Fox News said what? Did anyone ask Why?

A few days ago, Fox News (that utterly reputable news source!) broadcast a talk show in which three people of the Fox News staff discussed the fact that the University of Missouri had added Wiccan holidays to their list of recognized holidays.

The broadcasters of course had great fun ridiculing the Wiccan faith (Wiccanism, as one of the presenters inaccurately called it), and made mention that 20 percent of all holidays are pagan. That point is true, but it got immediately misinterpreted to say that Wiccans have twenty holidays.

If you haven’t already seen the piece in question, it’s here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J22mI-P0a1M

Naturally, Wiccans and Pagans were up in arms over this, saying that Fox News was misrepresenting or ridiculing their faith. That’s absolutely true, they were, and many voices, including Selena Fox of the Lady Liberty League took to the defense of Wicca.

But I don’t think that the Fox News people were doing that simply to have fun poking fun at Wicca. They weren’t out to start a War On Religion or any such foolishness. No, all they were doing is much more simple than that.

Have you ever encountered someone who will say whatever he thinks it takes, just to gain the attention of his superiors? The kind of brown-noser who’ll overhear a conversation making fun of, say, autistic kids, and add a comment to let the others know he’s ‘one of them’? That’s all it was. Glad-handing their superiors, in a way.

The Fox News folks were just making the right kinds of noise, saying things their wealthy, corporate-owned Christian Conservative Coalition (capitalization mine) would want to hear, so they’d give Fox more money.  They could just as well have made detrimental remarks about gays, handicapped people, vegans, whatever. Today it happened to be Wiccans, and the University of Missouri’s decision happened to be the target.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely detest the things they said, and the attitude they took. They could have done so much better. But remember, they hold Wiccans and Pagans in as much regard as the dirt they scrape off their shoes when they walk inside. They don’t care about Wicca. They just wanted to win the favor of their corporate backers, so they made the sort of noises that they’re expected to make. 

Which, as far as I’m concerned, makes them even less a reliable news agency than they were before.

Charles David Batty 1932 - 2013

 I love my Dad.

Anyone who’s known me for a reasonable length of time knows that I am so very proud to be my father’s son.

He is my mentor, my hero, my compass, my best friend.

He’s always nurtured me, supported me, guided me. Even when I was 19 and thought he was a buffoon, I knew that I loved him and needed him.

My Dad died this week.

He’d been diagnosed with liver cancer about eight years ago, which had spread to his pancreas.

He’d always had something of a cavalier attitude about his health. My Dad was the sort of man who controlled his health by sheer force of will. He didn’t want to get sick, he didn’t get sick. He had the kind of willpower that could stop a tank. When I was very young he used to smoke cigarettes. One day he decided he didn’t like them anymore, and that’s all it took, he stopped smoking. That kind of willpower.

So he called me when he got the diagnosis, and we talked about it for a little while. I don’t know if he took it seriously – he always seemed dismissive and glib about his health – but I was worried. He underwent various treatments, which had successfully overcome BOTH cancers, but the treatments rendered him diabetic. He never had the full-body chemo that makes your hair fall out; he didn’t want that. He’d agreed to experimental laser surgery that zapped and neutralized the tumors. The tumors came back, and he’d get zapped again, and they’d come back again. Stupid cancer.

Six months ago he began to get noticeably worse, and his condition worsened rapidly. A month ago he was hospitalized, and agreed to at-home hospice care. The doctor said he had maybe three to six months. But Dad was in a lot of pain, and I think that when he lay back in the hospice bed that had been set up in the living room, he simply said to himself, “That’s it, time to go.” His last words to Gayle, my stepmother, were a few hours before he died. “I love you,” he whispered, “I don’t think I can do this anymore.” Then he went back to sleep, and a few hours later just stopped breathing.

