This weekend is the Conference on Current Pagan Studies at Claremont University. This year our key note speakers are Z Budapest and Hyperion. You still join us and register at the door for two days of interesting topics, great key note speakers, and engaging in current Pagan studies.

For a PDF copy of this flyer see Current Pagan Studies Conference flyer 2012

There will be a beginning class “Introduction to Wheat Weaving” on Saturday. This class focuses on beginning weavings techniques along with straw preparation and sources on books, materials, and local groups. In this class, each student will make at least two weavings: a Bridget’s Cross and Harvest Knot to bring home. All materials and supplies are provided.

We will be teaching an intermediate class “Intermediate Wheat Weaving” on Sunday for those of you who have taken wheat weaving classes or are advanced hand crafters. This class focuses on intermediate weaving techniques. In this class, each student will make a Welsh Harp using a locking technique. All materials and supplies are provided.

The Woven Circle (Angela, Carol and William) is dedicated to teaching arts and crafts as part of our service to the community. Angela is an eclectic Pagan writer and has taught crafts for 20 years. Carol is a bead and fiber artist, who has taught for crafts guilds, both local and regional. William (author of A Pagan Humanist blog) has been part of the Pagan community for over 30 years and has been teaching wheat weaving for over 15 years.

Resources for Straw Art You can buy straw from Black Beard in North Dakota (from Dennis and Sharon Hanson). Also, you can find wheat at Frank’s Cane & Rush Supply(7252 Heil Ave. Huntington Beach, CA 92647 – (714) 847-0707). Both are good places, and good people, to buy from. We recommend two books (yes there are more books but this should start you out just fine):

• The Book of Wheat Weaving and Straw Craft: from simple plaits to exquisite designs. Morgyn Geoffry Owens-Celli. 1997
• Wheat Weaving Plaits & Projects: A Beginner’s Book. Edited by Nan Rohan. Published by The California Wheat Weavers Guild

The American Museum of Straw Art hosts a spectacular collection of straw art from the US and around the world. Also, there is Wheat Goddesses, which is Cora’s web site with her show schedule. Her work is amazing and if you get a chance, please stop by one of her shows to see all the straw art.

Being human means being flawed; that is, being filled with follies and foibles. Notice that all this is about being. Of course Martin Heidegger’s Dasein comes to mind. To follow Heidegger is a long, and often fruitful road; however, here I would like to speak to the problems of just living in the world and ethics.

What I mean by humans are flawed is that we are imperfect, or more perhaps more along the lines of being limited in our knowledge and self-reflection. Knowledge is limited because of biological restrains on memory and perspective. With the advent of technologies (writing and data storage), memory may be of lesser concern. Perspective is what I think as a deep concern. Biological beings may not have the wider perspective to understand everything including ourselves. There is no truly objective view. Science, philosophy, and other disciplines do try to get us closer. Science in general seem very good at this but still the limit is how to step out side of being a biological being in order to find some objective understanding.

What does this mean for ethics? If we are all flawed and perhaps unable to find an objective view of ethics, how then do we live. Some find ethics in revealed truths or in authority. Although these may not always be bad choices, I think a quick look at history will show incidents where they have fallen short (perhaps I understated this a little). Ethics from nature present other concerns. I often turn towards philosophy for my own ethical understanding but there is the problem of which philosophical system to choose.

However, let me return to the idea of being flawed. Many ethical system have standards that most of us do fall short of. Yet, to be human is to understand that being flawed is not an excuse, only a reality that we struggle with. Also, I think that when we take a single path towards ethics, the shortcomings of the path become more apparent. Any single system, no matter how robust can, and often do, leave out or is unable to touch on all the complexities of being human. Am I then suggesting that we act inconsistent. Well, the short answer for now, is yes. Human are filled with follies and foibles but perhaps we should find strength in our flaws. In being able to inconsistent but for the right reasons. Perhaps Kant is right that we should never lie but then again I think there are times we should…to save a life for example.

Over the next year, I will try in my own inconsistent and flawed way take up this theme. Have a great New Year.

This is part of the AAAS Science and Theological Education Project, which is an joint initiative with the Association of Theological Schools (ATS). Science and technology is and important part of modern society. As such, how can seminaries incorporate new topics into an already full curricula. These are the questions being explored here this weekend.

This weekend, I am attending the American Academy of Religion’s 2011 meeting.

However this leaves open the possibility that art is so vague that anything anyone makes can be claimed as art. I think that there is a difference between this broad, and vague, sense of art and what is may be seen as popular and cultural art. However, the question of what is art is complex and depended on the reason, need, and disciple of the categorization. My question today is why do people doubt themselves as artist?

Even more so, many artist still after becoming “successful” doubt themselves as artist. Seeking validation seems to be a very human need. I have my own doubts but I do not create art for validation. I enjoy the validation and even seek it out but my goal for creating art is different. Art is a media for me to build relationships. Some time this is only a relationship with myself but often it is about community and connection to nature. In this sense, art becomes broad and powerful. In fact, I think that most people engage in art more often than they may see and thus much more of an artist. Perhaps all humans are artist; some make money with art but all of us make connections.

