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I got into the subject with Lloyd Pye's Everything You Know Is Wrong. While I don't support his conclusions, it opens the door to some interesting questions for which I don't have answers.

I actually took some time looking for that name because I had a bit of a born-again Nordic experience. Another example of interesting questions with no conclusions. When I pray, as a Christian, I feel the presence of the Spirit, I feel that Jesus is love and the Gateway to heaven, but never answers. And always guilty and judging myself for expecting anything, like I should be grateful I'm not covered with maggots in a gutter in Calcutta.

Long story short, I had an exacerbating health issue and prayed about it, as usual I got bupkus, but decades of silence made me mad. I had a very angry one-sided convo with a silent Almighty, then proposed an experiment, and put my request to "whatever spirits or gods, I don't know what you are orcif you are, but if you looked after my ancestors in ancient times, show me you're there and consider my request." I went for a walk to cool off and I hadn't gone forty yards and a bald eagle with a squirrel in it's talons literally buzzed me, I could have hit it with a stick...OKAY...THAT was a hell of a coincidence...

Then my health started changing. My energy increased. It was like I had been walking with eyes at half mast and now I woke up. I needed a fraction of the sleep I needed before. My shoulder joint issues subsided into a vague reminder. I didn't see an old man in the mirror anymore. A month ago I started a hardcore diet and willpower seems completely beside the point, I just decided it, so it is. The way I deal with people, I feel confidence to a level that I don't want to "shine" too much and be overbearing. I could go on.

Where I am not having overwhelming confidence, is where I go from here. This makes me question my own stability as well as my relations with the Almighty and I keep thinking about how crazy some wackos get over religion and things they choose to believe. It was many weeks before I even tried another "conversation with my elders", and I had this clear feeling that while I had mainly been addressing a father god, he was pushing forward another person to help with an issue I hadn't prayed about yet, with advice on how to dedicate certain things I had been having failures with to them, so they could find me success.

The last thing I was expecting was an answer to prayer, and the context of the answer is a lot like the story, I asked for a fish, I'm being given a fishing rod rather than a fish. There is actually someone there, but it's like a holy family of some sort, always available, but I'm notvsurexabout visiting them. Going on two months I've done this "experiment" twice.

I'm still in a crisis. I still pray to God in the name of Jesus Christ. I still get silence. I still get the Presence and the feeling of Christ's love. But my guilt is entirely, completely, gone. And I miss it! Its almost like feeling unworthy was at least some kind of communication, some kind of answer. And I can't deny the changes, the crazy events. It's like I set the rules of the experiment, I had a result, I can't go on like the result happened.

My longwinded explanation of my "Viking name". And my chance to come out of my closet, tyvm ;) I pored over the Norse names and meaning thereof until I decided it was silly, often the names they gave themselves were intended to be humorous. For some reason I jyst always liked the sound of Ketill. It literally means an iron kettle and sometimes an iron helmet. Well, I've got a hard belly again and I've always had a hard head. "Whitebeard" or "Frostbeard" is one of the aliases of Odin, and since there's a white skunk's stripe down the center of my beard, I took it. I'm letting it grow, normally I shave, but I read the Lombard sect let their beards grow as a dedication to Odin, so.

I'm waiting until I feel ready for conversation 3, which is going to be different. In my research I came across a simple "rite of Bragi" where you dedicate a drink to the Holy Family (that's my term for them lately) and then you look at the surface of the drink, and you're supposed to experience something. I'm not in a hurry, frankly. So, there it is. Thanks for being my "victim" in my coming out. Now the pronouncements of insanity and eternal hellfire can begin, I'm ready ;)