I have always been a scientist. It’s not just what I do but who I am. It colors every aspect of my life, affects my worldview. Several years ago I decided I wanted to learn to paint in oils. A dear friend and talented artist took me on as a student. He taught me about color and light and contrast and texture. He gave me a limited pallet and made me mix my colors from very basic ones. This experience was a revelation. When I had looked at a tree as a scientist I had known its ancestry and evolution. I understood its structure, how the xylem and phloem carried its nourishment within it. I saw its leaf structure and knew about its stoma exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen and how the auxins directed its apical meristems to heaven or earth. I still knew all those things and saw them in the living thing before me. But now I had new eyes, artist’s eyes that understood the leaf was yellow and blue, knew that without red in the proper quantities I would never make the bark seem real. I saw texture and shadow and dancing highlights. The artist and the scientist both saw the tree, and both sets of eyes, each in their own way, saw a thing of beauty.

As usual in my world, things are coming in groups. Lately I've been hearing a lot about initiations. Most of what I'm hearing indicates to me that folks have lost sight of what initiations are supposed to mean. Among those folks are the people who are doing the initiating.

Somehow, somewhere a good many witches and Pagans got the idea that, after many months, perhaps even years, some authority figure confers upon a struggling unworthy the honor of becoming one of the in-crowd. At some point, after becoming suitably worthy, this person has the privilege of subjecting others to abuse until they, too, are deemed suitable for becoming a member of the in-crowd. Failure to tote and fetch, the bad taste to express an independent opinion, or some other real or imagined infraction negates all time at task, and the initiation never comes. No ticket to the in-crowd, no right to abuse others.

Once upon a time, for a long time in fact, I was a Baptist. One day the minister of the church I attended, whom I had known in my youth of church camp and Bible school, used the pulpit to tell his congregation why it was that he was running for the school board. I walked out in the middle of his sermon. He called me later at home to ask if I was sick. I explained that I had left because he had offended me. Brother Charlie had been explaining that he needed to be on the school board to stop the schools from teaching evolution. I was even then a scientist and researcher. His attempts to explain how evolution was impossible and that teaching it was wrongheaded at best and sinful at worst, had been too much for me. The result of the hour-long phone conversation Charlie and I had was that he told me I couldn't believe in God and believe in evolution. I replied that he was incapable of telling me what I could and couldn't believe because that was between God and me, and Brother Charlie didn't enter into the picture at all. I ceased to be a Baptist that day.

In this issue of The Rune [Winter, 1999], Fiona Firefall reviews for us some fiction with a Pagan point of view. These books are fun reading and seemed to me fair in their depictions of Paganism, albeit in a fictional context appropriate to moving the story along in an exciting way. But you'll find as you go to the movies, the video rental store, or the bestseller stand at the big, chain bookstores, magic and witchcraft are popping up everywhere. And the representations of magical people are very often favorable. Practical Magic and Sleepy Hollow depict both use and misuse of magic by witches, most of whom not only are not evil, but are even charming and likable. In the Harry Potter books (numbers one, two and three on the New York Times Best Seller List as I write this) the protagonist finds a place for himself through magic. Television's Buffy the Vampire Slayer's best friend, Willow, calls herself Wiccan and casts darned effective spells. Charmed features a whole family of witches. What can all this mainstream magic mean?

A consequence of growing older is knowing more people who are coming to the end of their lives. Still, it seemed I went to more than my fair share of funerals this year.

Funerals are interesting affairs. They are part reunion, part tribute. They can be sad, but sometimes other emotions well up. Old family battles can be revisited, old friendships rekindled, new friendships begin -- and new battles. You may find strength and competence in someone unexpected. Another you always relied on may fall apart. What you remember about the departed person may not be at all what you expected or even what anyone e1se remembers.

