Yvonne Aburrow
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To the library!
Changing Paths challenge 18 — throwback Thursday. This was my local library when I was a kid. It’s where I discovered Greek mythology, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Mary Stewart’s Arthurian trilogy, Robin Hood, Roger Lancelyn-Green, Geoffrey Trease, Henry Treece, and many more. I was introduced to Cynthia Harnett by a teacher at…
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Interfaith relationships
Great new post from John Beckett on interfaith relationships. Our wider society tends to assume that couples will follow the same religion, and generally they do. But interfaith marriages have been a thing for a very long time, whether between Christians and Jews, Protestants and Catholics, or any other combination – including Pagans and people…
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Deep magic
Changing Paths challenge day 17 — deep magic The deepest magic that I know is love. Not sacrificial love, not romantic love, but the everyday magic of connection, nourishing and soul-satisfying.
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Stories
Changing Paths challenge day 16 — stories. The power of stories to change and challenge a person’s worldview is immense. My worldview was definitely informed by reading A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin, Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, The Writing on the Hearth by Cynthia Harnett (now sadly forgotten by…
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Wibbly wobbly
Changing Paths challenge day 14: changing paths. Changing paths is a wibbly-wobbly thing. During the process, I was all over the place. It was like having the bends (you know, the thing where a diver rises too quickly to the surface and gets cramps) or being on a giant scary roller coaster ride. That’s why…
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Things I miss
Changing Paths challenge day 13 — things I do miss about my old path. Unitarian hymns — specifically the earth-based ones like Peter Mayer’s “Blue Boat Home” (which doesn’t get sung often enough in the UK), “Mother Spirit” by Norbert Čapek, and nature-based ones like “Daisies are our silver” and “Spirit of Life” of course,…
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Things I don’t miss
Changing Paths challenge day 12 — things I don’t miss about the traditions I have left.
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Lover of leaving
Changing Paths challenge day 11 — why I left I left Unitarianism in the end because of archetypes. The archetype that fits me the best is that of the witch, and it’s an archetype that sits uncomfortably in the Unitarian path. (The combination may work for others: didn’t work for me.) I left Christianity because…
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Still friends
Changing Paths challenge day 10 — still friends. I’m still friends with several Unitarians, either in person or on social media. Last September two of our longest-standing Unitarian friends from the UK came to visit us in Canada and we had a great time together. A quote from one of them found its way into…
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Smash that Protestant lens
Great piece from John Beckett this morning which covers some really good points about how to write about different religions, why the word “religion” should not be used as a synonym for Christianity, and how not all religions fit the “Protestant lens” (the way people tend to use the Protestant paradigm as a way to…
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Old friends
Changing Paths challenge day 9 — old friends. Although Unitarianism * / Unitarian Universalism wasn’t my path, I still value many of their ideas and values. They’re green, they’re LGBT+ inclusive or at least welcoming, they were the first to ordain women ministers (the Universalists in 1860, the English Unitarians in 1904), among the first…
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My old path
Changing Paths challenge day 8 — my old path The photos in this post represent the comforting and ancestral aspects of Christianity. They’re of Kilpeck church in Herefordshire, which is a very beautiful church and has a Sheela na Gig corbel. There are many familiar cultural aspects of Christianity such as carol services and harvest…
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Devotion, awe, reverence
Changing Paths challenge 7 — devotion “devotion (n.) c. 1200, devocioun, “profound religious emotion, awe, reverence” (also relates to vow) —Etymology Online What provokes awe in me is immensity — the immense depths of space, the infinite number of stars, the dancing curtains of light in the Northern Lights, or a huge sweeping mountain range;…
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Ritual
Changing Paths challenge 6 — ritual Candle flames flickering, incense smoke curling in the twilight, standing in a circle of firelight, chanting sacred words. Deep in the woods where everything is transformed by the moonlight. Where the warm summer rain falls softly on the leaves. The atmosphere of ritual is like no other: electrifying, life-enhancing,…
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Cinco de Mayo
Happy Cinco de Mayo! I didn’t know anything about this festival so I looked it up, and apparently it’s a minor holiday in México celebrating the defeat of an invading French army by a small Mexican army at the Battle of Puebla (1862). But it’s celebrated in the USA by the Mexican diaspora. Originally this…
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