Angels, Demons & Old Men in Bathrobes

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Walking home from the movie theater just now--beneath the glorious sun filtering down through the overlapping translucent dark-veined jade of a thousand leaves exhaling praise for root, water and earth towards the endless cloudless cerulean sky--I couldn't help but admit to myself that I have a deeper anger with the Catholic Church than I'm usually willing to acknowledge.

What else could explain the tears of relief? Quickly blinked away, of course, but still. When that bomb of antimatter exploded miles above the Vatican, and the walls themselves which men had made, the sculpted columns and stone angels, the repressive brick and dusty mortar, trembled to their very foundations and almost fell.... there were tears of relief in my eyes. I almost cried, watching a Dan Brown movie. Starring Tom Hanks. Of all the ridiculous things!

But this morning started out poorly, when it comes to the Church. The report released yesterday about the thousands of cases of child abuse in Ireland, actively covered up by this corrupt and decrepit institution, was weighing heavily on my heart, as was the continuing controversy about the Frosts mentioned in T. Thorn Coyle's blog recently. What we human beings sometimes do out of a sense of tradition and institutional order. The day was already hot by the time I left my apartment for lunch, and I wanted nothing more than to be somewhere dark and cool for a little while, somewhere where I might find an hour or two of relief from grief and that creeping feeling of helplessness. I walked past the movie theater on my way to the vegan restaurant and noticed they were showing "Angels & Demons," the new film based on Dan Brown's prequel novel to The Da Vinci Code. I decided to catch the 2:50 PM show. Why? Because I'm a fan of Dan Brown and his work? Certainly not. Frankly, I think his writing is irritatingly trite, his plots contrived (seriously, the butler did it? that's your surprise ending?), and his "puzzles" obvious; not to mention his terrible disregard for even basic historical research. (Before you object that "it's just fiction!" let me say this: there is no reason why good, well-written fiction can't also include accurate information about the histories and mythologies it invokes and portrays.) So, why see this new movie, then? F**k the Catholic Church, that's why.

To be fair, the movie was quite passable as entertainment. Happily, I know absolutely nothing about the Illuminati legends the plot centered on, and so I wasn't tortured by the constant interruption of my academic background in comparative religious studies about the rampant inaccuracies and misinformation (as I had been when I read The Da Vinci Code several years ago). I was just another ignorant movie-goer, enjoying a hot afternoon in the air-conditioned theater, munching on my Junior Mints and sipping my Pepsi, indulging myself. Sweeping camera shots of Vatican city and the breath-taking architecture of the chapels and cathedrals dotting the maze of streets had me aching to travel to Europe. To see history. Real history, not the fledgling kind we have here in the United States. Thousands of years of history, thousands of years of humanity thriving and writhing, moving and breathing and living together, building things and tearing them down again, rejecting and incorporating bits and pieces of the past into the ever-evolving mishmash of the present. The setting alone was worth the six dollars. Well, that and Ewan McGregor in a priest's collar.

Still, the ending left me disappointed. (For those of you concerned about spoilers, skip the rest of this paragraph.) I was grateful that the Illuminati threat turned out to be an elaborate ploy of the real antagonist, intentionally playing on the fears of the Catholic Church to throw off suspicion. Yet there was something about the noncommittal twist revelation that left me cold: no, there was no institutional conspiracy, just a single man, one crazy extremist. The Church was flawed but well-intentioned after all, and all those creaky old men in their lace bathrobes and slippers were justified in the end.

But the truth is... those same creaky old men are the ones who, in real life, sit comfortably behind their gold-adorned doors, shuffling papers and blocking investigations into abuse scandals. They are the ones who, when electing a new pope in real life, chose a man known for his theological rigidity more than his ecumenical openness, a man who has gone on to pronounce statements of dismissal and intolerance against several of the world's religions, a man who has retracted and undermined most of the progress made since Vatican II towards more inclusive, feminist language and symbolism within Church writings and ritual. The truth is, it takes no crazy extremist kidnapping cardinals and calling in bomb threats in the name of strengthening the Church; the men who justify child abuse and corruption for the sake of the institution appear mild and innocuous, doddering old men in bathrobes and funny hats. Movies like "Angels & Demons" play on the flash and flair of the single maniac, when the truth is much more subtle, much more insidious.

