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Published on 4 Comments on To the ocean and for a mountain

An empty offering bowl in candlelit.

I am still thinking about sacrifices and offerings. What would my gods ask of me if they spoke?

In wandering around the Pagan blogosphere and speaking to the few "hard" polytheists I know, the gods of the ancient worlds sometimes ask for specific things. They ask for things of value to be sacrificed to them, they give quests and tasks to be done, they ask for altars and shrines, they demand, quite rightly, that promises made to them be fulfilled, and sometimes they may even require blood. There is grace and awesome power in this: the gods asking and the people giving.

My religious beliefs are slippery and squirming things. If I were to name my gods right now, I might name Mother Pacific, the ocean of my city, and Father Lions, the mountains that tower over us. Maybe I'd name the Winds too: North, the fresh air; East, the morning breezes; South, the rain bringer; and West, the ocean’s breath. I love the whole post Gods Like Mountains, Gods Like Mist, but especially this paragraph:

My gods are not always like human beings. Sometimes my gods are like mountains, sometimes they are like mist. Sometimes I seek my gods in the forests, sometimes in ritual space or the beat of the drum. Sometimes my gods are inscrutable or apophatic, and my relationship with them is one of longing and seeking rather than invocation and offering. And sometimes it is the mountains themselves who are gods, and the rivers and trees who speak.

My gods do not speak, at least not in the way that Morrigan, Sekhmet, and Freyja do in the links above. My gods are both more and less literal, both more and less physical, but are definitely not asking things of me. What offerings I make and sacrifices I enact will be my own creations and by my own will alone.

If my gods were to speak and if my gods were to ask for something, they wouldn't ask me to sacrifice a tool or an item of sentimental value, they would not ask for statues and gems, and they certainly wouldn't want them broken or thrown in the ocean in their honour. My gods would not want altars or shrines covered in petrochemical-based decorations and tools made of metal pulled from the earth. To honour them with such would be as if I were to cut off my left pinky finger to offer it to my right hand.

If they are not asking, why am I concerned with offering? I don’t think of these gods in very human ways, but I am still in this human body and this time and place, and offering gifts and sharing food and drink are ways that people here and now create relationships. I want to know these gods in what ways I can, and I want to show respect and gratitude to the powers that shape my life and world, even if the gestures are inadequate to their beings. My cat shows us his love and respect by bringing us dead birds…

I have been meditating on suitable offerings for about a week, gazing periodically on the empty bowl that is the centre piece of my altar right now. I think a libation they'd appreciate would be rain water. I will collect it in a special container placed in the middle of my deck, where falling rain puddles and does not run down into the soil, and ultimately I would pour it on a plant blessed and consecrated to receive it.

If they were to speak, I think my gods would demand a different sacrifice than the giving of wine, blood, or jewelry: a sacrifice of consumption. I think they would have me not upgrade my phone, not purchase the random do-dad I have my eye on, and not buy the non-organic, non-fair trade chocolate bar I'm craving. They would want me to turn off the TV and turn down the heat. They’d only want candles burned in their honour if they were soy or beeswax and were being used instead of electric lights.

Some practice is definitely necessary, then perhaps some more thinking and some revising. What would your gods have of you?

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Published on 3 Comments on Tax magic

A tax cheque surrounded by representation of the elements.

I'm staring at my tax bill and feeling a bit depressed. It isn't the money - it isn't a huge amount and we have it available - it is the seemingly endless parade of stories in the media of our senators, our MLAs, and our premiers blatantly wasting tax payer money on personal trips and other extravagances. Hearing so many of those stories and then being handed a bill makes it hard to be pleased to be sending our government more money.

I liked the Walrus' recent article about why tax time should make us happy. I would add that for people as lucky as I am - to leave in a free country with social programs and to have full time employment and a home and all the wonders of middle class life - tax time is sacred: it is when our ongoing sacrifice is made visible. We pay taxes all year around, but when it is all consolidated and made concrete, we know the details of our sacrifice and can "make sacred" any final offerings needed of us to support the place we call home: that's where the blessings can be most deeply felt.

