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~ January 2007 Supplemental Page~
Slain Nevada Soldier Finally Gets Wiccan Plaque
Continued. . .They praised Gov. Kenny Guinn (R) for his role in
getting the Nevada Office of Veterans Services to issue the plaque in
September. The agency cited its jurisdiction over the state veterans'
cemetery.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has approved the symbols of 38 other
faiths for use in national veterans' cemeteries; about half are versions of
the Christian cross.
The Jewish Star of David, the Muslim crescent, the Buddhist wheel, the
Mormon angel, the nine-pointed star of Bahai and an atomic whirl for
atheists are also permitted, but not the pentacle.
VA officials have said they are rewriting rules for approving emblems, but
the process requires a public comment period.
About 1,800 active-duty service members identify themselves as Wiccans,
according to 2005 Defense Department statistics, and Wicca is one of the
fastest-growing faiths in the country. Its adherents worship the Earth and
believe they must give to the community. Some consider themselves "white" or
good witches, pagans or neo-pagans.
Patrick Stewart and four other soldiers died Sept. 25, 2005, when their
Chinook helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan. He was posthumously awarded
a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.
Kid’s Realm
Continued. . .Snow Family Finger Puppets
What You Need
1 white knit glove
Hot glue gun
4 tiny orange pom poms
Small pom poms for ear muffs and hat
Chenille stem pieces
Scrap material
Scrap felt for scarves
Black acrylic paint
Paint brush
White felt
Scissors
Plastic wrap
How To Make It
• Fill fingers of glove with plastic wrap. This will keep the glove from
sticking to itself from the glue and will act as a “filled finger” which
allows for a good fit when done.
• Glue on chenille stems and pom poms for ear muffs.
• Use a triangle shaped scrap of felt to form a simple hat. Wrap the wide
piece around the bottom and fold down the point to the back, then glue in
place. Glue a pom pom on top.
• Use scrap material to make a wrap around shawl. Simply glue the center of
a long strip of material to the top of the “head”, then wrap around and glue
in place. Trim ends if needed.
• Make scarves from felt strips, fringing the ends with scissors. Glue in
place.
• Glue orange pom poms on for noses.
• Dip the handle end of a small paint brush into black acrylic paint.
Carefully dot on eyes and mouths. (Practice this step on the thumb first if
you plan to discard it the way that we did.
• Allow everything to dry, then trim off the bottom of the glove and the
thumb.
• Glue a 1” wide strip of white felt around the bottom to keep it from
fraying.
• Carefully remove the plastic wrap from the fingers.
• Put on hand and have a fun puppet show!
Helpful Hints:
• Knit gloves are inexpensive (sometimes as low as 50 cents per pair) and
can be found at dollar stores, drug stores, grocery stores, and discount
department stores.
• If you have tiny black pom poms they can be used in place of paint for the
eyes and mouths. You can also practice with a black Sharpie marker.
• Be careful when using hot glue guns because the hot glue can hurt little
hands. Always supervise or handle the gun yourself while children position
the materials. White craft glue can be used instead, but takes a lot longer
to dry.
www.kidsdomain.com
One of Our Own
Continued. . .She’s a vegetarian who is learning to cook from her
mother and the Cooking Channel. One of the more than 10 badges she’s
received from the Girl Scouts is for outdoor cooking. Her troop made over 20
blankets to distribute to homeless children. Recycling is very important to
her. “I recycle everything. Cans, plastic bottles, and for over a year I’ve
collected soda can tabs so a family can stay at a Ronald McDonald house when
a kid has to go to the hospital.”
Lianna enjoys classes in ballet and jazz dance. Sports include swimming and
skiing. Besides loving art, math, and writing to penpals, she also loves all
animals, especially Survivor, her pet white cloud fish, and horses. After
seeing an IMAX film showing a dying coral reef, she started the Animal Place
at her school for all those who love animals.
As the youngest facilitator for Temple of the Goddess in Los Angeles,
California, Lianna has been active in setup as well as ritual celebrations.
She especially likes to make the “craft” items, those handouts given to
celebrants to take home. She has assisted priestesses and priests by handing
out eggs for Spring Equinox, and dream corn which symbolized participants’
wishes for the future. This year she’s taking on two more Temple tasks;
singing in the newly formed Temple choir and baking communion cookies for
our rituals.
Lianna is a beautiful girl blossoming into a beautiful, strong, intelligent
young woman, aware of what the Earth needs in order to heal, and prepared to
do what she can to aid that process. With young people like this in the
world, there is hope.
Dreaming and Inspiration with the
Sleeping Goddess of Malta
Continued. . .The Sleeping Lady of Malta found within the Hypogeum
was hardly the only example of mortal and divine interaction. That inner
voice, that divine guidance, those whispers that inspire us to act or
create, entered the psyche of our ancestors in various ways. In ancient
times these messages arrived in a dream, a disembodied voice or in a vision.
In the Old and New Testament, these dreams of divine self-disclosure were
called visions of the night. Physical appearances or manifestations of a
deity were events of theophany or an epiphany. Ideas of divine guidance or
revelation might also be called epiphanies. In writing to their
congregations, we have evidence of apostles who have had visions of Goddess
while they were awake. In Greece, Asklepios and Hygeia, God and Goddess of
Healing, were seen in visionary dreams by those who came to healing temples
for treatment using the aforementioned ancient healing art of dream
incubations. After fasting and purification rites, the sick would sleep in
the temple overnight in hope of receiving divine guidance to cure what ailed
them. Dream incubation was also practiced in sacred temples by the Chinese.
Native Americans went on dream quests where they would go out into the
wilderness, fast and pray as a rite of passage, and in doing so, hopefully
receive divine guidance. The ancient Egyptians also believed through the
power of dreams they might receive messages from their many gods and
goddesses. The Dreamtime is an integral component of the culture of the
Australian Aboriginal tribes who believe the connection between the physical
world and spiritual consciousness is reached during dreaming. These dreams
shed light on the inner landscape of themselves, as well as inform about
ancestors, history, fate, and culture in the past, present and future,
simultaneously.
With the onset of science, and our disconnection with Nature, less and less
faith and belief has been put in such methods. Today, occurrences of divine
dreams and visions might be seen as unimportant and silly. They could be
viewed as flights of fancy, neurosis, hallucinations or wish-fulfilling. And
with some patriarchal religions rarely encouraging this personally empowered
direct link to the divine source, or the divine knowledge of gnosis, such
methods might at best be discouraged and doubted, or at worst, feared and
interpreted as evil. It has been well documented what obstacles must be
overcome before an apparition is accepted as real by the Vatican.
Could it be too many of us have stopped believing in dreams and visions?
Perhaps we may have consequently severed or weakened that vital link to our
God/dess Self or that gnosis that lies buried within. Many people do not
attempt to remember their dreams or give any credence to these glimpses we
are given. Could we have gotten too sophisticated and “big for our
britches?” Might our ancestors, in a simpler time, have been more in touch
with the Divine?
In more contemporary times, The Sleeping Prophet, Edgar Cayce, was famous
the world over for his dream interpretations. He once said, “Dreams,
visions, impressions, to the entity in the normal sleeping state are the
presentations of the experiences necessary for the development, if the
entity would apply them in the physical life. These may be taken as
warnings, as advice, as conditions to be met, conditions to be viewed in a
way and manner as lessons, as truths, as they are presented in the various
ways and manners.” Cayce believed the information he received in these
dreams was from two sources: the subconscious mind of the individual for
whom he was giving a reading and the etheric source of information called
the Akashic Records, a sort of universal database for every thought, word,
or deed that has transpired in the past, present and future.
On the other hand, Sigmund Freud theorized that dreams were a reflection of
human desires and were prompted by external stimuli. He and Carl Jung
believed dreams were the interaction between the unconscious and the
conscious. Psychologist Joe Griffin believed dreams were metaphorical
translations of waking expectations not acted upon during the day to quell
their arousal. He believed dreaming deactivated the emotional arousal,
freeing the brain to be fresh each day. Sort of like cleaning one’s palate
between taste tests. Carl Sagan considered dreams neurological waste
products with little subjective significance or meaning, however he believed
REM sleep serves an important survival function since being deprived of this
state more than five days can cause hallucinations. Many psychologists
believe dreams can help humans understand their subconscious thought
processes in an attempt to overcome psychological difficulties. Contemporary
researchers in the fields of dreamwork and parapsychology are once again
using dream incubation techniques as they revive the ancient healing
practice.
There is no definitive answer on dreams, whether they might be divinely
inspired or not, if they can aid in predicting the future or healing the
sick, or if they give insight into our own psyches, or provide a direct
connection to the Source. Perhaps the best approach is not to question too
critically the source of creativity, inspiration, vision and imagination, or
any safe means that allows for personal growth and illumination. We can look
to dreams for insight and contemplate the messages and never relinquish our
free will to make our own decisions, all without turning off the flow from
the spigot. Good advice comes from Carol Koleman when writing about Yhi,
Goddess of Light and Creation. She states, “To bring life to the myriad of
future creations waiting within, we must first acknowledge their absolute
existence and believe that we can make them emerge through our own efforts.
Remember there is magical possibility in every crevice of the cave It only
waits for our light to release it. If we ponder the gifts of our ancestors
and honor the blessings we have now, the internal and external landscape of
our world will be lush with life.”
To further enjoy this energetic of dreaming and inspiration, please join us
for our monthly Sacred Sunday service located at the Magdalene Cultural Arts
Center in North Hollywood.
