Note to Harry Potter Readers: There are spoilers in both the linked article and in this post in reference to the final book in the Harry Potter series, The Deathly Hallows. Proceed at your own risk.
Again With the Harry Potter (Spoiler Alert)
July 31, 2007 at 10:05 pm (Media Craptango, Pagany Musings, Theology)
Spontaneous Pagan Religious Expression
July 27, 2007 at 7:28 pm (Culture War, Pagany Musings, Politics)
Ah, Texas.
It often comes as something of a surprise to some people when they find out how fervently I love Texas. While I can’t technically be said to be “from” Texas, having been born in California and having spent a considerable amount of my life in other places, Texas wants me anyway, and I happily claim it as my home state whenever asked. West Texas’ gorgeous flatlands live in the core of my heart, and I’m a sucker for cherry red cowboy boots, chili peppers, bluebonnets, and that crazy, outrageous accent. Please rest assured, I am primarily from Austin, which functions pretty much as an oasis of musicians, poets, artists, eccentrics, radical political leftists, and rockin’ Texas liberals (like the late, brilliant, kickass Molly Ivins). But my heart really is full for Texas in general in so many ways, which is why I do not hesitate to laugh with a bitter, knowing, partially gleeful horror at the latest news out of that beloved desert country I call home.
Jason Pitzl-Waters at The Wild Hunt blog today informs us of a new Texas law, allowing for “spontaneous religious expression by students” in public schools.
The Religious Viewpoints Anti-Discrimination Act: Requires public school districts to adopt policies specifically allowing spontaneous religious expression by students. The provision would create a ‘limited open forum’ — an opportunity for students to speak about religious issues on the same basis as they’re allowed to speak about other topics.
Here are some other great clips from the article:
…The new law creates a “limited open forum” that gives students the opportunity to speak about religious issues. It states that if a student speaker at a sports event, a school assembly or a graduation ceremony elects to express a religious viewpoint while addressing an otherwise permissible topic, school officials must treat the religious content the same as they would the secular content.
…The law also requires schools to allow religious expression in artwork, homework or other assignments and allow religious clubs or prayer groups to meet in school facilities on the same basis as other student groups — something that was already taking place in San Antonio school districts.
…Brian Woods, assistant superintendent for secondary administration at Northside ISD, said he’ll have to figure out what counts as a limited public forum. Is it just graduation ceremonies and school assemblies, or does it include morning announcements, usually delivered by a student over a school’s public address system?
In a diverse district such as Northside, where students speak more than 30 languages, ensuring that every view is represented and no one feels marginalized will be a challenge, Woods said. He also worries about the potential for conflict.
“If a kid on the football team expresses a religious message that is not in keeping with everyone in the room, will there be protests? That school principal will have to deal with that,” Woods said. “What if someone wants their time to respond then and there? If we allowed a Christian to express a religious viewpoint, and then a Wiccan wants equal time, how could we prevent them from doing the same?”
What an excellent question Mr. Woods puts forth. Of course, I am becoming amused by the now frequent impulse to place Wiccans and Pagans as the automatic foil in issues such as these. Never mind that there are, oh, only an ooptigazillion other people who follow almost as many other religions in the world and the United States, who might just also have a problem with this sort of law, or at least will want to practice “spontaneous religious expressions” of their own now that the law sez it’s a-okay to do so. The important thing is to pick the craziest one you can think of in order to make your point…and that would be us Pagani. Watch out! Witches are scary! Ooogly boogly!
My favorite part, of course, is the word “spontaneous.” So how DO you prevent Wiccans from performing spontaneous expressions of their religious faith at school given this new law? Ha ha, you don’t! Way to go, Texas! I’m totally psyched. Anarchy here we come.
Now of course, I’m not stupid. I see what those crafty legislators are trying to do there. What are the odds that a prominent member of the school leadership in Texas, like say, the captain of the football team, or the student speaker at assemblies, sporting events etc., is Pagan…or even non-Christian? And given that folks of other religions rarely have the emphasis on evangelism that so many Christians have, what are the odds that a student leader of another faith would even feel motivated to spontaneously offer up a prayer in their religious tradition at a football game? And what are the odds that that student would feel safe doing that sort of thing, for that matter? Would you go to a high school football game in Texas and deliver a Muslim prayer? Right.
Which is why I encourage safety in numbers. Students and parents who begin to perceive any religious bias at school events should absolutely organize to make sure all religions are given a fair and equal voice according to this new law. And if that means that it takes 3 hours to start the assembly because everybody’s religious faith needed to be represented fairly (including, of course, the Church of the Subgenius kids and the Discordians…which I would imagine could be fairly lively), well then, golly. I think that’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard.
OR, you could just not pass laws like these, and leave religion out of the public school system. But how I do go on.
