Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

-Pablo Neruda, The Song of Despair

Friends.  The light in the morning.  Have you seen it?  Each day I wake up, and it is there – the bleeding humility of it, its sharp and delicate nature.  It is a microscope, a sweet knife, and a reminder.  It says, “Yes, the darkness occludes, and is my friend and companion.  Some things are best in the dark.  But I will show you the sea at seven in the morning, or six.  And this will tell you new things.  Each time.”

The beauty of everything is the First Thing Always, and best.  God?  Merely a word for the beauty that sits tucked and burning in the heart of every tiniest breath and cell.  A billion worlds may exist inside the crease of an onion skin or the wrinkle of a walnut, and I will believe that each one is born whole and seamless from the Potential that is Beauty that is the perfect First, the Zero, the ineffable out of which comes….moss, carrion, the human heart, iron, tupelo honey, time and willows…the morning light, and the exquisite mechanics of the eye that perceives it.

Yet it is also in these mornings when I am most wracked by doubt about myself, and about the world.  I have too much time and silence to myself not to begin to think about the rough parts of the larger diamond of life.  People kill and maim, the earth suffers.  People suffer.  I avoid the news now on a consistent basis, and have never regretted that choice.  The larger points come to me through friends and various channels – I feel no need to seek out the minutiae of torture and destruction to feel informed.  Still, I cannot avoid it all, and the litany of grief seems louder in the mornings, when the day is new and fragile and could so easily be broken.  Hunger is everywhere, and fear, and the gentleman on the corner where I get coffee tells me his story – how he’s lost his room, how the days are getting colder.  The sparrow’s conundrum seems keener than ever.  And every day again I have no good or best answer for it, and I ask for forgiveness for the ways in which I fail and am culpable.

I pray for the road to become the river Lethe, but it does not.  Its gray movement is an old friend, but even still, it is not enough.

So I count on two things in the morning.  Music, and the morning light.

Music is religion.  Spirit, the wind, the sound of water, shout.  Music is religion and I don’t know a single person who wouldn’t agree when it came down to brass tacks.  And poetry, matched to music and drawn forth by a human voice trained like an instrument, a bell, a trumpet…well, coupled with the morning light and the rush of birds in the trees, I know of no better church.  To be awakened, set on fire with justice, renewed and dedicated to the Work, to touch the Beauty that we call God and learn how to live out of that meeting place, that’s church.  And church is Music.

Yes.  Yes.

And the morning light shines on me a while,
and I am grateful for many things.

Greetings, best beloved Pagani!  The world spins, the dark rushes up, but we are in the midst of some strange blush of September in what should be November’s creeping chill.  70 degrees does not an encroaching winter day make.  Days like this make me nervous and wary, visions of planetary enviro-apocalypse dancing in my head, and at the same time, the blissful animal in my skin is still awful joyful at these few stolen days of t-shirts and unexpected roses.  I have been, as I am so wont to do, baking bread and listening to Peter Gabriel.  You can’t beat a morning like that with a stick as far as I’m concerned.  Fresh rosemary bread and sweet vanilla challah…I’ve mentioned both these in a few recent blog posts, and that’s because I’ve made them before.  And THAT’S because they might be the best things on the Mama’s green and gorgeous body.  Also, I’m exceedingly and nigh excessively proud of my new-found ability to create woven challah rounds, which look like magical breads fresh from a fairy tale basket, and smell as good while baking.

Which has me thinking about all kinds of things, but perhaps most naturally, it has me thinking about food.

See, the other day, while going about the business of being me, I overheard someone assisting a friend in the cultural details of attending a religious gathering.  The most important detail of all?  “Bring food.”  Immediately, I knew that something real and serious and profound was going on.  It resonated with the very bottom of my feets and the marrow of my boneses. More and more, friends, I am beginning to believe that while the heart of the individual’s spiritual path may be the maxim “Know Thyself,” the heart of culture and religion can be very neatly summed up with these two simple words:  Bring food.

My coven in Colorado holds a Dumb Supper every Samhain.  One of our members is, among many things, a brilliant cook, and her gorgeous, wholesome and robust vegan meals often have us swooning in the midst of our respectful Silence.  This year was no exception.  And, as I am every year, I am left nearly in tears at the resonance of this amazing meal.

I am, frankly, consistently amazed at the beauty, profundity, magic, and real, grok-it earthy diving deep and surfacing power of food.  Food alone.  Food sans metaphor.  Just food.  Bread and beans and broccoli.  The emotional power of food choices, the diversity of it, the jaw-dropping amazingness of the fact that you eat the place you live in.  That everything is connected, so intimately, so perfectly.  That at some point, thousands and thousands of years ago, someone looked down to see a saffron crocus, its stigmas a bright, scarlet red against its sweet purple petals, and heard the voice of the crocus, mixed with its heady and amazing smell, teach them all about its creamy yellow dyes, its strangely erotic honey scent, to become a thing so precious that we will still pay an enormous amount of money for these little dried threads, each plucked by hand thousands of miles away.*

Point is, FOOD.  Point may always be food.  And the eating of it in togetherness.  Things happen, and people eat together.  And when people eat together, things happen.  In thinking about the development of culture first and religion second, food may be the first and best place to begin.  Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t scrap all this ritualizing (only sometimes…I am, after all, a sucker for ritual) and just get back to basics.  In thinking about what creates community, what creates culture, how religious bodies develop and grow, how groups start, it seems to me that always, the bedrock place to begin is with eating together.  Consistently.  And not just in terms of the haphazard potluck, either (where, I’ll be the first to admit, I used to be the person who brought the chips), but a meal, made perhaps by many hands, but one that has at its heart a sense of harmony.  Picnics outside, meals at tables.  Just eating – passing the butter, sharing the bread.  Eating together breaks down barriers – giving food to the Other makes that Other a Friend.  Feeding others is an act that nourishes both parties simultaneously.

Food.  Music.  Storytelling.  The basics of religion?  What would our religious circles and groups look like if instead of beginning with rituals or spells, we began instead with just eating, singing, and storytelling?  Of course, I think ritual is vital to the unique life of our religion.  But in the interest of cultivating culture, what could be more simple and profound than the breaking of bread?

