Work what you got

Let em get mad, they gonna hate anyway, don't you get that?
Doesn't matter if you're going along with their plans,
They'll never be happy because they're not happy with themselves!
 
Feeling great because The Light is on me,
Celebrating the things that everyone told me.
Would never happen but The Gods have put they hands on me,
Ain't a person alive who could ever take it from me.
Working with what I got, I gotta keep on,
Taking care of myself, I wanna live strong.
Ain't never ashamed what life did to me,
And ain't afraid to change cause it's good for me.

I'm talking about things that I know

Open and Poly stress

So tonight on Growlr, a "hook up" app on Android, I got another annoying ass ending to a talk that just ends up with me fuming! Was chatting it up with this nice guy and he stated that he wished I wasn't in a relationship because I sound like I'd be fun to date. I told him that my relationship with my Husband is open and we're polyamorous and that dating me wasn't an issue.
He went on a decent rant about how he needs to be the "one and only" in a relationship. Whatever. No one is ever the "one and only" in any intimate/romantic relationship! If that was the case, why do men and women check people out while in relationships? Why do people go to strip clubs? You still look, you still lust. Just because you're dating someone doesn't end your natural curiosities. The benefit of being open and poly is that you can explore those curiosities in other people!
It's not like I expect to be The One a guy ends up with. I'm not that shallow, stupid or naive.To be fair to all involved, I would strive to treat the men in my life as equals. Don't misunderstand, my Hubby and I have been together 14 years and are stronger than ever. He's mine and I'm his. He is first when you look at time together and I'm sure that there would be some preferences in play. However, we recognize that monogamy doesn't work for us, especially him since he's Bisexual. I would treat any other man I'm with as an equal to my Hubby, as I would expect him to do to any girlfriend he has.
It's so damn frustrating and I wish I knew how to get this simple idea across to people! I don't get how people can be so limiting to themselves. If you want to find marriage, then stop looking! It'll find you! Hell, I wish someone could sit me down and tell me how they know, without a doubt and absolute certainty, that what they're looking for that they won't find that in me. There's got to be someone with a backbone strong enough to do so! How can someone know that what they're looking for isn't presented to them in a way that they never expected?! Why ignore it because it isn't what they expected or wanted?
I wanted someone to love so bad and I stopped looking and then in a few months, my Hubby fell in my lap. He isn't what I was looking for or even wanted back then. But he is what I needed and he's become everything that I never thought I wanted. If I didn't take a chance on someone who wasn't what I was looking for, look at what I could have missed! I have to wonder how many people do that, miss/skip over the one person who'll be the answer to the question that they've been asking for, just because they don't arrive in the package they'd hoped for. How much frustration and sadness could be avoided if more people took chances?
Don't even get me started on those who don't want to risk friendships. If your friendship is strong, it can survive a stab at dating. If not, your friendship wasn't as strong as you thought. Yes, dynamic will change, but come on people, this is what maturity is supposed to be about! Being able to handle adult situations like adults! I just don't get people, I really don't!
People want to love and be loved; to hold and be held. Yet whenever the chance/opportunity comes along, they ignore it due to fear or what is presented doesn't fit the image in their head or the situation that they've fantasized about. That's just madness and insanity to me! Time and again, The Universe tries to give you what you've asked for in a way that you need it, not the way you want it. Learn to see this!

I still just wanna slap the hell outta that guy on Growlr...

Atheist Zealots

I'm not sure if I've written about this topic before and I'm too lazy today to go looking in my old posts tonight.