My Dad was truly a renaissance man. He was a teacher, an author, a poet, a musician, a chef, a philosopher, a dreamer, a world traveler, a fighter, a father, a husband, a friend. Music was one of the joys of his life; I grew up in a world of classical music. Dad was the kind of person who could pick up any instrument and play it. He’d be able to play it well within an hour. My brother has the same skill, but I never did. The only thing I can play is a radio. 

He loved to cook. Pottering around in the kitchen, experimenting with new dishes, tasting the food of different cultures, always delighted him. It was through my father that I learned to enjoy trying new dishes, and the general willingness to try anything new.  Many’s the day you could walk in the house and find something remarkable bubbling away on the stove, making the whole house smell warm and inviting. Dad had libraries of cookbooks, and volumes of pages of recipes clipped from newpapers or printed from websites.  It’s from him that I learned to appreciate good food and to make cooking an adventure, and why I worked as a banquet chef for so many years.

My Dad wrote and performed music for church; he wrote, directed and managed the Tudor Christmas Feast for three years running for the University of Maryland in the mid-80’s. He was a University professor, who taught Information Science at McGill University in Montreal, and the University of Maryland at College Park.  After retiring from teaching, he created a consulting firm and helped major corporations develop in-house library systems.

He was a man of deep faith whose devotion to God was without measure. But he wasn’t one to follow God’s word without question; Dad always questioned everything, and expected the same level of inquisitive dedication from everyone he worked with. There were times we’d have long debates about religion, and it was only after I’d published my textbook on teaching witchcraft that he came to accept my own faith. And after that, of course, we’d have long discussions in which he encouraged me to deepen my own understanding of my faith.

If there was anything he detested, it was idiots. There is a phrase, “I will not suffer fools lightly”. That is so very true of Dad, who could not abide simple-minded people.  God gave you a brain, use it!

Knowing that my Dad is no longer here is not easy. I’ll miss being able to call him to chat. To be honest, one thing I don’t think I ready for will be walking back into my parents’ house for the first time, knowing that he’ll never be there again.

If there is any consolation to my grief, it is this story:
My Dad’s father was killed in World War II, when Dad was only 9. He left his wife – my grandmother – as a single parent, raising Dad and his sister Hilary. Grandma never remarried. The years went by, and in 1995, Grandma Batty died of old age.
On the day she died, Dad was at work in his office, and his sister Hilary was at home in England. As Dad tells it, he heard his mother’s voice – as if she were talking in the next room, say, “You waited for me…” and then he heard his father’s voice which he hadn’t heard in over 50 years, say, “It’s alright, time doesn’t mean the same thing here.” Straight away, Dad called Hilary, and she said that she’d heard the very same voices, at the very same time. They both heard it, they both knew.
So, yes, death is a chance for another meeting with those loved ones you’d thought you’d left.
I am glad that Dad is no longer suffering, and while I do miss him, terribly, I know that he is at peace, and enjoying long fireside talks with his father and his family.

In closing, here’s an excerpt of a poem he wrote shortly after his mother died.

On Grief for the Departed

"The room is empty now.

Between the curtains, sunlight’s fingers

Touch first the bed, the vacant chair.

The day moves on. No point in time.

The room is empty now.

Grief for the dead is based in love.

Felt as guilt, expressed in sorrow.

They left too soon,

Before we had the time

For all the words, for all the gestures.

Always we could rely on tomorrow –

Until tomorrow became a yesterday.

Did we ever say enough?

Did we ever do enough?

Enough perhaps is any, and any, all."

Dad, I love you.

God's Gift, or God's Wisdom?

God’s Gift, or God’s Wisdom?

           In which I try to explain, borrowing a Christian perspective, the social concepts of sharing God's gift, or honoring God's wisdom 

            I live in North Carolina. The prevalent religious atmosphere can be somewhat conservative; concepts like recycling and environmental concerns, things that many pagans take for granted, are generally ignored. Or worse. I tried to explain this to a friend during a telephone conversation. Our conversation had drifted around to, as it often does, religious awareness in different parts of the country, and differences between pagans and mainstream religions.

