Ordinary Pagans

There is a lovely article at Vox today that talks about Sekmet. It caught my eye becuase it mentions at least 3 ways that our folks can be involved in practical, useful efforts that don't always involved ritual or being Pagan in a public way. I wrote a "thank you" note today to the author.

I've been trying to think of a word that describes the sort of Neo-Pagans I
like to be around. When I was first looking for a way to phase this I began to call them "Ordinary Pagans", meaning people who have lives, jobs, responsibilities and they are pretty balanced (or working on getting there).
I talked to Snake about this many times, and she has since written a very good article on the subject for our newsletter. She may even write a book. I hope so.

Ordinary Pagans pay their bills. They vote, they have manners, they volunteer, they raise happy kids, - that sort. I've also referred to them as the "Limited
Edition Adult Version" (L.E.A.V for short), but usually, I just call them
"the sane ones".

Today, over at Vox, Fritz Jung referred to them as "grounded Pagans". That
works, too :-)

Below is an excerpt from the article I liked, with a link to it at The Witches Voice.

----------------------

I headed out to for the next leg of our journey honoring Sekhmet. Our next
stop was Kanab, Utah and a visit to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. I had
made a promise to donate money to the special-needs kitties at the Sanctuary
in Sekhmet's name.

http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usut&c=words&id=9240

There are so very many ways that a Pagan Priest/ess can serve the Earth and the Goddesses/Gods/Spirit in a practical way. One doesn't have to work
within the organizing of religion to do so. In fact, one doesn't have to be
particularly social or enjoy people. The special part, in my opinion, of
being a Pagan is being able to have a personal relationship with Spirit.
Honoring all of our fellow living beings and the Earth as a living
representation of Spirit is what it is all about. Now, more than ever, we
need everybody to care, seek education, and get involved.
--------------------------------

Finding True Tribe - Growing Pains at Spiral Steps

I just got a copy of an email posted to the new Spiral Steps Yahoo support group. It seems that the first Moderator, the one who asked Dj to open and approve the site, didn't actually read the Steps, and was shocked, shocked and appalled, when Pagans showed up in the room!

They have a new Moderator now. And the group is forming and sharing - Fingers crossed.

Email sent today to the Spiral Steps Yahoo Group:

Irony alert:
One person has just left this group because we discussed "spirituality" too much for her liking. (I've sent her on to Rational Recovery). Another person freaked when she saw that Pagans were here. Another left because she wanted it to be "Witches Only".

So, here's my take on that:

Spiral Steps is indeed an non-denominational, interfaith group based on Earthwise ethics. It include Pagans, Witches, Druids and Goddess Celebrants, along with Pagan-friendly Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Taoists, Native Americans, etc. We also have Secular Humanists at our meetings. You don't need any kind of deity to be here, folks. If your Higher Power (AKA Healing Power) is a tree or Love or your library card, that's just fine. Alternatively, you can have lots of Gods or Goddesses or just one - your choice.

Did you know that Mormons have a Goddess? Neither did I until a Mormon gal showed up at my local group. She is a Wiccan-Mormon, a very powerful Reiki Healer and she's been a great asset to the group.

One of our best volunteers, ever, was a woman who is a sincere Evangelical Christian. She is Pagan-friendly, a gamer and a costumer, and is involved in the leather community out here. She's since moved away and we all miss her.

Neither of these people I just mentioned could fully be themselves except with us. Does anyone else relate to that?

So, my point is this: You never know where you are going to find people who really "get" you. For me, what a person calls themselves is not nearly as important as how they behave.

In an age in which so much intolerance and hate is out there and so little empowering support is available, we felt it was important to make a place for healing where:

a) it is safe to practice spirituality as we choose, and be "out" about that

b) where we could find the experience, strength and hope from like-
minded people who would support us.

c) that respects Earthwise Ethics

As for "Witches Only"....well, I've seen groups start out for Witches Only, and then do nothing all day but argue about who is a true Witch or not. I don't need Witch Wars in my recovery and I'll bet the other Pagans in here don't either.

I've been working in the Pagan and other communities for almost 20 years now, and I've met a lot of dysfunctional jerks calling themselves "Witches' and I've met a great many magickal Buddhists and open minded Others - So I don't go by titles or appearances. These days, I look to find true Tribe where I can and to learn from them and I don't care what they call their deity or even if they have one :-)

Go well, stay well.

Dj
Founder, Spiral Steps

The Spiral Steps:
We admitted that we had a problem and made the decision to reclaim our lives.
We came to believe that there was hope for healing, health and balance.

We now honor our connection with the divine, as we understand it, and we accept the process of change.

We make a searching, fearless and honest inventory of our behavior and beliefs. We consider their effect on our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual selves and their impact on our relations with others.

