Forget. Remember.

I'm back in school.

Three weeks ago, I was overjoyed at this. Possibilities opened wide before me and I fantasized about the homework I would have. Oh, the great things that might occur!

Now, as previously mentioned in my blog, I am grateful. I am so grateful that I live in a country where I am allowed and encouraged to pursue my education. I'm grateful that I can almost sort of afford to go to school. I'm grateful that my husband and family and friends fully support this idea.

I stopped going to school seven years ago. I dropped out of the community college where I was majoring in administration of justice and toying with literature and French. I left the country, came home, and got a job. I started a long stint of wasting my youth and teaching myself things from books and Teh Intertubes. Somehow in that seven years, I forgot a lot of things.

I forgot how tiresome it is to be lectured for six weeks on something I could have picked up in eight hours. I forgot how grating it is to have an instructor who posesses neither feeling nor flair for the subject he teaches. I forgot how I used to lose myself in any bit of minutiae in the classroom in my boredom. (Holes in the ceiling tiles, ripples in the carpet.) I forgot how much I appreciated art on the walls of the the classroom to give me something to think about and still look studious. I forgot how unapologetically, vocally ignorant many of my fellow students were and still are. I forgot that my generation forgot how to read, and subsequent generations are out to make us look like ravenous bibliophiles. I forgot that I have not really learned anything new from any teacher since I was 12.*

So, what's different now? Now I'm too old to screw around. That's the long nd the short of it at this point. I'm not 18. I can't give up and fly to Europe and dismiss the idea of ever having a degree. No matter how dull these next few years prove to be, I have to slog through it. I have to do well and in many cases feign interest in order to do well.I have to bide my time, pay my dues, and play the game.

Funny that; in high school those exact phrases made me screech about the purity of the auto-didact and the corruption and bias of the system.

Now, it fills me with a sense of grim, determined dread. I'm back in school.

Now I remember.



*Rich Herold, my art history teacher in 1999-2000 is the notable exception to this rule. I learned more in his class than I ever picked up on my own. His was my favorite class in all of high school and since.

The Spirit of Elijah

The Elison family reunion this weekend was a great success. Amy and Phil came bringing their charming kidlings along with them. Tiana and Ryan brought baby Quin to meet much of the family for the first time. Cousins flew in from far-off states and people we haven't seen in years came out of the woodwork for the event. We all had a great time.
The theme was "The Apple Doesn't Fall Far from the Tree." Amy designed a large apple tree with branches representing the branches of the family. Individual names were written on the apples and arranged in family groups. It was a very cute idea. All the kids got to run like mad through the stake center and play with each other. I met people John is related to that I hadn't met before, and got to see quite a few that I hadn't seen since my wedding.
I had a couple of long moments of Other. John's family is wonderful to me and always has been. They have gone out of their way to include me and I really love them. However, I just never quite belong. I come from a totally different planet than these lovely people. I was really struggling with feeling out of place the first few days, and Amy and Phil were very helpful with that. When we cut out and labeled the apples, I sat thinking that maybe I shouldn't be an apple. I had this image of a lone pineapple sitting on the branch next to John. Different shape, different color, different part of the world. We put my name on an apple anyway, but I felt foreign just the same.
Amy coordinated the whole reunion this year, passing it off to her cousin Sharon for 2011. Amy spoke with tears in her eyes when she described what it had been like to plan this event. She said that the spirit of Elijah had been in her house for a year. Elijah, the Tishbite. Elijah, the prophet. Malachi 4:6 said that Elijah would "turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers." To Amy, this is what Elijah could do. Elijah, the uniter of families.
As a Pagan, the name Elijah doesn't ring this way for me. When I think of Elijah, I think of 1 Kings 18:40: "And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there." Elijah had the priests of Baal and the prophets of Asherah put to death for no other reason than they dared to worship their own gods in their own land. Elijah, the murderer. Elijah, the zealot.
I cannot escape my fundamental differences here. I can only seek common ground and love my in-laws. I can only make sense of history and interfaith one moment at a time and enjoy the complexity of the culture into which I've married.
I drew a tarot card on the day of the reunion dinner. I pulled the Apple Branch, one of the fey gift cards in the deck. A gift. The fruit of the Garden, cut it crosswise and it's the fruit of the Goddess. I watched our nieces and nephews eat apples and reach out to one another. I saw my name hanging on the tree.
It is beautiful to be part of this family. It is more than enough.

Author! AUTHOR!

I was inspired recently by my best friend Di. When she truly loves a book, she will often track down the writer and send them a nice email. I resolved to try it the next time I read something that really moved me.

The occasion came sooner than I thought with Wicca's Charm by Catherine Edwards Sanders. I was moved, but not in the happy-fun way. Below is my hastily typed letter to her webmaster. I don't suppose I need to elaborate on my not reccomending this book...

Ms. Sanders-

I borrowed your book this weekend from the Santa Monica Public Library. I am feeling more and more fortunate that I didn't buy it.

In your book, you point out how displeased you are that Pagans stereotype Christians as ignorant, Bible-thumping, Evangelical southern hicks. You then cleverly combat this stereotype by portraying Pagans as drug-addled, ill-educated teenage slackers. You then follow it up with a "Jesus is panacea!" cautionary wail that falls just a little short of original, but hits somewhere near the borders of the Land of Irony.

Your scholarship is poor. Your interviews are badly planned, chosen, and conducted. Your preconceived notions bleed through the book like the smell of library air. Your Christian sense of charity stays your hand before the edge of outright insult, but just. This book is a pathetic attempt at a grass-roots ethnography and a failure.

It fails to inform anyone of what Pagans are truly like. It fails to impress me, a Pagan, that a Christian writer is capable of anything like fairness on the subject of religions not their own. It failed to teach you anything, it seems.

Thank you for continuing to assassinate the collective character of a minority faith. Thank you for ensuring that I will be asked, again and again if I worship the devil or harm children. Thank you for your bigotry and small-minded lack of insight.

It galvanizes smart Pagans like me to do this work ourselves. We need puppet journalists like yourself to remind us how much ignorance is still out there.

Blessed be,

Meghan Elison
Pagan Meghan
youtube.com/pagantv