Usually the highly motivated folks, at some point, start feeling threatened by the power position of the original leader. They feel held back, feel like the original leader has too much power, and one or more of them may start to build a coalition to check the power–or remove–the original group leader. They will usually build this coalition by gossiping behind the leaders back. Some gossip doesn’t have this malicious intent, but still serves to grow unrest and polarize the group members against one another.

The original group leader may have one of the following flaws–incredibly visionary but not a people person, or really motivated to get things done and willing to do the work but not good at delegating or mentoring others, or really strong and charismatic, but not really open to negative or constructive feedback, or really motivated and seeing the big picture, and frustrated by the folks who offer ideas but don’t volunteer, or who complain about how things are done. They may also find themselves threatened by some of the backbiting, gossip, and complaints, and react in a way that only fuels the anger of the group members who are gossiping already, such as removing people out of hand, or setting up tighter controls.

The combination of these things is a chemical reaction waiting to happen that will lead to a conflict that either leads to a large number of the volunteers walking away in frustration, the leader blowing up and leaving, the leader burning out or turning over leadership to the other group members, or the whole group blowing up in drama or just dissolving.

There is a way out of this particular set up, but it takes skills that most grassroots leaders (including Pagan coven and community leaders) don’t have. Heck, I have some of this training, and I still have a hard time.

In an ideal world, every group that is starting (or crystallizing) goes through a process similar to this. These steps can help prevent the above-mentioned community “pickle.” If you haven’t started out with a process of creating group agreements, here’s a process you can engage with your group if you are finding that there are problems and negative group dynamics. It’s a process to address problems before they get out of hand. It can still be a stressful session to facilitate, and it often helps to have a skilled facilitator who is a neutral party offer this for you and your group.

1. Begin with group agreements around safety (I have standard ones I use, and I’ll do a blog post about those in the future). Do a round of check-in; get a sense of who is there as part of the group,  and what they’d like to get out of such training. You can learn a lot by hearing what people want to learn about. If the group is really agitated and goes straight into checking in about all the things that are sucking, go with where the group is, but ultimately, it’s usually better to wait just a little bit before eliciting some of the negative feedback, and first getting to the goals of what people actually want out of the group.

2. Brainstorm session on, what do you want this group to do? How do you want this group to function? The idea is to do a positive-focused brainstorm. Most groups will say the same things, “We want to get XYZ actions done, we want to have less meetings, we want less conflict.” Trying to keep the language positive focused (rephrasing “less conflict” as, “more time spent on actions”) can help. If the organization/group in question hasn’t already articulated a mission statement, creating that mission statement or “group magical intention-setting” statement can work very well to help energetically focus the group.

3. Brainstorm session on, what are some of the activities, behaviors, and processes going on in the group that don’t support that vision? Try to get people to talk about the things that no one talks about. Or the things that they’ve been complaining and gossiping about but unwilling to communicate directly. Having a neutral party can bring these things out, much like partners in couples counseling feel like they can say things to the counselor they couldn’t say to their partner. Ideally some of the core conflicts will come out here, such as if someone is consistently disruptive in meetings, or if someone is micromanaging. Often there will be a core conflict between a micromanaging visionary team leader, and team members who have dropped the ball or who are not pulling their fair share in the group.

4. Take a break. Facilitators take some time to look at what’s been brought up, and structure the rest of the session to address the data you’ve gathered so far.

5. Return from break, and offer a set of tools to address some of the most common problems. Given that the same issues tend to come up in groups like this, a session might go in the following order.

A. Communication Tools: Offer some ways to communicate that can help people move from a place of emotion, assumption, and egotism, into a place of compassion and the ability to listen. Tools of Nonviolent communication are useful here, as well as tools in helping people look at what their goals are in communication. Modeling a dysfunctional communication example, and then a functional one, can help to illustrate things. The gist is, whatever toolset you teach, it should ultimately teach people to not have a hair-trigger reaction to their assumption of what someone else was saying, and give them a way to step back, evaluate, and address things from a calmer state of mind.

B. Group goals. If you haven’t, as part of the process from earlier, actually crystallized a mission or intention statement, do that here. Also articulate specific goals the group wants to support that mission and intention.

C. Values. This might be an exercise that happens before or after the goals. Brainstorm what the group values. What do you value? Ensure that everyone is on the same page, and if there are any discrepancies, address them.

D. Structure agreements together. Brainstorm what physical and emotional agreements support the group’s values and goals. Alternately, you can do the communication training after this, to illustrate how an agreement works. If you have an agreement for healthy and nonviolent communication, a skills training demonstrating what that looks like is critical.

E. If you’re lucky, you have time enough to get through all the aforementioned processes. However, it is important to schedule further group inservices to keep the momentum going. That might include closing by brainstorming on future meeting topics and times, such as skills training and mentoring in communication, or further clarifying group agreements. It’s also important to arrange for mediation between team members and group leaders who still find they have a conflict by the end of the day.

It’s also important to address the underlying issues of personal growth that cause most of these leadership and group problems in the first place. It’s not possible to resolve everyone’s interpersonal conflicts in a day, nor to do therapy on everyone in the group. However, making people aware that our own Shadows are some of what is coming up can help, and then creating a plan of action as a group to work on personal growth and shadow issues. Some of that might better work with one on one conversations.

It can be difficult to tell if the uber-volunteer you have in your group is just really excited and motivated, or if they are subconsciously trying to gain your approval as the “mom/dad/parent/leader/authority” figure by getting praise for work they’ve done. Or worse, someone who has a personality disorder and is trying to seize power in your group to make them feel better about themselves. It does happen, and it’s happened to me.  More commonly, it’s someone whose desire to serve community gets tangled up in their desire to be seen, to be the “good” one, or the “one with the good idea.”

Sometimes going through this process means that some of the folks will find that they don’t fit within the organization because they don’t support some of the goals, values, or agreements. And, as much as it can be hard to lose team members when you’re already wondering how you’ll get the work done in the group, it’s better to have someone drop out now, rather than days before an event, or after they’ve dropped the ball on something they agreed to do, or after they’ve caused a major disruption in the group because ultimately, the group wasn’t a good fit for them.

As always, I’m curious what strategies you readers have used in your groups. What has worked? What hasn’t?

This blog post is an email response I offered to a community list discussion on the connection between being honest, trust, and betrayals in community or in interpersonal relationships.

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There’s a couple of ways to look at honesty, and along with it, being nice, being authentic, and acting as a healer.