I'll pay what I owe, but the government can get a bit more with my cheque this year: a bit of magic. I want my tax money distributed by wise and intelligent people with the greater good in mind... or, that being unlikely, I'll take my money going towards roads, schools, hospitals, and social programs and not ads about non-existent employment programs, trips for rich people, and creating corrupt election bills.

Cast a Circle. Call the sacred elements: Air for intelligence, Fire for strength, Water for compassion, and Earth for practicality. Invoke deities of justice and fairness. Cleanse the cheque by the elements to prepare it to hold the magic. Pray over it to make it a suitable sacrifice and write in the balance owing in. Put that cheque in your offering bowl and meditate on the sacrifices you make, of which this is just a symbol. Raise energy for the greatest good and pour it into the cheque, picturing the good your taxes will do: the nurses and teachers it will pay for, the MRI machine and surgery it will buy, the lives it will save and the homes it will provide and the jobs it will secure and the roads it will maintain. Write "for the greatest good" on the memo line, seal that cheque and your bill into an addressed envelope, and leave it in the offering bowl overnight. Thank the deities and elements and open the Circle. Send the cheque off with a hopeful heart.

A tax prayer:
This is my time and my energy and I sacrifice this willingly. I make this offering to what creates our future, to what keeps us safe, to what catches us if we fall, to what heals us if we are sick, and to what lets us follow our own path. I ask the gods to guide our leaders. I sacrifice this to the greatest good. So mote it be!

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Published on 3 Comments on Our big questions – part 4: circling from awkward to graceful (and back)

Cherry blossoms in full bloom on a rainy day

I listen to a lot of storytelling podcasts, so I'm afraid I don't remember where I heard the story, but someone was talking about a horribly embarrassing situation and how one young person responded: "Awkward." The storyteller, an older man, expressed admiration for a generation for whom the major value scale is graceful versus awkward, instead of appropriate versus inappropriate or right versus wrong1.

When you are trying something new, there is often a period during which things don't work well. Whether it is that your limbs won't seem to do the right things while doing a new exercise or sport, or whether it is running into your partner repeatedly while trying to make dinner together for the first time, or whether it is circling with a new ritual group, there will be missed cues, confusion, and overall awkwardness. You will lack smoothness, flow, grace. And that's normal when something is new.

When it comes to a ritual group or structure, I am wondering when to drop something that isn't fitting in as smoothly as you might want. Right now, there a couple of places where Silver Spiral has to pause to consult each other about the order of things in our new ritual structure, such as: ground, cast, then quarters; or cast, quarters, then ground? And sometimes the grounding meditation gets skipped accidentally. As I see it, we have a choice to drop that part of our new structure, revise that part in some way to try to make it easier to remember, or push the group to memorize it. Which one we go with may demand on how much awkwardness we're willing to tolerate, or even welcome.

There's freedom in a ritual structure you know so well that you don't have to continuously think about what comes next. It allows you to be present in each moment instead of second guessing your next move. It allows everyone to do their part gracefully and contribute equally. However, one of the theories about the usefulness of ritual is that it engages and focuses our conscious mind, allowing our sub-conscious to do the magic, so if the ritual is so rote that we can do it without thought, our conscious can be distracted by other things and we are no longer fully in the ritual. I have said some of the same prayer or bits of liturgy so often that I can get to the end and only then realize that I've said the whole thing without a bit of thought or intention.

Though we may want to cultivate the grace that comes with a familiar structure well-run, there's also value in a bit of awkwardness. Putting moments into our ritual structure that require concentration or thought seems like it could help us not just run through it mindlessly; it prevents us from ever having it down pat. Maybe we need things to stay just a little awkward, a little challenging to remember, just to keep us fully engaged.

