Hail the Disir! Hail the Bubby!

There have been a number of philosophical questions I've wrestled with in the last few months of my journey, and I've considered posting some of them here.  In fact, I still might.  But right now, I want to do something else.

I want to talk about my Grandmother.

My grandmother, Arlene Janet Fuller (nee Dode) was born on December 7th, 1932.  Were she still alive, she'd be 79 today.  Married once, she was the mother of 6, the grandmother of 13, and the great-grandmother of... a lot (and counting).  That in and of itself IS an accomplishment, but it's not the accomplishment that made me want to write about her today.

No, what prompted this is a facebook post one of my aunts made sharing Louie Armstrong singing What a Wonderful World.  Bubby (that's what her grandkids called her) loved that song.  It really was how she saw the world.  Bubby was one of those magical people who always saw the best in the world and the people around her.  She was generous to a fault, taking in everyone around her and loving them no matter what.  She loved her family so much, and was always at the center of everything.  The kitchen table was a magical place.  We always sat around it not only to eat (she was German enough that Food was Love and everyone was fed, even if they didn't want to be) but to play cards, to laugh, to hear stories, to debate politics and religion and all of the things people aren't supposed to talk about in polite society.  It was from Bubby that I learned that the kitchen is not only the heart, but the life of the home.  It was from her that I learned generosity, watching her give away her bus money or her coat to someone she saw as needing it more than she did.  Bubby exemplified the nine noble virtues in everything she did, and for me at least, she is in many ways the standard that I compare what it is to be not only human, but humane.

Bubby's children were born over a twenty year spread (maybe fifteen?), and her grandchildren range from 35 to still in grade school.  If there was one gift I could give my younger cousins, it would be to have known her as I did.  To have had the chance to take the bus downtown on Black Friday (back before it was the complete bedlam it is now), and walk around looking at the displays in the windows at Famous and Barr, to have a cup of hot coco at her favorite restaurant, to be given a five dollar bill and turned loose to do your shopping in the mall before catching the bus back up to North County to go home.  I'm saddened that, should I ever have children, they'll never know their great-grandmother and what an amazing woman she was except through the stories we pass down to them.  My only consolation is taken from the Havamal.

[77] Cattle die, | and kinsmen die,
And so one dies one's self;
But a noble name | will never die,
If good renown one gets.

-Hávamál 

If there was anything Bubby had, it was good renown.  For the last few years of her life she suffered from severe Alzheimers, going from being one of the most sociable people I have ever known to someone who didn't know who any of us were.  It was heartbreaking to watch, in fact it's still heartbreaking now.  Even so, her funeral was so crowded that there was standing room only, so many were the lives she'd touched.  The funeral director even comment on it, and how shocked he was.  But then, he didn't know her.

This has been cathartic for me to write.  I miss Bubby.  We all do.  These days as I'm cleaning my house or doing the dishes, I think of all the times I watched her do the same.  I think of her often, in fact.  And I know she still loves us and is here for us, no matter where she is now.

So tonight I ask you to think of your own departed loved ones, and if you're one of her brood, lift a glass to Bubby.  Keep her memory and spirit alive because in the end, that's all any of us can really ask for.

On Becoming Heathen

I suppose the best place to start is at the beginning.  That is the common wisdom when it comes to such self-assessment, even if common wisdom seems like an oxymoron.

Still, it's probably best to start there, if for no other reason than to understand where I'm coming from so that I can look back at the path I've taken.  I'd like to say this was a difficult decision, but in truth it wasn't.  I'd like to say that I've had some deep insight that put my feet on this path.  Again, sadly, not the case.  I didn't have some life altering, earth shattering moment of EUREKA-ness.  Not at all.  That does not mean that the voice in my heart was any less profound to me.  Merely that the story isn't as exciting as some of the others I've heard.  Maybe that's because the Gods didn't need to throw a fit to get my attention.  Wow.  I hadn't thought of it that way before.  Maybe the people who have the most amazing stories about finding the Path had them, not because the Gods like them more or something equally childish, but because they needed them to get moving in a new and different direction.  Where as I have never had that problem.  Ask anyone who's known me for a long time and they well tell you that I'm the original source of Helium Hand.  Something comes along, and the hand goes up to volunteer.  I'm not the best at follow through (in fact, updating a blog might be beyond me...) but the initial push to generate excitement I'm a master at.

Anyway, back to my story.

One of my dear friends and I co-write a lot of fun short stories.  Not to try and publish them, but because we enjoy writing together.  Often we write in one of the many universes others have created, known as Fan Fiction.  On this particular day, though, we were instead playing around with history.  I think the actual impetus was a short story revolving around the idea of what would have happened if William had NOT been the Conqueror.  If instead, the Anglo-Saxons had beaten him back in 1066 and stranded the Norman armies in a strange land.  Or some such.  Whatever the premise was, I started looking online for information about Anglo-Saxon weddings, which I believe led me to the wikipedia page on Germanic Paganism, which... somehow or other, led me to the Asatru Alliance homepage.  Which I read.

Twice.

In particular the Q and A page About Asatru.

Now, when I read it, I had already been a Recovering Catholic.  I hadn't been to church (other than the occasional wedding, funeral, baptism, or visit with the inlaws, in years.  Since 2004, to be precise.  I had long known what I wasn't, and that was any form of Christian.  Still, I had NO idea what I was.  I read that website, and something clicked.  A loud click.  The more I read, the more I felt a connection.  A logical connection in my heart and in my head.  This was it.  This was right.  This was what I was supposed to do.

I don't expect it to all be so obvious to me, so smooth.  That's one of the reasons I'm starting this blog.  I need a place to organize the strange thoughts that pop into my head at two in the morning.  And if this reaches someone else with the same questions, so much the better.  I find I think more critically when ideas are flying fast and hot.  I also don't expect this to be easy.  But then, nothing of real value ever is.

And so here it begins.  My beginning.  I don't know what the future will hold, but I look forward to my journey along the path.