There are four parts of social media: connection, consumption, curation, and creation. Social media sites and systems can be one, some, or all these such as Facebook where you can follow and comment on what your friends are doing, read and watch what is being shared, share your own interesting finds, or create your own material. Let look at each of these categories in turn with a focus on some of the social media that works best for each of them and see how social media can be used by philosophers.

Connection

Social media is about being connected. The social media sites that I discuss all have a connection component but I will focus on three that seem pertinent to philosophers (LinkedIn, Academia.edu, and Google+). 

LinkedIn

First, the largest and perhaps best site, for professional connection is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is primarily use for making professional connections, having discussions within specifically industries (groups), asking and answering questions, and job searches (both looking for jobs and finding people). Overall LinkedIn is mostly for business connections; yet, as LinkedIn grows there is the possibility that more members of academia will join and make use of this site. A simple overview one how LinkedIn can be used by academia is give by Digital 3.0 101: LinkedIn for Academia. Also, see William Morris’ blog about how having academics on LinkedIn can be helpful for finding experts. 

With such groups as The Philosophy Network, History and Philosophy of Science, and Philosophy Majors, a philosopher may engage others in discussions, ask questions, and connecting with other philosophers. A quick review of academic type of groups showed that by searching for “philosophy” that there were over 900 groups. Now philosophy is a board category in common usage but some results include: Erasmus University Rotterdam (an exclusive group for alumni, professors, students, researches, and staff); The Philosophy Network (with over 2,700 members); and Philosophy Majors. 

However, the majority of groups are not engage in academic discussion of philosophy and those few groups that do tend to have members outside the academic setting. Seeing that LinkedIn is the premiere professional site for creating and maintaining connection, I see academia using it; however, there is already one professional site for this: Academia.edu. 

Academia.edu

Academia.edu is self describe as “a platform for academics to share and follow research. Academics upload their papers to share them with other academics in over 100,000 research areas. They can also follow other academics, and see new papers and other research updates from those academics in their News Feeds.” I have seen Academia.edu described at The LinkedIn for Academics (see http://gautamghosh.net/2009/03/04/academiaedu-the-linkedin-for-academics/). Academia.edu provide a means for making connections and following the work of other scholars. 

Google+

What is Google+…well that is the question that many people are asking and I think that, in general, Google+ is a social media for connecting in a naturalist way with the different social groups such as friends, colleagues, or even students. What is special about Google+ is that being Google, I think, they will continue to integrate their products and services. Also, Google+ offers what they call “Sparks,” which is a means of searching for post and websites on relative topics. Often this search is too broad; yet, I find these searches useful at times. 

Consumption

Living in the U.S., and thus part of a consumer culture, social media has made it easy to consume information, news, and entertainment. Although it is easy to spend many unproductive hours looking for Lego recreations of Henrik Ibsen’s plays on Youtube, there are many productive means of consumption for philosophers.

Goggle Reader

With a plethora of websites and blogs that contain good philosophical writings and discussions, it can be a daunting task to bookmart and visit each of your favorite sites. However, those days are over because there is a simple way of reading all these by having them delivered to you through the magic of RSS through Goggle Reader. See CommonCraft presentation on RSS in Plain English for help. Basically, sign up for an RSS readers such as Goggle Reader and then subscribe to those blogs that you want to read. When a new blog is posted it will be available in your Goggle Reader. 

Flipboard

You can also use an aggregator for your news and social networks. For those of you using an iPad, which is great for consumption, Flipboard works well. There are many services and the point here is to use social media to make is faster and easier to have the information your want on hand. 

Curation

Curation is the process where a person makes choices on what is interesting and useful to a community. Museums are seen as places where examples of what is best in art and culture are put on display. In social media, what is being curated is information in the form of blogs, websites, and other media. See Is Content Curation the New Community Builder by Eric Brown for more on this topic. Sites such as Philosophy News Services bring together article on philosophy. This differs from aggregation because a person makes choices on which articles are to be include not an automatic search with a logical statements such as “find any tweet that contains the word philosophy.” Find the right group of people who share the kind of content you want to read to save you time looking or if you really like doing the searches, then become a curator yourself and have people follow what you think is useful or interesting. 

Creation

People who create by writing blogs, posting photos, making e-books, white papers, and even commenting are the springs from which all the other parts of social media often flows. Lets look at two ways to create content with Twitter and Blogging. 

Twitter

Twitter is just a micro-blog of a 140 characters per post that started off with a simple question “what are you doing?” See Common Crafts’ Twitter in Plain English. It has grown into a social media tool for marketing, sharing ideas and photos, following events, and still remains a place for people to say what they had for lunch. There are philosophers, publishing houses, and aggregators all on Twitter. You may want to follow @Routledge_Phil or @Philosophy_Talk to begin with but there are many more.   