From time to time questions arise about degrees of Wiccan initiations. What are degrees, what do they mean, by whom and how are the levels determined? Do degrees indicate a hierarchy of authority or a level of training and experience or something else entirely? Those who regard any degree as bragging rights, as in "I'm an eighteenth degree black belt and can whup you," pretty much have no place in Wicca, or so say most of us who rejected the hierarchy of monotheism long ago. However, I've noticed an unsettling tendency of folks trying to sell something (like books, courses or other services) to declare that they have so many years of experience or so many and kinds of training and certificates. I suppose it's nice to think your author, teacher or service provider knows more than you do, but years and certificates have only limited value if the heart, soul and mind are not sound. Of course, there is also the tendency to time warp -- just as Pagan standard time means things will get started from fifteen minutes to two hours after the stated starting time, so some people can bend time to turn five years of experience into ten or the ever popular thirteen years. But none of that addresses the question, what are the use of degrees and what do they really mean?

A few weeks ago my household engaged in a lively discussion of Who might endow one with the role of Pagan pope, capable of excommunicating the unfaithful. This ultimately led us to reminiscences about abuses of power, gossip and character assassination, and Witch Wars we have known and loved.

I have the dubious honor of having survived direct association with or fallout from at least five separate Witch Wars. They are bound to occur in an environment where passions exist that are as strongly held as those involving religion. When sex and politics are thrown in, fires are bound to break out. Of course, no one wins these wars. The casualties often include dignity, truth and community cohesion. The central figures may get over themselves fairly quickly, but the flames of conflict are gleefully fed long afterward by misguided "friends" and followers or, worse yet, by those who delight in grief, woe and contention.

The Kansas City Disease is probably not confined to this region, but I have observed it to be very prevalent in this area. The affliction is no respecter of social status, race or focus of interest. My associates and I have been tracking it for years and have nearly given up hope of its ever being cured or even treated. What, you may well ask, are the symptoms, signs and causes of the Kansas City Disease? That is a bit hard to explain without advanced technical jargon. Perhaps a few illustrations of the insidious results of this tragic paralysis will help.

Several years ago the people who wanted to draw attention to the beautiful historic site, Longview Farm, organized an open house with tours and information on the Long family. The Longs were very wealthy, well-known horse breeders and active in the formation of the American Royal. Their in-town home now houses the Kansas City Museum which has in its possession many of the Longs' carriages and other interesting artifacts. Because the Longs were so important in this area and because there was much interest in Longview Farm, most reasoning people would have assumed that the farm tour organizers, the Kansas City Museum and perhaps even the American Royal organizers would have regarded this time as a golden opportunity to work out a cooperative effort that, at the very least, would encourage visitors of the one facility to check out the others. Unfortunately for everyone, the Kansas City Disease was at its full strength. Each regarded their activities and foci as unique and unrelated. "This is our event and not theirs. They have nothing to do with each other." Except, of course, the Long Family, the history of Kansas City and the general interest and benefit of the community.

In the deepest, darkest winter they begin to arrive, the stuff of dreams. I could feel the longing rising in me as I poured over them--the seed catalogs. Could spring have been far behind when Burpee was promising me tomato plants guarenteed to bear heavily with fruits of extraordinary flavor?

In that bleak time I dreamed of gardens impossibly rich. When spring finally does arrive, the reality of the hard work involved in turning the soil, planting the seeds, removing the weeds dampens my ardor a bit, but one magical, dreamlike element remains. Hard work, nibbling animals, bad weather and the general neglect because I've gotten too busy doing other things won't prevent the real miracle of spring from happening. In spite of it all, a seemingly lifeless seed will become a green and living thing.

I met an extrodinary woman this autumn. She has been wealthy. She has been poor. She has borne children and buried some of them. For a living she uses some of the most advanced technology available and for fun she employs some of the more primitive technologies of American history. Among the things she has learned in her life is that living simply is indeed simple.

She is one of those lucky individuals who has managed to create a job for herself that allows her to work from home via FAX, modem and telephone. But during the summer, for fun, she took a part-time job giving tours of a water-powered grain mill. Using the grain from this mill, she has made many loaves of her own bread. Next year she plans to grow her own grain and to follow it from seed to loaf along its entire journey. In the process she has learned about the people who built the mill, brought their grain to it, lived and worked around it.