Oh, good, something else to look at.

You may or may not be interested to know that I've started a tumblr.  It will mostly wind up being things I've found that I find amusing.  Enjoy.

http://jenniforensic.tumblr.com/

On "Religious Freedom"

So after a lovely afternoon in the park being all pagan and stuff, we were on our way home and passed a church.  This church has one of those great changeable light-board things (wonder how much -that- cost out of folks' tithes, but I digress).  It read "STAND UP FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM".

Okay, so I've been hearing this cry a lot again of late -- you know, the "CHRISTIANS ARE BEING PERSECUTED IN THIS NATION" one -- and, well, I'm frankly tired of it.  I find it absolutely laughable, truthfully.  I mean, are people knocking on your doors and dragging you out of your houses to beat you or something, and all the news outlets have either missed it or are participating in some huge cover-up?  Are people burning arcane symbols of some form or another on your lawns?  Are you being killed because you're Christian?  What's that?  Didn't think so. 

Do you even know what "persecution" means?  If you could find someone left over from the Crusades, I'd bet they could tell you.

Some of this, I understand, probably has to do with the gutting of DOMA earlier this week.  You know what?  Get the fuck over it.  You want to believe "traditional" marriage at the time the Christ was alive was 1 male + 1 female?  That's a nice thing to think, but it's pretty wrong.  See, numerous forms of both polygyny and polyandry were common in -many- societies, including -gasp- the Homeland of the Bible!  And and AND!  Abe himself had concubines despite being married to Sarah, which, when you really think about it, means that he (like many other notables in the Bible) kept a harem of women on the side in a form of sexual slavery that's, well, pretty awful.  So shut up, back off, and go have a nice, big, heaping helping of real-live history and anthropology along with your Bible study.  If you start feeling funky when wibbly-wobbly bits of truth start sinking in a little, you might want to talk to a counselor or take a Xanax or something.

Beyond that, okay.  Like I said, I spent the afternoon outdoors, being all pagan-y and suchlike.  I tend to do that, being a pagan and all.  I find my gods in nature and in other people (crazy talk, I know, right?).  I know people who are Christian and are very open about their beliefs -- good for them.  I'm happy that they've found a connection with Deity that serves them well and gives them purpose in life.  The fact that they're unkind and dishonest is, evidently, beside the point to most people, but it burns me something awful.  You know why?  Because their Bible also tells them that  "'A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads" (Our good friend Leviticus, 20:27).  Guess what?  Most of the people I know who are mediums, "spiritists", "fortune-tellers", or whatever Christians call us are actually good, decent, hardworking people who would give you the shirt off their back if it would help someone else.  Moreover, they wouldn't step on an ant, let alone stone another person for any reason (except maaaaaybe something especially heinous like child molestation or murder).  Ever hear of the Jains, for instance?  If you haven't, look them up.  I'll wait here.

[Of course, my standard disclaimer here applies: most of the Christians I count among my friends are also decent, hardworking, shirt-off-their-back people, so please don't get all up in arms thinking I mean you if you're reading this.  Also, there are a whole lot of unkind and dishonest pagans, too, just like there are unkind and dishonest athiests, agnostics, Jews, Muslims, Zoroastrians ... you get the point.]

The one question that crosses my mind is this: do Christians not have faith that Deity is big enough, grand enough, and encompassing enough to believe that there -might- be more than one road to finding Him/Her/It/Them?  Is their faith not great enough to include all of those roads?  Is it not even possible, in their eyes, that their god could be -greater- than even they believe He is?  Is the Christ Himself not remembered as saying " ...Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there." (oh, hey, wait, that's from one of the Gnostic gospels, so I'm betting that doesn't count).

How narrow the Christian view of Deity must be!  How limiting! 

... How sad.  Who are -we-, as tiny meatbags on a bitty marble of a world, to limit the Power of Deity to such an extent?  The vastness of the Universe, the incredible forces that bind us all together -- including Deity -- the fullness of the wonders of Spirit, and all you can worry about is what face it wears?

It breaks my heart to know that people exist this way; but it helps me to understand why so many of the words they speak are from a place of bitterness and hate.

If Deity is limitless to you, and infinite, surely you can find it in your heart to show it in the way you act toward others -- and yourselves.  It's hard, I know it is.  We're human, we're frail, we are fraught with issues and contradictions and fears.  I promise, though, letting go of a fear like that of someone not worshipping the same version as you, or two people who love each other becoming legally married regardless of their sex, is not going to end the world.  It's not even going to put it further on the road toward whatever terrible path we're on --

It's going to pull us back.

Human Nature

"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."

