dragons in the flower bed
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Posts posted by dragons in the flower bed
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I never took note of the minutes. We worked until the kiddo felt like he had achieved something, then we took a break.
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I must spend too much time around boys because my immediate thought when I read the title of this thread was that you were beating us all at The Game.
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What's this worship stuff you talk of? *runs screaming* :p
I'm rarely late but I do have a pet peeve here. How can nature worshipping people gallivant about in synthetic, crushed velvet robes?
:p
Dude, I don't know what kind of pagans you've been running around with. Here the girls wear denim cut-offs and the boys wear cotton saris.
Seriously, though, maybe it would be helpful to establish that there is a distinction in writing between pagan and Pagan: 1) pagan: a person not practicing an Abrahamic faith, a heathen, a non-believer; 2) Pagan: a person practicing a nature-based faith, components of which typically include respect for nature spirits, ancestors and/or deities, recognition of seasonal holidays, and a belief in magick.
It's an argument, for sure. Defining "pagan religion" is as hard as defining "classical education". I like what the Religious Tolerance page has to say about it: "the first of seven definitions..."
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What do you mean by pro-sex?
Believing that sex is a good thing to do, that folks should be as free as possible to do it, that it has (a great deal of) value for its own sake, and that engaging in it is usually not just right but important.
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Very nice answer, Rose :)
:D
I hope I didn't misrepresent my more conservative sisters in describing what we have in common.
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So since there are so many different beliefs within Paganism, what is it that all of the different kinds of Paganism have in common?
We all worship nature and believe that science reveals the sacred. We think that divinity can be inside of physical things as well as outside of physical stuff. We all take an ecological view of good vs evil, that it's more a question of balance. We believe that there are spiritual beings on this planet besides humans (fairies, gods, ancestors). We believe in the intrinsic goodness of human beings, and most of us could confirm, at least metaphorically, that famous line -- "all acts of love and pleasure are Her rituals." We are pro-sex and pro-women. We believe in and practice magick. We believe in putting feet on our religion, in environmentalist or political action. We are tolerant and believe strongly in religious freedom. We are all usually late, and we have a fondness for silly costumes.
Is it the belief that everyone has their own path?No, that's Unitarian Universalism.
What I mean is what is it that connects all the different kinds of pagans?Coffee and campgrounds?
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Very nice answer, Rose :)
"Where did the idea of the Summerlands originate?" is one of those questions I could contentedly spend $30,000 and a year researching in an academic setting. :::sigh:::
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I didn't realize there was a God, a Goddess, and Mother Nature. I thought maybe Mother Nature was the Goddess, but just a different word for her.
You know how when we start out homeschooling, we think there is A Single Standard Curriculum that every school uses at least basically, like, third grade = cursive and long division? But then we find out there isn't. We could spend third grade reading myths and solving Singapore bar problems, and heck, third grade could mean age seven, age eight, age nine, or never really happen at all. Paganism is that big and that, um, well, chaotic. There is no one set of gods that everyone agrees exists. Everyone doesn't agree that there are such things as gods. Among those who do believe in gods, some are monotheistic and some are duotheistic and some are polytheist, and any of those three could be pantheists too. Some Pagans seem to conceive of gods the way that Christians think of God, as some omnipotent, omniscience being. Most Pagans don't, though.
As for the Summerlands, common knowledge seems to insist that it originated in Wicca, a kind of mashing together of various European mythologies, but I don't have any idea where. My two primary references (Drawing Down the Moon, A Pagan Testament) don't seem to know either. It's a great question. I wish I had more time today to look into it.
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Thank you for your reply! :)
No problem. Let me know if you have any more questions. I was trying to be minimalist in my responses, but I don't need to be.
After I posted, Uranus of course immediately came to mind, but He's not a deity I have worked with much before.
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1. God/Goddess or Mother Nature/Father Sky --- what do they mean to you? Do you worship them or do you simply acknowledge their existence?
God - a sentient, holy being
Goddess - a god we perceive as more like women than men
Mother Nature - the living, conscious soul of the sum of the physical earth's parts; a goddess, and the one I acknowledge first in any ritual
Father Sky - I don't really have a Father Sky on my radar.
I worship them.
2. Where can I learn more on the above question while I'm waiting for the library books?I always recommend the articles on neopagan.net.
3. Is it necessary to believe in reincarnation or are there pagans who don't believe in reincarnation?Most Paganism is orthopraxic. That means membership is usually not perceived based on what you believe, but based on what you do.