For the moment, as the days in theory become chill and the wind blows hard along the brick and through the back alleys, stirring ivy and washing smiles over those touched by its gifts, I wish for you, friends, a meal shared and a covenant created.  To grok the perfect and most ancient blessing of food, and to sing through the evening with your heart as full as your belly.

Grok that most glorious and edible Earth.  Pray, feast, and sing without ceasing.

*There is a LOT to be said about the terrible price we pay for global trade – no question.  Coffee, chocolate, cloves and cardamom?  If you were living a purely local life in say, the midwest United States, you’d be fresh out of luck – these items that we take for granted in our lives are precious, and they come with layer upon layer of story and wonder and death. This is a terrible struggle – to hold on to the awareness of civilization’s many, many injustices and staggering global history.  Spices alone are a brilliant reminder.  Their long, complex histories are bloody, wasteful, eco-destructive, devastating, and appalling.  Yet, they continue to compel us – by the bargeload.  And while we have them, if we choose to partake of them, at the very very least we should wholly and mindfully appreciate them for their precious, incredible power…to truly treasure them, their uniqueness, their rare beauty, their humbling and problematic history.  To say a prayer of remembrance, to acknowledge the rare gift of these things in our lives…. a beginning only, but an important one.  What after that?  Working to bring down the destructive worldview, culture and institutions/corporations that perpetuate the horror – yes.  Yes.  But for now, this saffron thread, a treasure.  A wealth.  Don’t allow yourself to forget that the presence of your nutmeg and your cinnamon is a luxury, not a given.

Happy November, beloveds!  I am back in the pretty-crazy-wild urban midwest, working to absorb the lessons of Samhain and struggling with the evening darkness that looms over me each day earlier than before.  This is a testing time, this particular movement in the year’s symphony – last year, freshly planted in urban climes and holed up in my almost completely empty apartment (for various reasons, my intrepid spouse and I were not able to retrieve our belongings from storage for several months), my ankle thoroughly broken and my hobbling about consistently frustrating and exhausting… well I admit, I may have been adversely influenced in my assessment of the winter season here in my new digs.  This year, I am trying again, crying mercy to that most terrible and glorious Mother Night, making offerings and prayers to Her, great laughing redheaded calavera, in hopes She will pull back the heavy curtain of winter once in a while to reveal its blooms and gifts in the shadows and the naked rose canes, in the white bees that swarm in the dusty lavender sky, that I might know both Her faces this time around.

In the meantime, though, I haven’t been sleeping well.  I don’t tell you this to beg sympathy from you, dear friends, but merely as an opening into today’s subject, which in the wee hours gave me something to ponder, the creaky gears in my brain whirling away when they should have been at rest.

In the face of the advent of the world’s freezing…I was thinking about compassion.  And forgiveness.  And kindness.

More, I was thinking about why, in my experience (*tappity* caveat *tappity*), the Pagani don’t tend to discuss theologies that posit these items with any fervor, seeming to favor worldviews and value systems that laud the rugged individual (I will be the first to say that this may be an impression with no basis in fact and I’d be absolutely willing to change my mind).  What evidence do I have for this?  Well, truthfully, not much that would pass any scientific test… 20+ years of conversation, our noted dearth of any cohesive organized charity organizations/projects, and a seminary education where I suddenly felt vaulted into a culture that talked about this stuff a LOT…so much so that our lack thereof became rather illuminated.  No, I’m not saying that Christians are more virtuous than we are.  I am saying that they talk about compassion, forgiveness, love, agape, charity, feeding people, fellowship, and grace more than I perceive we do, and my fellow seminarians, liberal bleeding-heart radical-Jesus-following folks for the most part, were talking a talk that I liked, and that I think has a place in our own libereal bleeding-heart, radical-earth-based, polytheist, Mama-loving communities (yes, I know Pagans are not all liberals and radicals and tree-huggers and anarchists and communitarians and soup-kitchen volunteers and feminists….yes, I’m aware of this fact…but let’s just say that I’m one of those kinds of folks, and chances might be good that if you dig my blog, you might be at least shakin’ hands with these types, if’n yer not one yerself).  I think there are probably a LOT of reasons for these perceived differences – as ever, it’s complicated…but I suppose I better plow on anyway or I may never sleep again.

So, another good question might be, if what I perceive is even remotely true, where do I think this comes from?  Well, as I mentioned in a previous post, I think this is a hallmark of our American culture in general….radical individualism and all that (I know, I say that a little too often….luckily, a very smart person has made this short film explaining exactly what I mean by it……what actual community might mean to me in opposition to this big individualist demon I keep evoking….’nother time).  I wonder if the gestalt of America isn’t possibly essentially libertarian along these lines, and it’s safe to say that I think extreme capitalist libertarianism/individualism (and its sometimes sidekick, extreme postmodernism/relativism) is a road best left untraveled.  “Looking out for Numero Uno” is, in my most un-humble opinion, simply antithetical to the human endeavor.

Additionally, sometimes I think we Pagani try real hard to distance ourselves from anything that smacks of Abrahamic monotheism.  And while I personally think that this is, first, a kind of silly way to go about establishing an identity/culture/faith system (i.e., an identity based solely on what one is *not* is not a functional identity), and, second, involves a lot of babies being thrown out with a lot of admittedly stinky bathwater, and third, actually impossible….that’s probably yet another post altogether.  Somewhere along the line there, I *was* going to talk about theologies of compassion, gratitude, forgiveness and love.

First, I do understand why we’re so turned off by the vast majority of creamy, extra-bubbly new-agey “spirituality” that touts so-called “compassion” and “gratitude” (and sells lots of scented pillar candles) within a capitalist cultural context so shallow that the words lose all their meaning.  It’s commercial.  It’s false.  It’s insulting.  This kind of pap is usually coming from folks who are also peddling “positive thinking,” a cultural trend that I was recently blazingly thrilled to see one of my favorite thinkers, Barbara Ehrenreich, take to the carpet in her latest book Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (a much much needed and about time too kind of book…I recommend it highly).  After years of being told to have “an attitude of gratitude” in response to personal tragedy*, and to “think positively” in the face of misfortune and suffering (implying of course that your inability to heal miraculously or achieve financial success in the face of overwhelming obstacles is simply the natural and deserved result of being a Negative Nancy….the same bullshit found in The Secret, of which, you’ll recall, I am not overfond), it comes as no surprise that people would look with suspicion at “compassion,” “gratitude,” “kindness” etc., and rightly so…the words themselves seem to have become little more than bumper-sticker fodder.

