Testimony to the Power of the Mama
by Ruby Sara
Blessing, beloveds, from the spring rainy streets of the pretty-damn-wild urban Midwest! The trees are doing that “blink and suddenly we have leaves again” thing they do, and the oft-mentioned rosebushes are so green I have to shield my eyes from their brilliance. The rites and rituals of spring are upon us in full throttle. Ostara has past, and we look forward to the roaring fires of Beltane with gleeful anticipation. It’s maybe a little too early for Beltaney musings, but the rain and the green grass burning against the steel of the sky has sparked memories which have sparked musings, so bear with me as I leap back across time to wonder at the spiritual journeys of an 18 year old girl/woman on the Colorado front range with roses in her hair, and forward to May of 2010, with that same woman now quite a handful of years older, and quite a few Beltanes beneath her belt.
I was a college freshman when I attended my first rite of Beltane. Appropriately enough, I won the Games we’d fashioned in our host’s backyard and was May Queen that day. I was a fat girl in a sweatshirt and shorts with a mass of unruly and ridiculous hair, but crowned with the flowers reserved for the Queen of May, I felt beautiful – and you know Pagani, I probably was. The rest of that rainy day we spent in the living room of our host’s home, eating food and doin’ up some old school Wiccan ceremonializing. The May King was an amiable and good-looking guy, and we shared one sweet and religiously obligated kiss, which evoked happy sighs from the gathered.
Does this sound innocent and romantic? It is. It was. Years later I am no longer Wiccan and I have some political issues with gender essentialism and etc. etc., but the fact is that that day remains one of the most perfect of Pagan memories for me – wrapped in honey and rain and ivy. And it is in that story that I hold much of what has kept me wed to the Pagani for so many years – the sense of fellowship, the simple profundity of the season, the Mama pouring forth all her amazingness, the moment I stood in the hall staring into the mirror and seeing a Queen there who was also myself. It is this memory that often reminds me why I have not yet left off identifying with the Pagani even as I wonder, just today and probably forever, if it’s not for the best that I do so.
Which leads me to thinking about testimony. Now that’s one of those words that some folks may not like (although it has plenty of various uses outside of Christianity, most notably in Law, a Google search of the word quickly turns up plenty of Christian sites, so’s I’m thinking that no matter how its used in other areas of the world, to “testify” in a religious context is still linked to one religion in particular…I’m aware of all of this). But I’ll just have to explore the larger issue of Christian language another day. Today, I’m using the word because it resonates with me, and I think it has weight. I’m invested in words that have weight. And testimony is a weighty word, in several ways. As a statement of lived conviction, for example. Here I’m thinking of the Religious Society of Friends (not coincidentally, a Quaker who has earned a certain amount of respect in the community is sometimes called a weighty Friend), a religious group for whom I have oodles of respect and have spent many hours considering as a religious path (I may never decide for sure, but I can say with no hesitation that I will never quit that conversation). To my understanding Quaker testimonies are convictions and ethics by which Quakers live their lives. I can grok that. A Pagan testimony of Eco-Justice? Let’s live that testimony, friends (and many of us do). I’m down.
But also, I am thinking of testimony simply in the matter of telling stories – of telling personal truth, and of sharing journeys. Of asking others to stand witness to your story. So I’m committed to using the word testimony because I like the weight of it in my head and on my tongue, but you can substitute words that fit you better, I sure as sure don’t mind.
We do testify, Pagani! Our spiritual journeys are and should be deep and swiftly moving rivers. And we should share them with each other – not only those stories of our awakening and conversion, but those moments that define us, those rituals that move us, those communities that inspire us. Blogging is a testimony of course, as is personal storytelling around campfires and in the course of discussion circles. And I have been thinking lately about testimony in this context because I have been thinking a lot about the Why. Why I stick around. I asked that of my friend Johnny once – why if we have these deep and abiding questions/struggles/arguments with our co-religionists, some of them seemingly stone-deep and fundamental, do we stick around? Sometimes I need to take time out to answer that for myself. To testify.
So I stick around because of the memory of that Beltane. And another Beltane spent in the warm gorgeousness of a friend’s woody and herb-filled home as the sun set blazing through the open windows, gilding the room and illuminating her dancing to heart-expanding music. And another spent making flower garlands on the cusp of Massachusetts forestland in the home of almost-strangers – the sweet-cold Beltaney rain was there that time too. Because of the many summer bonfires. And that Midsummer ritual a few years ago that took my breath away with its opulent yet silent beauty…the courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi through song and costume and gesture. And the wanderings out to deep wooded hollows to ask questions of the night. And the wall-shaking shouting matches with good friends over theological issues. And that time my intrepid spouse brought me hyacinths unexpectedly one lovely April evening, and their smell evoked all the gods of beauty right down into the room – a sudden gift from my beloved, and my Beloved.
And…when I am sitting on the floor of my room, awash and reaching for something concrete to hold on to…because the Mama is there. Always. Always there. I do not have to make complex arguments for her existence. Not that there’s not a hell of a lot of fun to be had in making complex arguments for things that cannot be scientifically verified or touched/pinched, etc., but when I am lying at the bottom of the worlds with my face against the basalt groundrock of it, friends, and all my heart has left is movements, not words, I can put out my hand and touch the face of god in the rosebushes and the dust. In my own skin and a candle and the face of a dragonfly or a praying mantis. In moths and sunlight. In the Holy Ones in the Grain and the Ground. The Root and the Raptor. And when, at sunset, a hundred voices raise up beside mine and shout together Hail and Welcome to the Red Woman beneath and upon the Earth…I often think “Oh yes. Yes. At least for this, and for now. I stick around.”
I may have said all this before. And I’m sure I will say it all again. I repeat it because it’s too much to hold sometimes, and I need reminding. And that’s what testimony is for.
So say hey friends and cousins and neighbors! The Mama is! Praise the Land! Hallelujah! Shout Amen! Amen!
That’s good news. I hope to sing about it until Sister Death arrives on her bejeweled motorcycle and offers me a lift. For all those Beltanes – those rituals and friends and seasons, Mama…I am just one woman laid out in wonder and in thanksgiving forever and ever.
Grok fucking everything, Pagani. Grok the Sun and the Moon. Grok elephants and antelopes. Grok Earth. Testify to the Power of the Mama.
Pray without ceasing.
“And, too, bearing witness, like a woman bears a child–with all her might!”
- Ani DiFranco
You keep trying v hard to use the jargon of xianity, which squicks me right the hell out, but what I hear through all of your discussions of various Beltanes through the years is: experience. Not faith, but experience. When you talk about divinity, the Mamma, that’s not faith, not something that you accept because of someone else’s testimony (faith, which, as a lawyer, believe me, I get. Courts accept on faith things they never experienced but as to which some “witness” (another word the xians use in ways that squick me out) has “testified.”) but experience. And, to me, that’s the essence of Paganism. Experience. I don’t believe in the turning of the wheel, or in Beltane, or in full Summer, or in Ceres, or in anything because of faith. I have had those Beltane experiences: the rain, the experience of myself as a Queen, the raw touch of Deity upon my brow, my clit, my heart. And that, as Mr. Frost (how aptly named!) said, has made all the difference.
Ms. Hecate – indeed, experience is enormous. I personally think faith and experience can co-exist…maybe I see faith as a kind of hope. As in, I don’t know and cannot control whether the sun comes up tomorrow or that spring will move into summer, but I hope and have faith that it will, because of my experiences in my past and because I have faith in the Mama’s continuing dance. Informed faith, maybe.
I know the Christian terms squick you out. LOL. It’s a vocabulary that I just find enormously useful, what can I say? The product of a seminary education maybe…or my penchant for gospel music. And if I’m honest, there are things about certain types of Christianity that I like. Syncretism happens.
As ever, I am grateful for your moving comments.
RS