My First Pagan Festival: Doing Paganism

Share

The world is gray and white and shades of brown, and every inch of me is screaming for spring, restless and aching and urging me to quit, to give it all up, to leave my stupid job and drive south, to keep driving until snow and dark are left behind, to keep driving and burning and thrashing through night until the sun comes up and I'm surrounded by palm trees and blue skies and wide, warm oceans rocking, rocking. But of course, I can't. So instead, I light a homemade candle in a dented, old tin can. I set it out on the front stoop, nestled in the three inches of snow, and I let it burn. And evening settles and the snow continues to drift down from low clouds to cover everything — but that single wild flame is still clawing its way up out of that tin can, bright against the dull, wet brick, melting a tiny circle from around its hot metal sides. Whenever I begin to feel trapped and unfocused, I step outside and spend a moment squinting through the white-darkening cold that falls and bites against my skin, squinting at that candle, and feeling a little bit of triumph.

And I think of my cat, born in late September and abandoned in the gutter, seeking shelter under our car where we found him and brought him home as a tiny, half-starved stray. For him, the world has only ever gotten colder, and darker. I cuddle him in my arms as we look out the window together, and I tell him, "It will get green again — greener than you know. It will be so green, so warm and colorful and lush, and there will be birds for you to watch, and bugs to chase. You have no idea, kitty! You've never known a spring!" He just blinks at me with his cat eyes, and I have to put him down and slip on my shoes and step outside again to look at the candle, burning like a beacon, and tell myself, yes, it will come... it will...

It's been slightly more than a week since I attended the Feast of Lights, and oddly enough, all those ideas and topics jostling around in my head, vying for a good airing, have settled back down into relative calm, smothered by the snow. Which may be an interesting observation in itself: on my own, my spiritual life is about doing Paganism, engaging in embodied spiritual living; around other Pagans (at least in large group settings such as at a festival), my spiritual life becomes about being Pagan, and what exactly that means.

This is not entirely a bad thing, really. One thing I noticed immediately, despite my worries about being too "normal" (in my plain navy-blue long-sleeved shirt and sensible shoes) was that I felt comfortable, at ease and intensely interested in everything going on. These talks about interfaith work and establishing workable definitions that remain inclusive without becoming so vague as to be useless, these discussions of "mainstreaming Paganism" and "Paganizing the mainstream" and what such processes might mean... they were always too short for the subjects they wanted to explore, and they left the voices in my head yammering to have their say, to speak to old assumptions about the nature of community, and language, and archetypes, and political upheaval.

But what impressed me most was the first session that Jeff and I attended that Friday evening, a round-table discussion on sustainable living. Just a few of us in the room, skipping immediately to the question of work, to questions of activity and efficacy, sharing stories about what we did and why. No need to qualify or cite years of expertise, or quibble over definitions. We were not merely Pagans mulling over notions of self-identity, we were more than that, somehow, simply by allowing ourselves to be just folks, trying to live better. Yet we were Pagans, too, no merit badges required. After brief introductions, one moderator led us in a moment of quiet breathing and centering — and for the first time, I knew what it felt like to be a part of a community where no one looked askance at such a suggestion or rolled their eyes or shifted uncomfortably. The same was true when, after an intense discussion of sustainability options (which left me singing the praises of poverty and fungi, bless them both), we circled around a tight cluster of chairs, humming a simple tune I cannot now remember, and then settled down to breathe, hold hands and light that flame within each of us that would guide us in our choices. Nothing fancy, no pretensions — we were practicing the simple: breath, intention, togetherness and flame.

And, as appropriate to a weekend of beginnings and bookends it seems, the final session we attended was equally impressive, an amazing concert and sing-along led by the group Northern Harmony, whose eerie, soaring and guttural vocals sent shivers slipping up and down my spine as they set my soul to wandering. The experience was intense, and set me in mind of the other large-scale festival I have attended with some regularity for the past fifteen years: the Dodge Poetry Festival.

At the Dodge Poetry Festival, there were some panel discussions about the craft of poetry, what it means to be a poet, what the life of a poet is like; and there were some workshops on technique, exercises to experiment with and new approaches to try. But by and large, what makes up the Dodge Festival is folks doing poetry, getting up there on stage and giving voice and life to their work, performing their art in all its power and polished form. The debates about what counts as "real poetry" are left in the dust of this kind of living engagement with the work, and you always know that "something" is there, that poetry is alive and well, when it moves you to dancing, laughing, sighing and silence.

This is what I want from Paganism, and from Pagan festivals: this doing and being with each other, without constant navel-gazing and comparing notes. Knowing ourselves is essential, of course, and it was immensely satisfying to sit and listen to ideas being bandied and concerns being raised. But I also want that community of doing, so that I am not always doing the doing alone. I want to be able to set aside our differences long enough to do the work together, to practice and share that engagement, even if we each go home with our own impressions and interpretations of what just happened. I want our rituals to be full of songs that send shivers down my spine, not just the latest drumming technique imperfectly practiced. I want little candles lit and flickering despite the falling snow outside. And I know it will take a long time to get there, and there is much work to be done in the meantime, each on his or her own. But for now the questions of self- and community-identity that had been stirred up in the muddy waters of last week have all but faded away again, and what I want is to ground myself again in practice, in doing my Druidry as deeply as I can. So that when the opportunity comes to practice with others, I can do my part to make the whole thing move.

My First Pagan Festival: Orion Foxwood, Charisma and Self-Esteem

Share

Admittedly, I didn't recognize most of the names listed as presenters at EarthSpirit's Feast of Lights, but then I am more widely read in Druidry than in Paganism more generally, and my tastes tend towards the academic and non-Pagan in any case. But one person I was looking forward to seeing at the festival was Orion Foxwood, whose books (Tree of Enchantment and The Feary Teachings) had left me feeling intrigued but a bit perplexed. It was hard to put my finger on exactly why his writings weren't "clicking" for me, but certainly his emphasis on the Ancestors as the gateway to Faery Seership had left me feeling if not intimidated then at least unsure about how to step into the process.^[1] And so I was hoping that being able to attend at least one of Orion's talks in person might perhaps give me some insight into his teachings, knowing the Tree by its fruits, so to speak.

It seems that, despite my preliminary investigations into Faery Seership, reading through Orion's two books and even getting in touch with folks who had attended workshops with him or worked with him in the past, at no point did anyone bother to mention that he was, well, flamboyantly gay. Though in retrospect, I suppose describing him as "a wonderful man" might have been a polite hint. And that he is: quite wonderful, an energetic and engaging person who is quick to laugh and eager to compliment, and who obviously loves his work a great deal. Still, attending his talk "Lifting the Spelle of Forgetfulness" (which did not include any reminder, sadly, on how to spell "spell"), I was struck by just how much his homosexuality, blended with his Appalachian accent and two-toned-goatee, cleaned-up hippie look, became part of his teaching not just in style but in substance. He careened through his talk with a certain enthusiastic charisma that rested in part on his ability to turn at once from serious spiritual insight to distracted frivolity at the briefest mention of sushi or the mere suggestion of a bad pun on "faery wife."

Having read two books full of Rivers of Blood, ancient wounds needing redemption, and beings of all kinds of mischievous, startling, mystical and intimidating natures, I suppose I was expecting someone a bit... heavier, more serious, more reticent, more grounded in the dark earth. Instead, Orion was dazzling, almost dizzying (and practically the incarnation of coffee). And suddenly those things I read in his books didn't seem so strange or difficult, the way he talked about them. His words might speak, as though in passing, of wading through rivers of blood lapping up to your knees, but his charisma told you it was all a metaphor, that it was, in fact, all about you. You are a wonderful person, a lovable person, and you have Sacredness in you. Redemption? You can do it, you can redeem all those past generations; in fact, that's why you're here, and you're here because you're wonderful, and you are wonderful simply by dint of existing.