            “When I was in Colorado,” I told her, “I was waiting at the bus stop one evening on the way home. A man next to me had just unwrapped his hamburger. His bag shifted on his arm, making him slip and drop the wrapper, and the top half of the bun, onto the ground. I watched as he picked up the bun and blow on it. Then he held the bun up, look upward to the sky, and whisper something. A prayer, obviously, something like, “Please God, wipe any germs from my bun so I don’t get sick, thanks.” Then he rebuilt his burger and ate it in about four bites before the bus came.

            ‘“What about the wrapper?” I asked him. He glanced at me as if he hadn’t noticed I was there before, and his eyes slid to the wrapper lying under the bus stop bench, and back to me. He shrugged and gave it a dismissive wave of his hand. “That’s littering, man,” I said. I didn’t mention the crumpled newspaper lying on the bench, or the trash can overflowing with papers and bottles of various kinds. But the hamburger wrapper, that was his trash, a piece he’d just now thrown away. It suddenly became important to me to make this a point, I don’t know why, and I spoke to him as if I were a member of the Christian faith as well.

            ‘“If you’re going to ask God to clean your hamburger bun for you, the least you can do is clean your part of what he made for you. This world is his gift to you. Leaving your trash on the ground, that’s like disrespecting what your Father made for you, you know?”’

            This made an impression, and he picked the wrapper up and left it lying precariously on top of the pile of trash on the garbage can. When the bus arrived and we all got on, I saw the exhaust from the bus blow it off again, but left it at that.

            “I think that’s cool, what you did,” my friend said, “I wish more people would act like that.”

            “I’ve done something like that a couple of times,” I said, “usually adopting a Christian perspective. I call it giving somebody a ‘Jesus Kiss’. It’s like a wake-up call to them to be more spiritually aware of what they’re doing. You know, wheel of life, the interconnectedness of the web, all of that. Pagans, I’m happy to say, are often already more aware of their actions than that.” She made a consenting sound like a happy grunt.

            “So what’s North Carolina like, then?” she asked, “the same kind of vibe?”

            “I wish I could say it was. There’s a lot of good people here, but, well… you know the general notion a lot of conservatives have, that hippies are just no-good bums?”

            “…yeah?” she said carefully.

            “Well amplify that notion about a gazillion percent. Not only are hippies no-good bums, but anyone outside the conservative mainstream, if that is what they are, is suspect, and the ideals that such people would endorse are equally suspicious.”

            “What, like recycling? Taking care of the environment? Like that?”

            “Um, yeah, like that. But even moreso. There are people down here who think that recycling is against Christ.”

            There was a pause, and over the phone I heard the backs of her eyeballs constrict.

            “What?” she said slowly, “say that again.”

            “Some people think that to recycle, to put something back into the system to be used again, is against God’s plan. It’s evil.”

            “How in the hell can they justify that?” she demanded.

            “Okay, lemme try to explain, from their point of view.” I paused, thinking. “First, a little backstory. I used to work at a big banquet hotel in Maryland.”

            “Umm..”

            “Don’t worry, this connects. Stick with me.”

            “Okay…”

            “So at the banquet hotel, the Head Chef rules the kitchen with an iron… spatula. He makes the final decisions on everything, and what he says, goes. If a dinner banquet needs, say, two hundred chicken dijon, then they cook two hundred chicken dijon. Not a hundred and ninety nine, not two hundred and one. The Head Chef is never wrong. If, of course, five extra people show up at the banquet and they have to cook five more, they bend over backwards to justify what the Head Chef had said. He knows exactly how much is needed, and nobody questions it.”

            “Okay,” my friend said. I think she saw where this was going.

            “So there are Christians down here who believe that when God made the world, he knew EXACTLY how much of everything would ever be needed, and he set it up that way. So if we recycle, if we try to extend the use of something, we are as much as saying that God got his figures wrong. We are implying that we have to HELP God manage the world, that we think he might need help to get his figures right.

