When Are We?

There are a lot of strains of heathenry. Sometimes the emphasis is on "strain."

Recently, I posted on the facebook about using runes as a means of focusing our minds on questions we might be avoiding.

There was a comment by someone who shall remain anonymous, but whom I hope will be reading and willing to engage in further actual dialogue: *stares in reconstructionist norse heathen*....... is that what y'all think runes do?........really?

I answered that this is one application of runes in the modern age, which is where we live now. It is just one application.

I restrained myself, reminding me that the whole purpose of being on social media is to learn about people and maintain connection in this new way. I won't write what my knee-jerk responses would have been, because that's not going to further dialogue.

In my view, there is a lot of replication of organized religious fighting within heathenry. I find it both tiresome and detrimental. So many say they want to get away from the dogma inflicted upon them in their upbringing as (_insert religion here_), and yet try to inflict their ideas of orthodoxy on practitioners who "deviate." The very same people who accuse Catholicism of being a stale religion of rote recitation come into heathenry with ideas of being pope of the blot, and browbeat others who are working with the gods and tools we do have from those eras in modern ways.

My view on runes is this: They are living tools, like any alphabet or writing system. As with any language, they offer mystical applications. Plural. Some of my work is using them as prompts of consideration, some is as casting spells, some is of divinatory nature, and so on. These tools in *my* hands are going to be applied in as many ways as I can do. As I live now, and deal with the problems and promises of now, my work is of the now.

Yes, I love history. No, I am not interested in going back to some supposed golden age. My aim is to make *this age* as golden as possible.

I am not going to go into reconstructionism as a way of life, as it is not my wheelhouse. The only aspect of it that I will touch on is in the form of a question which applies to everyone, actually: If you are using your faith as a battering ram to knock others over, how is this uplifting you?