Greetings, greetings my beloved Pagani! I have been suffering much guilt the last few weeks over my lack of postings. Blog Guilt is not unique to me – in fact, I’m pretty sure any day now it will be listed in the DSM V (or is it six? or is it still at four? Obviously, I’m pretty up to speed on these things). But I persevere.
Life at the Gospel Pagan Headquarters here in the heart of the not-so-wild midwest has been consuming, to say the least. I find myself staggering along, oblivious to the little miracles I make it my usual practice to observe. Yet, though my altar is dusty, there is life stirring among the piles of paper on the kitchen table. My intrepid spouse and I have been endeavoring to become homebrewers, and our first experiment, a fermented ale made of wildcrafted nettles, cleavers and dandelion greens from the ravine out the backyard, has yielded some tart and spicy results. For the nonce, a bucket of sunset pink stuff sits bubbling on the table, something we hope one day will be strawberry mead (Oh, mead. Oh honey. Oh my golden sisters!!!!), made from wildflower honey, sweet good water and the crushed gorgeousness of overripe, organic strawberries from a local farm. The yeastie beasties (as my mom calls them) sure do seem to like it.
This fermentation inspires me. There is promise in the gurgling dancing of life – eating eating eating, sex sex, reproducing, froth froth. The smell of berries and honey floats through my house. Homebrewing, it has been observed, is sexy. Summer sexy. A perfect activity to begin between Beltane and Midsummer’s Eve. Since I am just a little homey newbie ale-wife, I don’t feel called to get uber-technical about it, and mostly I’ve come to consider my pots of beasties and fruit and nectar as welcome guests – wild animals with whom I am blessed to share space. Kin to the rabbit I found nibbling on the lavender after a thunderstorm yesterday – it looked bedraggled and weary and wet, yet nothing can ever erase the seed of crazy in its forever deep, wilderness-rich eye, or its feral stillness when it sensed me slowly sitting down on the stoop to say hello. It was more interested in the clover, and the lavender hasn’t been doing so hot anyway (the not-so-wild midwest isn’t exactly the Mediterranean, after all), so I told it to be welcome and watched as it romped a bit among my herbs before wending its way down to our oat patch. In the same way, I commune with the herbal beers and country wines I’ve been brewing as they sit companionably on the kitchen table, wrapped in towels, covered loosely and unceremoniously with one of the lamentable plastic sacks that occasionally make it home despite my best efforts to remember my canvas shopping bags (or even sometimes insisting on carrying my single avocado and bottle of water in my bare hands…rebel that I am). I’m happy knowing those damnable sacks are at least good for keeping flies out of the ferment. The yeasties and their rosy medium make good company.
In the same vein, thus, I have been pondering the most recent post by that thoughtful mademoiselle Inanna over At the End of Desire. She discusses the theme of community that has been running through her life of late, which leads me to ponder community myself as well as to wonder about the themes in my own life. She says something extremely profound about community among the Pagani:
Our problems with building community – and I do think we have some serious problems with it – stem both from our novelty as a religious movement and our location within cultures like the U.S. where community is breaking down. We occupy a unique cultural moment in which community can’t be taken for granted as the place where you’re stuck and the people you’re stuck with. Community needs to be built intentionally – and I think that’s a good thing – but I also think that most of us don’t know how to do that.
Yes yes yes. Learning to build community is something I think we all, Pagani or no, will need to learn to do, as we are becoming more and more aware of this breakdown as a people. We as Pagani have such a polythea/ology of home and community built in to our practice that we are enmeshed in these questions on a regular basis. Our church exists in our bodies, our homes, our voices, the yeast, the rabbit – our communities encompass the million diverse beings living on and in the Mama. When we come together, there is so much that is gained – so much that is transformed in a blush of alchemy. Community breeds fermentation. Let’s be like yeast!
I have been struggling with community-building for years, as a Pagan and as a human being. Pagan community alone is a topic worthy of more than a few books.
With all this bubbling up in the yeasty recesses of the mind – the connections between fermentation and community, the dance of loneliness, the haunt of gorgeous solitude balanced with the heat of many feet and many voices beating out soul on the black earth – I am excited to be approaching my very first large festival gathering of the Pagani in the next week or so. Indeed – it has come about that I have the opportunity to attend the Pagan Spirit Gathering in Ohio the week after next, and I am all a-dither with excitement and trepidation. What will ferment? What will knock the cork out and waste all the good contents on the cellar floor (who can’t possible appreciate it the way I would)? What will result in nectar? What will result in vinegar? Isn’t it awesome that both are good for ya? I look forward to simmering in a bath of my crazy fellow Pagani and coming back refreshed and with a truckload of notes to ruminate on for the next few months.
A Gospel Pagan Goes to Ohio! May the days leading up to that distilled moment of summer star perfection on Midsummer’s Eve leave you breathless with anticipation, and the bubbly sexy wonder at the alchemy of living on the Mama.
