posting, so here it is.

Admitting stuff is hard

This is a post of 2 very different stories, but perhaps we can draw parallels.

Story one, a friend of mine came out to his mother recently, who is a bit older than me, it was raw for them & felt emmotionally drained. The more sad the my friend was upset rather than what she had been told, things may still feel raw, but as time progresses it will ease & they will wonder why they didn't do it earlier, but coming out is not easy even now, eventhough more people are excepting of homosexuality. Admitting it was probably the first step to feedom for the person & will help ease the future along.

The second story is about a family member who is disabled & their condition was degenerative, it affects their stability & abilty to walk amongst other things. It is always hard to see someone so active to suddenly become less able, but this was a case of the person wanting to take part in a family outing which we thought wouldn't have been the best for their abilities, but family is family & they came along, unfortunately the day was cut short due to the inability of walking long distances & especially on unneven ground. It unfortunately caused stressed, words were had in the nicest way possible, that next year it probably wouldn't be best for them to come because of the way they were not able to cope. But this has set a ball rolling to find something new to do including them in the family gathering that is akin to what we were doing, but with more accessibility, so they don't have to rely so much on the support of others & can still enjoy themselves & still be independent. It is a bitter pill to swallow that you can't quite do all the things that you used to, but it shouldn't stop you from doing other things or new things that are in you remit. My heart goes out to them & hope that they won't be discouraged from doing other things together with the family in the future as they are still very much loved.

So excepting things about yourself can actually move you further forward, don't dwell on things & see acceptance as a good thing & a chance to do new things & be proud of who you are.

Knowing what you are getting yourself into with spells

I'm not going to name names, but I was contacted by a friend who has been hurt by love with the appearance of a third party who showed up to cause trouble. Now my friend looked into getting a "Witch" to do a couple of spells for them, the "Witch" has charges quite the fee it appears, but the friend doesn't know exactly what type spells are being used so not 100% sure of the outcome & what it would mean for them in the long run. To me this sounds incredibly suspect/dangerous, seriously when delving into the realms of spellcasting there are some rules I would seriously consider following.

• You don't have to be a Witch to cast a spell, it tends to work better if the person who needs/wants the spell to do it as it is more likely to have an effect as you are actually involved & not a third party who may have missed a detail in your case & who may have their own agenda, which could just be a make money fast scheme. If the spell fails or goes wrong they probly won't claim responsibilty for it.
• Be clear about exactly what it is you want & what you want the outcome to be. 
• Be able to deal with the consequences if it doesn't turn out how you exactly planned it.
• Make sure in the right state of mind when you do things, when passions are high you could end up biting off more than you can chew with what you are sending out there. Be level headed about these things.
• Think it through first, is there something you can do on a physical level before hitting the spell books?

I do hope my friend will be OK for their own sake & that things turn out to how they wanted to & not something completely distorted or unwelcome.

Sometimes logic can be quicker than the internet

Yesterday I almost went into what is now habitual, if I don't immediately know something & I know I don't have the answer in a book, to look it up on the internet. Yesterday  for the first time I was making a cake using duck eggs which are bigger than hens eggs & richer, but I lacked a specific duck egg cake recipe so getting the consistency right would mean different weights & measures. I was about to fire up the computer when all of a sudden my problem solving part of my brain perked up, weigh the eggs & then measure out the ingredients to scale, this did save me time & the cake turned out delicious, but it has now got me wondering how much do I turn to the computer for answers rather than thinking solutions to a problem myself? Have I just become to reliant on letting a machine do my thinking for me? One thing I do still use my intuition & problem solving with are my faith practices as I feel that as a Witch my workings of that nature are fluid & find that it is the most practical way of doing things. If I can do it with that then why do I turn to a machine for almost everything else? I'm a sensible if somewhat strange human being, logic should come & usually does come easily to me. Has the computer just made me become lazy in my thought processes? I think that that is something to I need meditate on.