A friend of mine can say she’s being honest when she tells me, “Honestly, that dress really doesn’t do anything for your figure.” That’s a definition of honesty, but it might not be *nice.*

And depending on the friend, this particular form of honesty might be the kind of honesty where my friend is cutting me down, either intentionally or not realizing it. Perhaps her honesty is more about her than me. Mabye she’s embarrassed to be out with me because she thinks I look like a hippie and she wants me to look more professional.

Similar to that is when I offer someone honesty like this: Someone asks me to help them move, and instead of being nice and making the excuse, “I’m sorry, I’m really busy this weekend and I’d help you if I could,” I’m honest and I say, “I’m sorry, my partner and I haven’t gotten to connect each other in weeks, and I’m choosing to stay in with him and cuddle this weekend.” That kind of honesty most people can’t handle. I can think of a few very trusted friends I’d actually be that transparent with, and those are the friends who know that Mark and I are typically running ourselves ragged trying to build Pagan community and that we don’t get much time together where it’s just us.

I’m that open and honest with people when I have a certain relationship with someone, whether it’s a very deep friendship, or if I have a contract with a community member, student, or leader. In this case, I’m committing to honesty with a person.

With a close friend I might point out that they are in an abusive relationship and consistently making the choice to stay there, and offer the suggestion that they can get help–and specifically offer that I will help them, vs. just nodding and agreeing, “Yeah, that jerk,” and letting the pattern continue because it’s too uncomfortable to address directly.

With a community member or student, I might offer feedback, “At the ritual last night, you were offering an invocation, and the poetry was beautiful, but I was having a hard time hearing you.”

With a community leader, I might offer feedback, “I noticed at the last event you hosted that you addressed several participants in a way that was aggressive, which impacted the energy of the group, and I believe that a different approach might serve your intention better.”

In all of the cases, I’m being honest, and it’s a hard honesty. Can you sense the difference between the honesty that is coming from a place of compassion, love, and healing, vs. the “honesty” that is really about cutting down the other person?

Similarly, there’s a place where nice isn’t nice–when I don’t tell someone the hard thing. If I don’t offer my student constructive feedback on their ritual skills, I’m not doing them a service. Being nice isn’t really being nice.

Or, to make a more physical example, a healer sometimes has to set the bone to facilitate healing, and that bone-setting might hurt like hell.

However, over the long term, I’ve found that the people I work with respect me for my honesty. They know that I’m offering feedback from a place of love–I offer it because I respect these people, not to wound them. Instead of bitching about another leader behind their back, I offer them direct feedback. I don’t get to do that with every person I work with because I don’t have an established relationship with agreements for feedback with everyone. However, when I do have that agreement, I work to honor that by being honest in a way that serves.

Over time, I’ve built up trust with the people I work with, and similarly, I work to build up a space of trust where people can work together in a safe space and offer each other feedback. The key here is, over time, building a culture and community where we can trust and respect one another to offer the hard words, the honest words, from a place of love.

And, where we can still hold love for one another when one of us screws up. We all have old wounds, holes in our ego, buttons, and sometimes they get pushed. I know I’ve snapped at someone for teasing me about something. We screw up, and if we’re in a community and a culture where we’re agreeing together that each of us will do our own personal growth work, work to strengthen our own self esteem….and if we’re in a community where we’re agreeing to give each other the benefit of the doubt, and work together to communicate through and mediate issues, then we can build a culture of trust and true honesty over time.

This kind of community takes time to build. It won’t happen in a month, or a year, but it is possible. Trust is definitely earned, and to get there, ”You go first” doesn’t work. When I want a culture of trust, I begin by standing in my own integrity. I risk being honest from a place of love, being vulnerable, ruthlessly doing my personal work, even though those around me may not be making such a commitment, because one has to go first.

Will you take that step? Will you work to become more honest, from a place of deep compassion?

Here are some of my thoughts on this topic.

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I’m so excited to see the work that NIPA is doing. There are Pagans all over the country who have no place to go for various reasons, and helping Pagans in one area to have a place to connect and find “home” is such important work.

The other is the specific topic of “how do we pay for all this.” This is a topic I’ve been talking about for years to Pagans across the country, and I hear a few similar responses. One is the common myth that “All Pagans are broke” or the other common statement offered, “Pagans won’t pay for things like that.” Many Pagans are broke–unemployed, underemployed, on disability, etc.  And, many aren’t. I think the enduring myth that “all” Pagans are broke leads to the fact that many Pagans have issues around money. There’s other factors, but for the purposes of this post, we’ll assume that this is one of the myths of money-related baggage that hampers us, but isn’t the direct topic.

First, let me put it out there that I’m a big fan of “Tithing,” or the similar form, Memberships. That doesn’t always make me popular with Pagans who grew up Christian, pressured to put money into that collection plate. Or Christians who were part of churches where church staff would call them to make sure they “got right with God” and paid up on their tithe. Or even Pagans who are afraid this is the model is where Paganism is headed.

But let’s look at the opposite side.

There’s a lot of smarmy churches out there–but there’s also a lot of churches out there doing really good work for community. UU churches are usually a good example of churches that are open, welcoming to diverse people, and who are working hard to provide a lot of services to their congregation. The church itself (land, building, maintenance) costs money. The salary for the minister, and for church staff, costs money. Even with a paid staff, a church of even a small congregation requires countless volunteer hours to ensure all their programming happens.

Looking at some other models, it’s easy to see how Paganism finds itself in the financial fix it’s in. For a long time, the most common “shape” of a Pagan group was the coven, usually based in some way on the Wicca that came out of Gardner/BTW. Built within those groups was the moral stricture that Priest/esses should not charge for what they were doing or teaching.

I have to imagine that, in these small groups, there was still a method of energetic exchange. I know how much work it had to have been to learn all that they needed to learn, prepare lessons, prepare rituals, teach people. And in a very small group, it’s likely that the other members of the coven helped to take some of the burden of the group as they learned more, or even helped with cleanup, doing dishes, cooking dinner, heck, even helping out with home repairs, gardening, or other things that needed doing.

As one Pagan clergy member once told me–”I don’t need to be paid for my work, but when I’m preparing lessons or rituals and taking 20-40 hours out of my week to teach, I don’t have time to clean my houses, cook, shop for groceries. Who will help me with that?” I have the feeling that, in the form of a small, close group of people of 3-13, these things worked themselves out because when the group is that small, people become close and tend to take care of one another.

