the sun also rises...
Mom and I were talking the other day about the names my younger brother and his wife are considering for their second daughter, who will be making her grand entrance shortly. And we were discussing the likely parallels with my Dad’s family. My older brother will likely follow Dad’s pattern of an eldest daughter and three sons. My younger brother (who I have affectionately dubbed ‘She Shooter’) will likely have all daughters. But if the pattern holds true, it puts me in the position of the uncle who traveled the world, got married in his forties and had one son-of-his-old-age. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
Somehow the conversation wandered to a story of a family member allegedly celebrating the solstice by dancing naked on the roof of a skyscraper. Yes, in fact there are pagans in the family, or perhaps more properly Neo-Pagans… I am not sure how these things work, perhaps they are Free Reformed Neo-Pagans of America…but whatever branch or sect, some of my dearly beloved relatives worship naked with drums. Pretty cool, huh? So there was an alleged skyscraper incident. And it got me to wondering about a couple of things:
What if the sun were a person, a deity. Would it really find naked folk gyrating at solstice-time all that interesting? I mean this is the same sun that travels over the Amazon basin every day, and European beaches. It sees lots and lots of naked folk probably doing lots and lots of different things every day. Although I suppose the same could be said for singing or praying or sacrificing animals for that matter.
And getting back to skyscrapers… what if the events of September 11th hadn’t been an act of terrorism? What if a couple of jets were trying to make up some time at the beginning of a transcontinental flight by sort of jetting over downtown Manhattan? And at the same time a group of aging hippies had decided to welcome the September mid-morning sun with some naked drumming and dancing atop a skyscraper as they are apparently wont to do. The pilots are minding their own business, concentrating on the intricacies of modern aviation when WHOAH… a blinding flash of bright white, wrinkle-ridden naked hippie-flesh gyrating on the spire of the Chrysler building! I certainly don’t mean to make light of those tragic events, but imagine how much simpler the six years since would have been if it was a simple religious accident instead of a horrible act of religious war.
Think of it. Pagan terrorism would be decidedly easier to deal with than Islamic terrorism. With Muslim fundamentalists you have to watch out for homemade explosives, guerrilla tactics, and WMDs. Pagans wouldn’t use nukes for fear of harming the Earth. At worst you would have to watch out for a sacrificial dagger or something, and much of the time they are naked, and have no place to hide their knives.
There isn’t an officially pagan country to invade (none that I know of anyway). There are a lot of nations out there that are essentially pagan, but nobody really makes it official. And even if there were one, it would be much easier to prosecute a war against them. It can’t be too difficult to bomb folks back to the Stone Age if they are already 95% of the way there. Plus, it seems like most American pagans I know are pacifists, though admittedly fairly militant in their pacifism.
All in all, though, I guess the world is what it is, things swing how they swing, and you rarely get to pick your fights unless you pick your fights. And I am really kind of glad it is the Islamic fundies we are up against and not the pagan folk, because I think it really pisses them off that not only do we HAVE naked-skyscraper-drum-dancing-knife-wielding-hippie-pacifists here, but we let them VOTE and we care about them and hug them on the holidays… at least when they have their clothes on.
Somehow the conversation wandered to a story of a family member allegedly celebrating the solstice by dancing naked on the roof of a skyscraper. Yes, in fact there are pagans in the family, or perhaps more properly Neo-Pagans… I am not sure how these things work, perhaps they are Free Reformed Neo-Pagans of America…but whatever branch or sect, some of my dearly beloved relatives worship naked with drums. Pretty cool, huh? So there was an alleged skyscraper incident. And it got me to wondering about a couple of things:
What if the sun were a person, a deity. Would it really find naked folk gyrating at solstice-time all that interesting? I mean this is the same sun that travels over the Amazon basin every day, and European beaches. It sees lots and lots of naked folk probably doing lots and lots of different things every day. Although I suppose the same could be said for singing or praying or sacrificing animals for that matter.
And getting back to skyscrapers… what if the events of September 11th hadn’t been an act of terrorism? What if a couple of jets were trying to make up some time at the beginning of a transcontinental flight by sort of jetting over downtown Manhattan? And at the same time a group of aging hippies had decided to welcome the September mid-morning sun with some naked drumming and dancing atop a skyscraper as they are apparently wont to do. The pilots are minding their own business, concentrating on the intricacies of modern aviation when WHOAH… a blinding flash of bright white, wrinkle-ridden naked hippie-flesh gyrating on the spire of the Chrysler building! I certainly don’t mean to make light of those tragic events, but imagine how much simpler the six years since would have been if it was a simple religious accident instead of a horrible act of religious war.
Think of it. Pagan terrorism would be decidedly easier to deal with than Islamic terrorism. With Muslim fundamentalists you have to watch out for homemade explosives, guerrilla tactics, and WMDs. Pagans wouldn’t use nukes for fear of harming the Earth. At worst you would have to watch out for a sacrificial dagger or something, and much of the time they are naked, and have no place to hide their knives.
There isn’t an officially pagan country to invade (none that I know of anyway). There are a lot of nations out there that are essentially pagan, but nobody really makes it official. And even if there were one, it would be much easier to prosecute a war against them. It can’t be too difficult to bomb folks back to the Stone Age if they are already 95% of the way there. Plus, it seems like most American pagans I know are pacifists, though admittedly fairly militant in their pacifism.
All in all, though, I guess the world is what it is, things swing how they swing, and you rarely get to pick your fights unless you pick your fights. And I am really kind of glad it is the Islamic fundies we are up against and not the pagan folk, because I think it really pisses them off that not only do we HAVE naked-skyscraper-drum-dancing-knife-wielding-hippie-pacifists here, but we let them VOTE and we care about them and hug them on the holidays… at least when they have their clothes on.
posted by yonderincarp at 14:01
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