The funny thing is, for a long time I was the first one to speak up, to defend organized religion and even the Catholic Church itself against my more vehement atheist friends. I understood the metaphor of the garden lattice screen, offering a basic support over which the organic life of the spiritual laity could grow. I appreciated and admired the complex mythologies, art and ritual of organized religion; really, I still do. I tried for a long time to be a "good Catholic" as well as a good follower of Christ, a good Druid, a good person. But the grief and pain of disjoint and contradiction weighed too heavily. How could I remain part of the Church, how could I intentionally choose to be a member of a religion that rejected me, rejected my calling because of my gender, and rejected my basic sense of decency in the name of some greater need for institutional preservation? How could anyone knowingly choose that?

Walking home from the theater, breathing in sunlight and the sighs of trees, I kept thinking that the Catholic Church has so little faith in the God they claim to worship, and so little faith in us. I found myself pleading--with the Church, with myself, with all of us--to trust. Trust. Trust in human beings to preserve that which is good and beautiful and meaningful, trust in Spirit to work its own way out in the hearts and minds of people living their lives with love and kindness and hope. Trust that huge, sprawling, stagnant institutions are not necessary, and never have been, that they cannot protect us and they rarely serve anyone but themselves. The world is so beautiful, messy and wild and utterly full of light, and we all seem to spend so much time trying to build up walls that shield us from that understanding. If only we could find it in ourselves to trust, to let go a little more, to relinquish our need to control and to be certain. If we could admit to our mistakes, our flaws and our abuses, instead of pushing them off on others or striving to conceal them. If we could trust ourselves and each other to be strong enough to face a world untamed by institution and authority, if we could pull down our own idols of power and remember instead our empathy for the disenfranchised, the impoverished and the suffering. If only... if only....

...

My father called just now as I was writing. He is a good person, a loving, gentle man and a supportive father; he's also Catholic, born and raised. I asked him what he thought of these abuses, about the cover-ups and reluctant apologies that come only long after denial and obfuscation have ceased to be an option. He grew quiet, almost bashful, and could only say, sadly, that it was something he had to deal with, that he had worked through his own anger about it, and that it helped to remember it was only a few, not everyone in the Church, not even the vast majority. Then, he put my mother on the phone, who warned me against my "judgmental tone." But this is not judgment--this is my expression of sorrow and anger, and I cannot apologize for it.

What sorrows me deeply is not that the whole of Catholicism is corrupt and misguided. There is so much good there, really, in its mythologies, its rich art and music, in its Mysteries and in the good, kind people who live peacefully and decently in their own ordinary ways. What grieves me is precisely that such abuse and suffering are caused by a few, a few men with power, who then use the goodness and kindness of others as a justification and a shield to hide behind. What confuses me is why, in the face of such corruption, that kind and decent vast majority doesn't rise up in angry protest and denounce and reject and rebuild anew, rather than shuffling their feet and submitting passively to the whims of its leaders. This is the downfall of hierarchy: that nothing will change simply because the majority hopes and prays and wishes for change. This is not a democracy: the laity doesn't get a vote, they do not have a voice. And while there are many ways to respond to and address the corruption of those in power, I cannot see my way to the choice made by so many, to remain silent and sad instead of taking action. I wish I could better understand them, but I have made my choice, the only one I felt I could make in keeping with my conscience: I chose to leave.

And in some ways, I know that inside of me is still an angry child raging against a parent Church that, in a time of most pressing need, turned away and chose the selfishness of self-preservation over the love and acceptance it had always promised. That gave me no choice but to leave, to strike out on my own. The child in me is angry and sniffling back her tears, and squaring her shoulders, and promising to herself that she will be stronger for it, that she will face the world with courage even in her solitude, and grow up to be the kind of woman who will not turn her back on those in need.

