This is not a blog post.

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In this time of fluid demographics and long-distance community building, I find myself over and over running up against this single, searing question:

WHY do I want to be a part of [this] community?

Doesn't matter which community it is. The fact is, we have a choice now about which communities we belong to, a choice unlike any our ancestors have faced in the past. With online networking and social media sites, I can choose my friends, contacts, teachers and mentors from all over the world. When once it might have been impossible, or at least semantically meaningless, to "choose" to belong to a religion other than the one of my immediate family and neighbors, today I can choose to be Pagan and to network with others I've never even met in real life. Even within the Pagan community, I can choose to be a Revivalist Druid or a Celtic Reconstructionist, a Witch, a Hellenist or a Heathen. I can choose to be a participant on various online forums, email lists and blogs with almost unending options, and each choice will put me in touch with different people and different community expectations and standards.

So when I make these choices about what communities I'm going to belong to, I find myself more and more running up against that question: why? Why do I want to belong to your community? Is your community supportive, accepting, challenging, grounded, honest, full of humor and curiosity? Or does your community bicker and encourage in-fighting, playing to the lowest common denominator, drumming up melodrama and one-upmanship? What's more important to your community: popularity and huge membership numbers, or authenticity and sincerity in the relationships it nurtures and cultivates? Calculated politeness that just barely passes for "tolerance," or warm hospitality and celebration of diversity?

The Long Goodbye: Part One

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The golden cups
are in his hand,
his hand is on the knife
and the knife is
above my head.

- Taliesin*

Three times I drew the Seven of Cups, card of soul-wrought dreams and tempting fantasies beckoning, and possibilities so numerous they seem to paralyze all ability to choose. Three times I drew the card in daily meditation before I finally agreed to seek for further guidance.

Where It's At

Things have been all tangled up lately. The puzzle box or wrinkled seed that was planted in my heart during my time in Northern Ireland — the small, mysterious thing curled in upon itself that I had all but forgotten about as things returned to normal — has been creaking and clicking as one by one its latches unhook and slip open... or it has been germinating and putting down roots that slip their sly tendrils in to pry open the soil of my soul. It all sounds very dramatic when you put it like that, but the truth is that I have been growing increasingly dissatisfied and frustrated with certain aspects of my work. And when I say work, I mean the soul-work of my writing, that strange little hobby that cannot make me a living but is indispensable to making me alive.

I've started to have serious doubts about blogging as the appropriate medium for my writing. It takes a huge amount of pride-swallowing to write that sentence, considering it was only a few months ago I was raving about how Meadowsweet & Myrrh was like my online "home," and scoffing arrogantly at people who easily abandon their blogs and let them lie fallow and un-updated for months at a time. I take my writing — and thus my blogging — very seriously, perhaps too seriously at times. I am as slow to abandon a project as I am to leave behind a faith path that no longer meets my spiritual needs (and it took my nigh on half a decade of dilly-dallying to do that before I finally dropped the Catholic label and admitted to myself what everyone else already knew).

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal

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In August 2010, just past the waxing quarter moon, a bunch of strangers met for the first time in Rostrevor, a small town in County Down, Northern Ireland, nestled below the Mourne Mountains on the edge of Carlingford Lough that opens out into the sea. From all over the world — from Portland to Hong Kong, from Glasgow to Nashville — they gathered together to learn about peacemaking rooted in the Celtic sense of sacred hospitality and the holiness of the land.

It was my first time traveling alone, and my first journey ever beyond the borders of the United States. For me, the week-long retreat became a kind of pilgrimage, back to the land of my ancestors, and beyond the ninth wave into a place of conversation, connection and new friendships forged.

Day Nine — The World Become Small

...then I went back up to my room, kneeled next to my bed to look out the skylight — and felt this overwhelming sense of closure and peace, and a thrill at the thought of going home. I knew things were finally coming to an end.

~*~

The morning was foggy and damp, with low clouds clustering and rolling along over the mountains across the water. Every once in a while, a parting in the clouds would open and the opposite shore would be bathed with a golden misty light in a small area, as if the land were glowing all golden and green among the dark and the mists.

