Pagan Coming Out and Pagan Pride

So, May 2nd is Pagan Coming Out Day.

I know very little about the International Pagan Coming Out Day organization (http://pagancomingoutday.com/), so I don't really know how I feel about yet another Pagan holiday / movement borrowing words from / being named from the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer movement.

I am familiar, though, with the International Pagan Pride Project (http://paganpride.org/), which is an excellent organization, and which openly and gratefully acknowledges its debt to the work of the Gay Pride Movement and to all the lesbians, gay men, bisexual women and men, queer women and men, and transgender women and men who have gone before, paved the way, and provided inspiration for the Pagan Pride Movement. 

Why are Pagan Pride and coming out important?

They're important for the same reasons as for LGBTQ people, and as they are for the members of any minority group. 

Visibility.  Survival.  Combating discrimination and prejudice.  Building community.  Building bridges.  Education -- sharing the truth with ourselves / each other and with people outside our community.  Equality.  Integrity.  Celebration and joy.  Honoring our fabulousness. 

Yes, honoring our fabulousness.  Honoring and celebrating each other. 

Acknowledging and honoring those who have died due to prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination, and working to end them. 

Celebrating those of us who are alive, those who have gone before, those of us who work every day to make equality truth and not just words on paper, those of us who live every day in the world walking through our lives as Pagans, in the bright variety of Paganisms that exist all over the world.

Thou art Goddess. 
Thou art God. 
Thou art Divine. 
Thou art Sacred. 

Thou art Fabulous. 

Blessed be.

Music from circle at Winter Solstice/Yule (but probably not what you think)

In my Tradition's Winter Solstice ritual, we spiral into the Darkness, spend some time there, discover a number of gifts in the Darkness, and then spiral back out into the Light.

Several pieces of music have stuck with me from circle this year.

Lorna Kohler's "Spiraling into the Center" 

Spiraling into the center
The center of the Wheel
Spiraling into the center
The center of the Wheel
I am the weaver,  I am the woven one
I am the dreamer, I am the dream
I am the weaver,  I am the woven one
I am the dreamer, I am the dream...

(I learned this with "shield" and "wheel" interchangeable (ah, folk process...).  There are times when "shield" makes sense to me, and times when "wheel" makes sense to me, too.  Sheet music for this can be found on p. 251 of Songs for Earthlings.)  

Clara Scott's "Open My Eyes, That I May See"

When I had walked a counter-clockwise spiral into the center of the circle, into the Darkness, I spent some time in worship there.  And one of the things that came to me were lines from this hymn:

Open mine eyes, that I may see
Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me...
Open mine eyes, illumine me
Spirit Divine!

Yes, it's a hymn!  Like a lot of women of my generation, I spent many years thinking that was simply the opening to Cris Williamson's "Song of the Soul."

But at FLGBTQC Mid-Winter Gathering a few years ago, when Willie Frye was our keynote speaker, we sang hymn #166 in the Quaker hymnal Worship in Song in worship one morning.  And I learned there's a whole hymn behind those opening bars...  Clara Scott's hymn "Open My Eyes, That I May See."

Open my eyes, that I may see
Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me...
Open my eyes, illumine me
Spirit Divine!
Open my ears, that I may hear...
Open my ears, illumine me
Spirit Divine!
Open my mouth, and let me bear...
Open my heart, illumine me
Spirit Divine!
Open my mind, that I may read...
Open my mind, illumine me
Spirit Divine!

Cris Williamson's "Song of the Soul"

During the rest of ritual, then, "Song of the Soul" was of course stuck in my head.  During singing, I snagged my wife's copy of Rise Up Singing (there are occasionally advantages to casting a circle in your own living room), and my circle sisters indulged me by singing it enthusiastically with me.

In harmony.

They rock.  

And we can sing this song
Why don't you sing along?
And we can sing for a long, long time
And we can sing this song
Why don't you sing along? 
And we can sing for a long, long time

May you, too, always find gifts of magic in the blessed Dark.

Happy Fall Equinox and Witches' Thanksgiving

Day and night are in balance; Fall Equinox is the door to the dark time of the year.

This is the second harvest festival. What are we storing away for the winter? What foods don’t store well, and so we eat them now?

Some trees are already beginning to shed their leaves. What do we shed with the coming of winter, so that we don’t waste energy bringing it through the cold, and so we have energy and room for new gifts?

In many traditions, the Goddess, or one of Her faces, begins a journey into the Underworld at Fall Equinox. What will we lose in our journeys? What will we find? What abundant gifts of Mother Earth, tangible and not-so-tangible, carry us through the coming dark and cold time of the year?