Finding Your Center: A Meditation on Movement

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"This is sometimes known as the 'Devil's Chord,'" my guitar instructor says, spreading his fingers claw-like across the frets. "And not because it's a bitch to play. In medieval times composers avoided it; they believed its dissonance made it inherently unstable and inappropriate for truly well-written music."

First finger in the first fret on the thickest string, second finger in the second fret on the second-thickest string, third finger in the third fret....

"But don't worry about what it sounds like," he says as I fumble, strum and grimace. "This is an exercise in changing chords. The point is to learn how to move from the tritone chord, to this"--first finger down to fourth string, second finger to third, third finger to second, fourth to first--"with as little movement as possible."

"That's impossible!" My fingers feel stretched to their limits already, straining just to maintain their current position. Next to me, the instructor cradles his own instrument, hand curled around the smoothly polished rosewood neck. He moves his fingers between chords, back and forth, back and forth, with a relaxed fluidity that makes me frown and laugh at myself.

I'm not sure where all this motivation is coming from recently, but I'm certainly not one to object. I've spent what feels like the last couple years taking one day at a time, passing on plans, moving very slowly, cautiously, through life. Life on my own. A life of solitude and, often, a great deal of quiet. There were times when I might go two or three days in a row without uttering a word, content to spend my days off puttering around my apartment, reading or surfing blog posts online, doodling in my sketch books or walking in the park. Writing sometimes felt like speaking, except without the throat and tongue getting in on the action. Instead of the deep vibration of breath in the body, there was the tapping at the keyboard, quick fingers, "chicken pecking" they called it in tech ed. class back in sixth grade.

But over the past several weeks, I've been doing a lot of talking. Long phone calls with family and old friends, not to mention juggling a relationship that remains long-distance until the beginning of June. Then there are the in-person conversations, the laughter and joking at work, the singing and guitar practice, the running, yoga and twice-daily meditation. That's right--I've been meditating twice a day! In the morning, I set my alarm fifteen minutes earlier than usual, drag myself through my usual routine and then sit quietly in my living room, gazing into the flicker of a small tea light. At night, I make myself some tea or sit with a glass of water, close my eyes and center, align my many bodies, circulate energy and, finally, sip gently and offer libation. The hot liquid of the tea or the cold ripples of clear water trickle down inside of me like rain working its way through cracks in stone. Fire and water, wind and energy. Even moments of relative stillness have their own sort of movement, a pulse, the circulation of blood and breath. The more engaged I become, the more momentum I can feel, urging at the base of my spine, sweeping me along on the soft soles of my feet.

"The key is not in the fingers, but the thumb," my guitar instructor says, smiling patiently. "See how my thumb barely moves at all? It stays anchored against the neck and gives the support that makes the loose movement of the other fingers possible. Don't worry, you're already doing this with most of your chords without even noticing. This is just a warm-up exercise to teach you to pay closer attention..."

I'm fiddling with strings as he speaks, already beginning to get the hang of it. I try a few familiar chords, and what he says is true--I've already been learning to switch from one to another with an economy of movement, my thumb rocking gently as my fingers drape and press over the ribbed metal of the strings. I go slow, watching the pale knuckles of my left hand, tense and release, squeeze and skip, moving in and out of the diabolus in musica.

The more I move, the more I feel as though I can sense that still center deep within myself, the hub around which everything else is turning. Recently, with the encouragement of my boyfriend (who I think really just likes the way I look in sweats, bless him), I've taken up yoga in addition to my weekly running routine. Gliding gently, fluidly, from one form into the next, feeling each pose stretch my limbs (a little farther each day) and warm my skin to perspiring, I notice those places in my body that hold their shape. The delicious natural curve of the spine as I sweep from virabhadrasana into trikonasana and back. The long, hard cord of balance that suddenly pulls taut from the top of my skull all the way to my tailbone, heel and down through the wooden floorboards for that split second when, in vrksasana, I spread my toes, stop wobbling and take my hand off the wall. After two weeks of this practice, sometimes at work I find myself with the distinct sense that I'm floating, that my body is suspended like the hot-blooded gwyar around some calas-like core, and that I'm not really walking at all, but willing myself from one place to another, wafting or sailing along on the intending breath of nwyfer, spirit. Wind, water, stone. Breath, blood, bone.