But then Paganism became more popular exponentially, and the books started coming out, and now there’s more Pagans than can be served by the coven model. In the past decades, what that’s given rise to is Pagan bookstores, open/public Pagan classes and rituals, and groups with lots of different shapes. There are groups that are larger than 13 people. There are lots of people not in groups but that want to find a group, or that are looking for education. Lots of different kinds of offerings (books, classes, festivals) cropped up for Pagans.You didn’t have to be part of a coven to learn things or connect with Pagan community.

What that has given rise to is, unfortunately, a very capitalist model of Paganism. What I mean by that is, different classes, stores, and festivals compete with one another for people’s dollars. And, (with some exceptions) only those who can afford to, can go to classes or festivals, or can buy things at the stores.

This at times enforces a polarity for Pagans–many Pagans who can’t afford the expensive classes, festivals, etc, complain that this stuff should be free.
The Pagans who are in the middle/upper class, who have better education and more money, seem to gravitate towards closed communities/groups that charge more for events and meet occasionally through the year drawing people from a broad geographic area. These folks are less likely to take part in their local community. I’d go so far as to say a further polarization is that the folks with the most disposable income and education end up gravitating towards the New Age community, where similar events and education to the Pagan community cost 10 times as much or more.

The trap is insidious. As a Pagan teacher and event planner, even if I’m just trying to cover the cost of an event I have to charge for it. If I’m renting space for a ritual, or making copies of class notes, or buying art supplies for an exercise, or my travel cost to get there, there’s an associated fee for that. Even if I believed that classes and rituals should be totally free (I don’t) there’s still the idea that I need to charge a fee to cover the cost. If you compare it to a church, the fee for renting a space is the equivalent of the fees needed to purchase/build the church, and maintain it.

I can tell you–both Mark and I have run events where we had to pay out of pocket because not enough people donated. I can say that, after weeks of organizing, dropping flyers, and planning workshops and rituals and other offerings, having to pay out for the pleasure of slaving over an event, is the fastest way that we as leaders and teachers head to burnout.

I don’t believe that events should just cover the hard costs. I believe that those people who have done the work to learn the professional skills to be able to teach Pagan topics, learn how to facilitate the workshops professionally, and lead effective rituals, should be paid for their time. I believe that people who are putting in the time to organize an event, design a flyer, staff an event, should be paid for their time. I work hard to offer Pagan events, and I should be paid for my time, too.

In the midst of this conundrum–how do you offer classes available to those who can’t afford much, but also honor the value that expenses should be paid, and that teachers should be paid for their work? The Reclaiming tradition (co-founded by Starhawk) came up with using a sliding scale, with no one turned away for lack of funds.

This is blending capitalism (paying for classes) and tithing (paying based on what you can afford). It’s the model I’ve used for every workshop, ritual, and event I’ve offered, and I’ve had great success with it. I think that taking the model further, making it a true tithing model, corrects a lot of the capitalist/competetive flaws that many Pagan classes and groups face. More on that in a bit.

Beyond teaching classes and leading rituals, I also believe that the clergy folks who are counseling people through a crisis should be paid for their time. Mark and I have both taken emergency “clergy calls” over time, and that’s not work we get paid for, even though it can take hours out of our day, or constitute us paying out of pocket to drive out to a hospital and spend time with someone. Therapists get paid for their time. Tarot readers and Reiki healers get paid for their time. Hospital chaplains and Ministers who are available full time to their congregation for their personal emergencies get paid for their time.

I’m not suggesting that, if you have an emergency, I take your credit card info over the phone and have you pay by the minute, any more than a firefighter should collect money before putting out a house fire. But–there needs to be a community support function where those who are getting services, are helping to support the structure that provides them that service. Selena Fox of Circle does a huge amount of clergy work for their community including hospital visits and memorials. And through Circle, she has a structure that makes sure she’s fed and clothed while she’s doing this work.

I should offer the caveat that few Pagan group leaders have done (or paid for) the kind of training needed to offer counseling and spiritual direction to their group members, but that’s changing. This kind of clergy training that we who lead groups, and who take clergy calls, should have. It’s not training that’s cheap, but it’s out there, and more and more Pagan leaders are seeking this education. This is a good thing for Paganism, but it does have a cost.

As Pagan groups change structure, especially in metro areas where groups like NIPA are working to serve the needs of a larger community, this format starts to look a lot more like a congregation (church) similar to a UU church, serving diverse faiths. However, in the case of most larger Pagan organizations, like the ESC group Mark and I used to organize in Chicago, or NIPA, or the various Pagan Unity Councils out there, it’s usually a really small group of people organizing for a lot of Pagans that show up, or don’t show up, depending on what their whim is.

Unlike a church, it’s usually a loose banding of people who have no “stake” in the organization, and they show up and pay the entrance fee for the class, ritual, or event, or they decide to not go to something because they don’t feel like it, there’s a concert they want to go to, they forget, they decide to watch tv, a family crisis comes up, or whatever keeps them from attending. But it’s still a capitalist model where people have other things competing for their attention, and they can decide to attend, or not, and there’s not a co-ownership of the group, it’s just “Do I feel like attending that class/event?”

This model of community organizing has great potential–and, it has some flaws that need to be worked out to make it truly sustainable.

Public groups and Pagan community organizations are not the same shape as a coven, and the inherent energy-exchange of helping out your priest/ess with their dishes and gardening in exchange for training doesn’t apply. I would consider services rendered to a priest/ess in a coven to be a form of tithing. If I’m part of the coven, if I’m getting training, and I want to do something to help the group out and I’m giving my time towards this, that’s tithing my time and energy of my labors.

The old, old models of, paying the shaman/medicine woman/healer for their time with a chicken or a fur or by getting clean water for them, doesn’t really work either. But that’s a form of tithing too. The shaman does what s/he does in healing the tribe or giving counsel. The woodworker offers what he has, the metalsmith offers what she has, the hunter and the gatherer and the farmer offers what they have. It’s an even exchange of skills, a barter. The close-knit community of a tribe or clan supports one another by offering their time and energy and expertise.

With a church, let’s take a UU church as an example again, the whole congregation that is a tithing member is “buying in” to the church. The term “buying in” is both literal and metaphorical–they’re in agreement with what the church is offering and want to be a part of it, and they’re backing that up by putting in their money. It’s more convenient than bringing over a chicken a week anyways.

If organizations like NIPA, Pagan Unity Councils, and other groups serving Pagans want to get out of the trap of either being stuck offering things capitalistically (only those who can pay, and who are interested enough, come to events when they feel like it) or offering things that are only free (choosing inconvenient venues with no cost, or leaders paying out of pocket for events) there needs to be a different model of how we pay for all this.

The model I’m using for my organization Ringing Anvil will be a sliding scale membership fee. In other words, a tithe. Some organizations charge an annual fee that is flat, like $200, to be a member of the organization. I recognize that that isn’t possible for everyone, especially with something like 10% or more being unemployed.  So I’m offering membership in our organization on a sliding scale from $1-$100. Those who are doing well can put in $100 a year, or more. Those who are students, unemployed, on disability, etc, can pay in the $1-$25 range. I might even make an exception where people can offer a good or service in trade that could be auctioned off–hand-made crafts, tarot readings, etc.

This kind of membership is a tithe.

It is getting people to buy-in to the organization. They will have co-ownership of what goes on in the organization. I’m trying to engage people not as occasional attendees, but as regular members who care about what’s going on with the group, people who will volunteer for events, attend events, and get all that they can out of it. It’s not about, “I’m not interested in that class so I’m not paying for it,” it’s, “I want to make sure that diverse education is offered to myself and other members of the community and I’m putting forth some money to make sure that education happens.”

I find there’s a spiritual apathy that happens when someone has 10 events they could attend, but isn’t a member of any organization and thusly has no community connection reason to attend something. When we tithe together, work together, we become a spiritual family, we have an obligation to one another, and we can connect and grow together.

For an idea of how a tithing/membership-based community organization could look like:

• The organization takes annual memberships on a sliding scale. This builds up a kitty of funds.
• Monthly rituals use some of those funds for space rental, but perhaps donations are also accepted at the rituals. Maybe there’s also a bake sale, auction, or divination done at some of these monthly rituals to raise additional funds. Ideally, each ritual at least pays for the space, and possibly puts a few bucks back into the kitty.
• The group runs an annual fundraiser (Witch’s Ball, carnival, pennywar) to bring in funds for special projects, or to replenish the group funds.
• The community decides that there’s enough new folks coming in that it needs to put on a rolling Pagan 101 class, offering basic skills and tools for Pagans and introducing Pagans to the various different traditions, as well as introducing new Pagans to the 11-12 different groups in the area so that they can help the newer folks figure out what type of Pagan, Heathen, Wiccan, Druid, Shaman, or other, they might be. The community finds teachers who can teach this, and decide on a fee to pay them for their time. Space is rented for the class. This comes out of the group funds. Donations are accepted at the class, but it’s assumed that the classes will lose money. This is decided to be an acceptable loss in order to bring this important education out to all who seek it.
• More advanced classes are planned. These classes are organized by people within the organization who want further learning in a particular topic, or who want to bring in a specific presenter. Let’s say for example that a number of folks in the group want to take some of John and Caitlin Matthews Celtic Shamanism classes.
• Funds are stewarded for this class; those who want the education donate towards this class, and also engage in a bake sale in order to raise additional funds to bring this education. They also reach out to surrounding areas to find more people who might be willing to travel 3-5 hours to attend something like this. Once enough funds are raised to make the class feasible, a venue is chosen and the date for the class is set. Because enough people were committed to attending the class ahead of time and had already paid in, additional registrants from the surrounding area helped the class to make a few hundred dollars to put into the group funds.
• Another group of people want more education on runework. They explore which presenter they might like to bring into town for this, and decide upon Diana Paxson. They follow a similar pattern as the group before, but discover that this class isn’t generating as much interest. They can cover most of the costs, but it looks like the class will operate at a loss. They decide that the education is worth it and operate at an acceptable loss. They also agree that those who learn the runework will do free readings at some of the upcoming rituals as a fundraiser to help pay for the class after the fact and replenish group funds.
• A member of the congregation decides they would like to get leadership training to better serve the group. Perhaps they want to take a class at Cherry Hill Seminary or Earth Traditions online, or perhaps they want to do a weeklong intensive in mediation and conflict resolution. They can’t afford the class all on their own, and the reason they want to take the class is to serve the group. The organization decides to help sponsor this person, taking some money from the group funds, but also holding a special fundraiser. In exchange, once the member has finished the class, they offer a free session for the community on some of the things they learned, and they offer this skillset to the group.
• After a few years, the group has a stable enough tithing membership, and has enough work, that they realize a couple of folks are needed on a full time basis to do the administrative and leadership work of the group. The group has already been offering a small stipend to the folks regularly planning the rituals. They discuss together to find who might be willing to do this work part time or full time, and agree upon a salary for this person’s work. The person is hired, and is now accountable to the organization for their work. Perhaps this person discovers that they need additional training in the clergy arts, such as counseling. The congregation votes and sets aside funds to help pay for this training so that the staff member can better service the organization.
• The organization has been collecting funds in a special account earmarked for purchasing a community center. Community members have already been doing collaborative gardening, growing food to be eaten at community gatherings, and taking the food waste from the monthly potluck and composting that food waste to be used in the community garden. The new community space has enough yard for a more extensive garden. The congregation checks out the space, decides that this is the right space, and engages in some additional fundraising to purchase the space. This group now has a community center–a church–that all can use, and all in the organization have bought into it, whether for the $1 they could afford on unemployment, or for the $1000 they saved after getting a raise at work.
• etc, etc.

This isn’t where many groups are today–but, with groups like NIPA working to bring Pagans together and offer services, it’s a possibility. There are Pagan organizations formed in a congregation model that are pretty close to this place, like Gaia Community in Kansas City, which formed its leadership based on UU principles, as well as through skills and tools learned at Diana’s Grove. Last year they explored buying a church. They currently rent space monthly from their local UU church. Their search goes on for the right church space to invest in when the time is right.

Other groups, like Gaia’s Womb/Earth Traditions, under Angie Buchanan, have successfully fundraised to help get Pagan delegates to the important world interfaith forum, the Council for the Parliament of the World’s Religions.

This model of collaborative fundraising for communities/goals is possible, and would have the opportunity of providing more, and better, services, for our growing communities. It depends largely on our ability in Pagan community to learn to get along and get past the egotism and interpersonal bashing that has gone on in the past; so many of us have been through it, and it happens again and again. It doesn’t have to.

It also requires Pagans reframing how they see money.

Money is a tool, a form of energy. You work for X number of hours, and you have Y number of dollars to show for it. I think that if we respected money as our energy, we’d spend it differently. If you look at a lot of things you spend money on, and actually think about how many hours you needed to work for that, you might wonder if it was really worth it.

I advise people who are working to reframe their relationship to money to operate in cash, with small denomination bills, for a month. Feel the money in your hands, and do the math to know if $10 represents an hour of your time, or two hours, or however it breaks down. For extra credit, factor in the amount of time that you don’t get paid for, like travel to work, and see how your hourly take-home pay is impacted. Ie, an 8-hour day making $10 an hour, is actually something closer to $7 an hour after taxes, and if you add in 2 hours of commute, your 10 hour day made you $56. If you subtract $6 for bus fare/gas money, you’re making $5 an hour. Or something like that.

Did you know that some Pagan/New Age stores count on the fact that a new Pagan will spend something like $200-$500 in their first year buying supplies like athames, statues, cauldrons, herbs, and other things that intro to Paganism books “tell” them they need, and that within 3 years, the amount of money the person spends will drop off as they realize they don’t need all those tools to do spiritual work? The paradox here is, it’s important for us to have Pagan stores, as so many of us doing community work depend on being able to offer classes or rituals at those stores. Those stores make money by selling books, supplies, and jewelry. So again, we’re stuck in the capitalist trap.

I’ve also seen people grumble about donating $25 to a weekend-long (16-20 hours of instruction) class I was teaching on ritual arts, and then drop $25 on a meal during our lunch hour. Mark told me that years ago he witnessed someone attend his class and say they couldn’t afford to donate, but during the breaktime they bought $40 in books and jewelry at the store. I’m not angry at people for this.  In fact, I don’t even think that they realized they were willing to spend money on lunch that they weren’t willing to spend on a class. I fully hold the paradox of, respecting someone’s choice as to where they spend their money, but also feeling sad that some people didn’t realize that they were, by their actions, valuing a meal over the time I spent organizing, preparing, and teaching the class. After paying for venue rental and some supplies, I think I ended up with $30 for the class. It’s a good thing my co-facilitator had a free airline credit, or I’d have paid $200 or so for the two days I spent teaching, and for the weeks of planning and organizing.

I believe that we need to look at money as a resource to steward. Some of us have more of it, some have less. Some of us spend our money and could reduce spending to give $5 to our local Pagan organization. For me it’s a matter of values–not an abstract philosophical concept, but value–what do I value, what do I spend my money on. If you’re unwilling to spend money on a Pagan workshop, but have no problems spending $50 on a Pentacle necklace with a moonstone, that’s worth exploring. If you find you balk at giving $5 a month to your Pagan organization, but you spend $5 a day on coffee, you might look at what you value. If you’re barely making ends meet and only wish you had $5 to give to your local organization, maybe you can offer something in work trade, like a necklace you’ve made, a book you’re done reading, a tarot reading, to help the organization raise money.

I think that Pagans need to look at what services we want and need, and, how we’re going to make it happen. I think that the model of Paganism that’s coming is collaborative community organizations where people bring in different skills. Some of those are specifically clergy skills–ritual leadership, teaching, counseling, interfaith work, leadership and community organizing, and more. As more Pagan priest/esses find themselves wanting the more robust education of Pagan seminary, and as Pagan seminaries become available, Pagan leaders are finding themselves in the position of paying out-of-pocket for leadership training, when in their local Pagan community, they will be able to use these skills, but not ever be paid for them.

I’m not proposing that Pagan leaders and clergy need a huge salary, but it takes a lot of time to offer Pagan services to a community, and even the reduced cost education available via Cherry Hill and other emerging Pagan clergy training is still a lot of money to put in if you can’t ever make a living doing what you love.

I can speak for myself–I’ve taken a vow of simplicity, which means, I don’t spend money unless I really have to, I don’t spend money on the “expected” amenities or the “Oh, you’re really not a grown up until you have a new couch and drapes and live in your own house” kinds of costs. I spend money on the things I really value. I live as cheaply as possible–a cheap, tiny apartment, thrifted clothes, a lot of things found on Craigslist. I use as little electricity and gas as possible, turning off the lights, line-drying my clothes, and weatherizing my apartment. I try to not spend my money on things I don’t value–fast food, food with chemicals and preservatives, cleaning supplies with toxic chemicals, anything supporting the styrofoam/plastic industry. In general, I reduce my consumption and consume as little as possible both to reflect my values on simplicity, and to reflect my values of ecological sustainability.

If I were able to earn $5,000-$10,000 a year to do Pagan events, classes, and rituals–doing the work I’m called to–I’d be ecstatic. I’d be thrilled. I’ve lived on this, or less, for years now. To earn a living as a Pagan leader, vs. needing income from other places, is one of my dreams, and I’ve given up a lot of amenities to make it happen.

A big place Mark and I spend our limited resources is on gas money and car repairs. That’s not something I value, but it’s the inherent cost we incur based on what we do. We spent this past summer traveling and teaching. In the past year, we’ve traveled a great deal to teach Pagan leadership and ritual arts to help local communities better serve their groups. Sometimes we’ve gotten paid. Often times, we’ve gotten enough gas money to pay for the trip, but not for the car problems that happen from the wear and tear.

When we travel to Starwood or various Pagan Pride events, we don’t get paid gas money, we have to pay for our own travel. For other Pagan festivals that we’ve taught at, we had to pay to attend, or do enough volunteering/work exchange to cover our entrance fee. Teaching these skills and tools is important work to me and I’m excited to be able to offer them. But what it amounts to is, I have spent hours and hours driving around the country, and teaching, and Mark and I have paid for the pleasure of teaching in the form of car repairs.

The wear and tear this past year has amounted to my old minivan being almost undriveable. Traveling to Indianapolis Pagan Pride 2 weeks ago, the alternator died and we almost didn’t make it home. We’re still trying to get enough money to fix the alternator so that we can fulfill our travel obligations later on this month.

Pagan elders across the country face this conundrum. Those like Oberon Zell who gave their lives over to this work struggle to make ends meet; if he didn’t sell his artwork/sculptures/jewelry, they wouldn’t have enough to live on, much less pay for his and Morning Glory’s cancer treatments. Isaac Bonewits did only months ago not able to really afford the cancer treatments and hospice care he needed.

We need a better system than capitalism to not only grow our communities, but to serve the new Pagan seekers, adequately pay the leaders, teachers, and clergy, and ensure that spiritual services are available for seekers at various abilities to pay. It’s possible. It’s happening. And we can be a part of it. And it requires looking at both new and old models of doing things, and shedding some of our cultural baggage around money.

Think about this. If 50 people tithed to a Pagan organization paying just $5 a month, that’s $250 a month. Let’s assume some folks can afford $1, and some can afford $10. $250 can pay for a lot of services and space rental. Over the course of a year, that’s $3,000. If you’re saving towards buying/renting a community center, or putting on a class, a little goes a long way, but it takes that group of people who not only have the vision for the group and are willing to put in the work, but the people who want the services and are willing to buy into the organization and put a little time and money and effort into it too.