To Make Sacred the Summer Night
July 25, 2007 at 11:57 pm (EcoTalk, Pagany Musings, Theology)
Greetings, Pagani, from the clover-rich fields of the not-so-wild midwest! The hills are heavy with sweetness, and the sky blushes weekly with steel gray clouds that shatter in the night. Roasted sweet corn is the hallmark of this season here, delicious even as its industrial cousins, bred not for delight but for fattening feedlot cattle for inhumane slaughter or producing industrial “food” products, rustle bright with fireflies and despair at dusk. Lammas is nigh.
And as my thoughts turn to the mysteries of bread and feast, community and play and work, they turn also to ponderings on the nature of sacrifice. Lammas is, after all, in addition to all those wonderful other things, a feast of sacrifice. The grain is cut and threshed – John Barleycorn must die to feed the people. We pause in our playing and in the glory of the first harvest to think heavy thoughts about the fall of the Beloved*, to wonder at the sacrament of death and service, of what we might also give in our eternal exchange with the Mama, the Powers and the Spirits. On what we make sacred in our actions and our words.
Sacrifice is a scary word. You know the image that comes to mind – I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate. Given sacrifice’s bloody bad rap, born out of the same cultural machine that gave us B-movie witches and fictional occultists in all their murderous, bespangled and toad-guts-covered glory, many folks nowadays seem a lot more comfortable with the term “offering.” Of course, I grok offerings too. But though sacrifice and offering are wed in and through to each other in deeply entangled and delicious ways – there are subtle differences, and it is to this deeply evocative concept of sacrifice, not offering, that I give my thoughts, prayers and ruminations this time of year.
As always, my first thoughts on the notion of sacrifice cycle through the endless loop of questions that plague earth-conscious Pagani more and more these days – what will it take for us to change? Whose side am I on? What would I give? There is no question that sacrifices will have to be made in order for us to go on living and singing and dancing on this gorgeous mossy stone we call home. Those of us capable of making some of these early sacrifices (acknowledging that there are privilege barriers that will mean that various people will have the ability to make different choices than others) are especially put upon to ask ourselves how much we can give up now in order to preserve the integrity of our biosphere.
The etymological meaning of the word “sacrifice” comes from the Old French sacrifise and the Latin sacrificium – sacra, meaning sacred or sacred rites, and facere, meaning “to do, to make, to perform.”** Thus, sacrifice can be literally translated to mean “to perform sacred rites” or “to make sacred.” Throughout the history of culture and spirit and time, sacrifice has been woven into the blood and sinew of our relationship with the Mama and all the powers and spirits. When you eat, something dies. A sacred thing, that. As you breathe, something is given, and that is sacred. Our recognition of that fact is one of the pulsing hearts in the vast breastbone of ritual, and is made manifest particularly at this time of the year, as the summer becomes tinged with a defiant heat sliding into the purple dark, breathing out its waning, and all Ripe Things know the hour of their blessing death. What is it that we are making holy in return? The reciprocity of the Nature of Things asks us a burning question. To live is to require sacrifices of others. What are we willing to give up to live in right relationship with the Mama?
Thus it may be that as we sacrifice, say, the convenience of being able to be anywhere we like in a moment’s notice via the dubious miracle of planes, trains and automobiles, we reestablish our understanding of the sacred in the earth. It may be crucial and necessary that we give up sleep, struggling in the hot night over the death of bees. That we give up the security of our careers to fight for justice, or the safety of our person to sit in a tree for two years and be threatened by those who want to cut it down. Or that we give up oranges in the midwest. From little to big, these sacrifices that spring out of our authentic relationships with the planet are sacred acts – more so than that, they further the awakening of the people to the miracle of the green diamond planet we’ve forgotten, and I would even go so far as to say that they contribute towards the monumental task of restoring the ecstatic stores of magic that riot in the Wild when the Feral Soul is unbound. They make Sacred. Holy work, the tides of Lammas.
Yet lest we forget, sacrifice is also wedded in time and culture and image to the spectre of that most Beautiful Angel, Death – terrible and lonely, lovely and wise. The year has begun to die. It is now, it the teeth of glorious abundance, that we sow the seeds of deep awareness of impending death – marking the passing of the Beloved, the Mystery of the One that will Come Again. Would I die to feed my people? How do you begin to say thank you for something that goes so deep? The answer to this question is in every rite we perform and every sacrifice we make – every gift we bring to our communities, every word we unravel and claim.
I will never tire of the year and its movement. I am ever in awe of this miracle. In the orgy of summer, Death is a secret stealing up through the veins of trees, making ready Its autumn table.
All Hail to the Beloved in the Light of the Scythe. All Hail to the Red Woman who Mourns Him. They stir. They wait. The bread is risen. A stolen, precious beauty has peopled the secret places in the blue notes of evening. Loss and glory. I lift my hands. Death and service. Sacrifice and Sanctuary. In the hot nights. In the sweet water.