I also get how some of the prevalent mainstream theologies of our day that do give lip service to the importance of forgiveness and kindness are often borne out of a parent theology that infantilizes people and robs them of personal agency and responsibility.  This kind of “forgiveness” can become either a perpetual excuse for folks who have no plans to change themselves for the better on one side, or a reason to grovel before a choosy, judgmental god, who metes out tiny parcels of mercy seemingly according to his moody whim, and who enjoys watching you squirm in agony, lowly worm that you are, on the other.  Either one of these is unconscionable to me.  Interestingly enough, we might also be told by similar theologies to live up to standards that we don’t even reserve for god.  Feeling obligated to forgive someone when you simply cannot do so is a perfect recipe for self-inflicted mental suffering.  And being told to love all people unconditionally all the time is, frankly, an unreasonably high bar for a bunch of emotional, beautiful, fragile, mortal animals.  But also note that love is different than permissiveness.  Something else to ponder.  Authentic balance (“balance”…another overused word in our times, but somehow still completely elusive) is hard. And out of the exhausted afterglow of theological gymnastics…then what?  Well, mysticism, usually.  To cleave: a word that means both itself and its opposite.  Love that is all encompassing, all forgiving, all consuming, all embracing and unconditional….yet comes with expectations, challenges, and hopes.  Love that demands dedication and personal examination….the same Love that forgives you when you fail.  Remarkable.

What I think I’m trying to say is that I think it is possible to construct a meaningful, authentic, dynamic theology that embraces both personal agency/responsibility, as well as grace, forgiveness, kindness, and love, requiring the flexibility to change given new circumstances and new information, but with an eye towards the richness of tradition.  What does it look like on the ground?  It looks like feeding people and making sacrifices in order to help others and preserve relationship, while still maintaining a healthy level of self-awareness and boundary-integrity.  It looks like making a conscious choice to forgive others for stupid small things, like the person who cut you off in traffic, or the hairdresser who implied that your pre-cut hair resembled a mullet.  It looks like forgiving yourself for mistakes, while also learning from them, and vetting yourself against an evolving code of ethics, personal and communal.  It looks like thinking about each person you encounter as a complex, feeling, thinking creature.  It requires thinking like an actor, an artist, a writer, a storyteller, a ritualist.  Lucky for us, we are all these things, innately.  A politics of compassion and forgiveness and love is a politics of real down and dirty life – beautiful and awful at once…neither the saccharine and shallow Joel Osteen brand of new-age capitalist prosperity pablum, nor flesh-denigrating, Other-hating, agency-robbing, oppressive nonsense.  Like good art, most folks just know it when they see it.  The real.  The real mess.  Forever and ever.  Cookies and milk.  Bread and wine.  Peanut butter in my chocolate and chocolate in my peanut butter.  Amen.

What does this mean?  I’m not sure.  Every time I open my yap, a million other questions spring to mind.  I think a theology/politics of compassion easily arises out of a Pagan worldview – out of a belief in rootedness, in being connected and aware of the planet, in real, working relationships, and a desire to preserve and celebrate Beauty.  And certainly, I see a lot of people living this every day, struggling with the heart of it.  So maybe it’s not really that I believe that Pagans don’t operate out of a theology of compassion, but that we simply don’t articulate it very often.  I’m not sure.

What I am sure about, at least, is that challah tastes good.  Especially with a vanilla glaze.  And that in the first week of November, when the nights are flush with an unexpected warmth so much so that even the stars seem to pulse brighter with a seasonal laughing pre-winter joy, I can feel the innate prophecy of the world’s turning in every snap of leaves beneath my feet.  And that the dawn will make all things new.

*Whatever happened to mourning?  Used to be so important they hired professionals to help out.  Now we’re told to move on, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, smile, and fake it ’til we make it.  Guh!  Leave me and my ashes and my sackcloth alone.  Mourning, I will now and forever maintain, is important.  Death is holy, and things hurt.  Have a little respect for the gravity of Life.

It’s a big sacred holiday today. Yep. I should resist snark today. I should resi….

Dear Pat Robertson,

I’m unsure how you expect anyone to take you seriously. At all. Ever.

Thanks for the chuckles.

Sincerely,

Ruby Sara

p.s. I just ate a peanut butter cup laced with EVIL. It was delicious.

Samhain rises, best beloved Pagani! Blessings of these most sacred Hallows!

This year, I have left the skirling skies of the urban midwest and have landed smack in the middle of a wild-wild-west Samhain blizzard. It’s hard to feel the movement of the season under two feet of snow, but we do our best. Hot chocolate helps. And warm socks.

But the mystery remains, the stars turn, the ground hardens, the light shifts. Candlelight still shines its otherworldly blessing, and I am surrounded by loved ones, living and dead. The season of beloveds. The sliding into Mother Infinite, the living Darkness coming on the heels of sepia-toned twilight, the needle of midnight ground against stone.

The veils are so thin this year it is hard to concentrate on much else (are they really thinner than before, or do they just seem thinner as I get older?), and I too am raw and open, reminded at almost every turn of the fragility of things, and the shocking, unending human beauty and breath-caught flowering that erupts from the awareness of that fragility.

Once upon a time, I wrote:

Samhain is a story. A good story. It is the story of those that lived before me and now live in my elbows and my back. It is the story of the Mama as she lays down and sighs and sleeps. It is the story of the screaming chaos of winter and the harsh clicking of the Oldest Woman, Owl Woman, who sits in the blackest night and spins out the dealings of our smallness and our bright thread. It is the story of squash. And pumpkins and turnips. And the human gift of telling stories to dance with fear. To look at Death, between Her curtain and His veils, and speak to those we love.

Samhain is a great Empty even as it is full of voices – a howling stillpoint before anarchy, a salutation to night songs and feral non-time. Samhain is the first invitation to a season of testimony and wild resurrection. Of Mystery and Sleep. Of masks and gifts. Of offering after sacrifice. Of holding ourselves out in the cold night and laughing after we scream. Owl Woman at the back of the cold room rocking in her chair. Laughing her ass off. Scaring the shit out of every breathing thing.