As Margaret Mead (and many others) have said, a small, committed group of people can change the world. Or, in this case, a small committed group of people can grow a healthy and sustainable organization that serves their spiritual needs as well ass makes it easier for the new Pagans to come in.

Blessings!
-shauna

I think with any ritual, so much is based upon the intention of the ritual work. And rituals rarely have just one intention. Is the ritual to do an act of magic, to honor the gods, to acknowledge the season, to do personal growth/transformative work, to build community, to acknowledge a rite of passage, to facilitate a grieving process.

When building or raising energy, the ritual team needs to look at the intention of the ritual, and match any energy work being done with that intention. For instance, if the ritual is solely about personal transformative work, then I could offer a ritual structured to get people into a personal trance state to do their own work. Energy would be raised but the room might be darker and people would be encouraged to have their eyes closed or half-lidded to facilitate both.

On the other hand, if the ritual is intended to build community, then I’m going to want more light so that people can meet each other’s eyes and see one another, and encourage the energy building to be with their eyes opened, not just having their own experience but sharing that with others.

If the intention of the ritual is to make space for grieving, then the energy wouldn’t necessarily be a cone of power, but perhaps a rocking/cradling chant, or a ritualist offering an invocation, poem, or trance journey that takes people into a deep emotional place. I’ve facilitated rituals where there was deep crying and grieving, with people literally on the floor uttering terrible things that had happened to them, and that raised more energy than many “cones of power” in other rituals.

But the question comes back to, why is that energy being raised (or moved, or transformed) and what is being done with it. In a grief ritual, I think the goal is a release, a catharsis, and a transformation into hope for the future. In a ritual where a magical act is being done–casting a spell, or sending energy to a particular political goal or effort–there’s a clear focus.

Or, like we did at Ostara with our ritual energy experiment, we did an ecstatic energy raising to hallow the blessing (waters which people would drink in to drink in the blessing of the gods). There was a visual focus–the water, and an auditory focus–the chant, as well other focuses (shared movement, dance).

Some rituals I’ve seen that fall into the Chaos Magick/Occult realm, are perhaps more similar to Vodou and to Seidhr trances in that the energy raised is channeled into one person who aspects/draws down a deity into themselves.

It’s sometimes more difficult to channel the energy to specific focus when the intention is personal growth work. That energy is often more like shooting the energy up to the ceiling and letting it fall like rain; typically when I’m building energy like that I try to shape the group less like a cone, and more like a cauldron, where we’re cooking in the energy, and the energy is the spiritual heat/fire that effects the transformation.

I believe that, even without a clear focus and channeling of the energy, the energy goes where it’s needed. I believe that even the act of engaging in an ecstatic ritual and raising that energy can effect a transformation. We don’t always know what we’re praying for–sometimes we’re just praying for things to be better, we’re praying for an unnamed blessing, and the energy goes where it’s needed. And even moving that kind of energy through our bodies can shake up our old patterns and transform us.

Typically when I’m offering a public ritual, one of my intentions is community building. Many of the people attending my rituals have never been to a ritual before, or haven’t been involved with the Pagan community at all. In a way, the ecstatic energy raising becomes a “carrot” to get them involved again.

The trick to this carrot is, the energy raising feels good, and it can get addictive. However, I’ve found that the more I engage with it in a specific group, it transcends being just about the endorphin high of running that kind of energy and 100 people pounding out a chant on the floor. Over time, that energy (with the intention to do this) can build community. It’s tricky. I have to begin slowly, get people to actually acknowledge each other and look into each other’s eyes. If I can get them to do that, maybe I can get them to whisper their dream for the future into one another’s ears, or even just say it aloud into the center.

For a group of people that doesn’t know each other, that’s a big step, a lot more intimacy than they were perhaps prepared for when they walked in to a public ritual, but usually they’re thanking me after.

But what happens after the energy building part, is that there is an ambient energy to the room and space. More like a cauldron of soup than pools of energy sliding down the walls into puddles. And that energy keeps on simmering. After a big energy-raising ritual, people have something to talk about. The ice is broken. Sometimes I think that the point of the whole ritual may have less to do with honoring the seasons and the gods and more to do with giving people enough energy, and something to talk about, so that people can form real friendships.

It’s friendships and tribe energy that builds the foundation of a community, it’s connection that keeps people coming back. I can offer great rituals, with lots of endorphin-pumping energy, but if people don’t leave with some kind of personal connection, they usually don’t make a point of coming back.

I just thought I’d offer another perspective on some things to do with the energy that’s being built in a ritual. The big energy-raising rituals can focus that energy–still provide the peak experience, but also use it for a purpose.

I call the ritual style I use, ecstatic/participatory ritual. It’s not just about me facilitating an experience for a group, it’s me trying to help that group facilitate the experience for themselves. Over time, this energetic builds volunteers and joiners, vs. audiences who watch but don’t have a stake.

Instead of just invoking something with my own poetry, I’d step into the center and ask people to imagine what’s important to them about the (element/ancestor/deity/McGuffin) and to perhaps speak that aloud. That invests their energy and emotion in the ritual. If they’re invested, vs. just watching me do something, and I can build that investment over time, they’re more likely to feel a connection to the work and feel that they can participate and be involved.

As I almost always say before I offer a public ritual, we each bring the energy to this ritual. I can’t raise the energy in the ritual without you. What if we each sang and danced and breathed and moved and concentrated like it mattered, like this ritual really mattered?

It’s a shift in perspective but it leads to a different kind of energy. Not just the spiky “Hey we build a cone and that was fun!” kind of energy, but a deeper, “We’re connected and raising this energy for a shared purpose” energy.

As for the banishing a minor health problem, that would be nice. 2 come to mind. One is fairly minor but aggravating–my hip is hurting really badly, and I think it’s probably from sleeping on couches and air mattresses. There’s a possibility of my being able to actually sleep on a bed in the near future if the weather warms up and I can move into the studio above the garage.

The other health problem is minor, I suppose–I’m back on my thyroid meds again, but not sure if it’s doing anything for my metabolism or helping me lose weight. Certainly I’ve adjusted my eating and am removing carbs, but I need to work in an exercise regimen somehow. Once again, moving into the studio would help tremendously as living in people’s living rooms doesn’t provide a lot of ability to do exercise work.

All in all, some good omens, and I could use them after the Tower of the past winter.

I include 3 signs for my Gemini Sun, Cancer Rising, and Pisces Moon.

