Taking a sick day

On top of all my other health problems, I seem to have come down with a cold. My brain is very fuzzy right now, so I'm not sure I could put together a very thoughtful post this week. I will try again Tuesday, November 20.

Fasting - a question

I'm posting much earlier than scheduled because I've been working on my next blog post, and I've hit a snag. I would very much like to share what is currently understood about what happens to your body when you fast, and explaining that is going to go into a lot of biology. So I'd like to make this post comprehensible to people who haven't necessarily been studying biology off and on their entire lives. But on the other hand, I know that everyone gets at least a little exposure to biology in school. Because of that, I don't want to explain things in such a simplified way it feels like I'm talking down to you.

I would greatly appreciate any input you care to offer about what level of biology exposure I should be aiming my post toward. If I don't get any input, I will be using Noel as a sounding-board. Brace yourself, Noel! You're about to get bombarded with biology!

Fasting - some preliminary notes

All right, so here's my plan. I would like to write a post about fasting. It is a subject that has fascinated me for a long time. When I was in my early 20s, I really wanted to be an ascetic. I think I thought it would make my life easier. Anyone who knows me well will attest that that definitely did not happen. Neither the part about becoming an ascetic nor the part about my life being easy. Easy is overrated anyway. Now, there seems to be quite a bit of evidence piling up that our bodies aren't meant to be perfectly well-fed all the time.

However, I would really like to do this topic justice. I don't want to take a cool topic like this and spend thirty minutes talking out my butt, not really saying anything useful. So, that's what I'm going to be doing until you hear from me again. I'll be preparing to give you (I hope) a really useful article on the subject of fasting. I hope you find it as interesting as I do.

Next post: Tuesday, October 30

Please allow me to introduce myself ...

This is what you may have been thinking if you've visited The Viridian Path recently. I know, it saddens Noel and me, too.

Who am I, you may ask? I am Cassandra, and Noel has asked me to help revitalize this blog by writing for it. This plan should work for several reasons. Noel is a man of many interests, so inviting another writer will allow the blog to stay active while still giving each individual writer a chance to pursue other things in life. Noel and I are also very good at motivating each other, so reading what the other one has written will inspire each of us to write more, which will create a delightful feedback loop of literary creativity. Also, while we love each other very much, Noel and I are different people. To have both of us writing on this blog will generate a variety of content and perspectives, which can only make things more interesting for you, dear reader.

Now, back to who I am. This is important, because telling you about who I am will give you an idea about how I'm going to write. Really, I'm doing you a favor; you can decide right now if you just want to skip all the entries with my name on them. I am a woman, mother, wife, and aspiring scientist. I also enjoy music (of many varieties), literature, crafts (particularly of the food and textile variety), and the outdoors. I'm sure these will all come through in my writing at one time or another, but more than any of these things I see myself as a healer. The predominant impulses that have driven me throughout my life have been to understand this universe, to reflect it in all its elegance and beauty through the lens of my mind, and to do what I can to help all its various elements exist in harmony.

I'm looking forward to this; I hope you are, too.

Sorry

Right, then, I was afraid this would happen. I've fallen down on this blogging thing and not been posting quite as much as I intended. I had started to write a post last week, but the subject is rather difficult to write about without being objective or offensive. I really don't want to start bashing any one else's beliefs but I think the topic is relevant. So, that's why you haven't heard from me much lately.

Pagan Blogosphere

Wow! After looking around the Internet for different ways to promote this site, I've managed to stumble onto the wider pagan blogosphere. I'm not sure why I had assumed it would be difficult to find other pagan blogs. For some reason I was still imagining the landscape I had known when Geocities was a popular website.

It's cool, but humbling. There are so many more well informed pagan bloggers out there. One of the neat things I noticed is that other blogging sites keep a list of other blogging sites in their side bar. I like this idea and I think I'll implement it (I'll create a form later for user to submit new links for the list). I'm humbled by others who are already so involved with pagan culture and are reporting issues relevant to that culture.

This has made me realize that when I started thinking about this blog I already had some definite ideas about what I was going to write, and I was ignoring a lot of other issues that touch pagan culture. Now, my dilemma is whether to expand my thinking and start following wider sociopolitical issues as they affect pagans, or should I maintain my focus on the areas of paganism that I'm passionate about?