This is still the thrust of the Mystery to me. Though I find, as each year passes, that Samhain continues to unfold itself like some gorgeous, sunsetting, nighttime and awe-ful flower, its scent so complex we can only trick out a few notes at each passing. So that this year, perhaps more than in the years before, I feel acutely Samhain’s unique and terrible education settling itself into my skin. To feel soul-stripped and laid out on the cold ground, ribs folded back from my body like wings, the wind ripping over every nerve, blasted and naked in the face of the Great Empty, and then, at the most hollow moment, to have that most perfect and holy Love Exquisite poured straight from heaven into my heart by the bucketful, and music and light and fire and I am overcome overcome overcome….the generations of my ancestors and spirits of my beloveds clustered in around me, their prayers rising like incense from their singing mouths, and their hands on my shoulders, my face, wiping away tears. To be an instrument, strung as tight as possible and played by an unseen hand, the agony and the ecstasy forever and ever.

Things die. And we are, fleshy creatures us, wracked by this communal tragedy. Things die. Grief and terror and all the children of Nox. Things die, and as we are Things, so we too are subject to the complete and unavoidable rule of Death. And then, in the teeth of it, in the mess and the sorrow…this strange and stirring hope. This wonder and this togetherness. A table laid with the last fruits of the Mama’s turning, a shared meal, bread and apples. The alchemy of the kitchen and the hearthfire, the a-mazingness of friends – how remarkable, how remarkable. Things live.

The no-sense of the season is upon us. The Mama may be carpeted with a misrule’s worth of snow, but the candles burn anyhow, and the Ancestors know our names. Bless. Bless.

Grok Earth at the Stillpoint and the Unveiling, friends Pagani. Pray with each other, each loved one, those prayers holy unceasing, in the Night.

She whose curses had blasted the fire till it shrivelled big logs of oak crooned now a melody like a wind in summer blowing from wild wood gardens that no man tended, down valleys loved once by children, now lost to them but for dreams, a song of such memories as lurk and hide along the edges of oblivion, now flashing from beautiful years of glimpse of some golden moment, now passing swiftly out of remembrance again, to go back to the shades of oblivion, and leaving on the mind those faintest traces of little shining feet which when dimly perceived by us are called regrets.

-Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland’s Daughter

Oh, Pagani, it is another fine, smoky, honey-eyed day.  And an eldritch one at that.  The weather is so rich and golden, so full of dance and dream, so sweet and dark and utterly strange that I imagine the ghost of Lord Dunsany himself whistling over the copper grasses, idly muttering passages from his exquisite books, having crossed over personally from Beyond the Fields We Know to admire the setting sun.

It is a Samhain day, and perfect.  All the hum and thrust of the season captured in the wind.  Downright fine cackling weather.  No matter where you are, I encourage you to go out and practice your best cackle in honor of the season.  Now is the time, now is the hour, doveys.

For it comes, it comes, best beloveds, the dark rising, the many-petaled veils between this n’ next slithering over and through each other…do you smell it?  Dust from crumbling yellow leaves, old pollen, the dying breaths of plants and moss and insects, memories on top of memories, the ones you treasure most, the ones that haunt you best, and even ones you are quite sure are not your own.  Remember the time you lived in the oak tree with the little door in it?  Remember the Big Crooked House made of bronze leaves and glass chips and bark, with a thousand rooms, each nested inside another?  You do.  You do.

The day is transparent, and we see through it on into winter, making wishes.  Our Beloved Dead are near, pressing in on our windows – let them in if they are welcome.  And the exquisite light, that light that cannot be captured on film or digital no matter how hard you try….you will simply have to remember it.  Drink it up, tuck it away in your little soul pocket.

The day looks sideways out the corner of its eyes.  Doors open.  One misplaced step, and you could find yourself singing songs and telling tales to a Strange Queen for the rest of your days…

Lucky you.

Grok the Shining, beloveds.  The door is opening….

Greetings, friends Pagani, from the continuously revelatory autumn days in the pretty-wild urban midwest!  I’m still kind of reeling from my unexpected rapture.  My dreams have been gentle and fierce, dreams of falling towards death in an elevator full of strangers, who choose, as a group, to spend their last few minutes of life not screaming in terror, but giving each other hugs….the best of what it means to be human blazing out of them all at once.  Sappy….maybe you had to be there (maybe you were)…but it was a long time before I could shake the beautiful fragile sadness-hope of that exquisite moment from my heart, and for weeks I have been captured like a trembling moth inside numinous songs that cut me to the quick.

So what does it all mean?  Hell if I know.  I’m just here on the planet for the cinnamon rolls and the ecstasis.

Still, of course, it’s not all revelations and pentecost over here at Pagan Godspell.  I’ve been away from the ’sphere this past week working feverishly on a variety of projects. More on those I’m sure in the future…for the nonce, I’ve got ponderings I’ve been trying to work out for a few days in my feeble brain pan, and I’m sure I won’t rest until I can worry them out in the most rambling manner possible.

Yes, I have been pondering much since my recent, ridonkulously long opus, and I imagine I will still be parsing individual items from that post for months.  Good timing, as the winter takes big steps over the tops of trees and runs its freezing hand over the ground and around my shoes.  A perfect season for onion work…peeling layers, removing inedible parts.  My intrepid spouse and I spent the weekend battening down the windows with blankets – as fun as the meat locker temperatures of our office in the dead of winter may be, we have made arrangements designed to help keep our toes on this year.  And in the closets of my spirit I have been making my own preparations – my prayers haunted with the coming hallows, I clean my altar spaces and open old caverns in my heart, waiting for those Shining and Beloved Ones I dance and burn with to pluck the strings of the instrument within my chest, playing the hard songs of winter, that bloodless teaching season.

Here is what I believe (rather, here is one of the things I believe):

Once upon a very distant time, Religion wasn’t.  Religion wasn’t, because Religion was Culture instead.  Then, civilization came along, and divided Religion from Culture, and Religion had a choice.  It could either choose to support the dominant Culture, or it could be Countercultural.  Is this a simplistic version of events?  Maybe just a hair.  But work with me here.  I’m trying to parse a Big Idea in a single blog post.  It’s rather like trying to cram a king sized sheet into a muffin tin.  It’s also arguably as useful.  But I digress.