The mourning doves rush out of the tiger lilies in the hour after dawn breaks and sing the names of everything that is. That’s your name they’re calling. It’s my name too.
There was three men came out of the west,
Their fortunes for to try,
And these three men made a solemn vow,
John Barleycorn should die.
They ploughed, they sowed, they harrowed him in,
Throwed clods upon his head,
And these three man made a solemn vow,
John Barleycorn was dead.
Then they let him lie for a very long time
Till the rain from heaven did fall,
Then little Sir John sprung up his head,
And soon amazed them all.
They let him stand till midsummer
Till he looked both pale and wan,
And little Sir John he growed a long beard
And so became a man.
They hired men with the scythes so sharp
To cut him off at the knee,
They rolled him and tied him by the waist,
And served him most barbarously.
They hired men with the sharp pitchforks
Who pricked him to the heart,
And the loader he served him worse than that,
For he bound him to the cart.
They wheeled him round and round the field
Till they came unto a barn,
And there they made a solemn mow
of poor John Barleycorn.
They hired men with the crab-tree sticks
To cut him skin from bone,
And the miller he served him worse than that,
For he ground him between two stones.
Here’s little Sir John in a nut-brown bowl,
And brandy in a glass;
And little Sir John in the nut-brown bowl
Proved the stronger man at last.
And the huntsman he can’t hunt the fox,
Nor so loudly blow his horn,
And the tinker he can’t mend kettles or pots
Without a little of Barleycorn.
———-
*In my practice, the Beloved is the God Who Comes, Who Dies, and Comes Again…Beautiful Gift, Star in the Vine. Yet there are parallels that resonate deeply with me in the Eleusinian context – that the Beloved is also a name for Demeter’s lost Kore, Transformed into that incomparable Queen who gives Comfort to the Dead. Thus, and in so many ways, the Beloved (and any other god/dess), defies, epitomizes and revolutionizes gender all in the same moment. There is much that is mutable in my understanding of the Shining Ones. With any luck, I will never ever believe I have any sort of good grasp of how They work. The Mystery is too delicious – why would I ever give that up?
**It is pedantic in its way to rely on the etymological meanings of words. Words are living beings, and they evolve and become over time in the same way any plant or animal does – they adapt. Thus, words “on the ground” do in some ways carry more weight for us as contemporaries than their older, more archaic definitions. Certainly I wouldn’t dismiss the fact that the word sacrifice has evolved to mean something unsavory and oftentimes immoral, or even theologically suspect (for instance, I do take issue with a theology of sacrifice espoused by some Christians, that the sacrifice of Christ for his people [or even, as they say, all people everywhere and for all time] was the only or the greatest sacrifice that supersedes all others). However, I am also a huge word nerd, and it is an undeniable fact that there is a powerful magic in words. Thus, I find that digging even a small amount (a light chicken-scratching such as I do) into the literal translation of a word or its etymological history at the least reveals the multilayered nature of a word, nestled together like a Russian nesting doll, and at the most can have the amazing effect of triggering whole epiphanies in their revelations. In the act of using the archaic or literal translation of a word to perceive it in a new/old light (shining in through a dusty window), we become empowered to incorporate that word into a new worldview – we enact a small part of the greatest magic – we become players in Change. This is my understanding of some of the power behind the “reclamation” of various words by liberation movements and communities. To know and digest a word at its many layers and to look at it in a new light, or a new darkness, robs that word of its power to destroy you by inviting it instead into the free road of your heartsblood.
Loaf Mass, Old Skool
July 17, 2007 at 6:01 pm (Pagany Musings, Theology)
Victoria Slind-Flor of Driving Audhumla has a great post up regarding Pottermania and Pagans. I agree wholeheartedly. Though I am a lover of the books like many people, and while I maintain, as Slind-Flor does as well, that the fantasy novel is a brilliant medium through which Pagans often receive inspiration, I’m a little baffled why folks would adopt the Harry Potter world in particular into their religiospiritual mythos. The books after all, while super fun, really have nothing to do with Paganism, contemporary Witchcraft or contemporary magical practice, aside from some fun references to historical alchemists such as Nicholas Flamel. Pointy hats and spangled robes certainly don’t register with me on the spiritual plane. But then, I’ve always secretly hungered after a crescent moon tattoo on my forehead a la The Mists of Avalon, so maybe I shouldn’t talk.
In addition to these points regarding Pottermania, however, Slind-Flor also has some brilliant commentary regarding what I call oldskool DIY ritual prep:
OK, this is my bias. I think the most magical things we do, the best rituals we create, the most empowering social actions we take come from the work of our own minds, hearts and hands. I cut my own wand from the pear tree in my garden, carved my own rune staves from my favorite alder tree, and evoke the Goddess through terra cotta images I made in pottery class. When I celebrate the first fruits of Lammas next week, it won’t be with store-bought Wonder Bread but with bread I’ve kneaded and baked myself.