The first time my heart opened, really opened, I wished it closed again immediately. It hurt so much. I couldn't understand why, either. I nearly broke down completely when talking with a Buddhist friend when the conversation got 'round to helping others who were suffering, because "human suffering" is so vast, so monolithic, so impossible to wrap one's head around -- even if you scale it back to one person at a time. It's a great part of my struggle with depression: sometimes, it's my own suffering; sometimes, it's someone else's. Can you imagine becoming so incredibly sad, feeling so incredibly helpless, over someone else's pain?

I'm gonna take a stab in the dark here and say that not too many people understand that feeling. Maybe not those of you who are reading this because you saw it posted on my Facebook, because the chances of your understanding deep empathy are pretty high. That's one of many reasons I call you "friend." Like attracts like and all. My father struggled with a deep sense of empathy, among other things. A strong sense of humanity drove him to do much of what he did in his life -- for good or ill -- and, at the end, nearly did him in. Sure, he was selfish, too. He hung on to the pain he felt and wrapped it around him like a favorite cloak, and used it to justify some of his shittier behavior. Sometimes, I feel that I was rather unfortunate to inherit his sense of empathy. It's driven me to incredible anger, deep depression and overall some very dark places in the recesses of my mind. I wish, instead, that I could go about my business and tend my own garden, happily ignorant of the lives and feelings of my fellow flesh motes. Really, I do. Or, I wish everything could all just be automatically "fixed:: everyone could be happy and carefree, have food in their bellies and a life that filled them with a sense of joy and wonder. Realization of the fact that that will never fucking happen makes me want to punch a hole in the wall next to me.

"But Jenniforensic," you ask, "how do you know it will never happen?" Well, my dear reader, the answer is simple: human nature. It's a concept that's often treated as kind of a "black box," especially among the social sciences. "Human nature" is a great compartment for all those things we cannot somehow logically explain away or pigeonhole. It's where all those behaviors come from that don't seem to have root in, say, upbringing or environment. And, by and large, that compartment tends to be filled with the causes of all the horrible things that we inflict upon each other. There are too few "positive" things -- for lack of a better way to put it -- in there. Those tend to get tossed into another black box: the "human spirit." This is that thing that's glorified every time one of those terrible things from the other box creep out, because it apparently contains things like resilience, humanity, and compassion. You should know I'm actually making my "thoughtfully confused" face while I write this, the one that I make when there's something causing a weird cognitive dissonance in my brain that I feel shouldn't be there, because the reasons for it shouldn't exist, but is.

I'm thinking this through today because a lot has happened lately, globally and locally, that gives me that terrible sense of WTF-fusion. I have this immense perplexity over this "human nature" thing, and primarily this part of it: What is it about us, as big-ol'-brained primates with smartypantsness, resourcefulness and all kinds of talent that causes us to tear each other down, rather than build each other up? Like, why did that old lady find it necessary to bang into me with her cart in the supermarket last week and then give me a dirty look like I'd somehow offended her? (No, that didn't actually happen, it's just an example.) Why did some dumbass with nothing better to do with his time, apparently, knock over a memorial to fallen firefighters? (That actually happened in Trenton about two weeks ago.) Why did two misguided brothers kill three people and destroy the lives of hundreds, if not thousands? (Oh come on, now, I don't have to remind you about that one.) Why are we so cruel?

"Well, that woman is clearly an unhappy person." Fine. Why'd she have to hurt someone else to show it?

"Well, that dumbass didn't understand the value of the memorial." Fine. Why couldn't he have just left it alone?

"Well, those brothers were part of a radicalized sect of some religion." Fine. Why does violence have to be the solution, and why does it have to be justified by pointing out that it's in writing in a holy book? Why was it written there in the first place?  At the end of the day, no matter how many reasons (or excuses) we come up with, questions such as these can all be boiled down to this: No matter what was going on in someone's head or heart, why didn't their sense of humanity stop them from acting incorrectly?

Like many things for Bill O'Reilly, you can't explain it. So, we tend to wind up in that murky black box of "human nature." It's evidently in our nature to act out violently when faced with adversity. Unfortunately, having been a student of human evolutionary history, I honestly can't argue against that very well. We've seemed to co-operate and build communities when it suited us to do so, and fight each other rather than share. In the beginning of our history, this may have made some-- some, mind you -- sense. Here in the crazy-advanced Twenty-First Century (!!!!waitIstilldon'thavemyflyingcarwtf), though, really it doesn't. Or, perhaps more correctly, it shouldn't. There is the potential within us and within this planet to create more than enough resources to support us all, and do it well, if we work together. All this hoarding and moneychanging we're doing really doesn't work for us anymore. Neither does the violence. Granted, just plain hoarding and moneychanging are forms of violence, too, but in this case I'm talking about the interpersonal crap more than anything else. Hitting someone with a grocery cart or blowing someone's legs off isn't even particularly satisfying (not that I would know ... forget I said anything), it's just childish acting out and further illustration of the old axiom that "violence begets violence." And, lest you think I'm just talking about the things that are relatively easily perceived as violent like explosions, I'm not -- I mean all of it. Sexual violence. Emotional violence. Psychological violence. Spiritual violence. All of it. None of it serves us. So much of it anymore is the product of the violence of generations past. That's sort of easily understandable. But ... where does it stop?

