Why I'm Pagan.

Warning: This post is not comprehensive. A better title would probably be something like, "Why I gave up on Christianity." 

Anyway, here we go.

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Jemez National Forest, NM
Lynne Cantwell | July 2025

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John Beckett, a Druid priest who I've been following online for several years, is offering a new online class called, "Unpacking Your Religious Baggage So You Can Live a Magical Life". The class is two weeks in -- the second module dropped this Thursday -- so there's still time to get in on it if you're so inclined. (Or take it later. The classes are on-demand.) I wasn't going to sign up -- I didn't grow up in a specific religious tradition, and I think I've done a pretty good job of exorcising from my head whatever Western religious thought I've picked up by osmosis. But then I thought, what the heck -- maybe I'll learn something. 

I have several friends who did grow up in religious traditions but who later turned atheist, and I thought the class might help them, so I've posted a time or two about it on Facebook. On one of those posts, I got into a discussion with a friend who has been following the Rev. Karla, an ordained interfaith minister who has made a name for herself on TikTok. My friend posted a link to one of the Rev. Karla's Substack posts: "The Kindness of Atheists and the Intolerance of Christians". In it, the Rev. Karla says she has been surprised at the number of Christians-turned-atheists who have told her they're following her. Here she is, busy helping people "heal from [their] religious trauma" and "deconstruct[] from the toxic theology of [their] religious heritage" (according to her website), and she's attracting atheists who appreciate what she has to say. (Her biggest target right now appears to be the patriarchy and attacking it from within the structure of the church.) 

So I read the post. One thing she wrote caught my eye: "[I]ntolerance is not inherent to religion, but it is deeply embedded in the systems that insist their truth is the only truth." I told my friend that I agreed with the statement -- but in my opinion, it didn't go far enough. 

The Rev. Karla -- just like nearly everybody else in the Western world, including atheists -- operates from the assumption that monotheism is the only possible religious framework. The only correct religious framework. Either God exists or He doesn't. 

Let's call it the "God/no God dichotomy" for short.

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Growing up outside of organized religion (save a couple of summers of vacation Bible school, courtesy of the well-meaning parents of friends) led me to spend some time in my late teens and twenties investigating various denominations to see where I might fit. In addition to several Christian denominations, I also looked into the Baha'i faith. But eventually I rejected them all and called myself agnostic.

At the time, I had a subscription to a magazine called Free Inquiry, published by the Council for Secular Humanism. They ran a column every month (and may still) that deconstructed some discrepancy or other in the Bible. It was always great fun to read.

But it eventually occurred to me that they were always fighting the same battle. Yes, a lot of Christian theology doesn't pass the sniff test. Yes, you can be a moral and ethical person without being a member of a church. It was all very rational: science good/religion bad (or if not bad, precisely, then misguided). The God/no God dichotomy.

But I knew there was more to the world we live in than science could explain. 

And I have since known a lot of atheists who reject all spirituality. They pay lip service to the idea that science doesn't know everything, but they dismiss ESP, Tarot, and so on as preposterous -- even when they've seen the woo-woo work. They know that trees are alive, but they're only grudgingly admitting that they communicate with one another, and they refuse to believe that trees have consciousness, aka a soul -- without recognizing the irony that for centuries, the same argument has been used by the Christian church against Black, brown, and Asian people; Native Americans; and anybody else who isn't "us".  That argument is what spawned the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, by which the Catholic Church gave the conquistadors and missionaries permission -- nay, the duty -- to capture, enslave, and "civilize" members of nonwhite societies.

I'll go further: Monotheism foments patriarchy. It encourages the control of ideas, especially those that conflict with religious doctrine (much of which was written centuries ago by powerful men). It puts fear into those who are tempted to believe that the paranormal is real: miracles are okay, but any other unexplained phenomena are scary because they could be the devil's work. (I once pissed off a Russian Orthodox guy of my acquaintance by observing that what his church called miracles, Pagans call magic.)