Cut to….right now.  This minute.  We (by “we” I mean civilization, and more specifically post-industrial, capitalist, monocultural, techno-driven, radically individualistic, hyper-hierarchical, patriarchal civilization….of course) currently operate under the auspices of a culture that posits extreme dominance, the oppression of the Other, the privileging and overpowering of the few, the rampant devastation of our landbases, soul-killing, war, the annihiliation of Beauty, etc.  You get the point.  You can argue with specifics, that’s fine.  You can also think I’m full of shit…which is why I so cannily said earlier that this is what I believe (even though this is kind of a cop out).  I’m saying I find there to be Something Wrong with the way we’re Going About Things.  Of course, I don’t know what the Right Way is, I just have a bunch of silly ideas.  Also, it is very very very very very very very hard to get away from this culture/worldview, because it is bred into our bones from birth.  But that at least it can be known that Something Is Wrong is the bedrock supposition out of which the rest of the post springs…suffice to say, if you think the dominant culture is rockin’ awesome just the way it is, then it’s probably best for us to shake hands, say friend, and leave it at that.  But if you’re still with me so far, then have a cinnamon roll, and walk with me on to the next cairn of nonsense…I promise it will be rocky.

So, then, we have Religion, and Myth, and Story (all the same to me).  For the purpose of this post, let’s say that Religion/Story/Myth exist for the purpose of orienting a person or a group of persons to their World, a method of embodied and ensouled storytelling and art-making that allows the human animal to exist in relative harmony with their surroundings, their fellows, their bodies, i.e. the World.  Does it always do this well?  Nope.  Are there folks who are going to argue with me about the definition of Religion above?  Oh you betcha.  But let’s go with the whole NPR “This I Believe” bit for a while longer, okay?  You can call me a crazy person at any point.  I can’t hear you, see.

THUS, if one posits that the dominant culture is Wrong and Generally Destructive, Dastardly and Disharmonious, AND one believes that the purpose of Religion is to orient the human animal towards harmony with their World, one might conclude that the Religion of one holding this belief should be necessarily countercultural.  That would be me, holding that belief there.  SO, when I was a young lass, and found the Religion that spoke to my bones and my breath and my blood, and had within it all the Secret and Beautiful Trumps of my own personal Story, I also thought that, naturally, its communities and ritual expression would also be countercultural; a Liturgical, Communal and Mythical Opposition to the Ugly Way Things Are.

But, in my experience, Paganism as it exists today in America (I can’t rightly speak to any communities outside my own country so I won’t), is not by and large a countercultural set of religions (I realize that there are traditions that have at their core a radical, progressive political agenda and I grok that, but I am talking about my impressions of Paganism as a whole….the contemporary Egregore of the thing, if you will…and many won’t agree, I recognize). Paganism in America was born almost completely out of the same cultural worldview as any other American religion.  As such, it often posits some of the same flaws (according to moi): rampant materialism, radical individualism (as opposed to radical community), a kind of “eye for an eye” ethic, and a spiritual libertarianism that posits a kind of radically apathetic perennialism along the lines of “if it works for you, that’s right swell, no matter the consequences, unless of course it affects me personally…” the NIMBY of religious dialogue.

Being countercultural is about values and Stories, not necessarily lifestyles or liturgical choices (standing in circles instead of sitting in rows is not necessarily countercultural), though both of these may arise out of values and embody them in ways that radiate those values in a holistic and authentically evangelical (aha….evangelism again…and you thought I was done with that) way.  Which is why I curdle sometimes when someone tells me that they are worried about Paganism selling out to the “mainstream.”  Paganism is mainstream, in ways that cannot be necessarily solved by simple social rebellion or alternativism (i.e. idiosyncratic dress, alternative ritual structure, armchair occultism, etc).  So then, if this is what I believe, it follows that I might ask how Paganism might be countercultural, since I thoroughly believe that it can be….which may be the beginning of a very long, very extended series of entirely different blog posts…..sometimes I bite off way more than I can possibly chew.  Dammit.

Meh.  I am not suggesting that it’s easy to let go of any worldview, and I am certainly not excepting myself.  I’m typing this on a computer, in an enormous metropolitan area, surrounded by all kinds of possessions (read: crap), much of them probably of dubious ethical origin.  Even the most dedicated radical communitarian is culpable in various ways to the worldview zie grew up in.  We are all culpable.  But that shouldn’t stop us from questioning the worldview on a continuing basis, asking questions, coming up with ideas and stories and myths that defy it, and embodying them in prayer and ritual and action.

What I am saying is that I think Paganism is a staggering well of blessed, authentic depth that can be effectively grokked in order to advent a real and profound countercultural shift.  I am saying that it might behoove us to examine the countercultural aspects of other religions and see if they hold weight with us.  I am saying that it begins with conversations about what we are trying to *do* in ritual, what we hope to say to people, what we hope they take away from prayer.  It begins with thinking about what our Stories are, and whether they serve the Ultimate Purpose we feel we are working towards in our hearts (and that may be different for different folks, certainly).  It begins with storytelling instead of rhetoric (of which I am obviously guilty), poetry instead of props, dancing and singing and eating and sharing.  It begins with rich, embodied, sensate experiences, moments of real mystical ecstasis, which naturally infuse the individual and a community with real and authentic evangelism, which fuels action, and embraces compassion.

Yes, it may be that I am talking out of my own idiosyncratic theology, which I admit is richly influenced by my education in Protestant Christian circles, and in which case, as I’ve mentioned in my previous post on Angel-wrestling, I will have to deal with what that means.  But now, in this moment, I am thinking about what it is to live a truly art-centric, earth-bound, prayerful, richly storied, countercultural religion, or at least to try to vett myself against that ideal, and see where I measure.  To ask the Angel that holds me who She thinks is winning here.  And that’s enough.  Certainly, it’s enough talking.  Prayer.  Prayer and a cookie.

Grok Earth.

Oh beloveds.

I’m a trifle wordy (you may have noted on occasion).  Yet…. yet.  There are moments when the Mama does her best to shut my mouth.  Today, today, today…was one of those moments.  I’m still struggling with what to say…I’m a hot mess. A grateful, prayerful hot mess, lifting her palms as an offering in the evening. Unto, as ever, the coming of tears.