Yes yes yes! There is a numinosity that becomes infused in our work when we spend time and effort in it. I am reminded of a lovely Beltane evening I spent in the home of a friend. She spent nearly 2 hours preparing the altar – arranging candles and ivy, laying out offerings, filling bowls with water, dancing in between the kitchen and the garden and the table heavy with these gifts. It became, before my eyes, one of the most exquisite Beltane altars I’d ever seen. When it was finished, she paused and we sat in the living room sipping red wine and letting the hauntingly gorgeously hot and sexy earth-beat music thrum through our bodies – and it occurred to us that at that point, we didn’t need to do a ritual at all. That we had already completed what was Necessary. That it was Finished and it was Good. So we drank more wine and laughed and talked and danced, and the evening slid gorgeously by and the moon rose. And that was Beltane that year.
Certainly there is a middle way here at times. There are artists and craftspeople whose work I cherish and that imbues my life with a bone-deep sense of the sacred. But the need to be involved in religion at the visceral, physical level cannot ever be ignored. Sweat-faith. To create is to share life, to suffuse your spiritual world with your own blood and tears and muscles. And to connect to the ancient legacies of your grandmothers and grandfathers, who beat out tough globes of bread on wooden boards long long before they drove to Safeway and bought it in shiny plastic sacks. All the layers of relationship rising up through the clay or the wood or the wheat – the milk poured at the root of the tree that gave you the branch, the intimate slick wet of the clay as you smoothed it into the shape of the Vessel that holds all the black sky, the song you sang in between loud breaths as you kneaded dough in your blistering kitchen (my kitchen is a freakin’ furnace)…your gut knows. This is the forge in which you are bound to the Mama. Blood and iron and sweat and riverwater. The smell of bread and loam.
Which then leads me to think about one of my favorite subjects. Bread. Oh yeah mama. Let’s talk about bread. Lammas, that most awesome of holidays (I know – I love them all with crazy abandon – they’re all my favorite), has its etymological root in the term “Loaf Mass,” being the holiday that is best signified by a table laden with the First Fruits of harvest and a warm loaf of bread fresh from the oven. The first of the harvest festivals, Lammas is about community, play, feasting, and work. The harvest may be a gloriously wonderful time – full of the joy of knowing your labor has paid off in the form of fat juicy zucchinis and ripe tomatoes, but it’s still a hell of a lot of work. Have you ever picked peas in the summer? There’s approximately a zillion of them, and it’s hot, and there are bugs cavorting around your ankles and your ears. And then you have to shell them (the peas, not the bugs). And then – oh man, peas. Peas rock. But they’re work. The Lammas loaf is a symbol of this brilliant process – the seed, the Mama, the rain, the threshing, the grinding, the stirring, the kneading, more kneading, more kneading (there’s lots of freakin’ kneading), the baking, the smelling, oh bread! Piece of the Mama, piece of yourself. A marriage of flesh and spirit – of Source (Mama) and Creation (You). With butter on it.
In this spirit, it’s difficult for me to grasp the Message in a loaf of pre-sliced, factory bread – even “whole wheat” store-bought bread, and even when it really is whole wheat and not just a pretty corporate lie*, isn’t the same. Wonder Bread is neither a wonder nor bread (though the now universally recognized packaging did make it possible for me to be a loaf of bread for Halloween one year when I was 10 – my mom slaved over painting a cardboard box in those creeptastic yellow/red/blue colors for weeks…it was a big hit in the neighborhood). Bread is made of wheat, water, salt and work, combined with the astonishing magic of yeastie beasties (whose miraculous properties are best observed in the making of traditional sourdough – I encourage you to capture your own local yeastie beastie and feed it well – after you’ve filled your home with the smell of fresh-baked sourdough bread made from sourdough starter you created via the alchemy of the Mama, you’ll never go back, my friends).
