Anne Hill on Reproductive Rights and the Divine Feminine

Today I would like to give over the floor to author and mother, Rev. Anne Hill, who writes about reproductive rights and the divine feminine for the Huffington Post.

Excerpt

...Conservatives in Washington have once more made women's reproductive rights a pawn in their power game. Why don't they come right out and say it: being female is a pre-existing condition, one that won't be guaranteed coverage at all if they have their way.

To those of us for whom the Divine Feminine is an important part of our religious life, the conservative, evangelical "pro-lifers" are not just attacking our rights to safe, legal, accessible abortion and contraception, they are making a mockery of the very concept of "life" itself.

You can read the rest here.

Brava! Anne

Sia

Art: Ostara by Helen Nelson Reed. Image found here.

Ask Me About My Feminist Rage: Anne Hill Sums Up PantheaCon

For years I made sure that my booth was right next to Anne Hill's Serpentine Music booth at PantheaCon. (1) This is because I can't think of better companions in the wyrd trenches that one inhabits when working and/or presenting at Pagan festivals than Anne and her family. I spent over a decade watching Anne work and teach and I found that she is always great company, even when stressed or tired or dealing with those who are, including those Pagans who brought all their jewelry but who left their manners at home. I also value her clear-eyed, no nonsense view of the Pagan community and often benefited from her insight and advice. Plus, she's funny. Her wise and pointed sense of humor was aptly displayed by the ribbons she created and gave out this year at PantheaCon that said "Ask me about my feminist rage".

It's a great story - click on the link above to enjoy her post,

Sia

Related Articles:

PantheaCon 2009

When Is A Sex Positive Practice....Not?

Self Defense As A Spiritual Practice

Endnotes:

(1) Thank you, Thalassa

A Much Needed Antidote To the News of the World

With Samhain coming, Anne Hill writes about the things of the spirit:

...at a time when all the news is lit with neon, it is easy to get lost in the bright lights. Particularly if it is our retirement that has vanished, or our job that is on the line, and when the future of so many countries hangs in precarious balance, we are gripped by urgency and cannot easily break away. The dominant narrative is powerful and pervasive, riveting, life-changing. Yet the subtle flows of power and feeling are still at work too,....

I found her post to be a much needed antidote to the news of the world.

Thank you, Anne

Sia

The Daily Show Writers Explain The Strike To Us

From the Raven Series - Copyright held by The Ink Witch

Issues surrounding the Hollywood writers strike are many, varied and complex. Thank goodness we have the Daily Show folks to explain it all.

Speaking of writers and writing, you might also wish to read Anne Hill's post titled Women Publishing.

Update 11/6:

The Daily Show Archive - How It's Changing The Way We Watch TV
Excerpt from Salon.com article:

"A five-year-old episode of The Daily Show is pure gold...a fact made plain by the launch of the show's new Web site last month. Before, seekers of already-aired TDS material had to make do with the limited clips available on the cluttered Comedy Central home page, or try their luck among user posts on YouTube. At the new site, they can search the past nine years of episodes in their entirety—more than 13,000 clips, with tools that allow you to sort by air date, content, number of page views, or viewer rating. It's a library of the show, organized with an archivist's attention to detail and a fan's affection for signature moments.

...Playing around on the Daily Show site, I saw for the first time how the Web might really change TV—not by streaming a promotional teaser here and there or allowing users to post random screen grabs on YouTube, but by providing searchable online databases of years' worth of content that are updated to include current episodes. When The Daily Show does come back... I may well start watching even new episodes this way: at my desk in the morning, instead of on the couch at 11 o'clock at night. Multiply that defection by the size of the show's fan base and the subsequent migration of advertising dollars from screen to Web, and the writers' demand for a piece of the online action starts to make plenty of sense."

Jon Stewart's Greatest Gay Moments

Enjoy,

Sia

Art: A print I purchased some years ago at PantheaCon from the lovely Ink Witch

Working In The Wider World - Ordinary Pagans

Anne Hill has tackled the core issues with Reclaiming (and many other groups) head-on. In her post, she spoke to the work of Ordinary Pagans and the future we are building together, without using that specific term. (1)

Anne wrote:

...at this point, the best thing we can do is to take these skills and use them in the world at large. Figure out how to translate them into our jobs, our child raising, our interactions with the non-Pagan world.......the more our networks are made up of genuine friendships, people who trust each other, listen to each other and like working together, the more genuine people we will attract who may come to share our values.

Snakemoon, another thoughtful Pagan, put it this way:

Experience all things as sacred. Treat the Mother's living body with awe and respect. Lovingly create altars of gratitude and joy. Continually seek transformation though trance, spell work, music, and dance. Work magic; the act of changing consciousness at will, to change my state of being, and my state of mind. Seek enlightenment and transcendent knowing but seek also what my friend Cerridwen calls "endarkenment", the wisdom of one's own unconscious mind because in truth, only the shadow does know.

She goes on to say:

Work straightforward magic every day, with little fuss or ado, just because it needs to be done. Work magic at home, in the yard, in the car, in the office. Work alone, with lovers, children, friends, family, pets, and even strangers. Work through grief and fear and loss, and also work magic to celebrate, to thank, or simply to delight. Invoke and create new insights, new jobs, new homes, new loves, and new lives."

To my mind, Ordinary Pagans are people who have homes, jobs, friends, and families. They also have very rich lives outside of the Pagan scene.