Carve out a brief time for yourself to experience sacred space at this the
start of the new year. Join us on Sacred Sunday as we focus on the theme of
Inspiration and Dreaming and honor the Divine within and outside ourselves.
Treat yourself to this escape into the sacred as we nourish our souls and
uplift our spirits.
Our next Sacred Sunday at The Magdalene
Culture and Arts Center will be on Sunday, January 21. Service BEGINS AT
11AM.
Sacred Sunday might best be described as an interfaith service based on
the Sacred Feminine, complemented by the Divine Masculine, and open to
women, men, and well-behaved children of all faiths and traditions.
LOCATION: Sacred Sunday
The Magdalene Cultural Arts Center
4822 VINELAND AVENUE AT LANKERSHIM,
NORTH HOLLYWOOD, CA 91601
(PLENTY OF PARKING IN THE LOT BEHIND THE CENTER.)
Article written by: Rev. Karen Tate
www.karentate.com
A prolific writer, published author, and tour organizer, Karen's most recent
work blends her experiences of women-centered multiculturalism evident in
archaeology, anthropology and mythology with her unique literary talents and
travel experience throughout the world to pen Sacred Places of Goddess:
108 Destinations.
Her published articles have appeared in both domestic and international
publications since 1995. She is currently a contributing writer to Sacred
History Magazine. Sacred tours she has led and organized have itineraries
that circle the globe and through A Special Journey Travel, she continues
bringing the like-minded to sacred sites to experience the joy of purposeful
travel.
Green Burials: The Ultimate Recycle
Continued. . .At thirteen I saw my brother buried, as an adult I saw
my father buried. When it came time to bury my mother, my sister and I chose
to have her cremated before burying her next to her husband. I had decided
that I didn’t want to take up space in a cemetery, and I didn’t want my
survivors spending a small fortune on embalming, a casket, perhaps a
concrete vault, a headstone, and a lot with all that entails–costs for
digging the grave, then for filling the hole afterwards. And the cost can be
great, from $6,000 to $10,000. The cost to the earth is even greater.
Commercial cemeteries are heavy users of water, fertilizer, and chemicals.
Every year, 22,500 cemeteries in the U.S. bury the following:
embalming fluid. . .827,000 gallons
caskets. . .90,170 tons of steel
caskets. . .2,700 tons of copper and bronze
caskets. . .over 30 million board feet of hardwoods
vaults. . .1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete
vaults. . .14,000 tons of steel *
Wouldn’t it be better to use those tons of steel, concrete, and metal to
build houses for the homeless or disenfranchised? Wouldn’t it be better to
not bury all those chemicals? Cemeteries can be disturbed by earthquakes,
caskets uprooted in hurricanes and floods. Those once-contained chemicals
are then leached into the soil, finding their way to our water to be drunk
by food plants, cows, pigs, and humans. At the very least, it causes water
reclamation plants to spend more energy and time cleaning up the
contaminated water. By the way, expensive caskets and concrete vaults
generally are not required by law. Neither does the body have to be
embalmed, refrigeration or dry ice is also acceptable. Interstate
transportation may necessitate embalming, although most airlines will waive
that requirement for religious reasons. Cemeteries establish such
requirements–and they are in a position to waive them. It’s hard to shop
around when you’re dealing with all that must be dealt with when a loved one
dies, but remember that some funeral homes and cemeteries will accede to
your requests.
A new ancient idea has emerged from our past. For millennia we have either
exposed our beloved dead to the elements, natural winds and rain, and/or the
four-leggeds who in turn support our survival.
TRANSFORMATIONS
Portion of this yew
Is a man my grandsire knew
Bosomed here at its foot:
This branch may be his wife,
A ruddy human life
Now turned to a green shoot.
These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;
And the fair girl long ago
Whom I often tried to know
May be entering this rose.
So, they are not underground,
But as nerves and vein abound
In the growths of upper air,
And they feel the sun and rain,
And the energy again
That made them what they are.
Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928)
My choice has always been cremation since with cremation I’d at least be
recycled into gases and fertile ash to be spread in the mountains or
sprinkled into my beloved Pacific Ocean. This is not an ideal solution,
though. Cremation consumes natural gas for energy and releases toxic gases
into the environment; among them, nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide, carbon
monoxide, and lead. These toxic emissions are scrubbed from the exhaust air,
but there are still maximum outputs allowed as directed by regulations.
“Results from the analysis indicate an estimated maximum cancer risk of 2 in
a million, a chronic hazard index of 0.09, an acute hazard index of 0.02,
and monthly averaged ambient air concentrations of lead are well below
levels that would impact blood lead levels in children.”** Many crematories
run 20 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 days a year. I don’t want to
contribute to anyone’s ill health.