Series to date:
Our big questions - part 1
Our big questions - part 2
Our big questions - part 3: ritual structure 2.0

Published on Leave a comment on Link roundup: sacrifice

mythumbnailI have always been a bit interested in the idea of sacrifice. I remember listening in fascinated horror to the stories of human sacrifice when I visited the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza when I was about 12 years old. Though I have used the various myths of Gods who sacrifice themselves for the crops and the good of their people in rituals, and I have a line about sacrifice in my pre-meal prayer, I feel like there is a lot more to learn and explore about this topic in a modern Pagan context:

"While it is perhaps noble to make offering with your last or most precious bit, sacrifice is not based on suffering. Most sacrifice is done in a mood of thanksgiving and comes from the abundance of the offerer." - Pagan Restoration

About the two meanings of 'sacrifice': "The common meaning of sacrifice is "to give up." We pour a libation, giving up the opportunity to drink the wine in order to give it to the gods. We give money to worthy causes, giving up the opportunity to spend it on ourselves. ... Sacrifice in this regard is a tangible expression of unselfishness or of long term thinking or both. ... The older meaning of sacrifice is "to make sacred." By dedicating something to the gods through ritual and ceremony it becomes sacred – it takes on some of the essence of the gods. Some of that divine essence then returns to us." - Under the Ancient Oaks

From a review of Religion of the Gods: Ritual, Paradox, and Reflexivity about the meaning of ancient Greek artwork depicting Gods making offerings and sacrifices: "The question that follows is how that is possible as all sacrifices need a recipient; a recipient who stand higher than the donor so that could be propitiated or worshiped. The author gives a remarkable, but at the same time, simple answer: the sacrificing Gods and, thus, their religious praxis is not directed towards a higher being than themselves, because simply religion itself belongs to the Gods. Accordingly, They perform libations and sacrifices as Gods, and this divine practice does not intend to venerate the 'other' – as a human worshiper will do – but, on the contrary, the god's 'self' as the source of religion and not the participants – a clear proof of Their omnipotence." - Nikolaos Markoulakis, Tropaion

From a blog post about the book review: "But while I pour libations and make other offerings, I never once thought that I was making these offerings to someone or even to something. I do not pour libations out to gods, who I wouldn't imagine would need them if they did exist. Nor do I make offerings to the earth or nature — unless you count my compost box. Who then am I offering to? Not to myself. Instead, I find value in the act of making an offering, a ritualized giving, even when there is no recipient." - The Allergic Pagan

"Modern Pagans love to talk about how the Gods evolve with us, and how forms of offerings can be different in modern times. I agree – but I think the important thing that has shifted isn't whether or not living sacrifice is needed or useful. What has shifted is the importance of the individual soul and the idea of consent, the willing sacrifice. ... That focus on volition with regard to human offerings is reflective of how sacrifice can evolve in a modern context – a religious practice now shaped by modern values on individual liberty, but still preserving the core function of the act, which is the offering of vital life." - Banshee Arts

"Sacrifice is often seen, in modern times, as hardship endured for the greater good, while ancient sacrifices are stereotyped as some kind of Gods-mollifying bribe or payment. It's rarely thought of as an exchange between your present self and your potential for greatness. Odin's sacrifice "of himself, to himself" during a nine-night ordeal while hanging on the world tree brought forth insight in the form of runes." - Shirl Sazynski, Witches and Pagans

"When we share our food with the Gods we invite them to be part of our family. Sometimes that means giving up the food – pouring a libation on the ground or burning a piece of meat or bread in a fire. Sometimes it means offering it to them with ritual and prayer, and then eating what they do not consume – what the Egyptians called "reversion of offerings."" - Under the Ancient Oaks

Oh, and I can't forget "Destiny" by Mojo of Parnassus (lyrics and sample and song purchase), which makes me tear up every time I hear it.

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Published on 2 Comments on Our big questions – part 3: ritual structure 2.0

mythumbnailHaving decided that we wanted a ritual structure of our own and that we wanted to use our own words instead of those of other traditions as much as possible, my spiritual family, the Silver Spiral Collective, set out to revamp how we do what we do.

We started out on our email list. We set up an email thread for each part of the ritual: cleansing the space and welcoming participants, casting and cutting the circle, grounding, calling and thanking the elements/quarters, invoking and thanking deity, and blessing the food and drink. Everyone who wanted to contributed to each thread with their own writing from past rituals or new pieces of writing designed just for this. There was some discussion and variations suggested, but for the most part, writing was simply posted without comment in preparation for our in-person discussion night.

Just before the discussion night, I copied and pasted the ideas from each thread into a single document, sorted by ritual component and stripped of author's names. When we gathered together, we each had a copy of this document and a pen. We also came equipped with some understanding of each others beliefs from our previous discussion nights, a history of working together (some of us have been circling together for over 16 years), and an openness and lack of ego.

This could have been a very difficult process without that last part. I take pride in my rituals and I usually like my own writing; I assume this is the same for most people who write group rituals. Unless you believe that you are channeling the ritual directly from the divine, it is your work and by presenting to a group in a religious context, you are saying that it is worthy of being part of their spirituality. You have to believe that you have something to offer in order to put on a ritual. If even one person had come into our discussion night wanting to push their words on the group, it probably would have been a much less productive and satisfying evening, but everyone came in with open minds. Though I had sometimes forgotten who the author of each piece was, in the cases where I did remember, it was never the author who spoke up that that was their favourite; someone else always had to speak for it.

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts at scheduling, not everyone was able to make it to the discussion. Luckily, the people who write the most rituals for the Collective were all able to attend, and it was agreed that nothing would be set in stone; whatever we came up with would be subject to everyone's approval and that feedback and re-writing was expected as we used the structure in upcoming rituals.

We did each ritual component separately, working through the ritual in order. First, one person would read all of the pieces of writing for that section out loud. Then we would gradually eliminate some of the options as being too specific to the ritual they were originally written for, too difficult to recite smoothly or too long for our purpose, or not quite matching the beliefs of the group. This was done very gently, with lots of "I love this, but..." and I know my feelings weren't hurt when my words got struck off some lists very early. When we were left with fewer options, we dissected them and what we liked about each one, then started combining bits from each in different combinations until we found something that was both pleasing to our ears and to our spirits. Sometimes the end result was almost exactly one of the original pieces of writing, sometimes it was a combination of multiple pieces, and sometimes we almost ended up writing something entirely new together. We spent a lot of time reading the drafts out loud over and over again, teasing out how a single word added or eliminated changed the rhythm or the meaning.

In the course of discussing opening procedures for rituals, we did stumble upon an odd little thing: not all of us agreed about the purpose of something we'd been doing as part of our rituals for years! When writing the original Silver Spiral ritual structure, Teresa and I had incorporated a meditation taken from a different tradition. We'd been guests in that tradition's rituals a couple of times and enjoyed the meditation. In discussing what to replace it with, we discovered that Teresa thought of the meditation as a personal grounding exercise to encourage each individual to be completely present, while I had always thought of it as a uniting meditation meant to bring everyone's energy and states of mind together. It was a revelation to find out that the meditation we'd been doing together for probably a decade or more meant such different things to each of us and yet worked for both of us anyway. A quick poll of the rest of the group found that the group was split about 50/50. As a group, we wrote a short meditation that incorporated elements of both, but with an emphasis on the individual grounding aspect because our re-written circle casting already had a number of uniting elements.

By the end of the evening, we had a working draft: Silver Spiral Ritual Structure 2.0. We used it in several rituals and after each one, we checked in with each other about how it was working. There were several weaknesses that we could only see once the structure was being used. For example, our circle cutting procedure was too short and felt perfunctory in version 2.0, and then was too long and drawn out in version 2.1. Our 2.2 version might be just right, but it will need to be tried at least one more time before we know for sure. As well, we have decided that we want to include a more formal procedure for our offerings to deity during our food and drink portion of the ritual. This is an interesting development, actually, because we had no such procedure in ritual structure 1.0; offerings were made somewhat casually after everything had been passed around and some of whatever was left was set aside or was simply left in the goblet or dish to be taken outside after. But during the trial runs of 2.0 and 2.1, the idea of a dedicated offering bowl and a planned way of making offerings was suggested and seemed to be universally agreed to; it seems like an idea whose time has come for us. I added an offering to our 2014 Imbolc ritual, which was the first to use ritual structure 2.2, and now we will discuss and refine that.

The process of developing a ritual structure that is satisfying to everyone has highlighted the things we all have in common (though individually we may all call different powers at the quarters at different times, we all agree on the elements as one good option) and the places where we diverge (the order in which the elements are thanked: same as when calling or reversed?). Sometimes seeking consensus means watering down everything to the lowest common denominator, so I was watching for that tendency going into the discussion night, but I don't feel that that's what happened. Those of us who prefer more elaborate calls and invocations definitely had to compromise some in the spirit of making everything adaptable to a variety of ritual themes and easy to remember, but I feel that we did keep things flexible enough to allow for precision in calling when desired. In the end, we built a suitable container for more challenging ritual content; a way to gracefully get into the same mental and spiritual space together and to deliberately bring ourselves back out. It was what we were seeking when we kicked off this process with some questions about what we believe.

I doubt we'll ever be done and have a final and forever ritual structure. In fact, I hope we keep evolving it to meet the needs of new members and our future selves. I expect there will be Silver Spiral Ritual Structure 2.4 and 2.5... and maybe 3.0 one day. And maybe "our big questions" parts 4 through 10 or more; there's always more to discuss and learn about each other and ourselves.

Series to date:
Our big questions - part 1
Our big questions - part 2
Our big questions - part 4: circling from awkward to graceful (and back)

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Published on 2 Comments on Here in the middle

Screenshot of the title shot for "The Middle" TV show.

Here in the middle, we mostly don't want to have to choose between faith and reason. See, on one side, there are hard core atheist scientists telling us that there is no meaning and that the universe is just physical forces and genetic replication with blind, pitiless indifference. On the other side, there are fundamentalist religious fanatics telling us that we have to believe in a certain God in a certain way or we will be condemned for eternity. And while they yell at each other, most of us just want to get on with it.

Pie chart of American's beliefs about evolution and creationism
Gallup Poll, May 2012

I watched the opening remarks of the Nye-Ham Debate: Evolution versus Creationism but decided that my blood pressure couldn't handle the whole thing. I do find ignorance about science and how it works to be galling. When I find out that 46% of Americans believe that God created people in their current form within the last 10,000 years, that 42% of Canadians believe that people and dinosaurs co-existed, and that 66% of those polled say that literal creationism is 'definitely true' or 'probably true', versus 53% for evolution, I despair of the state of the North American educational system. However...

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence. - Richard Dawkins

Secularism, with its moral relativism, is in direct opposition to Christianity and its absolute morality. The battle is between these two worldviews--one that stands on God's Word and one that accepts man's opinions. - Ken Ham

The anti-religious atheists and the fundamentalists have, together, set up a rigid dichotomy between faith and science. It is probably the only thing the two extremes agree on: that they cannot co-exist. And they are right; I believe the extremists on both sides cannot find peace with each other.

Here in the middle, we can have knowledge of science and still pray. We're capable of understanding fossils and the big bang and how chimps and humans are related, while still going to church, or temple, or mosque, or Circle. Some of us decide that divinity guides evolution. Some of us just figure that there's divinity and there's evolution, and we will do our best to understand both. And we get on with a life that is neither intellectually impaired (as some hard atheists would say of the religious) nor spiritually lacking (as some fundamentalists would say of secularists).