Blogging

If you need more than 140 characters at a time for blogging, and lets face it most philosophers do, then setting up your own blog may be the answer. However, before taking on this venture think about what you want from your blog. Do you want to express your thoughts, engage others, build up your reputation, or even be able to write more? All these reason are fine but some take more time. It can be a little hard when you have written a brilliant blog, set back and wait for all the comments and engagement only to find that no one has looked at it. There are lots of blogs with lots of shinning objects pulling at our attention. If you want to be successful, you will need to market your blog. Well, that is, unless all you really want is just to write more and do not care about readers.  

Connection, Consumption, Curation, and Creation

Social media permits all levels of engagement from commenting on what your friends have to say to writing content each day for others to read. I have always through that philosophers should engage at many levels with our communities. Social media is a powerful tool for this engagement. 

Portret van Julianus Apostata op bronzen munt van Antiochië, 360-363. Foto met toestemming van Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. (CNG) at www.cngcoins.com

Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus, the last Pagan Roman Emperor (355 CE to 363 CE), has been vilify by some (Julian the Apostate) and held in great esteem by others (Julian the Philosopher); yet, what I have recently leaned from this Roman Emperor are some economic lessons. Check out The History of Rome podcast episode 144 – The Road to Constantinople for more information and the source for my realizability that Julian has more to offer me than philosophy.

Julian during his fateful stay in Gaul…in the little town Lutèce that we now call Paris…faced the ever present problem of the Alamanni (German tribes) and need money to fortify the Rhine frontier. Conventional wisdom presented by the Praetorian Perfect Florentius was to raise taxes but Julian step in (that is overruled Florentius) to lower taxes. Now, if more money is needed, then why would Julian step in and lower taxes. Well the soon to be Emperor also ensured that the rich…who over the years used various tax forgiveness opportunities to simple not pay would in fact pay their taxes. Julian understood that he could lower taxes for those already at the breaking point, permitting a growth in local trade, and still secure the funds needed by taxing those who did have the means to pay. I am not sure if Julian’s understanding of economic growth include the idea of tax relief towards small business people; however, he did seem to have an understanding fairness towards all those he ruled.

I, like many, wonder what would have happened if Julian would have rule longer than he very short time; however, he did not and what we have left is a few writings and sampling of what he tried to do during his time as emperor. I have read some of these philosophical writings but I completely missed his attempt to change how the emperor interacted with the people, economic changes, and the restoration of Paganism. Yet, with such a short time as emperor, Julian did not have much lasting effect.

The lessons I do see are those of being practical about getting to where you want to be. Julian need money to protect the Rhine frontier, so he turned to those who had both money and an obligation to pay. He wanted to restore Paganism but understood the criticism that the temples and clergy were corrupt, so Julian implemented reforms for the temples along with restoration. In my work in the world I have become more of a pragmatist looking for what works while I try to balance what I think is the right thing to do. I get the feeling that Julian was walking this line too and as such is a good example of a philosopher applying actions to change the world.

Joseph R. Hoffmann, in Julian’s Against the Galileans (see his chapter Julian the Restorer) gives the reader an overview of Julain’s writings, times, and life. I would suggest Jonathan Kirsch’s God against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism for an general introduction.

So the other day, I followed a link to a website called Beyond Worlds, and listened to a Tarot podcast by Donnaleigh de la Rose. (Air date: March 5, 2011) During the program, she shared a great tip for a quick read. It was based on a Swedish proverb that says, “Shared joy is a double joy, and shared sorrow is a half a sorrow.” She then suggested pulling two cards and ask: 1)  How can I make joy a shared joy this week? 2) How can I make someone’s sorrow a half sorrow this week? Always enjoying a new tip, I pulled two cards. They seemed pretty self explanatory, so I nodded and went about my business. It wasn’t until later in the week that I actually connected with the reading. I met a friend of mine for dinner. We had a nice evening, and in a moment of sharing, we opened up to each other. Now I know this is not an extraordinary concept. Friends depend on each other all the time. But sometimes we do hold back, we don’t want to burden the other person. We may have things that we feel are too personal to share, or not important enough.  We are afraid of others’ judgement. That night I connected with my friend on a deeper level than we had ever done. I truly feel that we had some bonding and it has greatly enriched our friendship. The next night I went out to meet friends, and even though I had been feeling down, the connection had lifted my spirits. It opened me up to the group and talking with some of the members, I remember thinking that we are all dealing with our own processes at any given time, but the act of gathering and sharing really brings us connection.

I enjoyed reading William’s previous blog about joining his friend at Lughnassadh. I could feel the sense of connection he came away with. So while still composing this I asked him what he took away from the trip – on a personal level. He said, “Separate from any experience I would have had on my own, it was a great honor to be invited into an intimate personal setting with my friend whom I greatly respect. I was able to share a religious experience from her perspective.” He went on to explain that trust was key. He trusted her completely to bring the experience to him and never once felt like an outsider. Friendship brings trust and meaning.

That is so simple. Friendship brings trust and meaning. Everything we experience, everything we must bear, every bit of joy, is what it is to be human. Human connection brings us joy and helps us on the journey for whatever may come. Life is a process and for better and for worse, we need each other to help us along the way.