I know Pagans who believe in reincarnation, Pagans who believe only in physical reincarnation (we are eaten by worms and become part of them, then part of the soil, then we become the plants that grow in that soil...), and Pagans who believe that we cross over into a heaven-ish place sometimes called the Summerlands. I've known a few Pagans who have Buddhist-y ideas about ceasing to exist or joining the pantheistic soul of everything.
I'm leaning towards their is no reincarnation, but that sims because when I think of rebirth I can't picture myself being reborn as a butterfly or something. Or will you be reborn as the same kind of being?I believe I was a person before and will be a person again. The book Old Souls by Tom Shroder is pretty convincing.
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Wow, first I'd like to say that you sound like an incredibly smart and stable person for someone who grew up in an environment that perhaps was not very encouraging.
My folks divorced when I was small. I was mostly raised by my father and paternal grandmother. They are very encouraging people who lived a lifestyle of learning and loved me enthusiastically and unconditionally.
I wouldn't rat on your sister either -- given the situation (as long as she's not getting herself into trouble, I don't see why you would need to).I'm not going to do so. I was leaning towards not, but I thought I'd check in just to make sure I wasn't being weird. I'm glad that everyone has affirmed my gut feeling.
In the metropolitan area near us, there are actually schools that specialize in the arts/music, or language immersion. <snip>I wonder if your sister would blossom under either of those circumstances?That does sound great. I think I would have to fill out all the paperwork myself. My mom is not the kind to go too far out of her way to make something like that happen. I have no idea how to find something like that downstate, let alone push Mom through the paperwork. It's definitely worth a try, though. I think I'll start Googling.
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Awww. You could use NARHS for the accredited diploma while doing one of the upper level cores. :( I hate it when learning is a chore.
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I have a twelve-year-old sister who has always been in school, mostly a little private Catholic one but now she's ill and the district is sending tutors for her. She does not apply much self-discipline in academic areas. She was a mid-life crisis baby, and her father is Colombian (which is a culture of extreme child indulgence), and so she just doesn't get much discipline of any sort. My mom is starting to get worried because she's failing all classes that aren't very easy for her (like English and art) just because she doesn't put in the effort to actually do any assignments. Mom views me and my boys as some sort of educational wonders who get amazing stuff done and have tons of self-discipline (which is silly) and she keeps asking me for my advice. I was the one who recommended asking the district to send tutors, since she's sick and missing school a lot anyway. Hopefully my sister won't be able to slip off the radar of individual tutors like she did in classes.
But anyway, that wasn't what this post was about. My sister IS diligent and works hard in areas that interest her. In fact, she shows amazing commitment, maturity and ability to pick up new skills on her own, in her own domains.
Her hobby is translating Japanese songs from obscure anime into English. She's teaching herself Japanese and also a modern mythical language, kind of the equivalent in Japan to Tolkien's Elvish. This kid is capable and smart and good with languages (was raised bilingual - bet that helps). She's got an amazing singing voice too.
She's also great with anything to do with making movies, from costume and make up to post production effects. She makes some amazing and hilarious stuff with my sons when they visit, including a lengthy film in which my six-year-old starred as a superhero who could fly.
My question is: where does she go with that? If she were an unschooler, and for all practical purposes she is since she's working hard to pretend school doesn't exist, into what career would these interests lead her? She's very focused, disciplined, patient and diligent when it comes to learning this stuff. Where, out into the world, does she take that? If there are websites, camps, classes, anything, that I can direct her to, please send links. But mostly I'm wondering what kind of job this could lead to.
A second question is ethical. Our mother seems to be completely oblivious to my sister's activities. Mom has never shown any interest in the hobbies and skills of any of her kids, to the point where I wonder if she has some psychological issues about it. For example, when I was published in an international poetry mag at age thirteen, the youngest writer to have been in that magazine, she sad, "Oh, all teen girls write poems," and changed the subject and refused to take the extra copy of the magazine Dad (who I lived with) had put aside for her. So I am pretty sure that even if I say to Mom, "look, lady, your kid is a genius, just totally not into the school game -- look at these amazing movies she's making" she won't be relieved. But, my sister is posting these videos on Facebook at 4:30 AM, saying she was up all night getting the vocals laid down. She's online even when Mom has reported to me that she's been grounded from the computer, and she's not online chatting with friends but working on her videos. If my sister is working hard on something and doing a great job with it, do I want to rat her out and tell Mom she's up all night long and that's why she can't pay attention to her lessons during the day? I would hate to see Mom take her studio equipment away, and I would especially hate for my sister to remove me from her online social network so that I can't rat her out again. What would you do?