The economic question of benefits & tax cuts

I'm probably not the most attuned to all the intricate details of economics in this country but I am willing to put my views on this topic into the public forum. I myself receive no benefits but I am a low income earner & less tax on me would mean I would have more disposable income with which I could spend, I would be able to afford to use public transport to go to my main job instead of walking four & a half miles to work on a route that becomes treacherous in bad weather or afford more uniform instead of waiting for it to go into holes before I replace it. I know many people who rely on their benefits to scrape by as single parents, disabled or have difficulties with their skill sets to get jobs. Many who work part time need the tax credits they get so they don't have be on full benefits & not working but can't work full time because of the needs of their children. Their are some people who I now who never be able to work again through disability & it seems to be us who are having to feel the brunt of things, if you are middle class or downwards we are being punished for those in power who frittered away the money in coffers, but rather than the money coming out of their pockets it comes out of ours. The banks were nigh on unregulated & those with the gambling power took great advantage of that, many of them still get their bonuses with their million odd pound a year wages which are now enjoying a tax cut so they can squander even more of their money. The rich are getting richer the poor are getting poorer. There is a theory that would spend more, in uncertain times even the rich will be holding on to their money so it really doesn't work out, plus are the government really expecting that the extra spending the richest 10% would do with a tax cut would out way the money that poorer in the society now can't spend even though their is a far greater percentage of people living below the poverty line of course it won't. Though I don't agree with living of the state all your life without contributing to it, you do need to support those who need a bit of extra help on the lower end of the monetary scale who are working their damned hardest to keep their necks above water. I dare say if this keeps up their will be another peasant's revolt type incident happening only this time it won't be royalty in the line of fire & we do have rights now grrrrr

Graffiti artist vs Vandalism

Sitting on the bus on the way back from the chaplaincy I overheard a conversation (which was not hard with the volume that they were speaking at, in fact it would have been harder to not over hear it) in which one of the lads was saying he was a graffiti artist, it did peak my interest a little, which was then lost when he started to talk of the things he'd tagged by scratching his name into things. It infuriated me a little how is tagging art? To me it is nothing more than a slightly more permanent version of pissing up a wall, marking your territory. I felt like saying to him that is not art as it doesn't convey anything except that some idiot with time on his hands & a huge sense of inadequacy has been in the area. To me a graffiti artist actually says something more profound or provide amusement. For it to be art it needs to say something other than I was here (but thought better of it). People are becoming more appreciative of graffiti art, repackaging it as street art. Many places are proud of the Banksy or similar images around the place as people actually admire the effort & craftsmanship that went into making it. In fact if you can create uproar if it is removed then you really have hit the mark of the artist. I'm not condoning vandalism, but true art is something to be appreciated, somebody writing their name or just making a rude remark is worth little, though sometimes I do feel like getting a marker pen & correcting their spelling mistakes or lack of punctuation, but that would be lowering myself to their standards. If I want to leave a mark on the planet it won't be done with a compass on a bus.

Valentine's Day on Reflection

I had a bit a serious day yesterday, waking up to the Today Program doesn't fill you with the spirit of the day & throughout the day my sense of humour didn't return, Gabriel was being super naughty & I also had to clean up cat vomit which was done in a concealed spot so wasn't spotted when it happened which leaves me to think that it was Jezebel's as Gabriel has shows little regard for where he vomits, it was grim. Was I worried that this year even though I'd agreed with Rich that there was no cards, flowers etc this year I did have that thought of what if he surprises with something & I took him at his word, I would have felt mega guilty. As it happens the only surprise he had for me was that his rehearsal had been cancelled & we had an unexpected evening together where we cooked together in the kitchen which was lovely & then watched a bizarre film about Joyce Hatto. All in all the evening was lovely & unexpected which is way better than than a naff card or or flowers that have a limited vase life. So my worries were unfounded, but I do feel like there is way too much pressure on people to do Valentine's Day, perhaps if you don't get to see your partner so much or the relationship is new & you want to show how much you care it is a festival for you. I say I love you to my partner everyday & I mean it when it is said, it has been over 8 years since we first started in our relationship & we show our appreciation for each other often, so why just limit it to one day a year. All in all though it is meant to be about secret admirers rather than long term coupling. It was good to spend time together though & I would not have changed it, well perhaps with a little more assurance that there wasn't going to be an over blown gesture would have been reassuring but to be honest I don't think we could have made it clearer, but it never stops the niggling doubt. Love to everybody especially Rich xxx