But first, I explain a bit about me.  Sees, I’m weepy (friends reading this are having themselves an affectionate chuckle at the understatement, I’m sure).  Indeed.  In fact, the past few years, if Paganism was the sort of religion to postulate a mystical theology of tears, I might be a candidate for canonization at this point.  Now, before you take this and a few other veiled references to my unbloggy down time and fill them with dreadful speculation, I assure you: don’t fret, doveys.  I’s fine.  I’ve just spent some time these past few years struggling with some depression and anxiety…a not uncommon affliction.  That’s all.  It’s not a subject I choose to dwell on, it’s just something to know, and I do improve…I am blessed by good friends and loving ones and sometimes gratitude alone is enough to float my emotional raft.

But more to the point, even before and beyond this, it does seem sometimes that I have done and most likely will continue to do a fair share of work towards Unification with the Great-Silent-Shout at the Expanding-Hugely-Tiniest-Pinpoint-Heart-Forever of the Universe, by bawling my eyes out.  Some of my most spectacular mystical moments have indeed arrived both after and before, and in the middle of, tears.*

Today, for instance, I burst into tears because I was in love…my cells were in love, and my breath was in love, and my heart was on fire,  sacre couer, and I could do nothing else but burn silent livid sweet and raw, my eyes blurry and my mind full of singing. And really, it was just the weather. Just the weather, and God.

But perhaps I am ahead of myself (look at me back there). Let’s begin at the beginning (too late).

It’s fall, see.  I’m sure you’ve noticed.  And all day here in the pretty-wild urban midwest, it rained…a lovely blustery autumn rain.  T’weren’t nothing special…. all I did was leave the building.

And the Mama knocked me down.

The sun had come out, fast on the heels of the rain, and there were these enormous, wealthy clouds whorling and spinning in the clean sky, and the wind was fierce and savage, and beads of water clung to every leaf, and oh and oh and oh…the world was a diamond.  A diamond, friends.  But better.

I climbed into my car and watched the wind rush its arms through the reeds and the cottonwood trees and the dry rattle of old thistles, and I thought….yes, this is how I want to die.  I want to be standing on a hill on a day like today, with the wind blowing through my bones and the world sparkling and glittering and the grass rushing like water and my heart turning to leaves and smoke…and then maybe some enormous rock, launched unexpectedly from a bizarrely impossible, distant volcano, falls from the sky and smashes me flat.  BOOM!  Sudden like a fast star, and just before then, standing unmade on fire in love oh holy holy with the Mama.  Wholly alive.

I drove home, swimming in that astonishment. Every song that came through the radio had a message, and it was that Life is Mama is Grace is Unspeakably Brilliant is Beauty is the Golden Ticket, and that there may be no greater purpose than to break that Beauty like a fresh loaf of good bread and give it to everyone you meet.  I thought of a teacher in junior high who once shared a favorite, inspirational, numinous song with us, and how we’d secretly (or not-so secretly) laughed at the emotional lyrics and high musical drama of Bridge Over Troubled Water, and how deliciously the Mama was humbling me now by playing it in the car as I drove through glory, shaking me down to the dust from which I Am (so thank you, Mr. Jones, these 20 or so years later…adolescents can sometimes be an unforgiving lot, and it was a brave thing).

Now, at home, after dinner, my intrepid spouse reads me a passage from Return to Warden’s Grove by Christopher Norment that floors me, and we share that in a cozy room while the night wind rips the lamplight outside the window and plays its dark music.  And I don’t know.  I don’t know.  But that Beauty is, and will be, forever and ever.

Hours of prayer.  Fresh tears.  Forgiveness, breaking and mending.  What next, what next.  I am a little match, struck daily against the rough world.  This planet, this one.  My body, the vast reach of time.

Grok prayer, grok wonder, grok sky.  Grok heart.  Grok Earth.  Pray pray pray, ever without ceasing.

*No, no.  Do not, ever, suppose that I am conflating depression with mysticism. Depression and anxiety are very real and very awful, and I am extremely skeptical of those who dismiss the gravity of these disorders with pseudo-spiritual babble. I’m merely commenting on my own personal experience with crying as the result of an overwhelmingly spiritual ephiphany, or occasionally as an act that brings about a spiritual epiphany.  There are biological reasons for this of course, endorphins, etc.  And there is some really interesting work out there by those pursuing the spiritual dimensions of the emotional body.  But all this is very different than dismissing real suffering or the need for therapy and/or medication by hiding behind a veil of  judgemental pseudo-spiritual posturing.

Before I get too carried away with the rapture of the Mama’s turning (and I can’t tell you how often that happens), I wanted to mention how awash in heart-gladness I am, at the folks who have stopped by to say welcome back, and those who have even posted notice to their own blogs of my return.  Sincerely, I’m just overwhelmed by your good wishes and your warm thoughts, and there’s not much more that I can say but: Thank you!

Blessings these heart-stopping, gorgeous autumn days, beloveds! We spent some time this afternoon harvesting the last glorious handfuls from our small porch garden, and my hands still smell of rosemary and lemon verbena.  No chemical perfume will ever capture that perfection – fresh rosemary is the Mama’s Chanel #5.

Today I ran across this bit of deliciousness. I can only agree with every fiber of my being…paying attention is more than half the game of life.  I feel like recently I’ve fallen out of the habit of doing so – and have been tripping over myself as a result.  But the Mama does her damndest to pull me back from the brink of a number of craggy cliffs…wind blown on my cheek at the right moment, just so, making my head turn, in time to catch the smell of bread baking where it shouldn’t be possible to do so…or the deepening gloom of autumn evening, the sudden encroaching chill, the radiator tapping to life in the corner and reminding me of the merits of tucking in, of candlelight, grokking deep and personal reflection, and the blessings of socks.  Still, I struggle to shake the culture-fog that occludes the Real from my mind and my heart.  To remember to be the glorious art-making animals that we are, on fire with some secret amazement.  Paying attention means remembering, and discovery, and awakening, and relationship.