            “And to hint that God might have gotten something wrong, is as bad as blasphemy. Because God is always right, about everything. End of.”

            “So… but….” Her mind was scrambling to keep up.

            “So. Recycling is bad because it questions God’s wisdom. Taking care of the environment is bad because we’re assuming God wants us to extend the life of the planet. God has a plan, remember, and our job is to follow it. Not try to change it, not try to extend it, just follow it.”

            “But what if recycling IS part of God’s plan?” she asked.

            “Now now, that’s putting words in God’s mouth,” I said, “if we were supposed to recycle, it would have been mentioned in the Bible.”

            “So….. my brain hurts,” she said after a short pause.

            “So the guy in Colorado, with the hamburger wrapper? He understood about taking care of God’s gift. But down here, it’s more important to respect  - unquestioningly - God’s wisdom, even if it means risking one’s health.”

            “And that’s life in the conservative Bible Belt?” she asked.

            “Pretty much, yeah,” I said.

            “Oy veh.” Which sounded funny coming from a pagan Jamaican woman living in Canada.   

Toward the Divine Event Horizon

Toward the Divine Event Horizon (or, “Another argument against organized religion”)

Part One: Seeking the Divine Event Horizon 

A brief introduction, just to confuse you…… What is an ‘Event Horizon’?

            According to scientists, rocket scientists and people smarter than myself, an event horizon is that part of a black hole where anything sucked in is irretrievable, invisible, gone forever. It’s like when you watch someone drive out to the horizon, and *pif* they’re gone – but in a black hole’s event horizon, they’re REALLY gone – and so is anything and everything else that gets too close.

            According to general parlance, an event horizon is that point in the far distance where you cannot distinguish one thing from another – or, that point at which individual items or concepts are ultimately unrecognizable as individual, or have no discernible differences.

            According to one author – namely me, the event horizon is that point at which one realizes that

            (a)items or concepts, when under close enough scrutiny, have so many more similarities than differences that differentiation becomes irrelevant; or

            (b) if you take two dissimilar concepts on a single topic, and follow them to their logical conclusion, you will find that they reach the same results.

Did that make sense? I hope so.

            To take my definition of the event horizon to an even sillier plateau, let’s add spirituality to the mix. There are dozens of religions, with dozens of ways to worship/understand/honor/devote oneself to/follow, various forms of god/goddess/divinity/divine mystery/ultimate truth. It has been observed, I forget by whom, that the different religions are like different paths through the forest, all leading to god. (It has also been observed that, and I really like this line, ‘when scientists peer into their microscopes and finally crack the ultimate mystery of life, they will find that god has been looking back at them the whole time.”  I forget the author, and I’m probably horribly misquoting it, but anyway.)

            So you’ve got Christianity, Judaism, Islam; paganism in all its myriad forms, Hinduism, Buddhism, Humanism and a whole slew of isms, Heathenry, Native American, so on and so on. Followers of this faith worship this god, followers of that faith worship those gods, followers of this philosophy believe that (x=y), and so on.

            You could spend hours, years, millennia, debating the minutae of each religion, its practices and dogma, its pros and cons, and arguing for the validity of this religious perspective over that religious perspective.

            Or you could look for commonalities in different religious perspectives. (Here’s a tip: Every religion exists because someone thought it would be a good idea to try it that way.)

            I found a website that helps – the Big Religion Chart  has a listing of 43 belief systems, and includes origins, human situation/life’s purpose, afterlife, and more. It’s worth a look!

            You’ll find, if you scroll through the chart, that a lot of religions deal with human issues, understanding or coming closer to understanding god, knowing right from wrong. For example, let’s look at Baha’i Faith: “The soul is eternal and essentially good. Purpose of life is to develop spiritually and draw closer to God”, Cao Dai: “Goal is peace and harmony in each person and in the world. Salvation by "cultivating self and finding God in self," and Taoism: “Purpose is inner harmony, peace, and longevity. Achieved by living in accordance with the Tao”.