The God/no God dichotomy is the bedrock of Western culture. It's so deeply ingrained that a lot of the time, we don't even realize it's there. Why does the horror genre work? Because the villain is often stereotypically evil. What's the framework by which society defines evil? I'll let you work that out on your own.

Many atheists define their beliefs as no-God. That's fine, as far as it goes, I guess, but it seems to me it's a position in which it's easy to get stuck. You could keep poking holes in the Bible or your prophet of choice -- or you could do the work to define your own belief system, in which the Bible and its prophets are irrelevant.

I am here to tell you that the God/no-God dichotomy is bullshit. Quit fighting Jehovah and move on.

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Anyway, that's why I'm Pagan.

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These moments of bloggy dichotomy have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

The bathroom is done, huzzah!

I had something else in the queue for tonight's post, but I'm putting it off until next week for this BREAKING NEWS: As of this afternoon, the bathroom renovation is done! 

Lynne Cantwell | September 2025

Well, as much as I'm going to do right now.

As a reminder, here's what it looked like when I moved in. This is lifted straight from the listing when I bought the house. It was ... very white.

I forget the realtor's name. Anyway, it's from the MLS listing.

Note the builder-grade mirror and the 72-inch, same-as-the-kitchen-cabinets-but-not-as-high vanity that were installed in 1987. The countertop and sinks, I've learned, weren't very old, but I didn't like the dark green tile, plus I couldn't open the laundry closet without moving Tigs's litter box. Those round knobs on the laundry closet doors were installed throughout the house; I replaced all of them some time ago. The shelves you can see in the mirror on the left were actually part of an over-the-toilet thing that was broken. And the vanity light turned out to be a track lighting fixture that wasn't damp rated (horrors!).

My inspiration for the new color scheme was this photo that I apparently stole from Better Homes and Gardens. 

Stolen from the internet in 2023

It reminded me of a house I used to see from the school bus window when I was a kid. The house stood at the top of a dune, right across from Lake Michigan. It was painted white with black trim, and against a clear blue sky, it was just so pretty. That has stuck with me for 50 years. And when I saw this photo, I thought, "Why mess with perfection?"

Then the llamas got in there, and I needed little hints of yellow to go with the bits of yellow in the backsplash tile, and then I started buying art for the space, and things got complicated. But the blue, white, and turquoise are still there. And the vanity is shorter by a foot, so I don't have to move Tigs's box anymore to do laundry -- yay! 

Lynne Cantwell | September 2025

Our lives have improved by about a thousand percent on that basis alone.

Wrinkles:

1. As I mentioned last week, I had the plate-glass mirror cut down to fit in that frame. I had the glass shower doors taken out at the same time. I dunno why, but I hate glass shower doors -- and I like my llama shower curtain a lot better. 
2. There was zero flooring under the old vanity -- just the subfloor -- so I had to have more Saltillo tile installed. Of course it's virtually impossible to match Saltillo, as it's handmade and so on. (The tile guy laughed when he was done and said, "It's Santa Fe. Nothing matches!")
3. I thought at first that I wanted the sink in the left corner so the plumbing would be hidden inside a cabinet. The cabinet installer suggested that it would look dumb there. He was right. Unfortunately, I'd already had the plumbers set up the connection in the corner, so I had to pay for them to come back. To hide the plumbing in the center section, I went on eBay, found a llama shower curtain to match the one I had, and made the little curtain from it.
4. The sink is wood-look sandstone that I ordered from a place in Wisconsin. The countertop guys were a little freaked out by it. They thought at first that it was actual wood. 

It's sandstone, I swear it.
Lynne Cantwell | September 2025

Anyway, I painted the room yesterday (I woke up so sore this morning). I was thinking I'd have to paint the medicine cabinet, but with the fresh coat of paint on the walls, I think it looks okay. The shower tiles, however, now look more dingy than they did to start with. I'd really like to do a tub-to-shower conversion someday, but it won't be this year. I might just get the tiles reglazed for now. We'll see.

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These moments of bloggy home improvement have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Shopping for towels.

 I miss mall department stores. 

gpointstudio | Deposit Photos

But first: Let's talk towels.