I find it fascinating how movement can teach us about stillness. Especially slow, deliberate movement done with attention, but even the quick flurry of desperation or panic. For all that time that I spent holding still, quietly waiting, there were times when that center seemed elusive. When I first began meditating off and on back in high school, this was one of the first things I noticed. I could sit very still, close my eyes and, eventually, lose my sense of the body as a bounded thing. I couldn't feel my hands resting on my thighs--all I could feel was the warm sensation of pressure on my thighs, and the warm sensation of support beneath my palms, but the two seemed distanced, unrelated. My mind seemed to unfurl into itself, into a spacious darkness in which the conscious mind always looked remarkably like a tiny, pale lima bean. Holding still, holding my body and thoughts still in meditation, taught me about my perimeter, about boundaries and limits and finitude, and the extent to which these things interpenetrate and become blurred, illusory.

But it is movement that teaches me about my center, about the eye of the storm that is my little living soul. You might think it would be the opposite--that in stillness we retreat to our center and take the time to settle down firmly and comfortably within ourselves; and that movement shows us our boundaries, our extremities, those parts of us that are always bumping into one another and rubbing raw on the external world. And maybe for some people that's how it is. Maybe I've just spent too long holding still, too long nesting in my center and not enough time venturing out to sing the dawn bright. But these days, I'm amazed by how movement and activity, how work, sends shivers of recognition and peace into the silence of my center, like so many pond ripples suggesting the secret, sinking stone.

Security, Prosperity, Generosity

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My dear readers,

Times is hard.

Hopefully you already know Jeff Lilly, at least through his insightful writings over at Druid Journal. Jeff is a fellow member of AODA, a dear friend of mine, and a wonderful human being if ever I knew one. Only a few months ago, 'friends' was all we were, but since mid-March, we have become much more than that to one another.

Life works in mysterious ways. For the past two months, it seems the churning mechanisms of coincidence that spin this Universe of ours have been conspiring to make us happy. Family and social circumstances seemed perfectly in sync, bringing our lives closer together, smoothing the path before us. If I didn't know better, I would have suspected that we were merely madly in love, but it was more than that. Love couldn't explain why his ex-wife's fiancé's parents happen to live only minutes from me, or why his initial choice for a new apartment fell though just when a place became available that was cheaper and in a better location. Love couldn't explain my sudden surge of motivation and energy, or why all my mind-boggling bad luck seemed to be giving way to pleasant surprises and clear sailing... could it?

As sometimes happens, though, the ride has been getting a bit bumpier lately. Still finalizing the paperwork on his divorce and nailing down plans to move the whole family out to Pittsburgh, this morning Jeff received some difficult news about his work situation. His initial reaction--maybe from shock--was all smiles. Mine, on the other hand, was tearful panic and worry. Sometimes, I still believe I'm some kind of a bad luck charm, that whenever I get close to someone, life seems to get messy and more difficult for them. On the other hand, Jeff seemed full of confidence and enthusiasm, rattling off several alternative employment options he could pursue immediately. After a reassuring and mutually supportive phone call, my own anxiety was replaced with resolve. Thorn is right, as we delve more deeply into our Great Work, it's not that we never lose our center, it's that we return to center, we recover our poise and grace, more quickly than we used to.