As Snakemoon notes, these people walk between worlds. Sometimes they work as professionals or are active in local charity efforts, local schools, or interfaith projects. No matter what they do for a living, they are not afraid of responsibility and their lives are not full or chaos, drama and trauma. Ordinary Pagans bring concentration, professional, "can do" attitudes, dedication and, standards, to this practice. There are more of them then anyone realizes.

The term includes those who are joined in polyamorous families, many who are involved in the arts, people who are active in the leather and tattoo communities, as well as those who teach tarot and practice other magickal or creative arts. It also includes lawyers, doctors, teachers, technophiles, librarians, soldiers, police officers and nurses. It is not so much a lifestyle, as an empowered, creative, and capable state of mind. These are people you can count on.

Someone once asked me what I look for when I meet other people. This was my answer:

I look for people who who are working on their "stuff" because I won't work to work with those who are willfully unconscious or addicted to being victims. I like to have fun, and I need to be to be around people who can have fun without hurting themselves or others. I don't need my friends and colleagues to be perfect, but I do need them to be on a path, any path, spritual or not, and to be working that path towards growth, just as I am.

As I've said before, the people I want to know need to care about something other than themselves. After much searching, I've found a good number of functional, healthy, happy, creative Pagans and others I can work with. Many of them are active in charity projects, volunteer work or interfaith work. It took me 10 years to find some of those folks, and I had to meet a hundred Pagan people for every one I actually wanted to know better. Is this group of people unusually powerful or wyrdly elite? Nope. Neither am I (and bless these folks for putting up with my many imperfections). But they are funny, and smart, balanced and thoughtful, well read and honest. Each of them is committed to becoming the best person they can be, without excuses. They are brave and inquisitive and and strong minded, and they call me on my sh**t. I love being around them. I'm a better person for knowing them, and I like to think that they are better for knowing me. Maybe the best way to say it is this: We celebrate each other with respect and love much in the same ways that we celebrate the Goddess....and we get things done.

Sia


(1) I like this term because it is such a lovely and amusing paradox. I agree with Carolyn Myss when she calls paradox, "the language of the divine". I believe that the Goddess speaks truths to us in paradox, and lets us tease out the meanings for ourselves.

Cultural Creatives & Change

Off the Shelf:

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

Cultural Creatives : How 50 Million People Are Changing the World by Paul H. Phd Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson

Sia's Post:

Anne Hill wrote a wonderful essay called "A Peak Experience" which is about attending an event and hearing a chant used there that she wrote many years ago.

One of my favorite memories of MUSE Camp is the class Anne held on Pagan chants and songs in that wonderful Tibetan temple at Pema Osa Ling (then decorated with their 18 foot high Buddha and our four earthy Pagan altars in the corners). I loved watching Anne work, and watching her girls make art and play on the grounds and in the pool. Good days.

Her writing has reminded me again that, differences aside, I'm grateful to Starhawk and those others who, in the early, fragile, days of the movement kept the discussion of the divine feminine front and center long before it was ever trendy to do so. They dealt with ignorance, suspicion, and scorn, and made it possible for those of us who came later. We were then able to find Goddess-inspired art, spirituality, and language that we women could relate to. To share in the meaning of it all as sacred equals in the dance of life; can anyone who came of age in the 50's, 60's and early 70's forget what it finally felt like as spiritual seekers to realize that quest? And isn't that the point? Isn't finding meaning and connection at the very center of all we do?

If not for their work early on, Paganism could have been just another minor movement with an outdated, patriarchal focus or it could been left behind in some occult backwater instead of empowering and inspiring thousands of men and women (in a relatively short period of time, I might add) and influencing western culture in ways that have yet to be fully understood. Several historians (1) have noted the tremendous influence that these women have had on the Pagan, feminist, and ecology movements, and I think it is a fair (and necessary) point to make in this discussion we're having now.

The inclusion of men who fought to rise above their upbringing, as we had to do, and who brought their own unique creativity and energy to the party has also been invigorating and, for my part, most welcome.

For some time now, I've seen elements of Pagan thought, ritual and language entering into the zeitgeist and becoming a part of our cultural garden. (Read: The Tipping Point for a discussion of how such social change comes about). I can now talk about things like sacred space and honoring the seasons in one's life and raising girls with a sense of their own unique, spiritual place in the world with people who would never in their lives attend a Witch Camp. As you've noted, the discussion on much of what we hold sacred has now gone mainstream. The book Cultural Creatives is an excellent example of that:

The Wheel has turned radically since 2000. With such change, comes suffering, grief, challenge and renewal. We cannot deny or avoid this process but we can walk through that fire and come out stronger, more creative, more compassionate, deeper in spirit, more equal in relationship to others, and much, much happier.

What Pagans can do now is to ask themselves three very vital questions:

What Matters?
What Works?
What's Next?

The trick is not to fear the answers.

Change

While Anne wrestles with her feelings about Reclaiming, I am coming to terms with the fact that Full Circle may never again offer events like our fabulous Witches Balls, our Beltane Balls or even another MUSE Camp. The Full Circle Council is discussing changing our focus as we speak. Our senior staff have done this work for many years now and we're tired. To be honest, we're not getting any younger. Also, I now live in Oregon while others have left or are leaving California. Some of us now have other calls on our energy, money and time. As a result, Full Circle may now move from organizing such events to advising and assisting other groups who want to do such work. Others among us want us to switch our focus to the mid-term elections and registering voters via the Pagan Voting Project, while others want us to focus more on growing Spiral Steps.

Sia

(1) Ronald Hutton being prominant among them. I recommend reading his book Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft