Quaker Pagan Reflections

I had a somewhat interesting experience with spontaneous prayer today. Heavy snow is often good for that. Our Fulbright exchange teacher, Mr. R., carpools with me to and from work each day--a very reasonable arrangement, since I'm his mentor teacher this year. I've enjoyed the exchange of educational ideas a lot, and the cultural exchange has been pretty rich, too. The initial difficulties I had , trying to communicate with him around religion, have mostly resolved since my earlier post on the subject; on a day near Samhain , he was asking about American Halloween customs, and somewhere in the midst of my multi-cultural, multi-religious attempt at explanation, something clicked. He made the connection between Hindu traditions honoring ancestors and the dead from his native India, and my family's Samhain practices. There was a brief, deeply awkward silence--as a Christian and (I thank Marcus Borg for the terminology) a Biblical literalist, he disapproves of Hindusim--and...

All posts in this series: Part I: Getting (and Losing) That Old Time Religion Part II: Coming Home Part III: The Fool's Journey Part IV: The Underworld Part V: Seven of Cups Part VI: A Letter and a Kiss Part VII: Morticia Loves Gomez Part VIII: Nora Part IX: Felicia Hardy and the Tower of Babel Part X: When Babel Fell Part XI: Community 2.0 Part XII: This Forgiveness Stuff I wish I could convey the essence of a small Pagan gathering, like the one the Church of the Sacred Earth hosted the Samhain of that year. Combining the best features of an elementary school sleepover, a college dormitory bull session, and a Thanksgiving dinner in a large, boisterous family, weekend-long retreats like that are one of my favorite aspects of Pagan life. Picture, please, a woodstove popping vigorously in one corner of a ramshackle farmhouse. Music plays in the background--maybe a a track from the Libana album, A Circle is Cast --and there is a babble of happy, animated voices coming from every ...

All posts in this series: Part I: Getting (and Losing) That Old Time Religion Part II: Coming Home Part III: The Fool's Journey Part IV: The Underworld Part V: Seven of Cups Part VI: A Letter and a Kiss Part VII: Morticia Loves Gomez Part VIII: Nora Part IX: Felicia Hardy and the Tower of Babel Part X: When Babel Fell Part XI: Community 2.0 Part XII: This Forgiveness Stuff It is somewhat difficult for me to remember the main ritual of the Twilight Covening of 1990. I was only partly there for it...and partly I was in the Otherworld, riding on a big, black horse, curled safe and tight in Herne's warm cloak. The main ritual of Twilight Covening is always a collaborative affair; clans work together to contribute various elements to it, and the ritual framework is always similar--a journey, a quest, in which the celebrant encounters challenges and overcomes fears and doubts in symbolic form, culminating in a central celebration, something very pretty, with firelight and drums and ...

All posts in this series: Part I: Getting (and Losing) That Old Time Religion Part II: Coming Home Part III: The Fool's Journey Part IV: The Underworld Part V: Seven of Cups Part VI: A Letter and a Kiss Part VII: Morticia Loves Gomez Part VIII: Nora Part IX: Felicia Hardy and the Tower of Babel Part X: When Babel Fell Part XI: Community 2.0 Part XII: This Forgiveness Stuff Sometimes I think of my early development in Paganism as a path between two poles: Beltane and Samhain, exuberant innocence and painful deepening… Rites of Spring and Twilight Covening . In some ways, my growth in Wicca was pretty far along by the time Doug, Kirk, and I visited Rites of Spring together. We had coalesced into a strong working coven, and I had progressed far enough in my own development to make a capable acting High Priestess for the group—over the year previous, through dreams, trance journeys, and finally ritual work, I’d deepened my relationship with the goddess I call “R...