I love this man. Not just because of his optimism and openness, his kindness and generosity. He has spent a great deal of time these past few months praising my strength and courage, and sometimes, I think, overlooking his own. And so on his behalf I would like to ask you, my dear readers, for your support and encouragement over these next few weeks. Please, keep Jeff in your thoughts and prayers, send him comfort and confidence, whether by energy, deity, spellwork or carrier pigeon. If I know anything about prosperity magic, it's that there is a weaving triad of mutual support at work: security, prosperity, generosity. Generosity is something the Celts were known for: a welcoming, giving spirit. I already know you all possess these in abundance. If, in your daily work, you could light a candle for Jeff, for his family and especially for his children, I know your warmth and positivity will be felt and returned with appreciation and gratitude.

Meanwhile, for those of you with a little extra funds lying around, Jeff does provide some neat services through his website, including beautifully-recorded guided meditations and spiritual name analyses. Please hop on over and check those out, if you're interested; every bit helps! (But don't tell him that I made such a shameless plug for him, okay?)

Shaman & Priest: How America's Cultural Landscape Shapes Its Religious Institutions

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This morning, I was up at quarter of five, a good half-hour before my alarm. My bladder full, my abdomen cramped and my lower back stiff with tension, I shuffled to the bathroom to begin my daily ablutions and stem the oncoming moontide. I steadied myself, blinking awake, washed my face and hands, brushed my hair and bound it into a tightly-wound bun pinned high against my skull. Not a hair loose, an earring glinting in each ear. I slipped on the smooth black slacks and polo shirt, the work uniform, the ceremonial costume. After a quick bowl of cereal and some juice, I sat in the dark living room, my only light a flickering candle amongst the clutter on the coffee table. I sat still. I gazed into the flame. I prayed for heat, for the warm fingers of the coming day to work the tension out of my body, to loosen the muscles of my womb around its loss of lifeblood, to soothe the ache. Then, as the dawn beyond my window slowly lightened, I grabbed my apron and my name tag, threw on a sweater and headed for the door. Stalking the twilight of early morning, slinking through intersections, startling the rabbits still grazing, dark round figures shivering in wet front lawns.... I was off to the hunt.

The Hunter & The Farmer

For several years now, I have thought of waiting tables as a hunter-gatherer kind of job. Each morning, I stalk my prey at their usual watering hole, serving up coffee and eggs with a sleek and casual smile; I am quiet, unobtrusive; I bide my time. My earnings are gifts from the gods of generosity and good luck, coming in unpredictable floods and trickles. I gather the silvery coins from the tabletops, I fold the bills into my apron pocket, and I move on again, cleaning, preparing for the breakfast rush, the lunch rush, the next herd to come and go. I'm no agriculturalist. Most of my houseplants are scraggly at best, clinging to life despite my ineptitude and reaching for those few hours of sunlight that slip in among the surrounding apartment buildings looming tall on all sides. My parents would have liked to think they were preparing me for a steady-income career, what with my good grades in high school, a solid list of extracurricular activities, distinguished honors at the top of my college class. But in all this cultivation, they never quite understood: I was hunting, always hunting, stalking my passions, following my bliss, lingering long hours in the familiar territories of my needs and desires, hoping to catch the scent. And so, when money became necessary, I found a job that let me hunt it down, working for the customers rather than the company, relying on my skill, speed and patience to get me what I need.

Recently, Jeff and I discussed the nature of serving as a kind of entrepreneurial career. Although waiting tables is usually a low-income working-class job, many contractors and consultants these days can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each year taking on projects and hiring out their services to individual clients, juggling several commitments at once, balancing workload with financial goals. With global online networking and increased mobility and travel, people rarely spend a lifetime working the same job at a single company. They're far more likely to change careers, holding three to five different jobs over the course of their lives, while continuing their education or pursuing hobbies that can lead to small business opportunities. The days of gradual progress up a single corporate ladder, putting down roots, prizing stability and rewarding loyalty... these days are giving way to the hunt. The cultivator has again become predator, the agriculturalist has become quick-witted, light-footed. Risk and fortune hum taut between the skilled hands of the hunter, drawing his bow and holding his breath.

