Pagan Godspell

It’s Good News
when you reject
Things as They Are.
When you lay down the World As it Is,
and you take on the responsibility of shaping your Own Way:
That’s Good News.

Everybody talk about spirituals and they say:
“Oh Lord, Black folks singin’ ’bout going to Heaven”:
No, this lesson is for you tonight: November the 8th, 1980 in All Souls Church:

Lay Down the World
and pick up
My Cross.

And they don’t say it’s Good Times,
they say Good News.

It’s hard times when you decide to make your own way.
You’re gonna catch Hell
if you don’t do it the way they say Do It.

But when you lay down the world and shoulder up your cross, that’s what?

Good News.

-Sweet Honey in the Rock

—————–

Greetings, best beloveds, from the snowy, blustery white fields of the not-so-wild midwest. Come to think of it, this may be the wildest season we have here among the thickets and slopes of the upper midregions of the country. The wind rips through the eaves. Things get dark and strange – the electricity flickers, the animals become wilier, the folks burrow into the backs of their homes and fust and burn like small fires and create miracles wrapped in half-light.

As for me, I’ve been doing an amount of fusting and burning myself.

As I have stated previously, I began this blog as an experiment in balance, in order to feed a hungry part of myself and articulate some thoughts that had been floating around my head for any number of years in the process. And do a little verbal shimmying to boot – shaking a Pagani holy roller tailfeather, relishing the Good News. Towards all those ends, I have considered Pagan Godspell a right success, and I have been the recipient of a number of grand unexpected gifts as well – I’ve gotten to exchange ideas and thoughts with a host of wonderful Pagani, I’ve received words of encouragement and strength that I cherish, and I’ve gotten to feel as though I was part of a thriving online community of bloggers who care about the Mama, delight in the Beauty that Runs like a Holy River through All Things, and love their Gods with all their Hearts’ blood.

But, as so many fleeting gifts from the Mama that hold their beauty in the clutch of their mortality, I have come to the conclusion that the time has come (the Walrus said) to hang it up at Pagan Godspell. My posts have been few and far between of late – I am excited about some new writing ideas and other projects for the future. The winter tugs at the hem of my skirt. The new sun waits behind the hill, and I am putting some things to bed and waking up others.  Some of the material on this blog has been and will be transferred to my web site, most significantly my three lists of recommended books which together make up the Good News Bookshoppe. Come on by if’n yer of a notion.

It was the quote at the beginning of this post, delivered during Sweet Honey in the Rock’s 1980 performance of the African-American spiritual Good News, that inspired much of my thinking when I started Pagan Godspell and it still sends shivers down my spine whenever I hear it. The theology may present itself in words and images I may not necessarily use, but the sentiment grabs a-hold of me anyway. It’s hard times to make your own way – you’re gonna to catch Hell – if you don’t do it the way they say do it. But when you lay down the sewage fed to us by this pervasive worldview of greed and shoulder up the burden of the Holy Hysterical, the Ecovangelical, the Sacred Shout and the Miracle of the Mama, that’s Good News. It’s been a privilege to ferment and bubble along in my little corner of cyberspace for a precious time. I look forward to the sun over the hill. I say thank you.

Grok Earth. Pray without ceasing, friends Pagani.