A rainbow. We stood there in silence for a few minutes, watching the broad ribbon of light and color thicken and take on, imperceptibly, a brighter presence among the dim gray clouds, above the dark, choppy waters. J. leaned over to me and quoted again that Bible verse, Isaiah 45:3, "And I will give you the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that it is I, the Lord, which call you by your name..." When she said this, I suddenly felt overwhelmed and almost began to cry. The rainbow continued to grow brighter and brighter, and I took several photographs hoping at least one would come out. Then J. said how it was funny, from here the land over there looked awash in so many colors, but they couldn't see that themselves — all they knew was that they were standing in the light.

Dark Goddess of Star Fire: A Meditation

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As the sun passes from water into fire and the moon swells full over the cold, hardening ground of the land, I ready myself for a night of ritual. In preparation for tonight's work, a few days earlier I spent some time in prayer and meditation, seeking the wise company of whatever guides might appear.

It began with a few tenuous notes turning and echoing out across the waters, the keening of the violin striving against its own tension and yearning. I was there, on the same familiar rocky cliff that curved in around a small bay, the dark waters of the ocean stretching out far beneath me. The murmuring wash of waves among the pebbles of the beach below, rocking in rhythm until the music faded again into silence.

Above me, the stars began to slip out into the night, one by one, as though disrobing from the dark veils of the night sky. One by one, they turned and shot a gasp of brilliance blazing out in a spiny halo of light around them, then pulled back again, glistening and humming with a silent energy. I lifted my head to ask them for their wisdom. It seemed as though one beckoned to me, glimmering more brightly than the rest. The vertigo of a wild night sky thrown open from horizon to horizon swept over me as my gravity seemed to shift — and then before me, solid as stone it seemed, a staircase spiraled upwards into the starscape. Step by step I climbed, my feet steady, my eyes on the scattered specks of light. Each step fell thick and heavy as though on stone draped over with the deep, plush fabric of night and darkness and stillness. As I reached the final stair, the star before me stepped close as a woman, dark and brilliant with features that seemed to shift as she turned, as though I gazed into her eyes from across countless light years. She smiled, and lifted her hand to caress my cheek and temple.

Then all at once, her other hand was at my throat, grasping my jaw firmly. With one quick motion she wrenched my face away, palm hard against my forehead, and I felt my spine snap as my body crumpled beneath her hard, cold fingers.

Crafting a Symbol of Three Realms

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As part of my aspirant work with the Druid Order of the Three Realms, I've been experimenting with ways to create a wooden plaque with the DOTR symbol to include on my altar. I had at first thought of doing a combination wood-burning/acrylic paint technique (such as the one I used on my travel altar), but the redesigned and touched-up version of the three realms triquetra/triskele that Christopher did for me was so stunning, I wasn't sure my mediocre talents would be able to do it justice. I was curious to see if there were any techniques that would allow me to transfer the image more directly to the plaque.

After some brief investigating online, I stumbled upon this page over at matsutake, which provides a tutorial on how to transfer inkjet printer images onto wood. I thought to myself, hey, I have an inkjet printer... I have wood... I have Elmer's Glue and Mod Podge... I have a tiny modicum of talent and patience, but most importantly, I have an ass-kickingly beautiful graphic image that might just work. Even if the results weren't as stunning, or the process as easy, as the tutorial implied, I thought I'd give it a shot.

Keeping the Days: Meditation in Autumnal Woods

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On a beautiful autumn day just before Samhain, I headed deep into the woods that border our neighborhood
for some meditation among the trees, rocks, wind and sunlight.




Music by Pamela Bruner, "The Surrender" from Circle of the Soul

The Three Elements of Druidic Ritual

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The sun has set, and twilight settles dark over the autumn landscape. In another half an hour a harvest moon, swelling but not quite full, will rise over the eastern horizon, but for now the grove is thick with gray mist and half-seen shadows. In the center, a thin white altar cloth drapes a low, square stone; the cloth shifts once in a while, ghostly and almost whispering with the silent breeze that barely moves the trees. The altar itself is decorated with gourds, dried pale aster blossoms and pressed fall leaves collected from the local landscape over the past week, bringing out subtle shades of yellow, orange, russet and deep greens that are, nonetheless, difficult to distinguish in the darkness. A small bowl of incense smolders and smokes, its scent mingling with the damp late-night fog, and in the center of the altar a small lidded cauldron sits waiting, the waters of life inside ready to be ignited. When the time is right.