P.S apologies for my lack of humour to everyone online & in text

Gun Violence

It is with great sadness that another case of gun usage on another human being occurred & the fact that it is high profile is equally as bad, the world would be a much better place without them. My thoughts go out to the family of Reeva Steenkamp. I can't emphasise enough how much I don't agree with gun ownership for those whose jobs do not require a need for one, defence is not a reason as the gun the person owns can be turned against you by a skilled attacker. Thankfully with Barack Obama calling for tighter restrictions on gun laws in America it could make his country a lot safer if only the republicans could see that instead of thinking more guns are the answer to the gun problem where Joe Normal turns psycho & goes on a killing spree. If we could remove all guns from the world it would be a much better place. It is a sad case where a tool becomes a weapon & then make it an even deadlier weapon over time, but many weapon starts out this way as a sword was originally an agricultural tool. Guns do not make you look cool they just make you look like a scared psychopath who couldn't defend themselves in any other way. Although tighter gun laws are a step in the right direction, we need a more rigid system across the world to help stop the statistics of gun crime increasing. Perhaps a Battle Royale situation for anyone caught with a gun who does not need one for their job & the winner gets to live in a cell for the rest of his life may work & it will solve the over population of the planet crisis at the same time.*

Please do not take the last comment seriously.

Imbolc on reflection

I have to make admit something here, I have never really felt a connection with this festival as it is one where it is more for those who keep livestock or those who have children as it is a festival about birth as much as it is a festival of awakening of the seasons. Perhaps if I had livestock or was heterosexual I would have more of a connection with it perhaps, but I've never really got it. I tend to get the Vernal Equinox more on that side of things as being an ornithologist it is the time when more birds are mating. However I did do a pathworking based on the festival & it seemed to go well, I did take something from it perhaps this year it had a slight more significance with my sister having had Reuben & becoming an uncle biologically for the first time & I did send my thoughts & blessings to the both of them, but still I don't feel that Imbolc is not my festival.

Be Kind to All Life, Become Vegan?

This is not an attack on veganism or vegetarianism just a question which I have wanted to ask for a while & would like to know an answer to. A friend on facebook recently put a post up about the blatant disregard for life within the poultry rearing industry, isn't it time you went vegan? Which also lead me to remember a sign on a vegan march in Birmingham which had a sign saying 'Be Kind To All Life Become Vegan'. Now I'm not arguing that farming practises in this day & age are all fine & dandy & the animals don't suffer at all, in fact the opposite rings true, I think all people should rely a little less on eating animals & then perhaps then with a change in that habit we would be more able to keep animals in a more humane way. My argument falls like this, a blatant disregard to all life surely should encompass that of plants, just because they can't talk does not mean they can't communicate, they have pheromones for that & they do respond to each other, acacia trees let other trees know that there are giraffes nearby so they can produce a chemical that will make their leaves unpalatable for the giraffe if it decides that the acacia that it is feeding on has gone too bitter so will try to wonder to another to continue feasting on. Plants suffer, if you pick a bean, courgette, chilli or tomato off a plant, it will grow another, not because it wants to, but needs to to survive, essentially harvesting fruit is committing abortion in the plant world. Blanching vegetables, is starving them of light, which helps provide some of its food therefore malnourishing the plant, just so chicory, rhubarb, dandelions etc don't taste quite so bitter. Then there is the cut & come again salad crops which suffer from a regular disembowelling by removing their leaves. So is this being kind to all life? Or is this if it doesn't make a sound, it doesn't count as it must be a lesser being?