For me, most Atheists are a lot like The Silent Majority of Christians, silent and content in their beliefs and don't need to put themselves out there to be validated. However, just like any other belief structure, there are those vocal ones. The ones who talk louder, tell you that you're wrong and that they are right. Or live to convert.
As a Pagan, it is actually against all we are to convert. If you make the choice to come into our belief structure, we welcome you. And we all know those religious types that try to do the opposite and convert you over. Then there are the Atheist versions. They know, without a doubt, that they're right and you're wrong. You're delusional, misguided, childish, wrong. They have the same smugness of any other zealot, that they have to somehow save your from yourself and the errors of your ways.
I work with one of these. He's actually tried to convert me a few times. Even as a Pagan, I'm wrong. There are no Gods, just us. No afterlife, it just all ends. He never gives a chance to allow the possibility of me being right, for me.
See, I look at it all as what we believe and hold dear is what is right for us. For me, it's Wicca. For most of my family, it's Christianity. My dear friend Adam? Judaism. Sabina? Islam. Some of my friends, it's Agnostic views or Atheism. And we need all these varieties! The Atheist give us a healthy dose of doubt and a view point for us to look at ourselves and out beliefs to learn and grow. They are needed to help us be better people and better at Faith.
And Faith is an amazing thing! If you don't have it, it's can't be explained. If you do have it, no explanation is needed. And maybe there is a style of Faith in Atheists that drive them. I'd hope so because I can't begin to imagine a life without Faith. Even for me, as a Pagan, my Faith has made me stronger and better and happier a person. I like it, I love it. I have a Peace that I would hope everyone could one day find in their respective belief structures.
But these zealots, the Atheist ones, need to step back and look at how much they are just like the religious counterparts they seem to be fighting. And it's all over petty shit! Who's right and who's wrong isn't what should be important, it's about how good of a person are you and did you leave the world a better place than what you found it. Nothing more, nothing less. If there is an Almighty Divine of The Universe, then it is truly infinite and unending. And if that is the case, why would It be so worried over the comings and goings of the dominant simian species of a green and blue speck of dust?
We are all we have and it's high time we start acting like it. We determine us and our shared future, not God, The Gods or any other Divine being we create to help us understand the world around us. My Gods may not be real, no more than the God of Abraham or The Gods of Hindu. But they are real to me and They, along with my Faith in Them, have helped me be more than the sum of my parts. And They help me to leave the world, my tiny fraction of this tiny speck of dust, a better place than what I found it.

Zealot Atheists and their religious counterparts could learn a thing or two from that. Hecate willing, everyone could.

What's it's like for this Queer Witch today

This past week has been one of interesting situations and circumstances. For my own reasons, I'm actually going to keep several of these private. I may be an open book, yet some of those pages are only seen by me and those close to me. But know that I'm learning and growing from it all.

In it all, I'm learning that there's so much that I've not allowed myself to do or feel or (believe it or not) say. I've spent too many years making excuse after excuse for someone who I thought was near and dear but who turned out to be someone who was just playing me for a fool. And that's ended. I can't play the game anymore, I just can't take it emotionally or mentally.
And in all this, The Gods have been kind and gentle with me by handing me a chance and situation that I wasn't expecting. That chance and situation has rejuvenated me on so many levels that I'm not sure how far it really goes, but it was enough to push me to do what I have to do, even if I don't want to. But the Madness of Wisdom I've gotten over the last 2 years has taught me that what I want is irrelevant and what I need is what I'm going to get. The interesting part is how these needs are presented.
Needs aren't handed to you in pretty packages with bows and shiny paper. But neither are they handed over as a horrid penalty from Karma. And these needs of mine are being handed over with such care and grace that I'm forever humbled by how The Universe and my Gods are to me when I don't feel like I deserve it. The Hubby says that's why I do.

I want happiness and am being told I deserve it, so I choose to start believing that. I've also been told that I need to be a little more selfish, which I hate. Being selfish is wrong, I don't know if there's any right to it! I'm also told how I need to stop putting others before myself and my needs. Yet I'm thinking that is where the embracing of selfishness will come from. We'll see.

We'll see...


