Plainly Pagan

When I was twelve, I gave up eating cows and pigs.  At sixteen, I stopped eating fish and chickens.  At eighteen, I gave up eggs and dairy.  In that time, my family was strongly supportive ...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2023/11/plant-based-morality.html

Today is my birthday.  Not a great day.  My brother-in-law called to wish me a happy day.  I grumbled wordlessly prompting his advice to have good cheer on the anniversary of my birth.  I ...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2023/10/happy-birthday-no-you-cant-make-me.html

My grandmother's garden was a place of love, worthy of emulation. We asked her how to know what to keep and what to pull.  "Is this a weed?" we asked. She answered, "Only if you don'...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2023/10/weeds.html

  It has been nearly five months since I submitted my last grades as an adjunct professor. During that time, I've done a few historical presentations, fussed around my house and garden, and ha...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-mask-slips.html

 Yesterday I began using the internet to find my own personal style.  "What style is right for me?" The internet let me down by making some ghastly assumptions about "style" and "me".  I took ...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2023/09/what-is-my-personal-style-another.html

 Several years ago, I stopped using this blog consistently.  I guess I felt like I had nothing more to say. In the intervening time between then and now, I went through a metamorphosis.  Wit...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2023/09/in-which-i-am-hideously-transformed.html

 I see from a previous post that I resigned from my adjunct position in March of 2023.  Following that, I finished up the remainder of the spring semester in May.  That means that I have been ...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2023/09/in-which-i-realize-that-several-years.html

Lately I've been considering that I have had two bosses.  One was the university and the other is the Universe.  Neither was ever clear about their expectations.

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-boss.html

 In my last post, I discussed my recurrent desire to quit my job of nineteen years as a community college adjunct professor.  Here is my resignation letter with identifying information removed ...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2023/03/like-dandelion-seed.html

In the old wisdom reflected in the story of the death and resurrection of Christ, salvation is a seed that must be planted in the dark earth before it can bear fruit.

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2022/10/salvation-is-seed.html

 I just graded a digital ton of Western Civ papers. I began the assignment with an amusing anecdote about a former student from the U.K. who took my class in anticipation of lectures about the g...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-beginning-of-end-discuss-cite-your.html

 In the Precedented Times, I often came here to write about my Quaker-Pagan views.  In those days, I had a great deal more confidence, a laughable amount of confidence.  I started this blog af...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2022/08/beginning-again-again.html

The world we know is dying.  This is not hyperbole, but fact.  Recent climate change research tells us that the change will not be reassuringly linear in nature, but exponential.  A tsunami w...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2019/06/nightmare-and-disjointed-commentary.html

A windy day.  I saw my husband off as he headed to work.  Minutes later, the sound of aluminum cat food cans tumbling into the streets alerted me that the garbage and recycling he had pulled t...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2019/02/garbage-day.html

My kids and I planted bulbs today.  What a difference one week makes!  The spring warmth has brought everyone outdoors.  People are walking and bicycling by the house.  Cars drive slowly down...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2018/04/finally-spring.html

The weather outside is foul.  Thus far, spring has been little more than a technicality that the everlasting cold has, with obvious contempt, dismissed as irrelevant.  My bulbs and seeds, purch...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2018/04/warming-up.html

Two years after her death, my grandmother, with whom I lived for many years, is often in my thoughts.  The other day, I found her Bible improbably pushed off its place on a shelf and onto the fl...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2018/01/in-which-i-remember-grandma-two-years.html

Much has changed since my last post.  I now live in a dollhouse on a corner lot nestled between the canal and a city park.  We have lived here for one year now and have fallen in love with our ...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2017/11/in-which-i-discuss-my-recent-move.html

It has been an exceptionally slow spring with several false starts.  The flowers poked their daring heads above the ground only to be covered by several inches of snow.  Again and again this wo...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2016/05/battling-spring.html

Note:  I delivered this sermon on the Sunday before Martin Luther King's birthday and two weeks following my grandmother's death at 99 and 1/2 years old. These years have been difficult and un...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2016/02/now-look-here.html

I offer this with my thanks to one of my favorite blogs,  FRIENDLY SKRIPTURE STUDY which recently explored Matthew 6:19-21.  You can link to it here.  "Do not lay up for yourselves treasur...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2015/07/treasures-in-heaven.html

In the summer months, my little sister and I spent most of our days outside.  At the farthest end of our backyard was little, tree-covered flood-bank that snaked along behind the houses.    In...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-valley-of-violets.html

I'm not always sure how I would define courage, but I know that I am not a courageous person. One of my friends, a very practical and soulful woman, has a matter-of-fact way of responding to me w...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2015/02/an-exploration-of-fear-part-1-courage.html

I tried to write something but, as usual, I could not.  So I wrote this instead.  It is just a prayer about writer's block.  Not a very meaningful thing, maybe, but perhaps others know the fe...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2014/12/my-writers-block-prayer.html

My oldest son is seventeen years old now and is in a kind of funny stage between goofy boyhood and thoughtful manhood.  One minute he's as playful as a little kid and the next minute he's all su...

https://hystery.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-touch-me-not-seed.html