We admit to ourselves and to another human being what is both healthy and unhealthy in our lives and we make a daily commitment to heal ourselves in body, mind and spirit.

We are willing to seek our Highest Good and to grow both spiritually and emotionally.

We let go of dysfunctional thoughts and behaviors and we consciously welcome joy, love and peace into our lives.

We make a list of all beings we have harmed, including ourselves, and we become willing to make amends to them all.

We work to restore balance in our lives. We make direct amends to others wherever possible and we value and care for ourselves.

We continue to take personal inventory and promptly acknowledge both our mistakes and our achievements whenever they occur.

We continue to grow in compassion, strength and understanding. We learn to celebrate our lives and our connection to all living things.

Having had a spiritual and emotional awakening, we work to help others along the path and we practice these principles in all our affairs.

We seek to find our calling and to develop the will and the wisdom to follow it.

Spiral Steps Support Group On-line

This just in from Spiral Steps:

As per many requests, Spiral Steps now has an cyber group up at Yahoo. This is the online version of the Spiral Steps support groups. It is run by a moderator named Minerva.

These meetings use the Spiral Steps format and philosophy. These 13 steps & traditions focus on healing, recovery, and empowerment. We discuss any and all issues here and we focus not just on the problem, but also on the solution.

These meetings are open all who respect the ethics of Earthwise spirituality, including Pagans, Wiccans, Buddhists, Humanists, Goddess Celebrants, Taoists, Native Americans, Druids, Pagan-friendly Christians & Jews, New Age folks, Shamans, Mystics, etc. All are welcome.

To read more about the Spiral Steps, please visit the website and read our origins and F.A.Q. page.

To find or start a physical meeting in your area, please visit the Spiral Steps website or write to us at info@spiralsteps.org

Dj
Founder, Spiral Steps

Mavens & Martyrs

Ware! say I

Talked to a Full Circle staff member for over an hour last night about the why and wherefores of working with volunteers, mentoring others and setting boundaries for ourselves.

Like many here, this gal is a Maven. It's a good thing to be, a long as you are careful with your time and talents. I know. You get a great view from a glass house.

Mavens always have a lot of plates in the air. They are Pagan Doers in the best sense. But they can burn out, if they are not careful.

All archetypes have their opposites and the opposite of Maven, the negative energy attached to the positive aspect, is Martyr; something we presumably don't (and shouldn't) have in Pagan practice. So Beware. It's good to be a Maven, as long as you are a conscious one.

Playing with Words:

These days, I use "Mayven" as a way to describe what I do. It's a made up word, that word derives from the Hebrew "mayveen" meaning "to understand". I like having "May" in the title since I see true leadership as a kind of gardening, and this is a time of year deeply loved by gardeners.

There are lots of different kinds of mavens. The dictionary says that Mavens are self taught (or self appointed) experts. These can be such a bore. I think a real Maven would become an expert on what they don't know, and keep on learning all the time.....yes? Someone who is interested, rather than someone trying to be interesting and important to others. A real Maven would ask questions of those who come to them, to help then learn. They act as a guide, not a guru. Rather like Socrates (without any pretense to his wisdom). I wish they still taught the classics in High School. Old, dead white men like the Greeks still have some things to say to us. From them I learned to say: "I got there going that way. You can try that way, and watch out for the hole there (1).... or you can try this other way, as well. See you on the other side." Reading Plato also taught me how to see the lie lurking in the pretty phrase, a skill much needed in these times.

The best sorts of teachers I know are both a Maven and a Mensch; patient and demanding, skillful and willing to honor the skills of others.

Here is some Maven wisdom we can all use:

My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.

Mavens (the kind I want to be anyway) live in that amazement. And they go outside and just say "Thank you". That's all the ritual a good Maven needs.

And as long as I'm quoting Joe and the Volcano, I offer this paraphrase:

You say to me you want to be Pagan, you want to learn, but you don't know what kind of Witch you want to be. You leave that hanging in the air, like I'm going to fill in the blank, that to me is like asking me who you are, and I don't know who you are, I don't want to know. It's taken me my whole life to find out who I am.

As you remember from the film, Marshall did help Joe. But he did it his way, and he didn't do it for him.

Sia

(1) Leo's story [from The West Wing]

"This guy's walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can't get out.

"A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, 'Hey you. Can you help me out?' The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on.

"Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, 'Father, I'm down in this
hole can you help me out?' The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in
the hole and moves on."

"Then a friend walks by, 'Hey, Joe, it's me can you help me out?' And the
friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, 'Are you stupid? Now we're both down
here.' The friend says, 'Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the
way out.'"

Beltane Kitten Update

Kitten update:
Wild Willie is over his second fever and doing fine. We still don't know what was wrong, but I have a guess.