What gifts do fall and winter bring?

Some thoughts about Lammas

I like to try to post about different holidays on the Wheel of the Year and how they speak to me, how I am moved by them.  Some of them are "easy" for me; they're really obvious, instinctive; it's like I've always known them in my soul, as if they've spoken to me from birth.  Some of them have spoken to me from birth -- Beltane, Samhain, Winter Solstice / Yule.  Others are more subtle, and it has taken time, as I've grown into my relationship with the rhythm of the seasons, for me to grow into my relationship with them; but I still love them.  Other holidays or way-points on the Wheel of the Year just plain challenge me, perhaps as what's happening in nature at that time of year just plain challenges me. 

Lammas is interesting for me for a bunch of reasons.  It's my former Coven's, and now my Tradition's, anniversary.  It's the time when the days start getting darker, faster, but when there's also an end in sight to July's heat waves here in the Mid-Atlantic.  Wherever I've lived, I've loved discovering what's in season locally at Lammas.  (One week after Lammas 2008, I moved to Seattle and ate Rainier cherries for the first time.  Wow.) 

This year for Lammas, I thought I'd share some of what Roses, Too! Coven has written over the years in our newsletter and celebration invitations.

About Lammas: 

• The cross-quarter days (Lammas, Samhain, Brigid, Beltane) mark turning points in the year when the days get shorter or longer more quickly or more slowly. Since Litha, or Summer Solstice, the long days of summer have slowly been getting shorter. When Lammas comes at the beginning of August, the days start getting shorter more quickly. This may be a sad thing for those who love summer, but a relief for those waiting for the end of sticky heat!  

• Lammas is a time of harvesting, of evaluating what we have harvested and what we hope to harvest.  The days start growing shorter, faster, as we feel the turn of the year’s wheel towards Fall.  

• Summer Solstice was the longest day of the year -- the day with the most hours of daylight in a 24-hour period.  From Summer Solstice on, the days begin to get shorter, but at first the change is gradual.  At Lammas, the change comes more quickly and is more dramatic, and we can notice more easily how the balance of light and dark changes.  

• Lammas is the first of three harvest Sabbats we celebrate.  This time of year marks the beginning of the harvest, of storing against the winter.  Gardens are going crazy, and we rejoice in the abundance around us.  It's still easy to see the Goddess as life-giving Mother.  But the harvest is still uncertain.  Severe weather, storms or drought, can still destroy crops.  And when we successfully bring in the harvest, we also see the face of the Goddess as Reaper -- She Who Cuts the Grain.  In Harvest is the death that allows life to continue: seeds for next year's crops, food for the winter.  Some traditions celebrate Lammas/Lughnasadh as the wake of the Sun God Lugh, whose sacrifice at Summer Solstice is the death that allows the cycle of both animal and plant life to continue. 

Ritual: Cornbread!

In circle at Lammas, we break cornbread together, sharing the joys and sorrows of what we have reaped in the past year and our hopes for the harvests to come.  We ask ourselves, "What have I harvested so far this year?  What do I hope to harvest?"

Potluck theme: Local Food

Lammas is the “loaf-mass,” the ancient Celtic celebration of the harvest of grain. We live in a world full of global networks that ship produce to us from all over the world. In the USA we have access to a stunning diversity of fruits out of season.

This Lammas we encourage everyone to look for foods that are locally grown, to reconnect with the seasons of the places where we live. What is being harvested near here right now? What will you harvest?

(And don’t forget the protein!)

So, dear reader, my query to you is: 

What does Lammas mean to you?  

• What is happening in nature around you?  

• What have you harvested so far this year in your life, literally and metaphorically?  What do you hope to harvest yet?  

• What foods are local to where you live?  What grows near you?  If you live in the city, what are urban gardeners growing? 

Thinking about Summer Solstice: Shame, Pride, Strength, and Power

I was on a long train commute recently, trying to use the time to get some work done. I ended up writing in my Book of Shadows (spiritual journal) about Litha, or Summer Solstice.

Because I find That-Which-Is-Sacred in nature and the seasons, I like it when my spiritual work is in tune with the rhythm of the seasons. The Wheel of the Year is useful for this. The Sabbats -- the Solstices, when either day or night is longest; the Equinoxes, when dark and light are equal; and the cross-quarter days in between -- are convenient times for me to stop and check in with myself with respect to the seasons, and are also a convenient time to check in with the Goddess / the Gods in a more mindful, take-stock kind of way than I do most First Days.