Voting for X Factor

I don't get it, what is the point? To vote for someone who is to lazy to put the effort into a music career in the first place to be someone else's puppet & not have their own creative input into their music or to have it severely restricted, it allows a lack of artistic merit into our music culture, it does not nurture the talent that it says it does, just stifles the creativity of any contestants that have any, though I doubt many have that, just to provides a homogenised sound & endless uninspired covers that sound very similar to the original, which is rendered a little pointless. A friend on facebook posted a good point, if the people who endlessly harp on about voting for who they want to win X Factor put as much effort into voting for who they wanted to run the country we could be in a much better place by now & I know many people who vote for X Factor candidates who don't vote. I have heard it  been called escapism & from some it is, but to most they of the people I know who call it that don't fully understand what they are escaping from, so therefore it is not escapism because you have to have a fairly decent grip on reality of the events happening in the world in the first place. Please pay attention to what is going on in the world then I will have no objections for you watching a program I care little if anything for.

Chaos

With my life being in a state of flux, impeding move, new nephew & niece, promotion with new responsibilities, my foot playing up & the moot taking on a newer role. Chaos seems to be ensuing & it is hard to keep my feet on the ground. So I'm turning to my faith & I seem to have somehow felt disconnected with that too, So what to do? Reconnect with myself & hope everything slots into place. Hopefully reconnecting with my faith will also give me some sense of calm in the transition. Though acknowledging chaos is part of Paganism knowing that you can't control everything but finding your place in the mesh of what is going on is comforting & concentrating on what you can do & what you can influence is the key to managing it, setting out a strategy is key to taming it somewhat could make me feel more at ease. Or should I just ride it & see where it spits me out, not knowing is the scary part, would this create rash decisions, leaving me feel harried & likely to snap or brake down, or it could lead me to discover something new about myself. I think more the previous option is more me, hoping for the best & being prepared for the worse. Coping strategies vary from person to person, some people thrive more on a suck it & see approach & it works for them & who am I to argue with that, challenges define us & you have to except what such a thing reveals & deal with the fallout. So wish me luck & I shall see you at the other end.

Religious Backlashes

Religious extremism hasn't half been busy recently, mainly to fatally or the stuff that hit the news has been. I have not seen the video in question that has caused such controversy, but most people who I know who have seen it have all agreed that the video is poor, that it is some racist Islamaphobic idiot trying to cause more upset. Unfortunately religious extremists of 'Islam' have risen to the bait & started killing people who had nothing to do with the idiot's video (I have put Islam in inverted commas as it is written nowhere in the Koran that you should go around murdering people). I can't think of anyone who thinks that the guy who created the video was right & nobody I know thinks that the fall out from the video was justified either. People in Libya agree too forcing the militias out who carried out the attacks on the American Embassy, the people of Libya Muslim or otherwise condoned what had happened. Muslims are not the only ones who have to put up with the extremism of people of their faith, though the way the news is reported by some right wing news papers you thought it would be, but others do it too. There are people been killed for being witches by Christians in the world which apart from a few notable cases go unreported. There have been those who have burnt copies of the Koran too. But there are extremists in most faiths so don't think I'm anti any particular one it is just that these examples are the ones that stick in people's minds more. So if you want to know how most people feel about these religious conflicts going on ignore the papers, many times you'll see faiths helping each other in the community rather than being at war with each other if you just take your mind away from the extreme few. Think about the innocent Muslims who are being tarred with the same brush as the deranged few etc, & you will come through a better person than those who believe the media hype.

The Paralympic Closing Ceremony Part 1- Taking the focus away somewhat

There are 2 things I want to say about the Paralympic Closing Ceremony, so number one I shall state today, as although the visual part of the ceremony was stunning, the music AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH! There was way too much Coldplay, it turned the closing ceremony from an amazing spectacle to an infuriating concert, not band/artist should have taken over the stage for whole of the event, it made it seem the event was about Coldplay, not about the athletes who did their nations proud. It made my blood boil that they went on for sooooo long, Coldplay are OK in small doses or if you are a huge fan of them seeing then in concert would be fine, but then you are expecting & have paid for that long of a set. They definitely lost a lot of respect from me, not that huge amount their to begin with. they should not have been allowed to do that, other artists should have been allowed on the stage & then a proper party atmosphere could have got under way, many of the people there were only being carried by the energy of the visuals & the emotion that came with such a momentous event. If the Paralympics hadn't been exciting & the artistry been amazing they would have slumped the atmosphere further, they milked it for all it was worth. When they did have special guests on there was Rihanna & JayZ who are some of Britain's finest exports in music (please read in a sarcastic voice) & didn't really showcase the talent much of the GB Paraorchestra which having watched a program about them earlier in the day would have been amazing to have more of. So tanks Coldplay for stealing the limelight from the achievements of others & making the closing ceremony a little less spectacular than it should have been.