Below info from http://FreeWillAstrology.com

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The odds are higher than usual that you’ll
encounter a future soul brother or soul sister in the coming weeks.
Potential allies are gravitating toward you, even if neither they nor you
are aware of it yet. You’re also likely to brush up against a tribe or team
you could benefit from knowing more about. That’s why I’m counseling
you to be extra open to meeting people you don’t know. Talk to
strangers. Ask your friends to introduce you to their friends. And consider
the possibility of skipping over the customary social formalities so you
can reveal some of the core truths about who you are right from the
start.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Sci-fi author Neil Gaiman sometimes invites
his readers to get involved in his creative process. While working on the
story “Metamorpho,” for example, he Twittered, “Trying to decide if
broccoli is funnier than kohlrabi in a list of vegetables.” When a number of
fans suggested “rutabaga” instead, he took their suggestion. (Thanks to
*The New Yorker* for that report.) I’d like to borrow Gaiman’s approach,
as you’re entering a phase of your astrological cycle when you’ll have
maximum power to shape your own destiny. So here’s my question: What
accomplishment would you like your horoscope to say you will complete
by May 15? Email me at Truthrooster@gmail.com.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): I’m inclined to prophesy that in the days to
come, you may be able to read the minds of people whose actions are
critical to your success. I also suspect that you will know exactly what to
do in order to banish a minor health problem. I’m even tempted to believe
that when you gaze into the mirror you will be more intrigued than you’ve
been in a while. Have you ever heard a bird sing a song just for you? Did
you ever find a small treasure you assumed was lost forever?
Developments like those are in the works. There’s only one catch: To get
the most out of this grace period, you will have to summon more faith in
yourself than you usually do.

I haven’t blog-posted in a while and I’m working to get back in that groove. Tonight I was interviewed by Hawthorne on the Spiral Dance podcast, and we talked about the question of how to make healthier Pagan community.

Hawthorne asked me where and what are resources for people interested in learning how to build community, or start the conversation about healthy community.

On Yahoo groups there’s a group called PaganCommunityBuilders and if you search Yahoo groups you can find it and apply. Often there are good conversations there.

There are people teaching Pagan leadership tools around the country; I know of a few places and can offer some suggestions, like Ardantane in the Southwest, Circle Sanctuary, and Cherry Hill Seminary. There are also other places to get leadership training–through work, college, not-for-profit organizations.  The Minneapolis community has had some really great leadership and consensus training classes in the past year or so, the most recent one offered by an organization specializing in that kind of group training. There’s also the Diana’s Grove Mystery School, Earth Traditions, and others.

Through my organization, Ringing Anvil,  I’m working to offer traveling leadership training, and an online leadership and community building program as well as ritual arts training.

But, there’s a lot of great resources out there and my goal is to help people connect with the leadership and community skills and tools whether they learn them from me or from someone else.

So I thought I’d offer this post up–any of you have any resources you recommend? I’ll compile them and add them here, and on www.ringinganvil.org

The workshop itself took far more work to pull off than I had expected, which is a story for another day about communities, group dynamics, stepping on people’s toes, and epic yarns of nonviolent communication on email lists.

But after a lot of effort on my part, and the part of a local organizer, we got things together, and had about 20 people at the class over the course of the weekend (some could only attend part of it).

The class went very well, and as often happens during a weekend intensive with an ecstatic/participatory ritual, the class participants grew emotionally close and I believe we’ll be doing some future work in Milwaukee with folks who took the class, and those who wanted to but were unavailable that weekend.

In the ritual, we worked with Hestia of the hearth fire, the clan fire. We gathered together around that fire, felt the warmth of it, and tended that fire, and then, when the fuel got low, we went out into the darkness to seek more fuel for the fire.

Calling us out into the darkness was Hecate, who held aloft the guiding Fire of the soul. With her lantern she guided us further out into the darkness. Where first we began, seeking our personal magic and the gifts we brought to community, that which would feed the clan fire, we went further into the forest to seek that which held us back, the old wounds, the obstacles, the shadows and fears and pain.

Hecate drew each of us to the Crossroads, where we could choose to descend into the Underworld and sacrifice our pain, our old wounds. We could choose to face Haphaestus, the twisted and crippled god of the forge.

After writing down or making a symbol to represent our wound, we released it into the lava of his forge, and Haphaestus hammered for us. He hammered our pain until it was beauty. We gave him pain, sacrificed a wound, and in turn he gave us a gem that was the gift we take from that wound. Over and over he turned our pain into beauty.

We sang the dirge, “May my life be a gift to you, Take me home again,” to hold space as we each released our pain, and then we drew in close around the clan fire, offering our gift there to Hestia, to the fire. Hestia spoke, invoking herself into each person, naming each person there as Hestia and calling them fire-tender.

We each then blessed water in a decanter, then shared water together, each serving the next person, and then together we sang Pour it out for me.

The ritual was potent for me for a number of reasons. One was seeing Mark aspect Haphaestus. I could feel the palpable waves of pain coming off of this god of the forge, who labors out of love even though each stroke of his hammer must be agony. I could imagine the beauty he wrought from those mangled hands, and I wept for him. I wept for all of us that sacrifice our pain to step into beauty.

During the ritual there were a few logistics I wasn’t sure how we’d get through, since I didn’t have a ritual team and I had a group unused to ecstatic or participatory ritual. But each person really supported the ritual and that was beautiful to watch people taking what I knew had to be huge risks, even just making eye contact had to be a huge risk for some people there.

Somehow the logistics all flowed relatively seamlessly, with a few hiccups. There was a point when I wasn’t quite sure what to do, but I was in that trancey state where the divine had an answer for me, and suddenly I was invoking Hestia into each person there. What followed that part of the ritual felt like I had the hand of the divine on the back of my head, because I’m not at all sure that Shauna/local me could have pulled off what I was trying to do in the ritual, but whatever angel was riding behind my head had other ideas for things and seemed to know just the right words to say to progress the ritual to the next part.

In the car is where the ritual hit me. Mark shared with me his mystery of Haphaestus–that many times as he/Haphaestus hammered the wound to produce the gift, he’d strike the stone/jewel, and break it, or accidentally send it skittering off, and so he’d try again.

What he realized is that Haphaestus is crippled, lamed–he doesn’t have the full use of his limbs, and he’s in excruciating pain with every hammer stroke. And that as he hammered the things he was making–belts, helmets–sometimes he’d miss a stroke and screw up the piece, and have to start over once, twice, a dozen times, until it was perfect.

In fact he has to start again, and again, and again. Aphrodite’s Girdle may have taken him a dozen tries. The helmet of Hades may have taken him 10 tries, or thirty. Over and over, he would work on a piece and then his own body would betray him, and he’d have to start over again.