And I'm not saying there isn't truth in this, that there isn't real soul-deep insight in his quick quips about finding one's path or facing one's shadow. But I was interested in Faery Seership because (and this is me admitting something that might be a bit embarrassing) I was interested in faeries, not because I needed a boost to my self-esteem. The message that we are all, deep down, worthy and beautiful people is an important message. But it's not one that I particularly need to hear, at least not anymore. And maybe in some ways this just means that I have done the work of centering and grounding myself, walking into the shadows and coming out whole, even if I did not undertake that work using the metaphors and practices of Faery Seership. But, as Cat pointed out a few times during our visit, there comes a point after which being "healed" is not enough, because if that's all your spirituality has to offer then either you'll soon lose interest, or you'll soon discover that you're always feeling broken and wounded and in need of healing.^[2]

All of these reflections lead me to something about the role of charisma in the Pagan community, but I'm not quite sure what precisely that is. I'm reminded of the book I'm currently reading, The Serpent and the Goddess by Mary Condren, in which she speaks of patriarchal religious institutions passing on through ordination into the priesthood the kind of spiritual leadership and power that individuals once had to earn on their own through charisma, i.e. being valuable to the community. Wikipedia has this to say about charisma: it is kind of divine or divinely-inspired gift,

a trait found in persons whose personalities are characterized by a personal charm and magnetism (attractiveness), along with innate and powerfully sophisticated abilities of interpersonal communication and persuasion. One who is charismatic is said to be capable of using their personal being, rather than just speech or logic alone, to interface with other human beings in a personal and direct manner, and effectively communicate an argument or concept to them.

Now if charisma is a kind of living or embodied communication that moves beyond the merely rational (and is not, presumably, merely charming rhetoric), then I'm all for it, and I can understand why a person of charisma might serve the needs of a community engaged in the process of finding a new, trans-/nonrational way of leading an embodied and earth-centered spiritual life. If we think of charisma in this way, then perhaps Orion actually is speaking to those needs that many in the Pagan community find to be most vital and pressing (there were an awful lot of people there who were earnestly taking notes). Walking a new and often misunderstood path, it's not surprising that plenty of us suffer from even more uncertainty about our worthiness than does the general population (which is itself riddled with low self-esteem and fear drummed up by advertisers hoping to create insecure and gullible consumers). But now I'm just indulging in a bit of couch-psychology.

One last observation on Orion's talk, which would become a running theme throughout the festival: group-led ritual, discussion and presentation is, all charisma aside, an art form in itself. It can be poorly done. And while Orion's talk was engaging enough, the group exercises in breath and energy-work that he led us through at the end of the workshop left me feeling like I'd been forced to stand too close to someone with particularly bad halitosis. Imagine standing in a room with twenty to thirty other people, mostly strangers, who are being instructed to "breathe out all of your tension and anxiety" and breathe in fountains of intense energy from the sun above and the deep earth below. All that ickiness and all those issues, vented into the space between bodies being charged up with heat and energy: the effect was like baking rotting garbage in an oven. Rather than leaving me feeling refreshed with a balanced sense of center, it gave me the overwhelming urge to go bury my face in snow and breathe the fresh, clean, frigid air outdoors (I had to settle for a cup of cold water). So... note to future self (and the selves reading along): I wouldn't recommend that kind of work except in grounded, small-group settings.

^[1] My family life has been pretty well defined by an absence of ancestors, to no apparent detriment, my mother's side of the family having basically cut off contact with us after I was born and my father's parents (both now dead) having struggled with alcoholism and mental illness all their lives. Orion's word of caution against inviting unhealthy presences into our lives seemed reason enough not to pursue reconnecting with these various patterns of dysfunctional relationship, most of which I feel I have fairly well come to terms with in my own way. Plus, I'm not really a gregarious people-person even with the living.
^[2] I suspect that this is why all the really interesting Christian mystics talk not so much about salvation, but about love. Love is, after all, an on-going process and practice that you can't ever really outgrow. Salvation without love is like a revolution without dancing.

My First Pagan Festival: Gathering Thoughts in the Storm

Share

I am left with so much to process and ponder after this past weekend when Jeff and I, invited by Cat Chapin-Bishop and her husband Peter Bishop (of Quaker Pagan Reflections), attended the Feast of Lights festival hosted annually by EarthSpirit. I fear this blog is about to devolve into just so much stream-of-consciousness journal rambling despite my best efforts to write with some coherence and perspective; and yet, these are thoughts I want to capture before they slip away into the dark waters of memory. Meanwhile, the snow is coming down thick and sugary outside, drifting and piling up on top of the two feet that we found blanketing our lovely city upon return, and I can already feel the cabin fever of February setting in as usual, making me anxious with a thousand intentions and scheming (and how could I be hungry again when I just had lunch?). So bear with me.