Some of the Sabbats speak to me deeply, and were part of my life before I ever identified as a Pagan. Some of them just make a lot of sense to me emotionally and spiritually. And some make sense mentally, but not on that instinctive level. Summer Solstice, or Litha, is one of these.

Oh, Summer Solstice makes mental sense to me. It's opposite Winter Solstice, which does speak to me on a gut level. As I've lived in different parts of the country, Summer Solstice and Winter Solstice are times when I've really had an especial sense of place about where I've been living: sunrise and sunset on the longest and shortest days of the year are very different in different parts of the US. The longest day is much longer in Seattle than Philadelphia; sunset on Summer Solstice is later in Ann Arbor or at Camp Grayling than in the Mid-Atlantic; the shortest day is shorter in Seattle than in Ann Arbor than in Philadelphia.

Last year in Seattle, we threw a Summer Solstice cookout where it wasn't dark til nearly 10 pm, but it was chilly enough we were all wearing fleece and long pants in the backyard, gathered around the grill.

You get the picture.

But while Summer Solstice makes mental sense and place-sense, it has never spoken to me in my gut the way some of the other Sabbats do.

On the train, I was trying to plan this year's Summer Solstice Celebration, and not getting far. So I started writing instead.

.....

- What do I actually want to do for Summer Solstice?
- What would be faithful to my leading?
- What is my leading?
- What about my MFW notion that came to me in MFW?
- What is my leading with respect to Roses, Too! Tradition?

I have a strong leading and commitment to Feminist Witchcraft.

I have a leading to teach it to other people, especially women.

So what do I have to teach, and what do I have to learn, about Summer Solstice?

The Sabbats that follow this are all about harvest -- at Lammas, we ask, "What have you harvested so far this year? What do you hope to harvest yet?"

At Litha, we've often talked about fruits, pride, and first fruits.

Gay pride, queer pride, Pagan pride; Pagan pride is more associated with Mabon.

The flip side of pride for both of those is perhaps shame.

So how can Litha, with its bright, purifying (burning?) sun, chase away (burn?) shame, transform shame, into pride?

What things have we been ashamed of that are actually sources of strength, power-from-within, and pride?

• femaleness; female gender; being women
• our bodies
  
• femininity -- characteristics stereotypical of female gender
• being femme or being perceived as femme in a queer culture where that may be suspect or not as honored as being androgynous or soft-butch or gender-bending
• feminism
• being Pagan; being too, or too obviously, Pagan; being not Pagan enough
• being spiritual/religious
• doing "ritual"
• doing ritual that is too plain, too down-to-earth
• health, body, physical issues
  
• cognitive and energy deficits
• education -- high school and seminary especially

So: how to take this stuff about shame, that provokes or produces shame, and transform it into pride?

(One key is feminist analysis of shame based on oppression and powerlessness...)

Transforming shame and powerlessness into pride, strength, and power-from-within.

Burning things? Eating rainbow fruit salad? [ <--- Rainbow fruit salad has appeared at past Roses, Too! Litha potlucks where the theme was "Take pride in your fruits (all puns intended)"]

Writing them down, putting them into a cauldron [the Cauldron of Cerridwen], stirring them around, pulling them back out, reading them - ? ie, "I have been ashamed of/when ---," then, "X is a source of pride / strength / power-from-within" - ?

(What do we do with them afterwards?)

What about things like violent or destructive behavior, illness / injury / disease, addiction, etc?

Transform the statement.

"Recovery is a source of pride, strength, and power-from-within."

"The ability and willingness to take responsibility for my actions is a source of strength and power-from-within."

"My body is a source of pride, strength, and power-from-within."

"My body's ability to heal is a source of pride, strength, and power-from-within."

"Not taking crap from inferior doctors is a source of pride, strength, and power-from-within."

Etc, and more.

I was done writing then, but all this has been bubbling away in the stewpot in the back of my brain. And I'm curious to see how things will cook up for Litha.

And although I might not have consciously realized it until now, that little bit of work has borne some fruit already: I bought jeans (on sale for cheap!) yesterday that show off my belly fat.

Not something I ever would have done before.

More music :)

I wanted to share two songs which haunt me regularly...

The first is Red Molly's 3-part a capella version of Susan Werner's song "May I Suggest."

The second is the Three Altos' version of member Sara Thomsen's song "Holy Angels." Even though angels are not part of my own theaology or personal mythology, I love this song. Another awesome 3-part harmony piece. Click here (or below) to play it.