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Help isn’t always helpful is a lesson I learned from Annie Lomax of blessed memory back in the 70s when she was training me to work on a hotline. Sometimes, help is offered as a sedative when someone else is having strong emotions that make you uncomfortable. Sometimes, help undermines another person’s sense of autonomy or sense of accomplishment. Sometimes, help makes it more comfortable for someone to stay stuck in a situation that is slowly but surely diminishing them. And yet despite all the potential pitfalls involved in the offering of help and support, Annie taught me that when help is offered with a clear mind and an open heart it has the potential to encourage not just comfort or healing but true growth. Let me reiterate the part about the criterion of having a clear mind and an open heart. The mind and the heart don’t always agree, but if both are in agreement you might be doing the right thing. My time on the hotline at the Wellspring program taught me many things that I still use to this day.

The Jesse Pickens Pugh House via Wikimedia Commons

My husband and I recently bought a home in the Blue Ridge mountains – a dream we’ve held since we married eight years ago. It’s an old house with history, an acre and a half of land, and beautiful views of the mountains. I fell in love with the house and surrounding land almost immediately. As we look forward to moving in, I’ve been thinking about traditions to perform as we get established there – traditions that will familiarize and unite us with the spirit(s) of the house and ensure a long-lasting, productive relationship for years to come.

By Rev. Wes Isley

There are lots of things I love about being Pagan, and maybe you share some of these. We have a holiday every couple of months, and we get to dress up in fun clothes for ceremony. Our deities are badass—with horned gods who like wine and fierce goddesses who will kick your butt if you don’t mind your manners. Maybe best of all, I like that Pagans can have “church” anywhere—on a sunlit meadow colored with wildflowers or beneath a star-spangled night sky, where we can just sit in silence and feel the vitality of Gaia all around and within us. But, there’s one thing we Pagans don’t do well. Can you guess what that is? Well, it’s my opinion that Pagans stink at grieving.

In 1976 I became a Home Sanctum member of The Rosicrucian Order A.M.O.R.C., and for years thereafter I received regular mailings of their instructional materials.  I found those teachings to be of great value as an "Intro to Metaphysics 101."  They stood me in good stead for decades.

I especially appreciated the RC admonition to never blindly accept anyone's teaching as true, until I had first submitted it to proof by personal testing and my own sense of reason - a warning which I subsequently discovered had been issued by no less a person than the Buddha himself. 

art by Arthur Rackham

The winter solstice is approaching.

Cailleach walks the winter hills: in an old Gaelic song 'Cailleach Beinn a' Bhric' she has 'a great grey grisly paw' and is cold and wet, but cares for her deer. The hunter who sings to her laments her keeping the deer from him. This version is from Songs & Hymns of the Gael: