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[macnacailli]

The hospital is starting to get its presentations and displays ready for "Spiritual Care Awareness Week". For several years this has includes a series of small posters introducing a variety of world religions, including Wicca. The person who is reprinting the posters asked me if I wanted to re-do the Wicca poster to reflect paganism more broadly

Comments

[desert_boy]

That sounds cool. I would be interested in seeing that poster.

[macnacailli]

Here's the content. The only thing missing is a little tree design by the main title, and a little pentagram, triskel, and Thor's hammer, which are next to Wicca, Druidry, and Reconstructionism respectively

[eumelosdrizzle]

You're doing a great service for the community B. keep it up!

[macnacailli]

Thanks, Your're encouragement is appreciated.

[eumelosdrizzle]

See you later today...

[marytek]

yea!!!

[macnacailli]

Thanks, Your're encouragement is also appreciated.

[marytek]

well, you are a great "ambassador" and your knowledge is quite wide-ranging.

You are doing well, young grasshopper. Be my chaplain when I go to hospital :D... it will be up at Sunnybrooke, not sure if you can make the trek.

[macnacailli]

I can find my way. :)
I think there is a free shuttle bus that goes from Women’s College Hospital, downtown, directly to Sunnybrooke's front door. Otherwise its one subway rite and one bus ride away (just don't know which bus).

...and thanks for the kind words (everyone). It’s not easy ploughing into a profession that is unfamiliar with considering any non-Christian faith when discerning training and experience... on behalf of a 'community' of folks who aren't always sure what community is, what we want, or how to value the contributions of anyone outside our particular clique, coven, or coffee klatch. Of course, you’re familiar with that sort of difficulty yourself, so you know an 'atta-boy or 'atta-girl can go a long way (and has to).

[thewronghands]

That's awesome; go you. (And I would certainly call my path nature-honoring -- that's really central!)

[macnacailli]

Thanks for the encouragement.

I think a lot of recon pagans and ethnic pagans place importance on nature and our relationship with the divine in nature. I know it’s important to me.

But some folks seem to have taken an extreme stance that runs something like, "As I'm informed by a source-culture, I'm a cultural pagan. Culture and nature are in opposition (which is really an Enlightenment idea, with its roots in Christianity, Christian Platonism, and certain kinds of Gnosticism, and usually foreign to the very source-culture they claim to honour) so I'm not nature-honouring. Besides, gods forefend I should ever be confused with a pagan of any other stripe than my own.

[misslynx]

Yeah, there seems to be a tendency, especially among much of the NFP crowd, to assume that any emphasis whatsoever on nature in anyone's spirituality = fluffy nonsense from people whose idea of nature comes from Disney movies.

I'm sure part of that is a reaction to people who really do approach it in a fluffy way, but I have a sneaking suspicion that a large part of the current disdain for nature-based spirituality is more based on the fact that, if practiced in a serious and committed way, it requires actual work, beyond just reading books and surfing web sites. Too many of the self-professed Serious Pagans[TM] out there seem to be purely armchair practitioners, and dismissive of anyone who actually does anything, because clearly they are all Doing It Wrong.

[thewronghands]

They don't even have to do anything magical... I'd be happy if half of them would just start recycling or something. [rueful grin] ("But that's not in the lore! Sustainability is totally just your UPG..." [smite smite smite])