Before braving this post, I wrote a ridiculously long and dull account of the Sequence of Events™ for my personal journal, to help organize my thoughts and give me some sense of having already begun (a blank page at this point being the most intimidating thing). But it occurs to me that, in my account of the weekend, I left out one telling detail about my visit with my brother for the two days before. Thursday night, as Jeff and I settled down to sleep on the first of what would become several futons over the next few days, I thought about The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe that the three of us (plus my brother's two kittens) had just finished watching. The story is a familiar one, though the film just is not as impressive or old-feeling as Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings; instead, it has a freshly minted, shiny and clean quality to it, so that it's hard to imagine the "deep magic" that calls for Aslan's life being much older than some of my newer pairs of shoes. Yet the story of sacrifice and renewal, the humiliation and glorious return, that Aslan enacts in the film are moving and beautiful, and not just because he is a beautiful, sun-drenched and shining animal in his own right (though, as they always remind us, he is not a tame lion).

So as I drifted off to sleep, here I was wondering once again if, below these layers of freshly-minted, shiny and clean beauties and joys of Paganism, there wasn't perhaps still something old and familiar in me that smacked of Christianity, dirty and ugly and sad and so heart-piercingly sublime. I long for something ancient and deep-down earthy as soil and stone, yet there is so much in modern Paganism that glimmers and jangles of a New Age, and from the stories I've heard about Pagan festivals, I was braced for the silly and the embarrassingly over-eager. Yet later, as we began our drive north the following morning, I sat with the story of Jesus as the Only Way, and thinking about the institutions of patriarchy and politics that have grown up around what was really a very simple idea. And it seemed that my rational mind couldn't really believe in such things anymore, that what in C.S. Lewis's enchanted imagination had been old and beautiful and true was, in reality, so much rot and shabby props for greedy, grizzled men in funny hats, and that while this was not the heart of Christianity by a long shot, I knew full well that only Mama Earth can pull off "ancient" with any kind of grace. When we human animals cling too long to something, we get fearful and gross, which is worse, certainly, than being too new and bouncy to have had a chance to deepen. Though sometimes, it feels, not by much.

So this was the state of mind I was in as we picked our way across the intervening states, climbing northward towards Jeff's old town where not a year ago he had been living and longing with his big, gooey heart for some ridiculous young woman in Pittsburgh. Though only half-aware of it, there was trepidation as well as excitement in my thoughts about the coming weekend. I had no expectations of "coming home," and perhaps the truth was closer to this: that I was going to this festival not so much to participate, but to observe, to watch what "Pagans in their natural habitat" were like, what they did and how, and to discover how I maybe one day could say something meaningful to them, if not ever become completely at home as an unabashed and un-conflicted Pagan of my own.

I won't tell you the long story of how I was wrong. But I was. And happily. By the end of the Feast of Lights, I knew that here was a community of folks just as conflicted and uncertain and in love with the possibilities of deepening as I was. And while I did not feel that sense of "coming home" so often described, I was finally able to relinquish the unacknowledged worry that being Pagan would ask me to leave the home in Spirit that I have already begun to build.

Looking back, the story of this weekend is bookended by two appropriate events. The first, this visit with my brother in the brightly-lit basement apartment he only moved into a month ago, still so new a home that the bathroom cabinets are all mostly empty and the shelves only sparsely filled. And the second, a trip on our last night in Massachusetts to see the old farmhouse owned by Jeff's family, so rundown and filled with memories that every spare inch of space is cluttered and his great grandmother's ashes are buried under the front stoop, while behind the house there stretch forty acres of old forest that no human has walked in a hundred years. The new, and the old, and the ancient of the Earth. Things are moving, things are coalescing, coming together. I won't bother to articulate them now, but I want to know that, years from now, I will remember.

Meanwhile, I'll jot down a few more posts focusing on particular thoughts and observations about the festival itself. I won't write about them in chronological order because, well, that's just not good story telling this time around. I think, once I've finished, I'll revisit this post and include a list for easy linking and referencing. Meanwhile, stay tuned, I'm sure to be saying some controversial things in the posts to come.