Wiccan Weekly Writings are first, an opportunity for me to talk about ideas brought up by various quotations from a Wiccan point of view and secondly an opportunity for members of this community, whatever their spiritual path or lack thereof, to enter into dialogue about these ideas. Please feel free to ask any questions you have about my path, my personal interpretation of Wiccan theology, or the religion in general. We Wiccans don't proselytize, but we'll answer questions. Please let this be a place of civility and respect for the truths of other people's paths. And now, onto the thinky thoughts....
Time does not change us. It just unfolds us.
(Max Frisch (1911–1991), Swiss author, critic. Originally published as Tagebuch 1946-1949, Suhrkamp (1950). Sketchbook 1946-1949, p. 12, trans. by Geoffrey Skelton, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (1977).)
I am sure that if I went back to a high school reunion people would be surprised at how much I've changed. I don't see myself as changing, so much as becoming who I really am. Some of my career plans didn't come about, but when I look back, I realize that they weren't my own plans; they were the plans of people who looked at me and said I had "such potential." When I converted to paganism, it was not a conversion experience so much as it was a recognition that this is what I was. Memories rose up of times where I had sensed the sacred in nature and stood in awed worship before it, before I could give this sense a name. Memories of a deep understanding that my sexuality was not some dangerous beast to be caged, but a wonderful thing to be used to bless myself and my lovers, from its first stirrings on. It was just a blossoming into who I truly was. Similarly, I have always written. To actually write a book is not a stretch as much as a growing into the fullness of my talent.
As I look at my sons, I see their essential characters not being so much shaped by me, as growing into the people they have always been, like watching a flower develop and burst forth. It is true of the people I have known for years; character is not given by events, but events call it forth. The person who could rise heroically to the occasion is someone always in whom the seeds of that heroism lay waiting for the fire of catastrophe to release them.