Notes from FLGBTQC Mid-Winter Gathering

notes from my Book of Shadows (spiritual notebook) from the 2011 Mid-Winter Gathering of Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns.  

As soon as our Epistle is available, I will post it here.  - sm 

Meeting for Worship Sunday

the idea that one "ought" to write, blog, etc., from love rather than from anger

--> anger springs from love, is a sign that something needs to change --> I would not be angry if i did not love

--> would not be angry on my own behalf if not for self-love; would not be angry on behalf of my Quaker communities if I did not love Quakerism or my Pagan communities if I did not love Paganism and if I did not love the Goddess (each other, this beautiful Earth)


writing about being at FLGBTQC Mid-Winter and my experience being here

--> what is it that is so wonderful about FLGBTQC?  it's hard to explain to people who haven't experienced it, or to someone who's come and who's maybe been put off by another who's rubbed them the wrong way

-- so far this weekend, we've talked quite a bit about this community as someplace where we feel known, with our imperfections, and loved
-- I certainly feel this way

-- worship

-- worship for business

(-- no "card check" at the door)


reminder from worship: community is one of the testimonies


large-group worship sharing

how we collectively hold the integrity and centeredness of our worship as something important

-- conversations I've had today with Friends about how theaological diversity, and sharing that with each other, is one of the gifts of FLGBTQC

--> these two things -- integrity and centeredness of Quaker worship, and theaological diversity -- are not in conflict; but rather, they complement and enrich each other

I am hearing: it is important to ask to be held in the Light on the list-serv

*post the intergenerational worship post on the blog --> radical inclusion

Singing the Goddess

(fun!)

Conflict and Quaker process

I was thinking recently about a conflict in the Meeting where I'm sojourning.  And then I found myself thinking back on conflicts -- and potential conflicts that never were -- in other Meetings and Quaker organizations I am or have been part of.

I posted the following to Facebook: 

...reflecting today that whenever I've been really angry over, disturbed about, or hurt by a conflict in a Quaker meeting or organization I've been part of, the real root of my pain hasn't been the conflict, but a lack of Quaker process. Whereas the most potentially terrible conflicts have been transformed in the deepest love through worshipful decision-making, leading-seeking, and truth-seeking together.

Thoughts?  Reflections on your own experience?

What are the parallels or analogs in Pagan groups or organizations? 

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?

How to celebrate Winter Solstice using A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual

Speaking of other facets of my ministry: music.  And one aspect of my music ministry is that every year since 1997, I've been part of a community-wide Winter Solstice Celebration in the Philadelphia/Delaware Valley area, which then eventually became a book and compact disc, and has spread to other parts of the US (and maybe other countries, who knows?). 

When Julie (my co-author) and I put together the book and cd package, one of the things we thought could be useful would be if groups of different sizes could use it to put on these same Winter Solstice Celebrations (WSCs).  We'd only worked with large-ish groups, with Celebrations open to the community, but what if individuals and solitaries, and isolated Covens, and small groups who weren't Covens and maybe didn't know each other well, and groups we hadn't even thought of yet, could use the book and cd to do this Winter Solstice Celebration?

From the feedback I've gotten, and from the experience I've had during the time I lived in other parts of the country, it works as we'd hoped.

I've used (experienced!) A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual in a bunch of different ways:

• with small and medium-sized vocal groups and volunteer narrators and readers, in celebrations open to the community

• with a group of drummers and the cd, narrating myself and sharing reading

• with 13 people who sight-sang it in an unheated gazebo and no artificial lights, passing reading around the circle

• by myself in my living room in the dark

• with four other adults and a preschooler in my living room during a snowstorm, with the cd, with one narrator and sharing readings

Groups that Julie and I have worked with, or know have done this (often working together) include:

• a number of Unitarian Universalist congregations, either with their own choirs or in partnership with community choirs

• community choirs, especially feminist and LGBTQ choirs

• Pagan community groups 

• churches

• Quaker Meetings

• YM/YWCAs

• LGBTQ community centers

• peace centers

• private covens

• individuals

• families

• community groups that aren't Pagan or religious at all, who have wanted to do some interfaith community-building around/during the winter holidays, and have wanted to escape the commercialism of the season

Okay, that sounds like fun!, you say.  How do I do it?  How do I use A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual for a Winter Solstice Celebration?  

(I'm so glad you asked!)

Host an event on your own or with some family or friends.  

• You can do it by yourself, using the book and cd. 

• You can do it with a small group of friends and/or family, using the cd for music, and volunteers to narrate and do readings. 

• You can get together a group of friends to learn the songs, and do it at one of your homes, either as a performance or just for yourselves. 

Partner with an organization

• Find out if a choir or chorus you know is interested in doing this as an alternative to a Christmas concert, as a community-building event, and/or as a fund-raiser.  (For example, a women's choir or LGBTQ choir somebody you know sings in.)  

• Find out if your spiritual community or congregation is interested in doing this as a service, as an interfaith community-building event, or as a fund-raiser. 

If you're part of a Unitarian Universalist congregation

• ...and your congregation has a music program, talk to your music director or some of your musicians to see if they're interested in this as a service.  Julie and I are members of the UU Musicians Network, and we can put you in touch with other UU folks who have done this.  

• ...and you have a CUUPS group (Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans), ask them if they're interested in doing this.  

Feel free to contact me directly for encouragement, advice, practical assistance, and spiritual support.  

There are lots of practical suggestions in the second half of the book.  If you need to order books and cds for your group, please contact the publisher.  (She will charge you less than Amazon, plus she's an independent bookseller.)  

For lots more information, see the Winter Solstice page at my website. 

But most of all, have fun!  Enjoy the music, sing along, take time for the silence, and appreciate both the gifts of the sacred Darkness and the rebirth of the Light.

"Divining Divinity" -- Bob Patrick at Meadowsweet & Myrrh

I very much enjoyed Bob Patrick's recent post "Divining Divinity" over at Meadowsweet & Myrrh.

What spoke to me about this post? A whole bunch of things.  Rather than go through and analyze and annotate the whole thing, I'll just pull out a few highlights: 

1)  "Belief" vs. "working with," or experience.

"That is a Christian presumption that other religious paths require belief as it does. What of those paths that do not require belief?"

I come face-to-face with this often, with the assumption that a dedicated religious or spiritual life of course requires belief -- and that a spiritual or religious life that is based in belief is by definition superior to one that isn't. 

Recently, I was at a conference that focused on the diversity of Quaker women's theaological experience.  Not our theory, not our thoughts, but our experience: narrative theology was the phrase shared with me with excitement by the conference organizers. 

I was nonetheless yanked up short by how wedded some of the Christian women in particular there were to this assumption about belief. 

"So, if you don't believe in Jesus, but you're here because you're Quaker, but you're telling me -- you're -- a -- Witch -- then -- that means you believe in -- well, not the Devil? -- I guess, if you're -- a member of your -- Meeting -- so -- what, exactly?" 

When it was my turn: "Actually, I would say, You experience the Divine as Jesus, or through Jesus, whereas I experience It as, or through, the grass, the trees, the seasons, Nature, the other women here, animals, all life, the Earth, the Air, the Fire, the Water, the Spirit, the Goddess.  It's not about belief.  It's about experience.  I can go outside and touch.  I can touch you.  I can breathe the air.  I eat food." 

Blank looks. 

It's one thing to come across this attitude from people who operate in a particular theological tradition; but I also get it all the time from non-Pagans who are non-theists and atheists, too.  What gets me is how Judeo-Christian these nonbelievers still are in their thinking and reactions, and how they still try to force other people into that same narrow box they claim to reject. 

2)  "Worship"

The word "worship" has a connotation of subservience rather than one of simply reverence.  It definitely generates the idea that when we gather in worship, we are holding ourselves subservient to that which we worship, and holding that which we worship as superior to ourselves.  As a Feminist Witch, I struggled with this when I when I first came to Quakerism; and something that I appreciated was the discussion in my then-Yearly Meeting's Faith and Practice about the roots of the word in worth-ship: what do we hold in worth, in esteem? 

What's more, here's that notion again of not only the separation of divinity from creation, but also of creation at all.  This is so enshrined in Judeo-Christian, and possibly all Abrahamic, thinking, that most folks simply don't recognize the assumption they're making -- much less the religious and theaological ethnocentrism in it. 

This is just not my experience of the Divine. 

Seeing "divinity as totally other and superior to the creation."

Sure, there are plenty of creation myths in Paganism / in different Paganisms.  But if the gods and the world are not separate -- if That-Which-Is-Sacred and That-Which-Is aren't different -- creation isn't linear; it's cyclical.  Personally, I may have a Mother Goddess, but I don't have a "creator."  My relationship with the Earth is to someone who grew me, not someone who made me.  And there's a big difference.  Reverence in connection.  The gods are not outside the world, separate from it: They are the world, the creator and the created. 

In technical terms, we're talking about world-views of immanence and transcendence, and world-views of both.

3)  That conversation!

Why can't I be that articulate all the time? 

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? 

Fund-raising for travel in the ministry

Dear F/friends,

As I've mentioned before, there are several trips I feel led or called to take this summer which I do not have the financial means to do myself. For health reasons, Beloved Wife and I were not able to go to the FGC Couple Enrichment Leader Training; we were sad to miss it, but glad we stayed home recovering and taking good care of ourselves and each other. I did go to the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference, and am definitely glad I went! I am still raising money to meet my costs for that trip. Tomorrow we leave for FGC Gathering, where I am serving in several ways; I have done well with financial assistance and work-grants for Gathering. Right after we get back, I leave for North Pacific Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions, and I need to fund-raise for that.

Here are the details:

Pacific NW Quaker Women's Theology Conference:

Costs:

• Registration: $250
• Plane ticket + fees: $423
• Misc food & ground transportation: $75.88 (does not include brownies)
• Total: $748.88

Raised so far -- thank you!:

• Scholarship: $250
• Gifts: $266
• Total: $516

Still needed: $232.88.

North Pacific Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions:

Costs:

• Registration: $236
  
• Plane fare: $524.80
• Misc food & ground transportation: ??
• Total: $760.80 + a little more

Raised so far (thank you!):

• $500 total combined from Monthly Meeting and Yearly Meeting

Still needed: $260.80 - $300.00.

Please click here for information on how to make gifts to my ministry.

Sometimes it's very hard for me to ask for financial support to travel in ministry. It helps to remind myself, in the words of FLGBTQC's co-clerk, that it's ministry given through me. Then I worry less about the personalities involved, and am reassured that it's not whether it's my ministry, and it's not whether what I do speaks to people, it's whether I listen well and discern how I'm called, and it's whether I'm faithful.

Thank you for your support, for holding me in your spiritual care, and for your financial help.

Yours in Friendship,
Blessed be,
Stasa

American crows, Northwest crows, and ravens

Northwest crow

On my recent trip to Seabeck, WA, at low tide on Seabeck Bay, I spent some time in Meeting for Worship with Attention to Shore Birds. More on that wonder later, with pictures, I hope.

Some of those birds were crows; and I commented on an email list recently about how much more gregarious crows are in the Pacific Northwest of the US than they are in the Mid-Atlantic. Someone asked, Might they have been ravens?

I was pretty sure they weren't -- they didn't look enough different from crows, for one -- but this did prompt me to go do some research, especially at U Mich's Animal Diversity Web. Which, among other things, often has great recordings of bird calls.

Yes, there's a difference between the American crows I grew up with in the East, and the Northwest crows I became friends with in Seattle and visited with there and on the Kitsap Peninsula this trip. And neither of them are ravens.

Here's what I found. Enjoy!


Northwest crow:

• http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Corvus_caurinus.html

• http://www.birdweb.org/birdweb/bird_details.aspx?value=search&id=317

Here's how they sound, which caused me to say, "Yep! That's them!":

• http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/resources/naturesongs/crow1.wav/view.html

American crow:

American crow

• http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Corvus_brachyrhynchos.html

• http://www.birdweb.org/birdweb/bird_details.aspx?value=search&id=316

Common raven:

Common raven

• http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Corvus_corax.html

• http://www.birdweb.org/birdweb/bird_details.aspx?id=318

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.

Music in my head during worship

As I've mentioned before (especially in my talk about William Taber's "Four Doors to Meeting for Worship"), I often have music in my head during Meeting for Worship. Sometimes it's music that comes to me while I'm settling into worship; sometimes it's music that comes to me when I've gone deep.

There's a chant, "Meditation on Breathing," that I learned at the UUMN conference last year, from/by Sarah Dan Jones (on her website, and Singing the Journey #1009):

drone:
Breathe in
Breathe out

melody:
When I breathe in, I'll breathe in peace
When I breathe out, I'll breathe out love

descant:
When I breathe in, I'll breathe in peace
When I breathe out, I'll breathe out love

This song often comes to me when I'm settling into worship, and paying attention to my breathing. It was definitely present with me this First Day as I was struggling with some worry and stress.

Later in worship, Harry Belafonte's "Turn the World Around" was very much with me:

We come from the fire (water, mountain)
Living in the fire (water, mountain)
Go back to the fire (water, mountain)
Turn the world around...

Do you know who I am?
Do I know who you are?
See we one another clearly?
Do we know who we are?...

We come from the Spirit
Truly of the Spirit
Only can the Spirit
Turn the world around

I first learned this in Roses, Too! Coven, where it was a favorite closing song. Most of us there had first heard it a good when Harry Belafonte visited the Muppets (here and here). :) I now own a copy from "An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Friends," and listen to it and sing it often. (I love trying to sing it in consistent 5/4 time, instead of turning it into 6/8.)

This is a song that helps me ground and be renewed, be joyful, hopeful, and thankful.

A good song to come to me in the deep part of worship.

A quintessential Pagan Quaker ritual - ?

I had a question recently from someone about what a quintessential Pagan Quaker or Quaker Pagan ritual might look like.

A few days later, in passing, I happened to mention on Facebook that I'm doing Beltane planning, and a friend said she'd love to see a Quaker Pagan ritual, thinking that's what said Beltane ritual would be. I told her that Beltane with Roses, Too! is not a Pagan Quaker ritual, but a Pagan ritual with Quaker and lots of other influences.

At first I suggested Full Moon Meeting for Worship/Worship-Sharing might be a better example of a Pagan Quaker ritual, but then I realized -- you can't actually tell the difference, by looking or even necessarily from within worship, between that and any other Meeting for Worship.

Okay, so what would be a quintessential Quaker Pagan ritual?

Well, what do I mean by quintessential? It occurred to me that this is another one of those words I use frequently and whose meaning I'm pretty sure I know from context, but I decided to look it up. I found the Merriam-Webster definition particularly interesting, because it talks about "the fifth and highest element in ancient and medieval philosophy that permeates all nature." (Hmmm!) But in this case, I am using quintessential to mean "the most typical example or representative," or perhaps, a typical example or representative.

Let me also think and talk for a minute about what I mean by ritual.

I spent a lot of my time last spring thinking and writing about what ritual actually is, for a couple of reasons. One reason was that I was taking a graduate class called "Understanding the Ritual Experience." (It ended up being more of an introduction to ritual theory and ritual studies than the nice and concrete unpacking of the experience of ritual which I'd been hoping for; nonetheless, it was deeply fascinating, and I learned a lot. The prof has since re-vamped the course; I'm not sure what it would be like now.) Another reason was that I'd spent a lot of time -- too much time? -- the fall before, trying to be in dialogue with the clerk of the pastoral care/oversight/ministry-and-counsel-equivalent committee of one of my former Meetings, about the definitions of words like ritual, clergy, and Pagan... conversations which, sadly, ended up coming down to: what he thought, he considered to be truth, and was reporting to the Meeting as such; and any reality of experience -- mine, that of any other Pagan Quakers, of any other non-Christian Quakers, of any other Pagans, or of the large body of Pagans in the world -- was just not true as far as he was concerned. It was painful, to say the least.

Since I'm not going to re-hash my whole semester (or the fall before) here, for now, I will just say that people who study religion and religious practice would call Meeting for Worship the essential/quintessential religious ritual within unprogrammed Quakerism.

(Yes, yes, I know unprogrammed Quakers say we don't have ritual, and we like to think that's true. But that is a whole entire other conversation.)

So, thinking about it, and going back to what I said above, I take it back: I would say that any Meeting for Worship in which people with Pagan theaology participate is a quintessentially Pagan Quaker ritual.

I'd also say that any Meeting for Worship in which people with Christian theology participate is a quintessentially Christian Quaker ritual. Certainly any Meeting for Worship which focuses primarily or exclusively on Jesus or Christ would be a Christian Quaker ritual.

So any Meeting for Worship that focuses primarily on the Old Gods, the Goddess, nature as the Divine Itself (rather than as Divine creation), etc., would be a quintessential Pagan Quaker ritual.

Happily, most Meetings for Worship which I attend aren't explicitly Christian, or Pagan, or anything else: whatever Face of the Spirit you experience or seek, you are welcome. The people in most Meetings I've been part of worry a lot less about which particular aspect, facet, or name of the Divine people seek and experience -- or, to borrow a phrase from Cat Chapin-Bishop, which brand name of the Divine people tune into -- and are more concerned about our seeking together and collective experience. This is how I can be in worship with Friends who are Christian, Jewish, Non-Theist, Buddhist, and other theaologies, and still be in genuine spiritual community. And even have the profound experience of gathered or covered/held worship. (And what a blessing. What a deep, joyful blessing.)

In that earlier conversation, I went on to lay out what I thought a typical or quintessential Quaker Witchen or Witchy Quaker ritual would look like. And then I realized, I'm a Pagan Quaker; I'm an open and out Pagan Quaker who does education with Monthly Meetings and Quaker organizations, and with Pagan organizations; but somehow, I never end up doing this version of worship/ritual -- what's up with that, anyway? *laugh*

So here's an example of a Pagan Quaker ritual based in Roses, Too! tradition of eclectic, Feminist Witchcraft (therefore, small-group):

• Gather; talk through the ritual.
• Check-ins: what are three words that describe how you are right now?
• Ground and center/tree of life.
• Purify the space, cast the circle, invoke the directions and the Goddess.
• Silent worship. Vocal ministry as moved. Singing, dancing, drumming, chanting if moved?
• Ground and center.
• Feasting.
• Goodbyes to the directions and the Goddess and to each other. Shaking of hands. Hugs.
  

Here's another I can easily envision:

• Settle into silent worship; "enter and center" (per Bill Taber) / ground and center in silent worship.
  
• If/as led: purify the circle.
  
• If/as led: cast circle.
• If/as led: invoke the directions.
• If/as led: invoke the Goddess.
  
• More silent worship.
• If/as led: raise power silently or noisily, with or without movement.
  
• Ground and center.
  
• If/as led, goodbyes to the directions and the Goddess.
  
• Shaking of hands/goodbyes to each other.
• Feasting/coffee and tea in the social hall after. ;-)

And I'm curious. What does Quaker Pagan / Pagan Quaker worship, ritual, etc., look like to you? What's your own experience of it?

Queries for the Full Moon

In 2008, I began developing queries for worship-sharing at the Full Moon. You are welcome to use these or discern your own.

Queries for Full Moon worship-sharing:

• What am I thankful for in the month since the last Full Moon? Or, since we met last? What do I wish to bring to fruition by the next Full Moon?

• The phases of the moon -- waxing, full, waning, and dark -- can be seen as the phases of a woman's life, and as the three faces of the Goddess: Maiden, Mother, and Crone, and the space between between death and life. How have I experienced the Goddess as Mother? How have I experienced another Deity, or another face of the Divine, as Mother?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr; the music of the Civil Rights Movement; and Bruce Springsteen

Thirteen years ago, my Coven co-Priestess and I went to a training in non-violent intervention at Friends Center in Philadelphia on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, in honor of his life and work. (My experiences that day prompted me to start attending Meeting not long after, and I have been active in the RSoF ever since; but that's another blog post.)

So that training was in my mind during worship this morning...

During one Friend's message, "We Shall Overcome" started floating through my head. (Hers was a short message; the verses continued in my head.)

I found myself thinking of Bruce Springsteen's current work. Beloved Wife is a Springsteen fan, and I bought his "Live in Dublin" cd for her birthday last year after hearing a special about it on public radio. "Live in Dublin" takes the work of "We Shall Overcome: the Seeger Sessions" several steps further into certain kinds of traditional American music -- especially the music of the Civil Rights Movement. (Check out the playlist here.) I was so blown away by the performances I heard that even if Beloved Wife hadn't been a Springsteen fan, I'd've liked to have bought the album.

I know. You're thinking, "That white rocker from NJ is doing spirituals. Right. Ew." Trust me on this. If you just can't fathom it, pay attention to the rest of the musicians.

Part of what was coming to me in worship today was hearing people involved with "Live in Dublin" talk on the radio special about how important it is to bring this music to new generations. About how people who would never think to listen to it, who would never be exposed to it, are standing there at concerts next to people singing every word of every song -- sometimes, their own parents, and then going home and having conversations about it.

I'm grateful that Bruce Springsteen is bringing some of this music to folks who weren't there at the time or who didn't grow up with it. Not just the music, but what it's all about.











better sound, but not the cool video:

Blessed Winter Solstice!

I hope everyone had a good Winter Solstice, filled with the blessings of the Dark Time of the Year.

Last year brought a very snowy Solstice to Seattle: Winter Solstice itself was the second of three snowstorms in a week. Record snowfall brought the city to a grinding halt for days. Winter Solstice was on a Saturday last year; it started snowing again that afternoon, and finally stopped snowing that Sunday night. (When we flew out to visit relatives on Thursday, the buses still weren't running in our neighborhood, and we hiked, using backpacks for luggage, half a mile to the freeway to catch a bus downtown to transfer to the bus to the airport.)

On Winter Solstice last year, a small group of folks still made it to our apartment for a Roses, Too! potluck and a Winter Solstice Celebration based on A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual. This was the second or third time I'd done it with a small group, using the cd for the music. We had five adults -- just enough for readers and the narrator -- and a four-year-old, and had a warm, cozy time in the candlelight with the woodstove. Everyone made it home safely, eventually, though the two miles uphill to the U District was a haul for some.

It was a beautiful Solstice.

(c) 2008

So, now here we are in central NJ, and there's record snow here already now, too! (I think it's just following me around the country right now...)

Friday evening, dear F/friends who are part of the extended Roses, Too! community graciously hosted the Roses, Too! Tradition Winter Solstice/Yule potluck at their home in Philadelphia. They've hosted a number of potlucks in the past, and it was a treat, for me, for us to have a potluck there again.

We had delightful company and conversation, and we shared all sorts of yummy, festive, and comforting food and drink -- hot mulled cider, homemade fettuccine alfredo, cider donuts, chocolate (of course), apple cobbler with local Philly Vanilly ice cream, cranberry-jalapeno salsa (which I bought from a local farm store, but which is not as good as my friend Jennifer F's from CA), a cheese-pepper-onion torte with a sweet potato crust, all sorts of good things.

And then we shared a hilarious, intergenerational game of Apples to Apples. At one point, I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt and I couldn't quite catch my breath.

We knew a big winter storm was brewing, and sure enough, record snow came to much of the East Coast with a blizzard over this weekend.

Our community-wide Winter Solstice Celebration / performance of A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual (with SpiralSong, PAI/DVPN, and Pebble Hill Interfaith Church) was snowed out Saturday night, as was Sunday night's dress rehearsal for the second WSC.

Last night, however, lots of people made it to our Winter Solstice Celebration (with SpiralSong, PAI/DVPN, and the Inner Path), and it was just delightful.