You got to go on with your life. It's all right to sit around and be depressed for a minute, cry about it, do whatever you have to but don't stay there too long. Get up and go on with your life. You know what? This is what I learned in all these years on this earth. If somebody want to walk out of your life, LET THEM GO. Especially if you know that you done everything you can do. You done sat around and been the best man or the best woman you can be and they still want to go, let them go. Whatever they're running after, they'll see what they had in a minute, but by then it's gonna be too late. 'Cuz you'll sit there and you'll go... Because half of these people, you be sitting around crying about it, worrying about it and then two or three years from now you ain't even gonna remember their last name. How many times you done see folks somewhere and you be like 'What the hell was I thinking? I done been there, I was like what was wrong with me? What was I going through? I must have been lonely as hell to hook up with you'. Let folks go, Sonny. Some people'll come in your life for a lifetime, and some'll come for a season. You got to know which is which. And you're gonna always mess up when you mix those seasonal people up with lifetime expectations. They got people that got married to people they was only supposed to be with for a season and they wonder why they're having so much hell in their life. That was the person that was supposed to come and teach you one thing. You didn't know it so you just fell in love and now you wonder why you don't have no peace anywhere you go. No, noooo! Listen, I put everybody that come in my life in the category of a tree. Some people are like leaves on a tree. If the wind blows, they're over here, they're unstable. Blow the other way, they're over here. if seasons change, they wither and die, they're gone. But that's alright, that's some people. Most people in the world are like that. They're just there to take from the tree, they ain't there to do nothing but take and give shade every now and then. That's all they can do. But don't get mad at people like that, that's who they are. They ain't never gonna be nothing, that's what they put on this earth for, to be what they are: A LEAF. Some people are like a branch on that tree. You gotta be careful with them branches too because they'll fool you. They'll get there and make you think that they're a good friend and they're real strong. But the minute you step out there on them, they'll break and they'll leave you high and dry. But if you find two or three people in your life that's like the roots at the bottom of that tree, you are blessed because they're the kind of people who ain't going nowhere. They ain't worried about being seen, don't nobody have to know that they know you, they ain't got to know what they're doing for you. But if those roots weren't there, that tree couldn't live, you understand? A tree can have a hundred million branches but only a few roots down at the bottom to make sure it gets everything they need. I'm telling you, Sonny, when you get you some roots, you better hold on to them because the rest of them, you let them go. Let folks go!
Ain't nobody said it was gonna be easy, but it will get easy when you learn how to love yourself. When you get to a point in your life where you look at people and you go 'Okay wait a minute. You or me?', you will make a decision. When you telling folks to do something... Now I've never thrown nobody away, I've never in my life just thrown anybody away saying 'Don't bother me no more, don't talk to me no more', I've never done that. What I DO is tell them, 'Look, this thing you doing right here is gonna cause a problem. You need to fix that because if we're gonna be friends and gonna be cool, you need to fix that. And if you don't, we're gonna have an issue'. If you see somebody fix it or even trying to fix it, that's somebody that cares. Keep those people around, that's a leaf that's trying to grow up and be something else. But if you tell somebody 'What you're doing is hurting me and I need you to stop' and they keep doing it, they don't care. Move on, let them go! No matter how much it hurts, let them go. And it'll get easier, I promise you. Every day, it'll get easier and easier and easier, you just have to make it through. You hear me?
You see, some people just gotta learn to be by themselves. People have to learn how to be alone. I don't understand all these people crying about 'I need somebody. Lord, where is my man, Lord where is my woman'. That is crazy as hell! If you don't know how to be by yourself, what you gonna do with somebody else? Stop praying about it! SHUT UP AND WAIT! Go work on YOU! Hell, that's what that time is for, to get YOURSELF together! I'd rather be in a corner by myself with a puppy and a goldfish and be happy than to be sitting around with somebody in my house and wondering what the hell they there for. You will be surprised with the things that people put up with just to have somebody say that they love them. I don't understand that! I can't live in dysfunction, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I done been through too much hell and high water to come there and let you come up in my adult life where I'm supposed to be at peace and give me all sorts of hell. There's only two places on earth that you're gonna have peace: the grave and your house. If you can't walk up in your house and you ain't got no peace, then some thing's wrong. I'm sorry. People be rebuking Satan, I'll be rebuking Satan and beating the hell out of everything that's up in there until they get out. 'I'm sorry, you gots to go. This is mine'.
-Madea

Pagan Poetry Spell / Языческие Поэзия заклинаний

The Cauldron is full, the mixture is ready.
Magick is coming soon, it is overflowing.
The Panther is steady, waiting and ready.
The Dragons fill the sky, high in their flying.

The Bat hangs easy, sure and steady.
The Other is waking, stirring and coming.
The Cat is bitten and ready to play.
The Time draws near, no more evading.

Your time is up, you can't get away.
Be sharp, be ready, for He is arriving.

Magick abounds, the time is right.
Be ready and strong, to face The Storm's might.
Oh they think they know, yet they have no idea.
The Eyes have found you, hear the howl of Drahlthae'a!

The Panther of Smokey Mists sits still, The Bat of Protection is ready.
Draco flies high, all firm and steady.
He comes soon now, eager to play.
The Other comes forth, no more running away.

Hold still your tongue, quiet your fears.
For He knows best that which is hidden, so shed no tears.
The Elements sit waiting, His call They hear.
The Cauldron is full, so come close, come near.

The Time is now, As Above then So Below.
Come forth, stand tall, yet take no bow.
A Witch, a Wicca, a Heathen or something the same?
Be ready ye will, it's time for The Game.