A new year awaits

We passed a pretty sedate Yule.  Hampered, as it was, by catching COVID a couple of weeks before.  Still, we had a nice celebration with family and shared a drink with those we lost this year.

Big things are planned for 2022 and beyond... 

"...For Man is the joy of Man."

For a change, the subject is actually heathen today. Coming, as it does, from the Havamal. I'm not normally a big fan of the Havamal. It is a bit piecemeal for my liking and comes across as a dumping ground for dozens of odd snippets of quotes, probably taken out of context.

I have a friend who is quite a solitary person. He doesn't really keep in touch with his family. I'm not sure what his relationships with his other friends are like, but we only indulge in occasional, superficial interaction these days. So, I've come to think of him as a bit of a loner, you might say. The other thing about him is that he sometimes has trouble dealing with life. Emotionally, he can be quite fragile. Like me, he too has a long and bitter history with the black dog of depression. Like me, he shares issues with self image now and then.

As a heathen, I have a tendency to link those two aspects of his character. The only reason I feel I handle life's tests better than he does is that I keep in touch with my extended family. I also have a network of friends with whom I am very close. So, when life bowls me a googlie, I have them to fall back on. Not really in the sense of sharing my woes with them or using them as a sounding board for my feelings. Just knowing that I am a part of their lives and they are a part of mine helps me get through most trials and tribulations with fewer emotional upheavals than he suffers.

Heathenry is about being part of a community. Even solitary heathens are only solitary in the sense they don't have other heathens with whom they associate. They still have family and friends who support them. At least, I hope they do. No man is an island. Nor are women.

As I have always contended, my family is a big part of my heathenry, despite not being heathen themselves. I know some heathens have issues with their families which preclude the kind of relationships that I enjoy with mine. But people do say that the families of the twenty first century are made up of friends - that is very true. We all need that support network. They also provide a greater whole to which we can offer our strength, fealty and toil.

Call yourself a heathen?

When you choose to eschew the normal rituals and paraphenalia of the heathen path, it is liberating on one hand, but can be demoralising on the other. When you don't blot every day, talk to the gods, make offerings, etc it can make times like these - where we are limited in what we can do (i.e. lockdown) difficult. After all, what parts of my daily life at the moment are actually heathen?

I wear a mjolnir pendant. I have a tshirt with odin on it in my wardrobe. I have norse gods as usernames for some of my favourite websites.

Doesn't really seem enough, somehow.

Then again, if I were blotting every day and making offerings to the wights in my local area on heathen feast days, why would those things make me more heathen?

Maybe it is enough to be heathen in your heart and mind - where it counts?

Homeschooling - An opportunity to promote the heathen worldview?

Now we're all homebound, I find myself tasked with earning a crust via working from home on my laptop - but also overseeing the schooling of my 8 year old daughter. Now, she's been given plenty of work by her teacher to keep her busy while she's locked in. But I can't silence that little niggling voice in my head (Loki?) that suggests that I should use this opportunity to teach her about norse mythology, the history of the dark ages, ethics (from a heathen viewpoint, naturally) and other choice matters.

Thing is, I don't want to fill her head with stuff that is important to me, but won't actually help her when she does, finally return to school.

I'm hoping that she picks up a lot of my own heathen worldview through what I playfully refer to as "heathen familial osmosis".

Bolton