I loved singing with SpiralSong again; our readers, narrator, and stage manager were wonderful; the "audience" (in quotes, because it's actually very participatory) were wonderfully present with us, and enthusiastic during the high-energy parts; our musicians were excellent (and I had lots of fun drumming with our drummer); and the management and collection of lit candles went more smoothly than I think I've ever seen it.

Our hosts, the Inner Path, are members of the Delaware County Peace Center, so our Celebration was at the Springfield Friends Meetinghouse. This is a great space for this Celebration -- conducive to the ritual, warm and intimate without feeling cramped, and quite nice acoustically (something that is definitely not true of all old East Coast Meetinghouses!).

Plus, there was this moment at the beginning, when the singers first saw the "audience" after we'd processed in, and were facing them, singing with them... I saw so many familiar faces, and so many I didn't know. Among the familiar ones were friends who were there for the first time; folks who were there for the first time in a long time; folks who have been to these Winter Solstice Celebrations every year since the first one in 1997; folks who drove long ways; women I've sung with in the past and haven't seen in too long; folks from different parts of my life who had no reason yet to know each other... It was a magical moment in the web of connection and community.

How has your Winter Solstice been? What gifts of the Spirit has it brought?

(c) 2006

Queries for Full Moon Worship-Sharing

First, I encourage folks to familiarize themselves with FGC's information on worship-sharing, available here (http://www.fgcquaker.org/ao/toolbox/worship-sharing).

These are some queries I've developed for the Full Moon. You, or your meeting for worship, may devise your own, or already have some of your own.

Queries for Full Moon worship

• What am I thankful for in my life in the month since the last Full Moon (or in my life since we met last)? What do I wish to bring to fruition in the next month, by the next Full Moon?

• The phases of the moon -- waxing, full, waning, and dark/new -- can be seen as the phases of a woman's life: Maiden, Mother, Crone, and the space between death and birth. How have I experienced the Goddess as Mother? (Or, how have I experienced another face of the Divine as Mother?)

Full Moon Meetings for Worship/Worship-Sharing

For the last year, I've been hosting Full Moon Meeting for Worship/Worship-Sharing each month. Usually I've done this at my home; last month, I knew I would not be that organized, less than a week after moving cross-country, but Emrys and Nimue in the Philly are organized a Meeting at a local Meetinghouse.

Something that was different, that time, was that since there was on-line discussion about our get-together, we knew there were people joining us from afar -- either at the same actual time we were meeting, or at the same hour in their local time, or just at another time that same day or evening.

This gave me a marvelous sense of connection, similar to the one many Witches have to everyone else who celebrates the Full Moon or the Sabbats, similar to the one many traveling Friends have to their home Meetings...

So this month, I am proposing both virtual and in-person Full Moon Meetings for Worship/Worship-Sharing.

We are meeting Monday night, 10/5/09:

• 6:45-7:00, gather; local groups decide on worship or worship-sharing
• 7:00-8:00, worship/worship-sharing
• 8:00-8:45, potluck tea (I was thinking this would be local groups, but I can imagine having tea in virtual community!)
• 8:45-9:00, clean up together (local groups)

For full details, please click here.

Local, in-person groups

You can host a get-together by inviting Friends and friends. If you let me know, either through comment or an email, then there's an increased sense of community. Also, with your permission, if I know of someone looking for a local gathering in your area, I can put you in touch with each other.

I am willing to host in central NJ, or someone else can host here or in the Philly area.

Please click here for important details for in-person groups.

What do I mean by "virtual"?

I was originally thinking of individuals and groups who would be meeting at either the same time, or the same hour local time, or some time the same day or evening. But in on-line conversation, I'm realizing there could also be on-line Meeting for Worship, perhaps through quakerworship.org, or using Skype's IM function (which I've used for large classes, small conversations, and small-group worship before).

I look forward to more discussion about this, seeing what other questions and ideas people come up with, and seeing what happens Monday night.

Blessed be!

