The Easter Bunny & Others of his Ilk

So why was it that people thought that rabbits brought us eggs at Easter? The answer is they didn't, near enough everybody assumes that the Easter bunny is a rabbit when in fact the original Easter bunny is a hare, this will help explain this curious notion a little. Remember this is from the time when people thought flies had 4 legs, barnacle geese hatched from goose barnacles & cuckoos turned into hawks in winter. The reason why is makes slightly better sense it being a hare is that unlike rabbits hares don't burrow but create forms which is a scrape in the ground lined with grass to create a sort of nest for its young, abandoned forms make good nests for lapwings so occasionally have eggs in them, so it would make sense to them somehow, after all they didn't know as much about species & the ins & outs of the reproductive cycle as well back then. So to the Mad March Hare, people see them boxing in the field around this time of the year, it was originally thought it was males competing for a mate, another misconception as it is a male & female, with the female saying the equivalent of 'not now I have a headache, leave me alone you freak, I said no' clunk as she bitch slaps him in the kisser. There is also the lunar associations with the hare as people used to say you can see the hare in the moon, the are a fair few cultures that say this, though myself I have never seen this, perhaps I should look at the moon without my glasses on but then I'll end up seeing 2 blurry moons & you tell me you could see the entire works of Shakespeare on there & I probably wouldn't argue, that is more to do interpretation of lines in people's heads more than anything, but it is a good thing to tell children as they still have that kind of imagination & magic & you can tell them that are mimicking their friend the Moon Gazing Hare looking at his friend. Ah what it would be like to have that innocence again, it is all too fleeting as they grow up too quickly these days & stop believing at a younger age in such things.

Rowan Williams' Last Easter Sermon

Dr Rowan Williams in his last Easter Sermon is urging schools to not play down the importance of religious education in our schools & while I somewhat agree on certain levels for cultural recognition of others who don't share your faith, to learn about your own isn't that what the churches, covens, groves, mosques, gurdwaras etc are for? I remember my religious education & school & seeing as though my school was a white Christian majority school, R.E. as it was called in my day was pretty much Christian studies, with one day a term where would vaguely read a couple of pages out of a text book on another faith & just do the vaguest of nods to them. It wasn't until working with Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists & Jews did I get any real understanding of what their day to day lives were like. OK if I hadn't found Paganism first I would have probably studied Buddhism further on my quest to find my spiritual path. At school I didn't find out any more about my faith (which was vaguely Church of England at the time), than what I did through my rather uninspiring stint at Sunday school. If we are to teach religions in schools because of the increasing number of us Pagans it would be good to see a nod to us as Atheists already are being recognised. But should we have them as anything other than cultural studies? There is the argument that you shouldn't teach religion in schools, but in that case i feel that there may end up being a bit more of cultural ignorance being created if it doesn't. He is also worried that people don't recognise what Easter is & to many people the meaning has been lost, but those are the ones who are lost from or never been a part of Christianity. Those who are Christian who have lost the meaning of Easter that is disappointing, for those who aren't, if you have the time off spend time with you family & get stuffed.... full of chocolate eggs, which is a tradition that the Christians seem to have nicked from us Pagans. Must be going there is a birthday cake in the oven for a member of my family.

The End of Abstinence in Sight

Tomorrow sees the end of Lent, no more sitting at my moot drinking Pepsi getting more & more hyperactive as the night draws on. No more feeling like a social leper when turning down a night of going to the pub, yes I will be free, FREE I TELL YOU! In all fairness I have developed more of an appreciation of the alcohol I drink & dare say I wont drink it as much as I did before Lent, as with the frequency at which I drunk it I feel I lost my appreciation of it, though not the taste for it. I found giving up alcohol for Lent easier than I thought I would & don't feel the need to get absolutely hammered tomorrow, causing boredom to everyone except me (I am a very boring drunk as I tend to lecture people on random not very interesting subjects). Though would being away from alcohol this long make me a light weight? I will let you know if I end up face down on the bathroom floor hugging the toilet on Monday. Lent has been a very interesting experience & I feel that I kind of get what Christians get out of it, though I'm in no great rush to do it again. I do seem to have faired better than a fair few people, including Christian clerics which kind of makes me feel a little smug. If you haven't tried it before, it is well worth doing when stick to it. All the best, the still sober Pagan chaplain.