As I mentioned last week, I'm in the throes of a partial bathroom remodel. Not only am I swapping out the vanity, but I had the ginormous builder-grade mirror cut down and put in a frame I bought at the same consignment store where I bought the vanity. The frame's finish didn't match the vanity, so I painted it the same color as the laundry closet doors, which is more or less the same color as my favorite bath sheet, which I bought from Amazon so long ago that it's not in my purchase history (I must have ordered it under an old email address). Which is to say that I could use a new bath sheet.

You wouldn't think the assignment would be hard, but you'd be wrong. First, there's the question of color. The paint is Behr Adonis. It's a medium blue that leans toward turquoise; Behr calls it "a clear aqua". Try to match that just by comparing photos on the internet, and you will rapidly descend into madness. I think of aqua in general as being fairly pale, plus a lot of so-called aquas lean way green. Anything called "turquoise" can also be too green. I thought I'd found a decent color match with this towel (even though it was billed as "aqua") -- and it is a decent match, color wise, but the towel feels like you're trying to dry off with cardboard.

Then there's the question of thickness. Some towels are plush, but some plush towels are so plush that they don't fit into all the crevices, if you know what I mean, plus they take forever to dry. Thinner towels dry faster, but some can be too thin. I thought I had this licked when I found a waffle towel at World Market and bought two hand towels to try them out. I like them a lot; they feel thick but dry really fast. But they don't come in bath sheet size. Highly-rated waffle towels are hella expensive, and the definition of "waffle towel" is sometimes baffling at a lower price point. (Sorry, LL Bean, but leaving out the loops in little squares in your terry cloth does not make what you're selling a waffle towel.)

The answer -- as it is with other fabrics and virtually all yarn -- is to see the merchandise in person. You need to touch it to judge the weight, and you need to see the color without shade-shifting electronics in the way. And you -- okay, I -- also need to give up on finding a waffle towel in a non-boring color and at a non-eye-watering price, and just get a regular terry towel in not-blue but maybe in a fun pattern.

Which is how I ended up at Dillard's this afternoon to look at their selection of Pendleton spa towels. ("Spa towel" is apparently the chic name for beach towels these days.)

Of course I headed the wrong way at first and ended up touring every other department before I got to home decor. But it reminded me of how much I used to like browsing in nice department stores. The pandemic shutdown did a number on in-person shopping, and retail has yet to recover; maybe it never will. But there's something soothing about wandering through departments of curated merchandise in an environment where there's carpet underfoot and the lighting is not too bright. Big-box stores have their place, and so do warehouse stores like Costco. But it was so pleasant today to peruse stacks of neatly folded towels and have a nice assistant tell me to just let her know when I was done looking because she'd be happy to ring me up right over there. And she did. No waiting! And no self-checkout!

Anyway. I ended up getting this towel. My eyes only watered a little at the price (I suspect looking at those chichi waffle towels online wore me down). If I'm satisfied with it, I'll probably get another one or two in different patterns for guests.

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I can't let this post go without addressing the rumors that have been swirling online about the state of Trump's health. Before today, he hadn't appeared in public for three days, so of course the social media death watch had begun.

As much fun as it is to speculate on whether his team would pull a Weekend at Bernie's if he did die, I just don't see it happening. For one thing, his vice president is reportedly champing at the bit to take over.

Trump does look terrible, though.

I'll just leave it at that.

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These moments of curated blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

A late summer roundup.

A view from my porch.
Lynne Cantwell | August 2025

I'm back, having never been away.

I can explain!

In my last post two weeks ago, I said I would be having carpal tunnel release surgery on my right hand on August 8th, then traveling to greater Chicagoland this past weekend for my high school reunion. Neither of those things happened.

I decided to put off the surgery because of the portable swamp coolers. I wrote about them earlier this summer -- you can go here to refresh your memory, if you like -- but the problem relating to the surgery was that I use a two-gallon watering can to fill them, and I realized I wasn't going to be able to lift it with just one hand. And it has been too hot to go without using the swamp coolers. So the surgery has been rescheduled for the end of September, which hopefully will not conflict with our governor's reported plans to call a special legislative session within the next few weeks.