            Sure, there are a few faiths that don’t fit this altruistic model; the human situation of the Greek religions (presuming they mean Ancient Greece) is: “Human life is subject to the whim of the gods and to Fate; these can be controlled through sacrifice and divination”, and Islam is listed as “Humans must submit (islam) to the will of God to gain Paradise after death”. But even there, the ultimate goal of the faith is to develop a benevolent relationship with the divine.

            So if you examine the religions of the world and look for shared interests, you’ll find that they all have the goal of enlightenment and understanding.

            But all of that is only half the journey to the divine event horizon; the inherent differences between religions are still there. Despite the commonalities of purpose, we still have a long way to go. People will argue that Islamic terrorists believe that all infidels must be killed; or that Christianity denies enlightenment without absolute devotion; maybe, but those are extremist viewpoints. If you can still see the road you’re walking on, you aren’t there yet. Keep going.

            Let’s take a moment to define what we mean when we’re talking about religion. There are two commonly accepted definitions of religion; I’ll address those and then go off on a tangent, and then we can continue toward the event horizon.

            Religion is defined as (a) re·li·gion noun 1.a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs; or (b) a particular system of faith and worship .

            Myself, I’ve always defined religion in one of two ways: either the practices and rites used in the veneration or worship of the divine; or the mere awareness, the searching for, divinity and the answers it may hold. I once heard that religion, by definition, is nothing more than the system of worship itself. That’s fine for theosophical scholars, but I wasn’t content with that. Religion, for me, means not only the practice of worship, but also the quest itself, the seeking answers.

            That’s the one I want to examine, and that’s where the road to the divine event horizon is taking us. As we travel this road closer to the event horizon, we’re also going, you may notice, backwards in time.

            People who argue that religion is this, or that, or worse, argue that religion is NOT this or that, have lost their way toward the event horizon. Don’t worry about dogma, moral codes, which hand to raise first in an invocation. That’s window dressing. Keep going. Don’t be scared.

            Don’t look at the WHAT of religion, don’t look at the HOW of religion. Ultimately, they don’t matter. Yes, we’re getting closer. See that bright spot ahead? There’s a question in your head, I can see it. We’re heading toward the WHY of religion. That’s where the different paths become irrelevant. Like I said, trappings like dogma and politics don’t matter. Leave them behind.

            Religion, in the end (or the beginning) is the yearning. It’s the hunger in the mind, the question in the soul. The fire in the cave.

            In seeking the divine event horizon, you have to be brave enough to be scared. Religion is where the soul goes when it wants to understand.

            “Dear G_d, please help me see what I am.”

            “Please help me see what you are.”

            “Help me to understand – or let me know that you understand, even if I don’t.”

           

That’s where every religion takes us, if we follow them to the event horizon. “Help me to understand.” That’s the commonality across cultures, across centuries, across boundaries.

            (Along the way, people have revealed some wonderful truths – benevolence is more useful than selfishness; the divine smiles upon those who help others, and so on. “Lead a good life, and the divine will reward you.”

            Or to simplify it further:

            “God smiles upon those who do good.”

            Or even further:

            “Don’t be an asshole.”

           

There, that was easy. The search for the Divine Event Horizon leads us to the collective conclusion that:

(1)   It’s okay not to know everything, and

(2)   We should not be assholes.

Part Two: In which we find that Organized Religion weakens the Soul.

            In the course of writing the first part of this blog, I kept hitting walls, arguments kept cropping up in my head. “But what about this aspect of that faith?” I asked myself, “What about this law or that decree?” “Wait, this religion conflicts with that one – how can they both be loving and benevolent when they are in opposition?”

            That, sadly, is where I find an argument against ‘Organized Religion’.

(Quick, time for another definition. What is ‘Organized Religion’ as opposed to, say, Disorganized Religion?