When his fever came back, he received an aspirin shot at the Vet, which brought his fever down. Then I begin treating both kittens for the ear mites. Since he's had the mite medicine, his fever has stayed down, he has more energy and he is back to eating normally. The blood tests came back normal - no FIV, no elevated white cells, so no infection.

I have to wonder if he didn't' come in with something and the mites prevented him from throwing it off. But if he had something like a cold or upper respitory ailments then why were there no symptoms?

Is it possible for a kitten to have an allergy to mites that is so severe it could cause fever, lethargy and loss of appetite? I find nothing in the literature that says so. The Vets are still stumped by this, and so are we.

In any case, Willie is playing with Max, he's put on weight and he's been perfectly normal and happy since the 28th. Thanks go out to Bastet, Ashli and the amazing Dr. Chad. who helped us through this. Go, Willie!

They are at the clinic as we speak, being neutered. I've put a note about them into the monthly newsletter and they will both be available for adoption beginning on Friday, May 13th. (That seems right. They are Witch Cats, after all)

Newsletter:

The May newsletter went up and out yesterday. Snake wrote a wonderful essay on using unexpected tools in the Craft. Her evocation of Beltane is lovely, as well.

I added in some notes about May Day vs Beltane Old Style & Lunar Beltane - the distinctions are not usually taught. I find it odd that people celebrate a seasonal holiday on a calendar date and do full moon ceremonies on the closest weekend that's convenient. To me, as a Green Witch, this seems counter-intuitive, especially for a practice that prides itself on a connection to earth rhythms.

Still, it's fascinating to see the creative ways in which people celebrate the rites of spring and find their own personal connection to this season. At FCE we like to highlight different practices, worldwide, so that people can be open to all the possibilities that are out there and get an idea for the history, art and action spring inspires. It isn't easy being connected to Gaia in an urban setting, which is where most of our readers now live, so we offer ways to do that, too.

Seeking a broader perspective (and finding an avenue to peace) is one reason why we also list so many different cultural festivals on the FCE calendar. It's hard to hate someone when you love their food.

Other News:
The newsletter staff are doing a great job. We may have found an new Editor (or two) and someone experienced has stepped forward who want to work on the Pagan Census Project. This person may also do some interviews. I've talked to one person on the phone and I have plans to speak to the other before we leave on vacation.

Speaking of vacation:
We leave for Italy and Greece at the end of May. I hope to write some notes from the road. We'll see how it goes.

People are used to having me available pretty much 24/7 these last 5 years. I am taking more time for myself these days and encouraging the others to do so, as well. So I may write from the road or I may just be dancing on a beach somewhere - it all depends.

Sia

Beyond Mere Sentiment - Reclaiming Mother's Day

Reclaiming Mother's Day is up at The Witches' Voice.

That one was so bloody hard to write - I don't know why. I had the idea, but chipping the image from the stone was very tedious this time. The prose felt....labored (pun intended). Still does.

I'm very pleased with the book lists, which I think will come as a help to some and a revelation to others.

It's too long. They are always too long. I try to do too much.

But I do like the section on Dysfunctional Family Feud. I'm going to return to that theme again in other essays and I'll feature that link to Anodea Judith's essay on dysfunctional Pagans and group energy again as often as I can. That unspoken, often unconscious issue of codependency, emotional baggage, acting out, and ego-run-riot tends to ruin more Pagan groups and cause more heart ache among us than anything else I know. It's not the outsiders who do the real damage, it's the unhealthy ones in our own circles we need to watch out for....

I'm happy with discussion of the Goddess Mother Paradox. The Goddesses here were very deliberately chosen for certain aspects. I brought the Reader to the shoreline. Swimming down to the depths is now up to them.

I also hope that people find Sandra Stanton's website from the link via her painting, Rhea. I like how powerful her women look, and it was very nice of her to let us use the art.

Challenges:
Dio and Fritz were great, as usual; patient and funny, very competent and kind. It's a privilege to work with people who care so much and who play at that level.

Even so, I found this last production very challenging. Fritz has, for every good reasons, put in a form that he wants people to use for essay submissions. The days when I could send Dio a Word doc already set to my specs are over. It's no longer "We few, we happy few" but a massing horde who submit essays to them now, (and good for them!). They have to find a way to deal with the overwhelming work load this site creates. The form works well as such because Fritz is a very good designer, but it doesn't work well for me. I think it's because the form is designed for Op Ed pieces, not for pieces like mine that have lots of links and books lists. So I found it hard going.

Dio was splendid. She helped me figure out the html to put in bolds and italics (I'm a Word Geek, not a Web Mistress) and this helped a lot.

I hate code. I'm dyslexic and find editing words hard enough. Code... code is just cruel. How can you find mistakes in something that makes no sense to the eye? My partner can do it - he reads it like another language. It's just so much gibberish to me.