So this day, when my emotional being may be caught up in the snares and nets of ridiculousness, I pray to the rosemary and the fall sky – teach me again how to pay attention…and forgive me when I forget.  This is a short life, and I will make many more mistakes in it.  How humbling, how delicious, how breathtaking that the Mama simply turns me again and again towards Home, pointing with her scarlet finger to the mysteries of the year, a symphonic, soul-rattling, and knee-shaking generosity.

Grok Earth, Pagani.  Pray without ceasing.

Well.  I wasn’t here, see.  And you may be wondering (or not…but I’m-a tell you anyway…it’s a blog) what kind of shuffling around in my own polythea/ologies I was doing all that time.  Well……..funny story.  I’ve been working on this post.  Yep, this one right here.  So, you know, it might get long.  Bear with me, doveys.  Here’s the thing:

I’m partial to pretty colors.  I’m a bit of a magpie, after all, no matter how I like to pretend otherwise, and color gets my attention – so does spark.  I’m a fan of a big box of crayons and a bonfire (not necessarily together…well maaaybe…no no).  And, true to form, I like a shiny thing…’specially when it’s in regards to religion (and there’s little that isn’t shiny about religion; sometimes, it’s so shiny it could very well lase your eyeballs out, so you know, use caution when staring down the devoted, s’all I’m saying).

See, I noticed that there’s been not a few patches of color flashing in the Pagan blogosphere this year…what could even be called malcontent.  Folkses have criticisms.  Some are not shy about them.  Some are making ruhl bold statements and inciting some heated debate.  Some are just saying “y’all have fun with that – I’ll be over here with the Great No-Thing” (and inciting some heated debate). I’m sure there have been others I’ve missed.

Being a person intimately fascinated with the movement of spiritual journey and the patterns in my own communities, and not to mention getting down in the dust with my own angels on the matter, these particular kerfuffles, laments and personal 95’s have all caught my little eye and have sure held fast even my wayward attention.  These are some holy grievances, these are some spectacular discussions.  And what-do-you-know, but that all this good good verbal wrastling and seething and festering has gotten me a-thinking.  Cuz these past couple of years, the Great Mill has squished me flat, and I’ll be damned if it hasn’t been and continues to be a real effing challenge sometimes for me to stay Pagan.

Yes, oh Yes, Ma’am.

And now, the blithering details.  You can skip this part if you’re already, like me, a little tired of this post.  I won’t mind.  But I soldier weirdly on anyways.  I’m trying to sort it out.  It’s hard, dusty work.  I hope there’s water at the end.

First,  I think it’s important to point out that individual spiritual journeys will meander past wide and shallow parts and deep and rushing parts of the river always.  Your boat is made of a substance that you cannot begin to fathom.  The current is swift and there are beings beneath who are thinking of you not at all, flashing out bits of sunlight like little living mirrors.  This is the nature of Wyrd, of Fate, the stars disposing and compelling (no matter what the astrologers say).  Of course, you have a paddle, and you can choose which place in the river you float, and you might be able to avoid a rock or two if you’re fast, but it’s all the same shore, beloveds, and you’ll be dumped up on it at the end, no matter where you think you choose to be.  So it’s not for me to judge the discernment of an individual who believes that the time has come to change their outward religious identification, even if that person is me.  That’s a personal decision, and truthfully – it doesn’t really affect us as individuals.  Whether a Pagan leaves the banner of Paganism behind, or a UU leaves her church out of increased frustration, or a Christian becomes lit from within by Taoism…this is all just beauty – this is all just the Way Things Are, and it’s an intimate struggle – wrestling in a riverbank by night, alone and under the vault of heaven.

Also, I think it’s important to consider that the language of spiritual journeying is a difficult one.  Toes are bound to be stepped on.  Articulating why one chooses to leave behind a path, outside of the inoffensive but somewhat noncommittal “it just doesn’t work for me anymore” requires that you choose words that others might indeed find offensive.  In the case of Jason’s post way back in January (I know I’m behind the times…the world spins faster on the internet…but why don’t we pretend that the mystics have it a-right, and that time is really just a big lake and not really a river, and that you are reading these words as I type them, and I have already finished, and also have only just begun…or something like that), the use of the word “fail,” and the phrase “outgrowing Paganism” raised some hackles.  Mine as well.  But, in the spirit of the tragically and terribly verbose, I also think that there is some merit in grokking what may be swimming below our words, and so I have been pondering on it.  Maybe not as Mary pondered, quite, but some pretty heavy pondering, nonetheless.

For instance, let’s take these two examples, “outgrowing Paganism” and “failure.”  The implications of “outgrowing” Paganism is of course that it is a religion for the immature, and that one, traversing the grand linear evolution of spirituality, will surpass it, and move on to [enter superior religion or lack thereof here].  This smacks of the kind of early anthropological studies of religion put forth by Tylor and others, postulating that the early “primitive” religions of indigenous cultures were eventually “outgrown” and supplanted by “evolved” monotheistic civilizational religions (and after that, I suppose, atheism, the “pinnacle of human reason”).  Problematic?  Yeah, just a tad.  Spiritual growth simply does not work this way.  There is so little that is actually linear about the spiritual experience that the mind boggles at the idea, not to mention the laughable fallacy of attaching value to these “stages” of human religious consciousness – folks, if there’s one thing that’s true, it’s that things are so much more complicated than anyone can possibly imagine.  So no, I don’t buy “outgrowing” any religion, actually, on that basis.  And, of course, additionally – there’s the insult. Inference: Paganism is a childish religion. Ah, but here’s where it gets muddy for me.