Suddenly, the strike of a match and a flame flares into life, held delicately between the fingers of a white-robed figure. Opening the cauldron, she tosses the match inside and within seconds a column of fire is dancing and leaping upwards as if out of the very womb of darkness, lapping at the round, black lip of the iron pot. Flickering light illuminates the entire grove, revealing other figures standing poised on the threshold of vision, some dressed in white, others in the colors of the elements or of the autumnal season. As the cauldron fire grows stronger, the center figure raises her arms in a gesture of gratitude and exaltation, and those in the surrounding circle do likewise. Together, all begin to chant the familiar words of prayer, the syllables weaving and repeating, their voices cascading over one another in a rising harmony of sound and vibration. The energy is palpable, flowing through each tongue of fire, grounding in the deep earth and arcing towards the celestial realms — and each participant adds their own energy, opening themselves to the awareness of connection moving and dancing through the grove.

This is the cosmos recreated, the three realms meeting in a center which is everywhere at once.

The chanting prayer drops suddenly to a slow-whispered awen, and the grove falls once more into silence, the only sound that of the flames trembling and sizzling on the altar. Everyone waits expectedly, their skin shivering with energy, for the ritual to continue.

Water on Water's the Way: Blog Action Day 2010

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When it occurred to me that the animals are swimming
around in the water in the oceans in our bodies.
And another had been found, another ocean on the planet,
given that our blood is just like the Atlantic.

- Modest Mouse, "3rd Planet"


Everybody knows we're mostly water. But I remember the kind of mystic revelation that hit me the first time I read that scene in J.D. Salinger's short story "Teddy" where the ten-year-old describes watching his little sister drinking milk, how he suddenly saw that she was God and the milk was God, and "all she was doing was pouring God into God." David Suzuki echoes this startling but simple truth when he writes in his book, The Sacred Balance, that "we are intimately fused to our surroundings and the notion of separateness or isolation is an illusion." Our physical being weaves us intimately into the world of air, water, soil and sun, and as Suzuki says, "these four 'sacred elements' are created, cleansed and renewed by the web of life itself."

When we eat, we participate with Spirit and the gods in a dance of growth, death, decay and rebirth, as even our waste returns eventually to the land to nourish and enrich the soil from which our food grows. Plants transform the energy gifted to them by the sun into forms that can be absorbed and exchanged, and when we work, we release that energy again through the efforts of our hands, legs, mouths and minds to shape the world. Our breath is the breath of our ancestors, but also of the atmosphere and the weather, the winds and storms that encircle the planet and rustle the leaves of the tree just outside the window. And when we drink of those waters that well up from the earth, blessed, guarded and sustained by the gods and goddesses of the oceans and the holy springs and the caves of the underworld, all we are doing is pouring god into god.

Blog Action Day 2010: Water

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Folks who might be a bit out-of-the-loop (such as yours truly) but still eager to hop on board the Opinions About Social Change Express as it makes its way around the blogosphere next week might want to think about participating in the annual Blog Action Day on Friday, 15 October, when thousands of bloggers will join an international discussion about water.

Yes, that's right: water. From the Blog Action Day website:

Right now, almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s one in eight of us who are subject to preventable disease and even death because of something that many of us take for granted.

Access to clean water is not just a human rights issue. It’s an environmental issue. An animal welfare issue. A sustainability issue. Water is a global issue, and it affects all of us.

In previous years, Blog Action Day has focused on issues like climate change, poverty and environmental awareness. I'll be participating once again this year with reflections on water and its role as both element and realm in Druidic spirituality, and how our spiritual relationship with water connects us to the larger questions of social justice and environmental activism.

I encourage others out there in the Pagan blogosphere to join in the conversation a week from today and share their insights, too! Just visit the Blog Action Day 2010 website for more information and to register your blog.

You can also snag this year's Blog Action Day badge, though not as snazzy as last year's it's infinitely more practical and proactive:

Change.org|Start Petition

Interview with Phil Ryder about The Druid Network's Charity Status

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The following is an interview with Phil Ryder, Chair of Trustees for The Druid Network and one of the members most deeply involved in the four-year-long process of applying for religious charity status with the Charity Commission of England and Wales. I want to express again just how grateful I am to Phil for taking the time to answer my questions and give me, and all you readers, a little more insight into the long and difficult journey that TDN has made over the past several years. Congratulations once again to him and all the members of TDN on their success!

For my full coverage of this story, please hop on over to The Wild Hunt and stay tuned for my guest post tomorrow! To read the full text of the Charity Commission decision document, you can download the .pdf or visit The Druid Network's website.