The fundamentalists on both sides think they are warring for the minds and hearts of the public. They have set up an "us versus them" situation and declared that one side must be right and the other wrong and there is no middle ground. A lot of people, confronted with having to make a choice, will choose the faith they learned first instead of the science they learned later, or will choose the comforting choice that says that there's a loving God looking out for them instead of an empty heaven, or will choose the story they understand instead of the complex and incomplete reality. Despite advances in scientific knowledge and all the information we now have at our fingertips, the percentage of adult Americans who hold Creationist views (45%) hasn't changed significantly in 30 years.

Here in the middle, standing on that middle ground that isn't supposed to exist, we don't want to be scolded and we don't need to be educated. We don't want to be threatened with hell and we don't need to take every religious story literally in order to take our faith seriously. We find ways to understand what has been explained, to explore the mystery of what hasn't been explained, and keep our minds and our hearts open. And maybe we don't feel so righteous, and maybe we're not always so sure of ourselves, but we can live with that.

***

End note: I really enjoyed this post on the Nye-Ham debates from the Science on Religion blog and this post on questions we should be asking ourselves after the debate from Under the Ancient Oaks.

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Published on 1 Comment on Talk too much; feel too little

mythumbnailI am an over-thinker. Before all things, I plan, I worry, I prepare, and I plan some more. The day before a big trip, I am unstoppable, chaotically creating order. My partner knows to just stay out of my way; he can't help me, so he might as well let me burn through my anxiety productively.

When I'm preparing to run a ritual, I do tend to over-prepare myself and the participants. I've mentioned before that I have felt that exhaustive explanations of what to do during the ritual can hurt the flow of the energy. I'm also starting to think that my tendency to be exceedingly exact in my planning can interfere with the mystery of ritual.

Group ritual is, in part, theatre, so it does have to be written with a mind to how it will perform. You have to think about where people will stand and walk, what you want them to see and hear, and how you are going to transition the group smoothly from one activity to another. However, group ritual is sacred theatre, so some room has to be left for the magic of what can't be planned. A good ritual gets a group united and in the right state of mind, sets a theme and opens a space to explore it at a deeper level, beyond logic. The process by which that space is created can be analyzed and rehearsed, but then rational thinking has to take a back seat to intuition. It is a challenging balancing act, and one I'm still working on.

Returning to pre-ritual explanations, I have found that too much detail about how everything is supposed to happen works counter to that magic frame of mind. When you've filled everyone's head with cues and stage directions, they stay in their analytical minds and may spend the whole ritual thinking about what they are supposed to do and how they are supposed to it, not about why they are doing it.

Explaining too much is my natural inclination, but when I fight that impulse, I sometimes go too far the other way and don't explain enough. In a recent ritual, I had to awkwardly cue each person's line because they had no idea that it was their turn to speak. At one point, I even cued the wrong person, resulting in a combination that made no sense and necessitating taking a mulligan on that section of the ritual. We smoothed it over and still got to a good place, energy-wise, but that is to the credit of Silver Spiral and years of working together. Without enough explanation, especially of an unconventional ritual, your participants may be edgy, trying to guess what is going to be expected of them next.

After the ritual, Robert suggested numbering the cue cards to make the readings go more smoothly, and Richard pointed out that I hadn't given people a lot of time to read over their parts before starting the ritual, so those are great places to start. Then, it is just a matter of analyzing the ritual explanation process until it is no longer analytical in its results...