Bread has gotten a bad rap of late, what with all the fussing and puffing and blithering hysteria about carbs a few years ago (everybody scream it with me: CAAAAAAAAAAARRRRBS!!!!!!!), and even though that’s all thankfully kind of faded lately, I think the carb-scare has succeeded somewhat in settling into our lizard brains, making us all still a little jumpy at the sight of muffins and biscuits. But real bread is holy. Bread is alchemy and collaboration and relationship. When it takes time – when you sing songs to the yeastie-beasties and they respond in kind – when it is risen and crusty and warm, or flat and crispy and delicious, delivered to the tables of a thousand different cultures, bread is a sacrament. Deserving of reverence and respect. There is a difference between the holy sacrament of handmade bread and the squishy, styrofoamy blood-sugar-spiking horror of an IHOP pancake. For one nutritionally-related thing, you can’t eat as much of the former, but you can wolf down plates of the latter (oh, and I have – I am not a saint). This is the place where we begin to make connections between the food we eat and the prayers we make. There is a lesson in bread. I mean, there are a lot of lessons in bread. There is a reason why bread is the focus of so much religious symbolism (in a few different religions, of course, not just with us Pagani). The body of the Earth. The offering. The sacrifice. The transformation. The resurrection of life – rebirth. The firing of hidden life that riots into joy and expands in death to create sustenance. Lammas. Fire. The peak of summer tumbling oh so slightly into the miracle of autumn. Pure fierce joy. First Fruits. Darkness and starlight. And on and on into a night filled with drums and heat and voices and baskets of food tumbling out into the mouths of the hungry people. And they are fed not only by the Fruit of the vine and the tree, but by the Fruit of your sweat and your work.
Lammas comes, oh my people! May the savage, glorious rain in the garden inspire you to pea-picking in the clear mornings, and may the fresh wicks of summer’s secret light be lit in the bread you bake and the rituals you embody with your hands, your mouth, your eyes. It is for these gifts that we are dancing.
*I wouldn’t normally link to any kind of diet site, but this is a wonderful explanation of the “100% whole wheat bread” scam
Whatever It Takes
July 16, 2007 at 10:30 pm (EcoTalk, Politics)
Et Voila! Sara turns yet another technological corner and figures out how to post videos to her blog. And who better to be first than that Prophet who speaks with a fiery tongue, Derrick Jensen.
In continuation of the questions: Whose side am I on? What would I give? This clip is part of a longer interview – more portions of it can be found on YouTube, and I highly recommend all of them.
Just a Wee Bit O’ Good News
July 13, 2007 at 5:59 pm (Extremely Silly)
This morning a corn-cob dropped out of a maple tree right in front of me. Gift? Omen? Clumsy squirrel? The world may never know.
Happy Friday the 13th! May the world shine its wyrd light through all your fingers and toes to help you step around those ladders and may all your mirrors be whole and revealing.
On Perfection, Enlightenment…And Being Grumpy
July 12, 2007 at 4:41 pm (Pagany Musings, Random Thoughts, Theology)
Oh gorgeous day in the not-so-wild midwest! Days where the pattern of leaves on the ceiling through the sun looks like scripture…because it is. The heat fades for a tender day or two and we run like feral children through the grass and across the prairie. In the evenings we dive into ponds that shimmer like black ink (and we try not to think about pond creatures in the depths) – the sun moving down past the lip of the small world, sweeping the color of tangerines over the dark water. Long days in which to ponder the meaning of fresh peach OJ, or the the art of conversation, or the desert, or the sea.
The orange juice has pits. Conversations can be ugly. The desert can kill you. The sea likewise. All are perfect in their complexity and imperfections.
It is in this spirit that in my weekly dose of cosmic Pronoia from the incomparable Rob Breszny, I recently received this faceted jewel of infinite wisdom:
“Loving-kindness (maitri) toward ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy, we can still be angry. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away or become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already.”
- Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty
Oh my yes.
Which reminds me of a conversation I once had with some fellow seminarians in a class on mysticism. We were discussing the achievement of enlightenment (a term that I’ll use throughout the post though it may not be entirely accurate at all times), of mystical union and holy rapture and its results in the lives of those so blessed. They were explaining that an enlightened person would be perfect – that they would embody perfection in their relationships, their devotion, their thoughts and actions. As an enlightened soul is one who has been touched/filled by the Infinite Being of God, they become in essence a kind of vessel for the perfection of God, who is limitlessly kind, generous, beautiful, wise, etc. (this is, as ever, merely my interpretation of what my fellows were saying). I wanted to know if you could be enlightened and grouchy at the same time. I mean, can’t good mystics occasionally be pissy, too? What does perfection mean then? These are questions I continue to wrestle with as I traverse the sputtering trail of my own fitful mystic’s heart-path.
Of perfection, I admit, I am a trifle suspicious.
Now – here’s where it gets funky for me, cuz I believe in perfection, sure. I live here – I see the sunset in the west and the marvel of the swallow catching a minnow and the astonishing miracle of seeds moving and finding homes and sprouting and holy holy holy! The Mama is perfect. But this does not mean that the Mama is always nice. Or pretty. Or benevolent. The Mama will eat your liver. The Mama likes rot. The Mama has made her share of ugly. The Mama did, after all, make peacock shit at the same time that She made the glorious peacock, and peacock shit is really really disgusting.
So there is a Mystery there (inherent in all confusion and paradox there is Mystery). I believe in the perfection of mess, and complexity/simplicity wrangling out together forever and ever, amen. But this other perfection…this Perfection that bleeds people of their mess and leaves them sanctified in the absence of anger, or timidity, or jealousy, or fear – I just don’t know. I don’t know. Proof that I’m certainly not on the fast track to enlightenment? Maybe.