Ali: Thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview, Phil! I know you and everyone at TDN must be very busy these days.

Phil: As you can imagine, I've been flat out trying to deal with the media folk — and on the whole it has been positive, within their limited ability to understand just what we are about. But I think it's important for everyone to understand just what this acceptance means and why TDN did it. I'm not sure we can cover everything in such a limited time — the amount of material we've sent to the CC would fill a very large book and covers everything from the anarchic setup of TDN through to explaining not only Druidry but all nature-based spiritualities and how they are religions. I know many shy away from that term — and I'm not keen either on the terms 'pagan', 'religion' and to some extent 'druid' — but 'religion' simply means to bind one to the sacred, and religions are defined by their identifiable method of doing that....

Oooops — there I go, going off on one! So, yes, fire away and I'll see what I can do to help.

Ali: All right, here we go!

Participating in Enchantment: Reflections on Magic

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Susan Greenwood, The Anthropology of Magic.
New York: Berg Publishers Ltd, 2009.
Review by Alison Shaffer

After the flight to Charlotte, North Carolina, two days earlier, I had learned one thing for certain: I was not a natural flyer. My first time in an airplane in more than fifteen years had left me feeling queazy and disoriented, retreating to the quiet sanctuary of my hotel room for the evening as I attempted to ground myself in a new landscape and a new city hundreds of miles from my home in chilly, hilly western Pennsylvania. High-rise buildings, a depressing lack of trees and green park space, people walking around without jackets in early December: I'd spent the trip feeling out of sorts and cut off from my usual sense of place. Now, I sat anxiously in the claustrophobic cabin of the plane, preparing for the flight back to Pittsburgh and worrying that I was in for another nauseating, jolting ride.

Susan Greenwood's latest book, The Anthropology of Magic, was tucked into my carry-on. The text was academic in flavor as well as subject matter, and clearly it had been written with the new student of anthropology, rather than the lay magical practitioner, in mind. A more accurate title for the book might have been "Competing Theories About Magic, And What It Really Is, In Anthropology," though that would have admittedly been far less catchy, and a bit cramped on the spine. The text introduced a good number of scientists and researchers who had spent their long, distinguished careers studying the practice of magic and shamanic techniques in tribal cultures throughout history and all over the world. Some of the names I recognized from my college days studying comparative religions, but even still I had often felt my head swimming as I worked through Greenwood's arguments. I'd spent the past few days reading her intense (and sometimes convoluted) discussions of the myriad competing theories of consciousness, ritual, reason and myth that have been informing and shaping the field of anthropology for the past several generations. While I knew such a book wasn't your typical how-to Magic 101 that many Pagans might enjoy, I also knew that the text held something immensely valuable for those seeking to deepen their understanding of magical work as a spiritual practice. It would take time, and some rigorous intellectual work on the part of the reader, but it would be worth it. As our plane taxied into place on the runway, I took a deep breath and pulled out the book, flipping through the loose pages of notes I'd taken and thinking once again about the nature of magic.

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal (7)

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In August 2010, just past the waxing quarter moon, I attended a retreat on Celtic spirituality and peacemaking in Northern Ireland. The hosts of the retreat asked us to respect the safe and sacred space created by the community, and refrain from attributing direct quotes to any of the attendants or speakers. With that in mind, the following are excerpts from the journal I kept.

Day Seven — Day of Silence

Is this a dream of mine, or something somebody told me? There is a house full of people, all of them moving and silent, and you cannot know where they are because you cannot hear them moving. It is dark. And so every once in a while, in the dark, suddenly you come upon another person — and you are both surprised, and horrified, to discover one another in the quiet, busy emptiness of the world.

Today, the house reminds me of this dream — except the rooms are full of sunlight, and against every windowpane a bee churns away its noisy presence into dust and nothing.

~*~

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal (6)

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In August 2010, just past the waxing quarter moon, I attended a retreat on Celtic spirituality and peacemaking in Northern Ireland. The hosts of the retreat asked us to respect the safe and sacred space created by the community, and refrain from attributing direct quotes to any of the attendants or speakers. With that in mind, the following are excerpts from the journal I kept.

Day Six — The Wise Man in the Woods

It's about 10 PM, and our day of silence has technically begun. Which means I may actually have half a second to write and complete my thoughts.

~*~

We came to a bird lookout-hut, a small wooden hut with horizontal slits all along its walls giving a view of the shoreline of the lake. The weather was rainy and gray — my hair was damp and matted down from the walk there — wind whipping the blue-gray waters of the lake into whitecaps. Absolutely gorgeous.