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Wee Folk Art offers free seasonal guides here.
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Have your potassium checked out. I get terrible painful twitches and stabbing leg pain when it's low. Check with your dr.
Ha! That's funny. I have chronically low potassium. I bet that's what it is.
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Thanks, dragons, for including your schedule. Love the look of it (and :lol: at the Dungeons and Dragons time slot).
D&D is to STEM'ers as golf is to business execs. ;)
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But with this schedule, I do not see any other foreign languages (I'm assuming with classics you mean Latin&Greek). I *have* to teach my kids English, German and French. I'm not kidding. And sadly, you don't learn a language in 20 minutes a week. Wish it was possible.
It is hard to lay out a schedule with all that in it, but as I look at my eleven-year-old's weekly schedule, I do see places where we could add English, German & French. I would replace Spanish with one of those, use our extra weekday afternoon for another, and probably start trying to speak the third exclusively during dinners. It would be intense, but when you're devoted to either a STEM education or a classical one, it's a lifestyle of learning.
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I really hope "Second Generation Homeschooler" doesn't become a phrase that means more than it literally means (like "well-trained mind" or "Thomas Jefferson education") because I AM a second generation homeschooler and I do not agree with a thing on that website. Also, I think my dad would be amused and disturbed if someone thought that because he's a first generation homeschooler he's a biblical reconstructionist. Now I need to go Google to check and see if "biblical reconstructionist" means something besides "person who attempts to reconstruct the world according to the Bible".
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Thank you so much! He's used Song School Latin this year, because I wanted a really gentle approach for him. Do you think I should still use I Speak Latin?
Hmmm... If you think he still needs a gentle program, yes, I still prefer it of those choices. But if he's had SSL, and he's nine or ten years old? Then I might jump right into Lively Latin, Latin Prep, or Latin for Children.
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"Do everything" is always a popular option, but I don't know if it's realistic. One has to have priorities -- ninety minutes or two hours a day of math is not going to leave as much time for Socrates and Latin. And reducing the math education will make them much less able to go on to advanced study in science.
I don't find we have that problem. For a long time our formula was an hour for math, an hour for music, an hour for classics, and the whole rest of the day for tech & engineery fun. A serious LCC education leaves so much time for other things.
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I experience painful spasms. I'll feel like someone is stabbing me with a pencil somewhere. The pain gets more intense in that spot, and then the spot starts twitching or jerking. It lasts usually for about ten to fifteen seconds. I'm not a wuss about pain, and this is some of the most scary-painful stuff I have ever felt. It's impossible to think about anything else during the pain. It only hurts for a second or ten, though, so I have always just borne it.
I've always had these, since early childhood, as long as I can remember. I thought everyone had one occasionally. But never before has it been this frequent. It used to be that it'd happen once a month or even less frequently, but now it's hourly. A friend saw my knee muscles moving in a way that knee muscles don't move, and noticed that I got a little glossy-eyed for a second, and said that has never happened to him. So now I'm wondering, does this happen commonly to other people? What is it?
(Just for background, I am thirty years old. I have a decent diet and make good lifestyle choices, I think. I cook whole foods, organic, local and usually vegetarian, and dislike fatty greasy things. I bike or walk all over the city everyday for errands and for fun, and tend to choose to take the stairs rather than the elevator and get out and do things rather than sit in front of the screen. I have celiac disease that is pretty severe but I manage to control it with a GF diet. I have seizures, mostly focal seizures originating in my temporal lobe and a very occasional [like bi-annual] grand mal. Seizures aren't supposed to be painful, though.)
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That looks great.
I would use I Speak Latin if this is his first Latin experience. It gets higher friendliness and relevance points.
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Scott Gustafson's "Classic Fairy Tales" is stunning.
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Strange. Plaid Dad doesn't come up under a search for me, nor is it under the membership list.
I'm hopeful that he is still around. But I'm scratching my head at why I don't see his name on the members list.
Bill
Would that have happened if he blocked you?
But I can't think of why he'd have blocked you.
Are you sure? Can you see it if you follow the direct links in this thread?
You are a seventeen year old male...
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
My finicky kid, the one who eats mostly just plain carbs (rice, bread, pasta), is now almost twelve. I always hoped his pickiness meant I wouldn't have this problem. Nope. I discovered when I left him alone with a freezer full of bread that he can go through two loaves of bread in four hours.