That explains the surgery delay, but what about canceling the trip? That's because of the Bathroom Vanity Project.

The original vanity was the one the builders installed when the place was built in 1987. It was the same design as the kitchen cabinets, except shorter in height. It was also so long that I had to move the litter box every time I wanted to do laundry. Some previous owner had replaced whatever the original countertop was with Talavera tile: countertop, backsplash, and matching sinks. I like Talavera tile, but there are lots (and lots) of designs, and I wasn't wild about this one. Here:

Lynne Cantwell | 2023

The tile was inoffensive (which was part of my problem with it, to be honest) and some of it was dark green, which clashed with the laundry closet door after I painted it turquoise blue.

I spent a lot of time looking at replacement vanities online. The ones in my price range looked like boxes; the ones with a little style to them were over my budget. So last fall, when my friend Kim was in town, we checked out consignment shops and found this: 

Lynne Cantwell | 2024

It had started out life as an entertainment center. I knew I wanted a vessel sink; this was the right height and definitely did not look like a box. So I bought it and had it delivered, and it sat in my storage closet until last month, when I contracted with the cabinet makers down the street to put it in.

Well. The top is not flat, which I knew, and the thing is not square. Plus I had to have more Saltillo tile put in because the people who installed it didn't pull the old vanity to lay it underneath. (It turned out there was nothing under the old vanity but the subfloor.) Then there was the miscommunication about the sink; I'm going down to one sink from two, and I had the plumbers put the new connections in the wrong place, so that had to be fixed.

Anyway, the bottom line is that it's not done yet. The floor tile and vanity are in, the new countertop will be installed tomorrow, the backsplash will go up Tuesday, and then I can have the plumbers come back. Hopefully it'll be all done by the end of this week. Then I get to spend Labor Day weekend painting. 

The joys of homeownership...

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This post is already pretty long, but I wanted to mention the death this week of James Dobson, who founded Focus on the Family in 1977.

Dobson -- along with Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty University and creator of the label "the Moral Majority", and Pat Robertson, who founded the Christian Broadcasting Network and what's now Regis University -- were probably the most well-known promoters of evangelical Christianity in the 1970s and '80s. All three of them espoused the sort of "family values" that include opposition to abortion and the claim that LGBTQ+ people are misled and should undergo conversion therapy. (Conversion therapy doesn't work, has been proven detrimental to those who undergo it, and is now banned in 23 states and DC.) But Dobson in particular is vilified by a lot of people whose parents ascribed to his harsh, abusive childrearing techniques. One blogger began his post with this: "JAMES DOBSON, 89, died this week after a long battle with children." He goes on to say that Dobson's philosophy on raising children was in reaction to that of Dr. Benjamin Spock, who said kids do best when disciplined with love and understanding: "Dobson contended that children were born sinful and must be beaten without mercy in order to secure their bond to their parents and the church, and, of course, to save them ... from damnation." 

A charming fellow. But he, Robertson, and Falwell insinuated their hateful brand of Christianity into the highest echelons of government in this country, and for decades, conservative candidates have appreciated their followers' support. Ronald Reagan courted the evangelical vote. So did George W. Bush. And I'm sure you've seen the laying-on-of-hands memes featuring the current occupant of the White House -- a man whose behavior is in no way Christian, but whose supporters claim he was sent by God to save the nation.

Dobson, Robertson, and Falwell are all gone now; Falwell died in 2007, Robertson in 2023. But the poison they introduced into our national discourse has become deeply rooted, and it needs to be uprooted from our government before we can recover from the mess we're in.

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You could argue that I conceived of The Pipe Woman Chronicles partly as a response to the damage evangelicalism was doing to the nation.

I used to say that I thought Falwell was the Antichrist until Robertson came along. Then I realized that Falwell was the anti-John-the-Baptist.

I hope they're all enjoying themselves now, wherever they've ended up. I'm pretty sure it's not heaven.

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These moments of deconstructive blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!