Keeping the Days: Earth and Stone

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Long Pond, Acadia National Park, Maine

Etymology of My Gods, Redux

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While Bob Patrick was writing up his recent guest post on polytheism and divinity, I was busy gathering my thoughts on Bonewits' version of modern American polytheology, and doing a bit of research and etymological digging of my own. Exploring the roots of words like "god," "deity," and "spirit" gave rise to the contemplative-poetic piece posted a few days ago. But I thought it would also be valuable to share — in solid, trustworthy prose — the results of my digging.

Words for the Many, Words for the One

deity

From the Latin deus, "god." Related to the Proto-Indo-European root *dewos-, which gave rise to various words for god, spirit or demon in languages like Latin, Persian, Sanskrit, etc. The PIE form comes from the base *dyeu-, which means "to gleam, to shine," and also gave us words like sky and day. It seems the term "deity," related to the name of Zeus, originally evoked the idea of a being or spirit of light, whether a solar-god or a god of lightning. The word "divine," also from the Latin deus, when used as a verb (as in "to divine the future") originally suggested the ability to see by a supernatural light.

Delving into Divination: A Long Story of Silliness

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Temperance (XIV): Dressed in faded red, she perches perfectly balanced and at ease on the twisted limb of the old tree, suspended in air rippling, spiraling, tingling with the great powers that surround her. In her pale arms she cradles the pulsing sphere — wisps of energy, the tiny fey beings, drift and rise like steam, swirling and weaving, twining around each other as they climb until they blossom into full, solid forms. Watery blue, fiery gold, the great-talonned dragon and the frantic phoenix entwining, arching skyward, each with an orb of its own, pure color. The stony gargoyle makes offerings; the little songbird opens its wings wide, about to take flight. Her thoughts turn around them, seeking the power of their presence. She touches the sphere, undisturbed, her long fingers moving lovingly in contemplation — the perfect, pale-white glow of a halo exactly framed by the curve of her small, delicate wings, the light of it whispering to her, her thoughts turning around each other, dark and bright, water and fire, a sensual dance of power, duality, tension and life. The brown curls of her hair float as if caught up in a warm, rising current. She holds the churning forces of the world in her mind, between her hands, and every movement is poised here, utterly, in this moment, like a gulp of delicious air, like a quiet gasp in the center of a storm.

- excerpt from my tarot journal

For one reason or another the practice of divination has been something that, for a long time now, has given me trouble. I just never seemed to "get into" it. Perhaps because of the amount of study and memorization it seemed to require (though for other subjects and practices this has never stopped me). Or perhaps because my day-to-day life is often so exquisitely routine that daily readings hardly seemed relevant. Or maybe both. Though I consider myself a generally intuitive person, cultivating this aspect through my creative writing, divination as a regular practice seemed... unnecessary, one of those things people did to feel "occult" rather than taking the time to analyze their motivations and behaviors in more mundane ways, or maybe to wow their friends at parties. But I don't go to many parties, lovely readers, not many parties at all.

Bemused by Brigid: How I Met My Goddess / What I Did to Keep Her (Part Two)

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Almost three years ago I began this musing and stumbling over polytheist theology, utterly unconvinced and unsure. Not that I thought others were deluded in their worship — quite the opposite, in some ways I was almost jealous. I pictured myself in a quiet grove penetrated through with soft fog amidst the twining green, my form draped in blue, my skin tattooed with spirals and other elusive but beautiful signs, perhaps now whispering gently words of adoration and gratitude, now reaching my arms up and out to touch the surging sense of divinity, now leaning down to tend the lighted fire and scatter offerings of herbs into the flames, their smoke trailing off like prayers to linger in the mist.... I imagined myself a shaman or priestess, a Druid in her nemeton, sure and at peace with herself and with her gods. And somehow, unseen except in the peripheral shadows of unsteady imagination, was the murmuring, dancing throng of the Many shining opalescent among the stars and beads of morning dew.