Dumping Stuff in the Canal

One word of advice if you have live fish swimming in & out of your shopping trolley, you have parked it in the wrong place. Maybe it is just that canals have a magnetic charge that specifically targets shopping trolleys. This week saw the removal of a load of things dumped into the stretch of the canal I walk along by a crane attached to a narrow boat & it appears that  some people just really don't care about the environment, it seems that some people like to dump all sorts of things in there. Over the cold snap we had last winter somebody had parked their child's broken kiddie car onto the ice, possibly just to see how long it took to sink. Sometimes it makes you think what is going through people's heads at the time, but the thing that concerned the most more than the shopping trolleys, the bikes & other things that have wheels, was a car battery, thankfully it didn't look as though it had leaked, but if it had it could have killed so much wildlife. I was not the only one who was angered, one onlooker said he knows some people who do it & he had torn strips off them for doing it, good on him, it was just a pity he couldn't tell what they had dumped in there from what had come out of it as I'm sure it would have looked & smelled lovely in their living room & would be the talk of the neighbourhood. It isn't as if the Black Country doesn't have enough scrap metal collectors to take their rubbish away. OK the canals do seem to lack bins for things other than dog excrement (although these aren't used as frequently as they should be either). One of the days we are going to see a fish looking like the one out of The Simpsons. please if you find a shopping trolley in your garden from a night you can't remember please return it back to the supermarket I'm sure they will appreciate more than a water vole would.

Excuse Me Please & Other Manners

I find myself at times wondering where all the manners from some people have gone, when I walk into work I tend to walk along a footpath which is also a bicycle path & bridle way & one of the things that really annoys me is how some cyclists treat it as their domain only & we should make way for them to pass by divine right without so much as a thank you, most of the time they don't even give you a gesture of them even coming & if I had anything like an iPod on I would have severely mangled to a point beyond recognition & when you out of their way they don't even say thank you, at which point I yell at them YOU'RE WELCOME! like a mad person & mutter to myself about them being rude. There are some customers who come into my place at work (retail not chaplaincy) who stand there at the till they don't say anything no pleases, no thank yous, no shove it up your arses. There are also those people who you open doors for & don't even acknowledge you are there to which my response is similar to that of the cyclists. People who push in also annoy me too, I was on the train with my partner we got up to get off the train at the same time as each other & between me leaving the row of seats & my other half to elderly women barged in in so when I turned round to look lovingly into my partners eyes I ended up with a horrified expression on my face which did not go unnoticed, neither too did the scowl I gave them afterwards as they were getting off the train when i waited for my other half. But the disintegration of manners is not limited to the young it seems to span the whole gamut of society. Have we just expected people will not use manners so there for they decide not use them because what is the point? But surely if that is the case it would make it much more appreciated if people do use them, I know I do & I always use my manners as tends to make people feel better, sometimes I get a little too overjoyed when people use their manners, because it gives me hope for humanity. Sometimes when you use your manners in certain places they give you extras, just because you are being nice in a day when most people are being rude. Be nice to people & they will be nice to you & if they are not make them feel uncomfortable about it if they don't. Don't give up your manners if it seems everyone else does otherwise you will end up being just as rude as them.

Congratulations Aung San Suu Kyi, May Your Vision be Long Lived

Although Burma is not yet at the point it needs to be, it seems to be heading in the right direction. Aung San Suu Kyi has stuck to her guns (metaphorically speaking as she is against the high military involvement of the running of the country) & fought for what was right at great cost to her emotionally & even under house arrest she never gave up hope of a peaceful democracy emerging someday. She has fought long & hard for the rights of the Burmese people sacrificing her own freedom for what she believed. She seems to be bringing about change through none violence & urging others to follow her precedent, she was gracious in victory in the polls & urged other parties not to be disheartened by her victory as they may get victory the next time round. she still has many challenges ahead like all the other people of Burma do, but things seem to be heading in the right direction & we hope that they continue to do so. The military maybe the biggest obstacle to face but hopefully they will see her way in the end. I'm hoping that this will not be the last of what she is inspiring & my congratulations are not premature. She is an amazing woman & many of us could take a leaf from her book, including me at times. Congratulations, all the best, Pagan Chaplain

The Empty Bed

There is soooooo much I want to talk about with various happenings over the past few days that I shall probably do 2 posts today. The first post actually refers to Thursday night/ Friday morning. My partner was working 8pm to 8am, though got called into work early so I didn't see him when I had come home from work. I had to occupy myself with varying different things until it was quite late & I was to tired to do anything but sleep as I get empty bed syndrome & I sleep light at best, because not having my partner snuggling up to me in the night feels weird. So I slept fitfully, then a 5:30am I wake to a clunk, the boiler starts up & my mind rationalises that it is the boiler, then I hear the whooshing noise of a tap being turned on downstairs a little time later, but as still the boiler was making its strange noises I put it down to that. Then I hear the partition door screech open between the kitchen & living room & I then knew I was not alone in the house, somebody had got in. I put on my dressing gown & arm myself with the closing thing that came to hand, which happened to be a pair of stainless steel candlesticks, I leave the safety of the bedroom ready to spring on the intruder, I hear footsteps coming quite rapidly the stairs, fear grips me but I raise one of the candlesticks up ready to strike if I needed, only to find that I would have clonked my other half over the head as he had arrived home 3 hours early. Moral of the story be prepared but don't think that everything that goes bump in the night is out of a horror movie.