The Shaman & The Priest

Is it any surprise, then, that the priestly orders of our familiar organized religions are giving way once again to the prominence of shamanistic traditions and individual spiritual experience? Joseph Campbell, in his book The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, writes that in agriculturally-based societies,

There is a rigid relationship not only of the individual to his fellows, but also of village life to the calendrical cycle; for the planters are intensely aware of their dependency upon the gods of the elements. One short period of too much or too little rain at the critical moment, and a whole year of labor results in famine. Whereas for the hunter--hunter's luck is a very different thing.

To plow, to plant, to cultivate and harvest, at precisely the right time, in obedience to the seasons and the cycles of weather--such practices require the discipline of a community, and the knowledge of tradition, of the cycles and seasons of the past. The religious life speaks to and reflects this cultural structure. Ordained priests carry on the traditions of the previous generation, preserving the knowledge of the changing moods of the gods, remembering the appropriate rites and rituals needed to please, praise and appease them. The priest is the shepherd of the flock, the good farmer cultivating and reaping souls.

But the shaman--the shaman, like the hunter, goes out into the wilderness, alone, to seek her own truths. Practiced skills and passed-on techniques may be helpful, but in the end, what matters is the moment, the immediate presence of the here-now through which Spirit, the prey, is moving. No amount of community support, structure or tradition can replace her personal experiences, her individual capacity for attention and response, receptivity and creative activity. In a hunter-gatherer culture, people's spiritual lives naturally echo the needs of their mundane lives, shrugging off organized tradition in search of meaningful personal experiences. The individual, the present moment, the activity of the hunt itself--these become nodes of meaning in a chaotic, often unpredictable world.

Warrior, Shaman, Lover, Queen: A Druid Priestess

While I was at work waiting tables this morning, stiff and flinching against the noise and fluorescent lights, my boyfriend sent me the following email:

In my dream just now, you had climbed up a little way into a tree, and were wearing a gorgeous white and cream colored dress covered with flowers, and white flowers were in your hair, and the garden and the air and the light all around were like the perfect afternoon of an impressionist painting, and you said to me, The central question is, 'Is Druidry Earthly?'

Is Druidry Earthly? The stereotype of the old, bearded Druid priests in white robes, collecting mistletoe from the oak with a golden sickle according to some mysteriously complicated astronomical timing, catching the harvested plant in a white cloth so that it would not touch the ground... such an image might raise some doubt. And yet, even the structure and tradition of organized religion grows and evolves out of culture, out of our relationship with the land and its seasons. The growers, the farmers, are no less connected to the earth than the wild huntsman tracking deer through the woods. The vision of me, dressed in the impractical white of purity, suspended among the branches of the tree like the lightning-seeded mistletoe itself, gives me pause. Am I earthly? Do I sometimes try too hard to be that ideal image of the priestess? What is my connection to the land, to the community and to the past? But the dream also makes me smile, for it reminds me of another vision, one that I myself had several years ago during meditation when I first embarked on this Druid path:

I was wandering through a dense woods, the trees all thin and straight and touched with the bright, young green of full spring. Entering a clearing, I sat down in the mud and grass, spreading my gray-green dress around my folded legs. I stretched out my arms, feeling the wind raking my unbound hair, and felt--for an instant--the fiery blue lines of energy, interwoven connection spinning out in all directions around me, dodging and twining through the trees, opening to the sky, sinking deep into the earth and arcing all the way to the sun.

There is room in Druidry, I think, for the shaman and the priest. In a culture that still clings to the social traditions of agricultural society and dismisses hunter-gatherer lifestyle as inherently "primitive" even while adopting some of its characteristics, Druidry can find a place of balance and harmony, acknowledging everything priesthood and shamanism have to offer. Individual experience, the intensity of the moment, the essential nature of creativity and spontaneity and play; and the deep roots of tradition, the ancestors, the accumulation of wisdom and meaning, the vital participation in community. The Druid priestess can be lover and warrior, shaman and queen. She can weave these roles together. She can become something new.