Discovering Druidry

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I have, like others before me, discovered that Blogger now hosts "pages"... and I've finally broken down and decided to play with this feature to see what it has to offer — a longer biography, perhaps, or a list of useful books and resources? Links to popular and interesting past posts, maybe one or two longer essays of general interest? If others have any ideas, please don't hesitate to share! Eventually these pages will appear as links (in a relatively boring format, until I can tweak things) just below the header. For now, please enjoy my first page, Discovering Druidry, which serves as a kind of combination memoir and overview of my personal approach to the threefold, interweaving Druid Path. I have shared it below as a post on its own, but it will also be permanently available here. (Also, I'm honored and excited to see that Philip Carr-Gomm stumbled across it today and quoted it in his blog! Thanks so much, Philip!)

In the beginning, I was a wild child, a woodsy child, a child who could concentrate all of my attention on holding perfectly still so as not to startle the robin in the grass. I could disappear into the tense air of rapt attention, forget my own little body completely as my eyes widened and my breath stilled. Once, the robin's twitching eyes turned towards me, and I thought I heard it whisper... Cheer-up. Cheer-up, calmly, almost with amusement, you know, I can see you.

That was when I was a very little girl. As sometimes happens, eventually I grew up and stopped listening so closely to the world, to the landscape and the wilderness. It would be years before I rediscovered the rapture of stilled breath or the ecstasy, the going-out-ness, of listening closely and attending with reverence to sacred nature. Druidry would restore my sense of connection and intimacy with the natural world; it would open me to new ways of living with creativity and wisdom, playfulness and respect; it would bring me home to myself, to this person dwelling in my own particular body in my own particular place in a vast landscape infused with Spirit. Druidry was a home-coming for me, as so many Pagans and Witches before me have described their own rediscoveries. One day, I would look into the eyes of the world and discover — like some startled scullery maid or the only daughter of a widower out of a fairy tale — my real destiny wearing a strange new face, a face of beauty and dignity, but smiling at me with the same old familiar affection.

But first, I had to learn about poetry.

My First Pagan Festival: Doing Paganism

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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.

Song, Three Realms and a Feast of Lights

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My partner, Jeff, and I are in Massachusetts this week to visit friends and attend Feast of Lights, which will be my very first Pagan festival! I'll have updates and thoughts when I return, but for now, please check out the following recent publications, and enjoy!

This month's Song of a Daily Druid column over at PaganPages.org features thoughts on Imbolc and how we can ride our frustration and cabin fever this coming month by "priming the pump" with simple daily practice and a sense of sardonic humor:

What we conceived on the darkest night, now begins to quicken within us, and we feel the inner pangs and hungers stirred by this change. Our bodies begin to awaken a little more, yearning to be outside despite the need for heavy coats and thick gloves. Mornings seem to come sooner, with a tantalizing freshness despite the overcast gray skies and the browns of mud and matted grass beneath the soggy snow. Though February begins with a burst of eager energy ready to delve into the spring season, true warmth remains a long way off.

Also, the spring issue of Sky Earth Sea is out and waiting! Here's a bit from editor Paige Varner about the SES over the past year and the future of the journal:

Winter rains have turned the star wheel,
Springtime is upon us.

So begins one verse in Chant for the Seasons by Rev. Mark Belletini. This year in the Atlanta area, we have most definitely felt the winter rains – far more than in a typical year for us. And yet, I am having trouble accepting that springtime is, indeed upon us. As I write, Imbolc is a mere week away. This Imbolc marks a full turn around the wheel for Sky, Earth, Sea: A Journal of Practical Spirituality. As I reflect on the past year, and my own journey with this journal, I realize just how much my own spiritual practice has been influenced by the materials that our wonderful writers, poets, and artists have submitted. Last Spring’s “Zen Like an Oak” by James Donaldson encouraged me to look at a natural area with which I was already familiar (Georgia’s Stone Mountain) through fresh eyes. In the summer, Anna Adesanya’s photos in “Being Still” fed my need for beauty, and her accompanying article helped me look at my own fears around creative processes. Poetry from the Fall issue still lingers in my mind. And in the months since our Winter issue, Alison Shaffer’s “Peace of the Three Realms” meditation has become a daily staple in my own practice. I can already feel myself being affected by this issue, as well. Jeff Lilly’s “On Fear” has given me much to ponder about my own fears and relationships. Hannah Thompson’s poetry has given me a fresh and moving perspective on community and ceremonial work. Alison Shaffer’s review of Susan Greenwood’s The Anthropology of Magic not only encourages me to check out the book, but stands alone as a valuable commentary on practicing magic. Truly, I have been enriched through working with this journal. May you continue to find here material that enriches, comforts, nourishes, and even challenges you on your own path.