Now, we all have another choice. It’s called green burial. Groups with
private land scattered around the United States have received permits to
bury a person, not embalmed, wrapped in a simple sheet or resting in a
biodegradable coffin.
For many years I have believed that my spirit will be “recycled” by way of
reincarnation into the next exciting existence. As my spirit moves into the
next step of my education, I can think of no greater, last gift than to give
my corporeal body back to Mother Earth–she who gave me my skin, sinew,
muscles, and bones–to be recycled. In this way my physical being will
forever be in the Cycle of Life, giving nourishment to plants, and animals,
four-legged, two-legged, and no-legged.
The goal of green burial is to preserve the land. Great Britain has more
than 200 areas for natural burial. There are currently about 150 separate
sites in the U.S. that are set aside for green, or natural, burial. These
land preservation areas will never be developed into a strip mall, golf
course, or stacks of condos. The land reverts back to its original state for
visitors to breathe free and refresh their souls. By restoring the land back
to a healthy, pre-industrial state there is less soil erosion. The
restoration of native plants helps prevent wild fires which feed on dried
weeds and undergrowth.
The main objections voiced against green burial sites have been local
citizens fearing outbreaks of dangerous diseases or pollution of streams. In
fact, it is almost an impossibility. Bacteria and viruses die in a few days,
so no epidemic could happen even if the deceased had a disease. And no
pollution would occur because every burial must be more than 150 feet from a
water supply. These sites qualify as nature preserves since plants are
inventoried, sometimes discovering uncommon native plant species. It isn’t
long before the body enters back into the Cycle of Live.
Visitors to the first green burial site in the U.S.–Ramsey Creek Preserve,
in Westminster, South Carolina–are able to walk trails meandering through
mixed woodlands and open fields. The deceased is not embalmed when they
arrive at the local independent funeral home, but kept refrigerated until
internment. The graveside service is determined solely by the family. The
first burial here was in 1998, and as of May 2003, 17 more have joined it.
Another 50 have purchased sites. The cost of such a simple burial is $2,500,
burying cremated remains is $500, and a mere $250 is the cost of scattering
cremains over the preserve. Dr. Billy Campbell, the founder of Westminster’s
Memorial Ecosystems, claims that when a family creates their own funeral in
a simple and natural way, that they move beyond the “nature as wallpaper”
mentality. Campbell also notes, “My idea is we need to link land
conservation with ritual and with people in a very fundamental way.”
In Florida, Glenwood Memorial Preserve is being established to save a 350
acre family farm from developers. Colorado, California, New York,
Washington, Texas, and Wisconsin have groups working to create green
cemeteries that center on land preservation. The Memorial Society of British
Columbia, Canada has funded a green burial initiative.
At Fernwood Cemetery in Marin County, California adjacent to the Golden Gate
National Recreation Area are 32 acres set aside for natural burials. With
each burial the non-native invasive species of plants are replaced with
native grasses and wildflowers. A family member can also request the
planting of a native tree like a Bay or Coast Live Oak.
Most of these sites do not allow tombstones, but some will allow engraving
of a natural, native stone to be placed on the grave as a permanent marker.
Most of these natural burial sites will also accept animals. I do not
condone euthanizing a pet when the human companion dies; I think that’s
obscene. However, I think it’s beautiful to have a beloved, deceased pet
interred next to where you will one day rest.
Many of these sites have a chapel on the grounds for any type of service one
might want, and for sitting quietly in contemplation of the relationship one
enjoyed with the deceased. Jeri Lyons, author of Guidebook for Creating Home
Funerals says, “the widespread practice of having the deceased person’s body
whisked away at the time of death. . .interrupts the normal grieving
process.” Families, she claims have, “better closure, a sense of empowerment
and substantial economic savings” when they control their loved one’s
funeral and internment.
Fernwood has added the new to the ancient burial practice. There are no
tombstones to mar the beautiful vistas. For those who want to visit their
loved one–they can use a hand-held GPS locator to pinpoint the exact spot.
What greater gift could you give the Mother who birthed you? Your corporeal
remains, unembalmed, shrouded with cotton cloth or perhaps a quilt your
grandmother pieced together from worn-out clothes, placed in the earth to
grow flowers for the next generation.
* These alarming figures were compiled from statistics by the following
organizations; Casket and Funeral Association of America, Creation
Association of North America, Doric Inc., The Rainforest Action Network, and
Mary Woodsen Pre-Posthumous Society.
** Draft Engineering Evaluation Report, Irvington Memorial Cemetery &
Crematory, Plant Number 4134, Application Number 14892
Green Burial Links:
www.acfnewsource.org
www.glendalenaturepreserve.org
www.woodlandburial.htmlplanet.com
www.memorialecosystems.com
www.memorialsocietybc.org
Links for simple burial rituals, grief, and all things relating to death
(the first website has many links):
www.funerals.org/links.htm
www.npr.org/programs/death/
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