I found that spacing on that form is also hard to deal with, as the form is narrow and not set up like a word page. I like form and function. My spacing is designed to draw the reader's eye a certain way, and to inhance the rhythm. It's hard for me to "see" the total flow on a smaller format. So it goes.

I also like embedded links, which is the professional way to offer this information. The new set-up at Vox put the links next to reference, which I find clunky, hard to read and amateurish looking. There must be a better way to do this - I'll ask Dio.

Dio offered to do that work for me, but we were running short on time thanks to me, and I felt that she had already done a great deal, so I set the links myself.

I will ask Dio if there is a way to fix that link issue on my end without creating more work for her. And I will order HTML for Dummies (yeeeeeetchhh!). (1)

The form also times out after 15 minutes. There is probably some good reason for this, but I felt a pressed for time - I didn't want to do all that set up, just to have it blow up in my face near the end.

But I got it down. I felt so good about finishing it that I treated myself to a five hour hike with Owl Moon...and now, I hurt. Much do I hurt. Owl may look like a Hobbit but she can hike me right into the ground.

Sia

(1) Thank Goddess someone invented DreamWeaver. I'm taking classes in that now, and I really like it. For non-coding types, it's a geat way to build a website.

In Praise of Pagan Men

Still recovering from the Beltane weekend. Perfect weather - great people. A good time was had by all.*

This time of year I always get a few really nice emails from men (and women) who read the Witches' Voice essay I wrote some years back titled In Praise of Pagan Men.

The guys like being appreciated. The women like to send it to their guy pals or husbands as a way to celebrate someone special.

That always makes my day.

Sia

* As a Green Witch, I celebrate the holiday with rituals on Old Beltane, but it's nice to be with friends on the 1st in any case.

Beltane at the Baylands

Several years ago a friend told me about an event called Beltane at the Baylands. At this ritual (both cultural and Pagan) a hundred or more completely insane people, along with various troupes of Morris Dancers such as Mad Molly and The Deer Creek Morris Men, get up at four in the morning to dance the sun up near the wetlands.

The dancing starts at at 5:15 and goes until sunrise. The Morris Dance teams all perform. At the end they teach everyone a folk dance, and the whole crowd dances together in a circle.

This year, I got there rather later than I planed. (1) I finally made it to the park by 5:30 and I think I was the last one to arrive. As I drove along the road, past the duck ponds and up toward the Lucy Evans nature center I saw about a dozen black tailed hares eating the tall grass by the side of the road. I slowed down so I wouldn't hit one by accident, and wished them all a Merry Beltane.

By the time I arrived, the Morris dancing was in full swing. I hugged a few friends and walked along the edge of the crowd until I came to some hedges at the north-east edge of the lot. Past these hedges is an clear view of the bay and a ramp that leads down to the water line. A walk down the ramp brings you to a floating deck. Bird watchers love this spot. From here you can see over to the East Bay hills and you get a good view of the tidal marsh birds, as well as the swallows, hawks, ravens and geese. All these birds were out that day, including terns who were fishing and the purple swallows, who were flitting after bugs in the early morning light. I stood on the ramp, listened to the music and watched the sun come up over the hills. As the sun rose it colored the clouds rose-gold and white. Light touched the dark water, turning it silver and pink. The water was still enough for scrying, until a bird landed, then it shimmered slightly, sending ripples to the shoreline, where the stilts strutted and bobbed for food. They seemed to keep time with the dancers on the green, especially during the stick dance.

I've rarely seen such a morning. The bay, the clouds and the mountains together looked like an early Monet I once saw in Paris. Only this time, instead of standing in the d'Orsay, I was looking at a living picture while Celtic folk tunes played in the background. It was so beautiful, I stayed at the water's edge, enthralled, and missed the dancing completely. As a friend of mine says, sometimes the best prayer is to simply stand outside and say "Thank you".

Finally, the sun came up and the Circle Dance was done. The crowd helped the organizers clean up the space and went to their cars. I met up with some friends and went out to breakfast. I've enjoyed some magnificent sunrises in my life, but that one will always remain one of my favorites.

Sia

(1) I was coming off the 101 when I got a flat tire. I pulled off on to Embarcadero street and parked under a street lamp. I was more annoyed at missing the Beltane celebration than I was at the tire. After all, I was in a safe place, the blow out had not a caused an accident, it wasn't raining and I had my cell phone. If you are going to have car trouble, this is how you do it. Mostly, I just wanted to the coffee and muffins I knew were waiting for me a mere 10 miles away, at the end of the park. Happily, the a tow truck from AAA showed up quickly and I was back on the road, using my spare within half an hour. In the meantime, I had explained to the truck driver why I was there (and why so many other cars were going by in a deserted area at 5 in the morning.) He turned out to be half Irish and very interested in Celtic music and events, so I gave him a card. The Goddess has a sense of humor and she likes to use me as she sees fit.