Why is it that we, with all our smartypantsness, resourcefulness and so on still choose -- and it is a choice -- to inflict violence, when certainly at this stage we realize that it doesn't serve us anymore? Because we have chosen to. We have chosen the easier path of saying: "This is the way we've always been. As soon as we learned how to make tools, and control fire, we made weapons. We are violent creatures by nature." We have chosen to allow ourselves to stagnate, and to disallow a glorious union to take place: the intersection of "human nature" with "the human spirit." We know that the latter has all that stuff that we like a lot, like crying eagles and hugs and rainbows and puppies, and makes us feel like we can do anything we set our minds to. Is it really going to take some sort of bad-special-effects alien visitation to bring us to the point where we can allow ourselves to become greater than we have historically been as a whole, on an individual basis? Do we really need someone else to remind us that, no matter our philosophical differences, our hearts tell us -- if we care to listen -- that the truest Law is that of Love, and that it can overcome even the basest of black-box tendencies if we permit its enlightenment?

"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature." It's true. One entity, no matter how powerful, cannot change us, and certainly we cannot be changed overnight. We have to do it ourselves, make a conscious choice to do it, one person, one effort at a time. What's more, we have to choose to do it each time. It's often the more difficult choice.

Maybe I'll start by not hitting someone with my grocery cart the next time I go shopping.

Minor Alteration

Yes, I've already changed the name of the blog.  Why?  It's more fitting.  It's certainly descriptive of the mind behind the words, if nothing else.

In the interest of truth in advertising, I don't handle corpses anymore (I might handle their spirits, but not the physical shells).  I identify most strongly with this aspect of my life, however, because the time that I did was likely the single best clearly-defining factor of my mindset and my spirituality.  It was the time that I realized that I can do something that most sane people would avoid (in more ways than one), learned to put my own fears aside for the love of others, and, quite frankly, when I first heard the calling of my heart.

I have always been called to serve others; I believe it was my father who instilled that in me, a little bit more each time he answered the literal siren's call to go where only very special -- or very foolish -- souls would dare.  When I was inducted into the National Honor Society as a student, the tenet I chose to speak on was Service.  I did a lot of volunteering as a youth.  This is not to toot my own horn, mind, but to give you a sense of where I was coming from before I began to walk the Fields of the Dead.

As Top Dollar noted in The Crow, "Childhood's over the moment you know you're gonna die."  I knew this by the time I was six.  One's mortality is not something easily faced.  Every time I've picked up a human bone fragment, every time I've looked into the rotting eyes of a corpse, I've been reminded of that moment when the angels whispered into my ear that my days were numbered, unbidden and unwanted.  Every time I've faced it, and decided that the person in front of me, however torn and broken, needed me more than that fact did.  Or their families.  Or the interest of Justice, who isn't blind at all.

Like nothing else in the Universe, Death is the Great Equalizer, and He comes for us all.  He is the inescapable fact that we can try all we want to avoid, to hide from, or postpone -- but sooner or later, He will embrace us.  Often, it's called unfair; often, He is called evil or cruel.  Such is His lot, such is His place. 

He is neither.

He is Fact.

He Is.

Death, in whatever name you choose to call Him (always, for me, does Death manifest as male), is not something to be feared.  He is a midwife of sorts, a guide to What Lies Beyond, the Keeper of the Gate, the Parter of the Veil.  He is as kind as He can be, given the harsh circumstances.  He knows we fear Him.  I saw Him standing at my father's feet, as Dad dug in his heels and glared back at Him defiantly in his last moments; He waited patiently for Dad to accept the journey ahead, and when Dad was ready, He smiled kindly, took his soul, and they walked on through the Gate together.

He serves.  His service is too often overlooked, too often scorned; but still he serves.  He called me to His service, and now I serve.  I stand witness to the past.  I stand witness to the scars of living.  I honor those who have gone before, and those who are working toward accepting their journey.  I keep their souvenirs, their testaments, their memories.  I hope to build a better world for the living, that they may carry forth into the next life with a sense of joy and wonder.

I serve.  That doesn't mean I'm always happy about it, though.