Christians Fighting for Equality

This is a bit of a sensitive subject & I know I have to tread carefully, but there are 4 Christians fighting against dismissal from their workplace because of their faith, one at least was sacked due to the fact as a sex therapist he wouldn't have been willing to advise a same sex couple on how to improve their sex lives, but  taking this one into account, wouldn't we be offering a hierarchy of discrimination if you let somebody because of his faith not do his job properly, because he doesn't agree with something that the people coming to see him have no control over? Before going into this profession he should have thought about what it would entail & either going along with it or choose another career path. He wouldn't have been allowed not to to treat couples of a different ethnicity different or disabled different so why should he be allowed to do it with LGBT people. The similar point has to be made about the registrar who refused to do civil partnerships. If it was all just Christian bashing for the sake of it & not tied up with other equal rights issues then I would have sympathy for him, but this is not the case in his case, the 2 other cases I feel are examples of this. The other 2 cases are a flight attendant & a nurse who refused to remove their crucifixes. that is direct discrimination without other equality issues, it would be the same as asking a Muslim woman not to wear a hijab or a Sikh not to have a turban if they worked in a certain place, which would have been deemed unacceptable by society, it should not be one rule for one faith & a different one for another.

Should the Paralympics exist?

I have been just as glued to the Paralympics as the Olympics & Team GB are doing us proud, but do we need a Paralympics? Why don't we just have have the Olympics & grade them to ability of athletes? Or is it that people are worried that the rounds with the disabled competitors won't get watched as much as the able bodied ones as we don't promote them as much? All I can say is that it is Team GB's Paralympic athletes that are the more successful on the whole as far as Team GB's athletes go, we are not far off the amount of medals won as the Olympic team won for the whole of the games & yet we are only half way through the Paralympics. Something I also found interesting was an interview with Tanni Grey-Thompson, was that it was in her words infuriating & quite patronising to say that they were brave for doing what they do as bravery does not come into it, that there are still rivalries, people are just as competitive & it is just the athletes doing their job. I can't really argue with that as when my mother was in a wheelchair & doing the best to lead a normal life with her illnesses. People with disabilities doing everyday thing are just that people doing everyday things like anyone else. But at the end of the day well done again Team GB.

Crystals

It's been a while since I touched upon a Witchcraft subject, so I'm going to talk about these sparkly beauties. Crystals have been big business in the New Age & Pagan markets & many books have lists of crystals & their attributes. I've trained in crystal therapy, don't judge me it was a free course & it did definitely do something, but I have a feeling that it was more down to the placebo effect, I believe this due to the fact if 'energy' came into it sure it would bare the scars of a wounded planet possibly wounded men & women as a lot of our beloved crystals are far from ethically sourced, the recent political battles with the platinum mines are case in point. So if they have these energies that heal why don't they bring the energies that harmed the people or landscape in extracting them? Yes gemstones have different properties in their make up diamond being pure carbon, quartz being a silicone dioxide as well as a high scoring word in scrabble, but are we holding on to superstition just for a mass market or does it really work & my scepticism is just working overtime. Does the leaving them out in the sun destroy the 'negative energy' by radiation & the full moon 'realigns the energy' through it's magnetic pull. I never thought I'd see the day when I might put science into said post. I suppose quartz does power watches, but if you wanted quartz that badly go in your garden, those white round pebbles are quartz, Britain is full of quartz, you don't need to get it from some country thousands of miles away, flown in at the expense of the carbon footprint of the planet & at least you know it's ethically sourced & you haven't harmed the planet to get them. I do admit though that I have kept some of the crystals I bought in my less enlightened as to how they were sourced days.