Because all this is surely not to say that I have any true grasp of enlightenment. Certainly I am not enlightened under any definition of the term. I’m not even certain about what I’m saying half the time about any given subject. Yet, I balk at the idea that the true spiritual leaders of our world are Perfect beings, in the sense that they exist outside of and beyond emotionality, physicality, etc. At least among the Pagani, and those who practice an authentically embodied and earth-based religion/tradition, any claims to transcendence seem off to me. As I understand it – you have to dive really really deep to even begin to rise above. You have to go the Underworld first. You have to get down with your bad self. You have to begin to love the shit before you love the gloss. You have to die before you die. Deep in the heart of the heart of hearts – the infinite point, the smallest world where the further in you go the bigger it gets, the horizon star, the densest, heaviest point of infinite expansion, the darkest place under the darkest place where there is a sudden blossoming of light, a seed and a sky at the same time – illumination and awareness roil around in timeless, sexy, shattering adoration, yes….yes….the stars beneath the earth…
Wha? Oh, right. Blog post. People reading.
Hey! I love not making sense! Where was I? Right – after you come up for air and the green fuse-light of the World lights up like a roman candle and you get that One with Everything hot dog, within a polythea/ology of Mama-based religion I can’t see that a state of being removed from the sticky fun of laughing and crying and yelling would be even desirable. Maybe it has to do with the goal. The Goal of Enlightenment. Is the goal of Enlightenment to move Beyond this earth or to move Within it? Obviously for me it’s the latter. Which leads to questions about divinity. If Union with the Divine is the goal of the mystical journey, and I perceive the Divine as being embodied (at the least) in the flesh and bone of the planet we rock and shake on, then enlightenment can’t mean the same thing to me as it would be for a religiosity that posits a transcendent deity…which leads me to wonder about the perennialist argument, particularly in its relationship to the mystical traditions of the world. But that gets me into a bigger inky pond than I’m willing to swim in at the moment.
If loving-kindness does not posit being some kind of ethereal Perfect being, but rather meeting yourself truly at the authentic point of yourself, then that’s what I want to pursue. If mysticism is a journey wherein the exquisite Beauty of the unconquerable mess of Life is made manifest in a scintillating point of Awareness, then that’s where I want to go.
Hey man, maybe I just don’t want to let go of being grumpy ever again. Or it’s possible that I’m just a lazy non-mystic making excuses for myself. When in doubt I think it’s best to consider what it might look like if all possibilities are true at the same moment. Then I get dizzy and have to sit down and giggle for a while. And then I don’t worry about it and have an orange instead….flushed with green fuse-light, oranges are so remarkably beautiful.
Liberty and Justice… Oh My!
July 9, 2007 at 3:03 pm (Pagany Musings, Politics, Theology)
Greetings from the sweltering, burning heart of the not-so-wild midwest! We have been moving slowing through our days here, clinging to that insipid destroyer, air-conditioning, as though we did not exist up until its invention. The corn is thick and tall on the monocropped hills (I’ve heard that the corn ought to be “knee-high by July,” though this year it seems far ahead of that goal, towering over fences…the pretty horror of our chemical dependencies), and in the pockets of restored prairie championed by a few hard-working and blessed souls, there is life thrumming nigh unto distraction – blazing out with ecstasy and death and the riot of butterflies and white moths. Summer is a wealth of heat – the wind moves with sly muddy exhaustion, lightning flashes and breaks in the middle of the night, threatening rain that does not come. As in all things, the Mama breaks my souls open on a fiery rock – beautiful even as She is dangerous or desperate.
So last week, I don’t know if you noticed, America celebrated its continued Independence from England with typical abandon. Coincidentally (but only if you don’t believe in the Fates), I have been recently inspired to a several-week-long rumination on the intersection of politics, nationalism and Paganism.
John Michael Greer, Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America and the author of the exemplary blog The Archdruid Report, had some interesting things to say last week on this topic, particularly in regards to the ways that various political groups deify America, as either the Messiah of the World, or the Adversary of Biblically Evil Proportions. I myself am admittedly guilty of perceiving America to be mostly a baddie – certainly I am not as middle of the road as Greer suggests would be wise – but I overwhelmingly concur with the need to be watchful against the seductive simplicity of perceiving America as either a simple Utopia or a simple Evil. Funny how simplistic dualities rarely seem to work in practice. Life, the riot of biodiversity within the body of the Mama, is messy, multifaceted and strange. The realities of the World cannot be summed up in a flag, waving or burning. It becomes theologically frightening to conflate nation-states with gods on any level.
All that said – politics cannot be divorced from religion. Political opinions often arise out of the bedrock of worldviews that are often largely formed by religious, spiritual and theological ideas. And it is for this that I remain locked in a mini-battle with myself, over symbolism, nationalism, pride, voice, faith, criticism and justice.
