Hearthside

I have been spending too much time on TikTok lately. Which is probably a poor use of time, however, occasionally something interesting comes of it. For instance, I recently was just flipping through content and found a song sung by bella.dandrea which is a "Norse Pagan" (for why this is in quotations, read here ) song meant to be sung to your daughter as you are waking her up in the morning. The lyrics are as follows: There once was a little lady Little idel leigh And she stood up tall and proud The drums they are so quiet To the way that her feet pound Freya smiling down Idunn she’s oh so proud Nott so joyous Syf so happy Hamynga dares to grin Hel can’t help but stare The little lady there They all feel so proud Happy little lady found Chorus: Little idel leigh, del leigh, little idel lay Little idel leigh, del leigh, little idel lay Hey! (x2) I thought this was quite beautiful and it sent me down a rabbit hole on heathen lullabies, and what was out there. It will probably ...

So I have been on a bit of a hiatus, but for an important reason. I was getting married. I have had the blog entry below already written but in need of some editing for months, but I have a lot of ideas in the works most of the time. Now was the right time to put it out there, because our marriage speaks further to the topic at hand. We were supposed to be married last July, but of course pandemic times put plans on hold. We were blessed this year to have a small gathering of 26 people, and then through the wonders of modern technology livestream to friends and family all over the world.  Our ceremony was a meaningful and moving combination of our faiths as well bringing in elements of our combined story and emphasizing the importance of family in all its unique forms. At first I wanted to keep faith out of our ceremony, but my spouse wanted his father to say a prayer, and I knew that this would be a very meaningful moment between father and son and that it must happen. As such I a...

Happy Solstice, all! Hope it is treating you well, and Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there! I actually wrote the text for this blog a few weeks ago, but I felt my last post needed a bit of space before I posted something new. So here goes: My fiancé and I have been talking about starting a family for a long time. Due to the pandemic this plan and many plans within our household have been postponed. This has allowed me more than ample time to think about the household traditions I want to share with our future child. My current job is working with children, and between this and our inter-faith hearth I have been thinking long and hard about what is best when raising a child who is given a mixed spiritual education in hopes that they can make an informed decision about their faith when they are older. It is important to me that my fiancé and I can both share with our child our favourite holidays and traditions from growing up as well as the traditions that we each subscri...