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Published on 1 Comment on Link roundup: hospitality

mythumbnailWhen I'm working on a ritual, especially one I'm having trouble writing, I tend to do a lot of internet research and collecting a lot of quotes and links. Here are the ones I found most inspiring on the topic of Pagan hospitality:

"... hospitality is practiced as a way of showing respect to the sacredness inherent in all people." - Musings of a Kitchen Witch

"Hospitality is about interdependence, between ourselves, and between us and the Gods. ... It encompasses compassion, sensitivity, understanding the needs of others, and not waiting to asked. We are all guests in each others’ lives, and the best thing we can do is be good guests and good hosts." - Julie of Thornhaven Grove (ADF), quoted in The Pagan and the Pen

"We receive hospitality, whether we want to admit it or not, every time that we step or sit or screw anywhere in this world: all things were Created and Blessed and are enspirited by some forces greater and infinitely more complex and holy than we. We are guests here. And in turn, our religious structures are a way of reciprocal hospitality: we provide in our home shrines a space to welcome those (sometimes invisible, sometimes terrifyingly visible) forces, powers, gods and goddesses and ancestors and holy powers into the center of our homes and lives and families." - Thracian Exodus: Nomadic Musings of a Wandering Polytheanimist

"The laws of hospitality are ancient and to a certain extent elastic enough to stretch into different contexts, but always it is about the relationship between being welcome and being welcomed..." - Thracian Exodus: Nomadic Musings of a Wandering Polytheanimist

"The exchange of gifts is a way of establishing relationship. In gift economies, gifts are given without any formal agreement as to when the favour will be returned; however, the ethic of reciprocity is so strong that the gift creates an obligation to return the gift or favour, and in this way, an ongoing relationship is created. ... The giving of money in exchange for something does not create relationship, it ends it. If I pay in full for a service or a commodity, my obligation is discharged, and that ends the relationship." - Sermons from the Mound

The ritual I wrote inspired by this research: Imbolc: Being Welcome & Being Welcomed.

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Published on 3 Comments on Ego of a ritual writer

mythumbnailImbolc can be a tough ritual to write, especially for a group that doesn't follow any Celtic deities, so we can't just call on Brighid, and in Vancouver, which doesn't have reliable seasonal weather to draw on. Elsewhere, there are first signs of Spring to celebrate or the depths of winter to endure, but nothing is really interesting about Vancouver's weather at the beginning of February. We're just in a perpetual state of grey drizzle; sometimes a little warmer with a few early cherry blossoms and sometimes a little colder with a little frost in the mornings, but without a true winter, much of Imbolc's importance is lost.

Silver Spiral's Imbolc is, luckily, not until next weekend. Currently, I'm stuck in endless research that repeatedly spirals me away from any of Imbolc's themes. I've got pages of brainstorming notes in my laptop, in my tablet, and on a paper notepad, and all of them go the same way: start with an Imbolc theme, such as Brighid, and then I seek to make the theme more personal to our group and I brainstorm ideas until I end up with something really interesting but completely unrelated to Imbolc, such as minding our words and their power. Since the process of trying to tie that back to Imbolc requires monologuing my entire reasoning, I drop it and start again with a different theme, but with the same end result problem.

I want every ritual I bring to my community to be interesting, enlightening, and spiritually fulfilling for every participant. I want to serve my community and the divine. I want to do justice to the holiday and to the Gods. So Imbolc's vague themes is not the only cause of my ritual writer's block, as I put a lot of pressure on myself to make every rite perfect and that makes it hard to write something that might be less than perfect. But that's not the whole story either; my ego is involved.

It takes a certain amount of ego to be willing to try to create a spiritual experience for other people, and I pride myself on my rituals. As much as I would like to say that it is all about making an offering, I also really enjoy the ego boost of compliments after. The best compliments are the ones that indicate that I've made a worthy offering, served my community and the deities well, but I appreciate anything. It does sometimes drive me to want to analyze the ritual right after (though I've tried to stop since reading this post) so I get to hear what's working for people, though I do also want the constructive feedback as I strive for better next time.