The impetus for these reflections, conveniently placed just a scant couple of weeks before our nation wraps itself in the gleam of a shiny Eagle and warm apple pie, happened during my time in Ohio. The theme for PSG this year was “Lights of Liberty,” celebrating the Pagan community’s recent triumph over the VA in regards to the Pentacle debacle. Like most, I too celebrate this triumph and have enormous respect for all those who pursued this issue with their time, hard work and monetary resources. As I’ve commented in the past, no matter one’s opinion on the government or our current administration or this war, it’s plainly unfair in an almost ridiculously egregious way to deny a fallen soldier the religious symbol of her or his choice on their grave marker. Additionally, I am indebted to the organizers of PSG for their incredible efforts in creating the opportunity for nearly 1000 people to come together in community once a year and participate in so many events, rituals, and workshops. I don’t think I can say that enough. PSG was amazing.
Given all that, as someone who has some serious criticisms of our entire political system and the existence of nation states in the first place, I could not help being a little disturbed at the overwhelming emphasis on national pride at PSG this year, including American-flag-colored wristbands and the inclusion of the statue of liberty as a recurring symbol on merchandise and in ritual. Not everyone is an anarchist – certainly I appreciate that. And I would never presume to tell anyone not to give respect to our veterans – I myself am born into a line of several generations of military women and men on both sides of my family. However, I firmly believe that it is necessary, amidst the celebrating, that we remember that America, the nation state (an entity that is separate from America the people and America the Land, both of whom I am madly in love with) has problems. Deep, serious problems. And for me, my polythea/ologies, in addition to being the method by which I revel in Beauty, are also the method by which I understand and form a response to these problems – when Pagan polythea/ologies and rituals employ nation-state symbols that can be interpreted as representing a paradigm that perpetuates inequalities, imperialism, etc., I think it’s necessary to ask thea/ological questions in order to clarify our intentions in regards to those symbols. Magic is, after all, primarily a tapestry of intention.
America, the nation state, was founded on colonialism and genocide. America, the nation state, cares not at all for those on the fringes of its societies and its cultural norms, functions as a rogue state in international affairs, and has an utter lack of sympathy, compassion or sense of responsibility for the Land on which it is currently squatting. I cannot overlook this history and these struggles even as I agree that the fundamental ideals of justice, free speech, religious freedom, radical democracy, etc. are good ones. I love people – I love the people here and elsewhere. I love the Land, the Mama – I love Her here and elsewhere. While our triumph in this first battle against the VA and the American government – towards recognition of our religious communities as valid traditions that deserve all the rights and privileges of any other religious community in America (which is a worthy goal, though there are arguments certainly to be made about whether or not it behooves us to go mainstream) – is a strong one that deserves our celebration and our gratitude, it remains important as well to never cease in leveling a critical hermeneutic of suspicion at our culture, our government, our symbols, our choices, and our selves. We Pagani dig us some symbols – so it really does mean something when we choose to exalt certain ones. When we give worship and praise to the statue of liberty in the name of the “American goddess Libertas”, to what are we committing as a religious community? Is Liberty really a deity? What does that mean? Are we deifying America? Are America and Liberty truly synonymous? What is liberty? What does it look like? At whose expense is liberty acquired? Again, I do not wish in any way to criticize the extraordinary efforts of those in our communities to fight these battles and indeed to create the opportunities for little gospel pagans like myself to attend festivals like PSG – I simply think it’s important that these questions and these conversations never cease to be engaged in our community as we grow and move out into the mainstream. I also recognize that there are Pagan individuals, circles and communities that are on the entirely opposite side from me politically, and I honor and respect their right to be heard, as I honor my own right to be heard.
Politics and religion together make for a sticky business. The symbols we choose to give worship to have meaning – and sometimes the meaning is tricky, and multilayered, and conversations ensue. This is me having a conversation…kinda with myself.
In some ways, I wonder at symbols in general. The deeper meaning of their purpose – how they can make things beautiful and screw things up royally at the same time. But that’s some other pondering for some other glorious day on Mama if I’m blessed enough to have it. For the moment, I am wrapt in the never-silence of Summer, and wish you all a dip in the pond and a dragonfly on the water. There but for the grace of swimsuits go I.
A Gospel Pagan Goes to Ohio
July 3, 2007 at 10:36 pm (Good News Communique, Pagany Musings)
Ah, Pagani.
I’ve been struggling with how to communicate my experiences at the recent Pagan Spirit Gathering for over a week now. In the language of my last post, my time in Ohio fermented itself right out of its crock and has leaked into the cracks and corners of every thought and prayer of mine the last 7 days. I met amazing people that have already woven their thread into my tapestry so firmly that I feel they must have always been here, walking in my life. I walked silent under the waxing moon past tents filled with secret singing and torchlight. I danced madwoman around a fire that threw up stars to match those in the dark sky. I ate ice cream.