First, there is nothing wrong with child-like wonder, something that Pagans overtly cultivate in their theological dealings, and rightly so.  To delight in a star or a blade of grass is not the hallmark of the weak or the stupid, and would that more of us felt free to engage in this precious fascination with the world.  But really, this isn’t what is being implied here.  The individual who points to Paganism and labels it “childish” or “immature” is pointing to a range of items.  Some are cultural – spangly hats, velvety robes (in the summer, even), body modification, bizarre facial tattoos, a predilection for fantasy and science fiction, the strange trinity of Pagans/Trekkies/role-players, the lack of structural organization, the petty infighting and sometimes relentless bickering.  Some are liturgical – the overly simplistic or overly complex nature of various rites, the lack of hymnody, the use of overly theatrical looking props, the stumbled dancing, the lack of memorization.  And some are theological – unchecked eclecticism, cultural appropriation, a lack of a cohesive vision, an anarchic, radically individualistic diversity, and only the beginnings of rigorous ethical/theological/historical literature.  And yes, while some of these items are accusations laid before us by an ignorant public (and some are items that I embody wholly and would defend unto my last breath), who among us can say that we have not complained ourselves about one or two (or three or a hundred and eight) of these, really?  Certainly, on one hand those outside our faiths who sneer and mock us do not deserve our attention, and who cares what they think.  But on the other – should we not be asking ourselves, at the very least, if there are legitimate criticisms to be made here, and how should we approach their ramifications?  Truthfully, I could not care less about how we are perceived by the media or mainstream culture, which will never bother to truly understand the Other no matter what or who it is, and will always sally forth with their own banal, prejudiced interpretation of the World As It Is, and they can have it.  But, I do care how we perceive ourselves, how we treat the Others in our lives, and I care how we treat each other, and about our movement as a people – about the theologies of beauty we engender, and about the Gifts we have to offer our planet, the reclamation of our ancestors, the healing of our brokenness.  Thus, there is something deep and legitimate behind the words “outgrowing,” “childish,” and “you’re joking, right?” that we should be called to seriously examine.

It is the same with “failure.”  When a ritual fails to bind us together, fails to tell a Story successfully, fails to kindle those present, that’s something to think about.  When our community fails to support our clergy and our elders, fails to offer services to the poor, fails to be a part of the wider community as a collective, what does that say about our theologies?  Paganism is not a failure – of course not.  The idea is ridiculous – obviously, it succeeds somewhere, or there would not be so many who love it, myself included (and I do…I do).  But it does fail in some ways – all religions do.  And it is not a betrayal to question one’s own faith, as we all know, and we owe it to ourselves to ask ourselves whether these are legitimate criticisms, and if they are, how we will meet the challenges they so gloriously embody.  How we will answer, in our praying and in our dancing, the questions that are important to us.

As I said above, I have spent months and months now wondering if the expectations and needs I have of the Pagani are ill fitted to the reality of the matter, and then (logically) if it appears to be solely my problem, then I should therefore seek community elsewhere – I’m not, after all, terribly keen on shoehorning a really round peg into a really square hole.  So I have been struggling.  And while there have been many conversations with my compatriots that have left me full of joy, there have been moments that have also left me, frankly, rather full of something akin to angsty despair. As just one example, I am disheartened by some among us who decry those individuals as weak who are seeking a theological and communal source of comfort, healing, support, and succor.  Certainly, we stand in opposition to a theology that robs us of agency, spiritual freedom, and inquiry – but nowhere does this dictate that we necessarily give up a theology of love, a divine ethics of compassion, or the notion that we have a duty to each other as fellows on the river.  This idea that our gods can be hard, capricious, and difficult is powerful only when tempered with the realization that they are also kind, compassionate, and loving.  Is Paganism is the religion for rugged, radical individuals and spiritual libertarians only?  How is this possible?  Can ecoanarchists and libertarians coexist in the same religious house?  Is that possible?  I don’t know.  I wonder.

I got lots of wonderings.  I wonder at the efficacy of our theologies, whether a unified vision is workable or even desirable, and what that would look like if so.  I wonder about a spiritual politics of simplicity, the practical application of a land-based ethics, whether the master’s tools can in fact dismantle the master’s house, the necessity of structure and charity, the greater mission of religion in general and our religions in particular, about the definition and utility of the word “Paganism” itself, and my own small identity as a member of this fire-fly shod, beauty-worshipping, dazzlingly wonderful and cosmically frustrating, loosely congregated aggregate of religions.  I also wonder if churches don’t have something we don’t.  I wonder what Aretha’s got that we’re missing (besides, yes, a pretty unbelievably outstanding hat).  I wonder why we can’t have a little gospel action, a little old fashioned tent revival,  get a little Spirit, have us a little rock and roll.  I wonder if we really must always stand up in a circle for looooong rituals when we could sometimes (not always, mind you) more easily pay attention from the heretical comfort of chairs.* Truly, Pagani, I am saying that I don’t know.

I don’t know if I truly have legitimate criticisms of Paganism as a corporate body, or if maybe this is all just a bunch of personal shit, in which case I have had friends tell me I should “start my own religion.”  But really, I’ve no real inclination to do such a ridiculous thing.  And more to the point, I want community - and if I am off bouncing around the park by myself, content in my own hallucinations…there’s a place for that and all, but on the larger scale, who does it serve?  I want a religion that gets down with the people, that helps and heals, that lifts up and offers opportunity for ecstatic communion, for grokking the Land, for laughing and crying together, for feeding each other, for feeding the Other, for singing and dancing, and becoming Whole.

Maybe religion in general is just… silly. I have fantasies sometimes of dumping my altars into a giant sack and hurling them into the dumpster.  Unfortunately, however, it appears I’m stuck.  The Beloved and the Mama…they’re kind of hard to shake.  No matter how many hard turns you make down sudden alleys.

So, so…sew buttons.  So…I blog, I guess.  Here holy here between the highway and the swollen creek is where I and my angel try to knock the feet out from under each other in sometimes cheerful and sometimes grim competition (taking time out like chivalric knights for tea and cakes, and for oiling the leather between our iron joints).  I may be here for an eternity, locked in this boiling, awful, ecstatic embrace.  I love it and I hate it.  It may split me in half someday.

But for the moment, I’m out of ponderings.  If you are still reading this, well howdy…and welcome!  Have a seat here next to me – I’m the one in the bunny ears and the magenta socks.  And have some hot chocolate.  I’m gonna.

For the nonce, I crackle and burn holy holy in this space, and can only ask of you to stay fiercely beautiful, as you are so wont to do.

Peace out.

*Are buildings, chairs, tabernacles…compatible with an ecocentric faith like the one I personally espouse?  Don’t know.  BUT, if they’re not, then I submit to you, dear friends, that we ought to perhaps seriously rethink the large, public ritual, especially the ones that take 2 or more hours and are largely performative instead of interactive.  I just think…if you want church, DO church.  If you don’t want church, do something else.  Me, I’m down with both – when they’re done up right, both can rock your socks off.