I suspect this is necessary for me. I've always had trouble keeping a private journal and did better with a blog, even when only a few people read it. My own private rituals are very small and very simple – prayers, really – but I plan fairly elaborate rituals when I've got other participants (the more participants, the more elaborate; my Stardust Ritual to open The Gathering for Life on Earth 2006 has still been my biggest ritual in every way so far). Given that I am so socially anxious that I don't usually want to be the centre of attention – I haven't always served as the high priestess of the larger rituals I've written – this seems odd, but it is performance that motivates me to do my best work. However, it is performance anxiety that keeps me doing research and contemplating themes – and doing laundry, and repairing a chair that's been broken for years, and going to the gym, and writing blog posts – instead of writing an actual ritual.

And such is the paradox: in order to be of service to the Gods and to my community, I must have a certain amount of pride in my work, but too much pride is paralyzing to me. I know that I need to give up on perfection and just get on with it, since my Imbolc ritual is now scheduled for less than a week away. Hopefully tomorrow night inspiration will carry me through where my ego would stop me.

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Published on 1 Comment on A state of g.r.a.c.e.

mythumbnailIn one of my other aspects, I am a paragliding pilot. I dreamed of flying as a child and I have made that a reality. When I tell people that I am a paraglider, many tell me that I am crazy or say something like "isn't that dangerous?". Well, it isn't without risk – it is flight – but I can tell them about the strength and stability of the wings, the training and practising, and the safety equipment.

Before launching, a pilot will carefully check their equipment and will make sure that the environmental conditions are suitable to their skill level. In Paganism, we should check the physical safety of our space and the health of the group we intend to work with. I liked this post about ritual safety for an efficient summary of some of the issues we should consider.

Of course, the inherent safety of paragliding equipment and the work involved in getting a license isn't the whole point; human error is a huge part in flying accidents (and car accidents, boating accidents, scuba diving accidents...). Even someone with the best equipment and with the best skills can make mistakes, so we also learn to evaluate our own state of mind and to really think about whether or not we are in good condition to fly before launching. They like acronyms in flying, so we learn the I'M SAFE checklist.

If we are to do deep work – encountering deities, entering trance states – we should take our pre-ritual self-evaluation seriously. Too often, we're running from work or errands to a ritual, grabbing a potluck contribution from a grocery store on the way, and we have little time to think about how we're really doing. Ideally, we would all be in a state of GRACE before ritual starts:

Grounded

Relieved

Able

Clear

Emotionally Stable

Grounded: Release any excess energy and find balance and focus. Grounding is often part of our rituals, but if we don't feel solid going in, we cannot get deep.

Relieved: Relieve yourself first; it is really hard to concentrate with a full bladder! Also, relieve yourself of as many of the pesky annoyances as possible: tie back your hair if it is going to irritate you, get the little bit of food out from between your teeth, and whatever other little things you need to do to fully concentrate.

Able: Make sure you are physically able to do the work at hand. Most often, at a minimum, you should be rested, nourished, and hydrated before starting a rite. If your work does call for something more physically intensive, such as a vigil or a fast, you should carefully consider your physical condition before beginning and during the process.

Clear: Be clear and certain in your purpose and clear of all mental distractions so you are fully present in the moment and in the work.

Emotionally Stable: Make sure you are emotionally able to do the work at hand. If you are stressed, depressed, anxious, or grieving, then you may not be able to give your best to an intense religious experience. You need to decide for yourself what you are able to do.

The paragliding comparison falls apart a bit here, as even a short and simple flight requires that the pilot be absolute in top condition. I like Gus diZerega's hiking metaphor at the end of his article "Encountering Pagan Deities" and think it can be used here. If you are doing a light-hearted public seasonal celebration – the equivalent of an easy hike in a public park – you can get away with being a little less grounded, a little distracted, a little hungry, though your experience will probably be better if you are not. But if you are going to be seeking a deep, intense religious experience – a true mountain expedition – you should have done your research, completed a lot of training, and be in the best condition possible. Give your best to the work, and to your group, to get the best out.

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