It was awesome.
I have a million thoughts that I can’t pin down to articulate yet, as I grapple with the emotional juggernaut of being home and back to “real life,” which in many ways is no such thing. For now, I will leave you with a few thoughts and impressions from my week of woods and light, of air and darkness – Good News Communique #11 (or 754…or 13…or 42…I can’t remember), PSG Edition:
1. In one of my recent posts, I commented on the health issue in contemporary Pagan communities that I had heard was communicated at Pantheacon this year. I have since learned that the original speaker who commented on this issue at Pantheacon was Pagan author and NPR correspondant Margot Adler, who was also present at PSG and gave an outstanding talk on the evolution of Pagan religious movements and communities in the United States since the first publication of her seminal and extraordinary work Drawing Down the Moon, which has been recently released in a new updated edition for 2007. During her talk, she commented again on her distress at watching the Elders in our community battle diabetes, heart disease and mobility issues due to ill health, and the need for the Pagan community to take responsibility for ourselves and our communities in terms of our physical well-being. She also said, quite pointedly, that the issue is not about fat, and was very clear about the need to avoid shaming fat bodies in our search for an alternative to the contemporary American tendencies towards poor nutrition and sedentary lifestyles. I feel very powerfully that this is possible – to balance the importance of health with a refusal to jump aboard the shame train, and I was thrilled to hear Adler balance the two effectively and compassionately.
2. Labyrinths have never worked for me. This is ironic, since it was while I was reading Lauren Artress’ classic book Walking a Sacred Path that I first felt a call to ministry and decided to pursue seminary work. Yet, every time I’ve walked a labyrinth, I’ve felt strangely unmoved. I derive more spiritual fulfillment from watching others walk the path, actually, which I’m sure must mean something. At any rate, it comes down to the fact that labyrinths leave me cold. Which is why I was hesitant to experience PSG’s candlelight labyrinth, constructed in a starlit meadow and tended until dawn for any wayward member of the Pagani who happens to feel the pull of the walk at 3:30am…like I did, much to my surprise. And what a blessing it was. Oh, don’t get any fabulous ideas – I heard no trumpets from Beyond the Fields we Know. I wasn’t visited in the wee hours by spirits or sprites – I heard no booming voice instructing me in the Way. I sat by a fire in the center of a field of lights and listened to the Voice below the Stars Within, the divine Child of Promise in my tiny green soul, and heard a few snippets of instruction and advice that I take well to heart, but no radiant fire poured down from the inky vault and anointed me with illumination (for that, I dance). Rather, I spent an hour burning dew-bright with the sweet wet of the grass, transfixed by the gorgeousness of the flickering trail – the match-up of star to candle, the wheel of the sky above my circle, and the whisper of wind in the Appalachian thickets. It was enough. For the shattering Silence of that Beauty, I give thanks.
3. Community. By Gods, it exists. While I wax despairing from time to time as a woman who finds herself more often than not practicing my religion in a circle of walnut trees, opossums, cilantro and rabbits instead of my fellow human beings, and who spends most of her community time w/ her fellow Pagani on a computer rather than in person (the hypocrisy of being an anti-tech anarchist who spends so much of her waking life online is rich, I’m aware), I was staggeringly delighted to be surrounded for an entire week by the glittering diversity of our people. Do all the polythea/ologies present at PSG turn me on? Good Lordisa no. Do I agree with everyone at PSG politically, emotionally, spiritually, etc.? Nope. Did I feel a kinship with a group of wildly and splendidly different people, all wrestling in their own dark and bright nights with a bevy of angels, demons and sundry spirits, feeding on the fire of glorious living, sharing water and air and fire (and mead), dancing out their salty prayers around a bonfire twice as high as the tallest tree, shot through with love for the earth, the sky, their fellow crazy lovers of the World? Hel yes.
4. Mead. I had some fine fine mead. Praise the Melissae, Bee Priestesses of the Honeyed Cup! Praise the Rapturous Nectar-God! And Praise Dionysus…just cause. Io!
I attended a number of workshops and discussions that I am still digesting. And some rituals wherein the black sky opened itself like a flower and gave me gifts I am still unwrapping. To have been enveloped by my crazy people – a total joy. To feel the burden of self-consciousness fall away as my body began to understand what it is to merely be what it is, love what it loves, dance and be known, laugh hard and argue and connect…yep. I had a good time. I had a Good News time. More to come in the following weeks and months as I peel back the onion of my week in the woods. For now, I wish you all my Beloveds the shattering glory of a dawn that breaks on you knowing that today you are Right with the Mama, and your body is Her praying place.
Grok Earth. Pray ever without ceasing.