Article in the Inquirer about spiritual direction

This is a lovely article about spiritual direction from the Philadelphia Inquirer. (Thank you to Laurie K for pointing it out.)

Spiritual direction has been part of my ministry for a long time, but it wasn't until about a year and a half ago that I was willing to call it that. I didn't like the phrase, for one; having grown up in hierarchical religions, the notion of having someone "direct" my spiritual life was a distinct turn-off.

Winter before last, during a period of intense discernment, my friend Michelle told me, in so many words, that spiritual direction is exactly what I do. I nearly tossed off a flippant email in reply, but thought first and looked some things up. My searches brought me to Spiritual Directors International's page on "What is spiritual direction?" I felt like I'd been dropped in a bell that was ringing. Ohhhh. What Michelle said made so much sense.

I still haven't found a term I like better, or, most importantly, that conveys the essence of this practice to other people more accurately. Spiritual navigation? Spiritual mentoring? (A term used in some Pagan circles.) Spiritual companionship? The best terminology for me will come.

I'm glad to see this article, which talks about some of what's behind spiritual direction, but more importantly, the experience of people who seek out, and find it helpful, to talk to someone about their spiritual lives.

Certified spirit guides | Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/23/2009:

Certified spirit guides
Quietly, compassionately, spirit directors take the soul by the hand, helping a seeker tap deeper dimensions.

By Anndee Hochman

For The Inquirer

Fifteen years ago, Susan Cole was a pastor with a troubling dilemma: She felt unable to pray. It was a stressful time in her parish at Arch Street United Methodist Church in Center City, and Cole felt her anxiety climbing. She tried closing her eyes and focusing on a meaningful passage of Scripture. She tried waking before dawn to pray. All that did was make her tired.

'I was a mess,' she recalls. 'I would feel myself working really hard, I'd get more anxious and not feel any connection to God.'

Love and respect

This is a message that came to me in worship yesterday. It didn't quite meet the must-speak-or-will-get-a-migraine test, so I didn't stand, but it has still stayed with me...

Last fall, Lois McMaster Bujold came to Seattle, promoting her new book. I went to see her at the University Bookstore with my F/friend Marni, and we had a lovely evening.

After reading the new book, I of course had to go back and re-read the other three in the series. Among many other things, it's a series about this opposite-gender couple who meets and falls in love, both far from home.

In the first book, Dag, who has plenty of respect but not much love in his family, does not understand why Fawn, this woman he wants to marry and whose family clearly loves her very much, does not find all the love her family gives her to be sufficient. Until he visits them with her. And then he sees how they love her but do not respect her, and so try to make her smaller -- in a way, similarly to how his own mother and siblings try to make him smaller for respecting his work, but not loving the person he is.

And so Dag comes to understand that just as respect without love is not enough, so love without respect is not enough.

My F/friend Jana, update

I just learned that Jana is awake and responsive, though still in the ICU. Blessed be!

My F/friend Jana

I just found out that my friend Jana, from my home Meeting in Seattle, is in the ICU after being hit by a car Thursday night.

Jana and her husband Warren are both dear friends of mine and of Beloved Wife. Also, our friend Katherine, who was my elder for my ministry at FGC Summer Gathering and my traveling companion going to and from North Pacific Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions, is coordinating care from the Meeting. I talked to her this evening, and got a fair amount of information. Warren, Jana, and their young adult children are getting good support -- practical, emotional, and spiritual. Everything practical that can be done, is happening.

I also talked to Warren, and what he said he and they need are prayers, in whatever form works.

So I invite you to hold Jana, Warren, Katherine, and University Friends Meeting in your spiritual care with us: by holding them in the Light, by praying for them, by sending good thoughts their way, by thinking of them with love or tenderness, by lighting candles for them... whatever it is that you, personally, do when you hold someone in your spiritual care.

I know I could be a lot more articulate, but I'm still kind of numb. I know that because of past experience, it's even more upsetting for me when someone I know gets hit by a car. I know Jana's in good medical hands. I know she and her family are in good spiritual hands. And I know it will be a while until we know what's going to happen.