Organized Religion is just that – “a system of rites, rituals and beliefs used in the veneration or worship of the divine”.  A system, a set plan. Organized religion has a structure of practice and belief, a hierarchical system, and it (whichever version of ‘it’ you’re looking at) has drawn its own conclusions about what the Ultimate Truth is.

            In following an organized religion, you are doing just that – following. Someone else has already decidwhat the questions are, what the answers are, and how to find them. In any organized religion, someone else has already written all the rules. Someone else. Not you. (Granted, if you’re happy with knowing only as much as they are willing to tell you, if you accept that their interpretation of the divine is good enough for you, then all is well.)

            But for many of us, faith is a much more personal question. What does god look like to you? Is it the same image that your neighbor sees? Is it the same image that your partner sees? Is it the same image that you saw when you were ten?

            The problem with organized religion is that it has structure. Boundaries. Laws. (And with laws come.... politics. Remember the separation of church and state? Let's start with the separation of 'the quest to understand god' and 'someone else's rules'.)  It’s finite. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. You aren’t allowed to seek the divine event horizon, because doing so might make you ask more questions than they are willing to answer. (How’s that apple taste, by the way?)  fnord   

             

             So being part of an organized religion, embracing the ideals, concepts, god-image, etc, that someone else has created, means that all you're really doing is following someone else's spiritual path. Where'd yours go?

(Disorganized Religion, by the way, isn’t disorganized so much as just non-regimented. You are an individual and your quest for divinity is a personal journey – you don’t need someone else’s rules, unless you just need handrails to help you on your walk.)

           

            If I were me, and I am, I would say that each and every one of us has the right to seek our own definition of divinity – to walk our own path to understanding.

My co-officiated wedding

Yesterday, April 23, I had the honor of co-officiating the wedding of two dear friends, Thomas and Christine. (To be fair, while I've known Christine for about 5 years, I only met Tom for the first time during the wedding rehearsal.)
Christine had asked me a while ago if I'd officiate her wedding, and of course I said I would. Then questions of faith and such crept into the discussion, and she thought that a more neutral, as opposed to Wiccan, officiant might go better with the predominantly Christian families. So during the weeks of negotiation other clergy was considered, until it was decided to have TWO priests officiate the ceremony, one male and one female. (They also had a Best Chick - Tom's best man was his friend Kimberly.)


During the discussions and negotiations and such, I'd sent Christine a wedding ceremony proposal, using many of the elements I often incorporate into my handfastings. When all was said and done, I'm proud to say, a good portion of my work was used in the final ceremony. I've done Wiccan handfastings before, but never before a crowd of people I just straight-up didn't know.

Since most of the family(s) are Christian, Christine had asked me to keep any mention of Goddess, magick, pagan, witch, etc, to a minimum. Like, none. But likewise, there was no mention of Jesus Christ, Jehovah or Heaven either. In fact the only mention of any such notion was one use of the word ' divine' in the opening statement.

But this does not by any mean say that it was a drab or un-spiritual union; the elements were invoked, energy was indeed raised just by the fact that so many people were in such good spirits during the service!

Christine had wanted a medeival/renaissance theme, so everyone who could do so attended in period garb. I really think EVERY wedding should be performed this way! People look so much better than in plain old tuxedos and formal dresses.
Reverend Jane officiated most of the ceremony, but I performed the Seven Bindings and the Eight Sacred Blessings, which I've used in every handfasting I've performed to date.    
The Seven Bindings are a part I borrowed from my friend Beth; I first saw her use them for a friend's handfasting a few years ago. Each Binding uses a ribbon, and Christine opted to use the seven chakra colors, one for each of the ribbons. It goes as follows:

Thomas and Christine, I have some questions for you.
Do you truly love each other and choose to affirm that love today?
"We do."
Thomas, will you burden her?
"I may"
Is that your intent?
"No" 
Christine, will you burden him?
"I may"
Is that your intent?
"No" 
(To Both) Will you share the burdens of each other so that your spirits may grow in this union?
"Yes" 
And so the binding is made.
(First cord is tied around Christine & Thomas’s wrists)

Christine, will you cause him pain?
"I may"
Is that your intent?
"No" 
Thomas, will you cause her pain?
"I may"
Is that your intent?
"No" 
(To Both) Will you share each other's pain and seek to ease it?
"Yes" 
And so the binding is made.
(Second cord is tied around Christine & Thomas’s wrists)

Thomas, will you share her laughter?
"Yes" 
Christine, will you share his laughter?
"Yes" 
(To Both) Will both of you look for the brightness in life and the positive in each other?
"Yes" 
And so the binding is made.
(Third cord is tied around Christine & Thomas’s wrists)

Christine, will you share his dreams?
"Yes" 
Thomas, will you share her dreams?
"Yes" 
(To Both) Will you dream together to create new hopes and realities?
"Yes" 
And so the binding is made.
(Fourth cord is tied around Christine & Thomas’s wrists)

Thomas, will you cause her anger?
"I may"
Is that your intent?
"No" 
Christine, will you cause him anger?
"I may"
Is that your intent?
"No" 
(To Both) Will you take the heat of anger and use it to temper the strength of this union?
"We will" 
And so the binding is made.
(Fifth cord is tied around Christine & Thomas’s wrists)

Christine, will you heal his wounds?
"I will" 
Thomas, will you heal her wounds?
"I will" 
(To Both)
Will you offer healing to each other in times of need?
"We will" 
And so the binding is made.
(Sixth cord is tied around Christine & Thomas’s wrists)

Thomas, Will you honor her?
"I will" 
Christine, will you honor him?
"I will" 
(To Both) Will you seek to never give cause to break that honor?
"We shall never do so" 
And so the binding is made.
(Seventh cord is tied around Christine & Thomas’s wrists)    

I like this because it acknowledges that yes, sometimes there are going to be fights and disagreements. But it also acknowledges that their relationship is stronger than the dispute, and they can weather it. (The audience did have a laugh at the first binding, when I asked Tom if he would burden her. Caught up in the "I do" vibe, he said, "Yes!" and then caught himself and said, "oh, wait, um, no!")

The Eight Sacred Blessings are something I first wrote in 'The Green Prince's Father', and which I've used on every handfasting and wedding I've done since. They are a way of offering the blessings of the spirits and the elements. They are:
We honor this union with simple blessings, spoken with love by friends and family.
We give you the blessing of air, in wind and thought. May the winds bring you many joys.
We give you the blessing of fire, of warmth and passion. May the flames of love fill both your hearts.
We give you the blessing of water, changing and flowing. May the deep well of emotion be yours.
We give you the blessing of earth, constant and stable. May the foundation of earth keep you at peace.
We give you the blessing of spirit, of the mysteries of life. May the wisdom of the universe be yours to share.
We give you the blessing of the sun, bringer of life. May his warmth and radiance fill you with joy and health.
We give you the blessing of the moon, lady of mystery. May her ever-changing face guide you through life’s changes.
We give you the blessing of the stars, distant and serene. May their light bring you guidance and tranquility.
As a change of form that I hadn't considered, but which I thought worked well, the second part of each line was printed in the wedding program, making it a call-and-response for the audience. So I said, "We give you the blessing of air, in wind and thought,", and the audience replied with "May the winds bring you many joys." Nice touch!

I do have a speech disability and I'm always concerned that it's going to get in the way. I feel that it did, briefly, but the families took it in stride and nobody seemed offended by it.

All in all the day was a resounding success. Even the DJ had fun, dressed up in a Merlin costume, complete with huge pointy hat.
 
To my dear friend Christine, and my new friend Tom, congratulations!! And may the future ahead be as bright as the love that showed in your eyes at the wedding.