We both cried a fair bit at the idea of that, of both the pain, and the relentless pursuit of excellence, of the willingness to keep trying.

And that’s when it hit me. The Milwaukee community we were there to serve…the Chicago community…all the communities we’ve served in our time. All of them were like that, like Haphaestus. Full of pain, hammering over and over and over to try and get it right. Unity initiatives rising and failing, groups forming and falling apart. Over and over they keep trying.

For a little bit I was overwhelmed by the pain and agony Mark and I were almost channeling from the community itself, the amount of pain people have gone through out of love for community and trying to bring things together, only to have the community fracture and fall apart.

And there is so much pain in some Pagan communities, so much drama and anger and hurt. For me, that was what Haphaestus had to offer us–that it hurts, and we have to keep trying to do it, over and over again, until the belt or helmet is as excellent as it can be.

Over and over, Haphaestus hammered. Lamed, he misses a stroke and must start over. His agony, his pain, he continues to shape and reshape and turn into beauty. He is the beauty beneath the surface, the beauty not of face, but of heart and of work and of love made visible.

In the process of organizing the class, I feel like I’ve been through the fire of the forge; it was almost like an advanced dissertation of group dynamics. I found myself, over the course of organizing the class and working with the community, baffled and frustrated and angry—and also, honored to the point of tears at what some people were willing to risk to bring healthy community tools to their group.

I’m amazed and inspired by the 20 people I worked with last weekend.

I can’t help but wonder what the future holds for Pagan communities. Will we ever be able to get past the extreme egotism and drama that seems to halt us in our tracks? My inner optimist says yes, but my inner skeptic who had to field emails and hatemongering and active hostility and drama, wonders what it will take for Paganism to grow up.

But then I remember Haphaestus, lamed, crippled, hammering away at the pieces, slipping and breaking a link on a belt or a misplaced dent on a helmet, and throwing it into the forge to begin it again, until it’s just right, and I’m willing to try again.

Having lived at Diana’s Grove for several months, and having spent a lot of time there, this news doesn’t come as a complete surprise. I know what many of the challenges Cynthea and Patricia and other staffers have faced with making Diana’s Grove possible.

I’m hurting–for me, and for all my friends who are part of the Diana’s Grove community.

——————————————————

In 2010, Diana’s Grove Mystery School will be working with the story of Persephone. It is a story of cycles, and as we all know, part of the wisdom of cycles is that all things come to an end. While it is our intention that Mystery School will continue, Diana’s Grove Center, as you and we have known it, is coming to an end.

Cynthea Jones and Patricia Storm founded Diana’s Grove on January 17, 1994, and for 15 years their work of myth, story and transformation has grown and deepened on this land. The Grove has been a sanctuary where people could come to experience the world of nature free from the distractions of modern city life, a place to be in touch with the natural elements and to honor wind, fire, water, and earth. A community has grown here as well – a community of people striving to find ways to heal self, world, and relationships that includes the more than 41 people who have lived and worked here, over the years, the Mystery School community, well-known guests such as Starhawk, T.Thorn Coyle, Margo Adler, Ubaka Hill, Trebbe Johnson and Steven Forrest, and the many who have come for other events or simply to experience the magic and healing to be found here.

While blessed with these wonderful supporters who have given so generously of their time, energy, and money, Diana’s Grove Center has nevertheless been suffering under the current economic climate. It’s founders no longer have the energy and stamina required to support their dream, in it’s current form, in these challenging times. They have decided to make major changes before major changes are forced upon them, and will be selling Diana’s Grove. It is their intention, and the intention of the residential and Mystery School staff, to make this transition with as much positive energy and integrity as we can.

What will that look like? Some questions will have to wait for answers as this transition unfolds, but some things we do know. We plan to continue our programming here on the land through 2010. Cynthea and Patricia anticipate sale sometime during 2010 or 2011. If the sale happens in 2010, they will ask for a closing date in late November or early December so that we can complete all Mystery School and non-Mystery School events scheduled here next year.

Mystery School will continue and… next year will be the last in this form, on this magical land. If you’ve been waiting for the right time to join Mystery School, to visit again, visit for the first time, or to introduce friends and family to this land and our work, this could be that time. We will make every event in 2010 a special one. We are planning a grand “reunion” Fall Equinox event, September 17-19, that will be open to everyone. We hope to see many old friends and familiar faces there.

For 2011, we are looking at other locations where we can gather for weekends and week-long events. We will continue seeking out the natural world as our stage for Mystery School, and working with myth, story, and transformation. Cynthea and Patricia plan to stay in the Ozarks, and continue providing a more limited Dog Rescue service. They will travel to Mystery School events and be open to doing workshops in other locations as well.

Here are a few more questions we’ve anticipated:

What happens to the land investors?

Investors in the project will be refunded any monies invested less contributions made. We are unable to refund contributions, as they were reportable as tax-deductible funds. Those who have invested in the land project will be receiving additional information shortly.

How much will the Grove sell for?
That’s one question we also share. We will know more after appraisal by a local realtor. Originally we had 102 acres (more or less). We added 40 acres last year with the land funds. Since moving here we have added the Great Room to the main house, built 15 cabins that house 62 people, added a commercial kitchen, finished the barn to include a 2-room apartment, added 2 pavilions as well as 2 large and 2 small storage buildings, lovely outdoor showers, 6 outhouses, a kennel house, a 2^nd sewage lagoon, a decorative pond, a hot tub, 4 decks, and many lovely outside areas. There is no way to put a price on the magic, energy, and memories that live here.

What will happen to the trees?

We have no intention to sell to a logger.

What will happen to the dogs?
We are working diligently to find placement for many of the dogs currently at the Grove. We expect to reduce numbers by not taking more large dogs or dogs requiring long-term care. We have a resource list of alternatives for people needing shelter services. About 50 dogs will move with Cynthea and I. If you would like more information, please contact us.

What can you do to help?

Continue to support us in our transition. Come as often as you can. Recommend our work and let people know this may be the last opportunity to experience a very special and unique place and people. Do magic for the future of the Diana’s Grove philosophy and land. If you or anyone you know is interested in continuing the work here, contact us. We would dearly love to see Diana’s Grove continue in the same or similar environmental/magical tradition.

Next year we will be working with the story of Persephone. It is a story of cycles, and a fitting end to this cycle of an impossible dream, made manifest for so many years. We plan to re-tell and live out this rich, ancient story through the year, in full and reverent awareness that a beloved form is ending, as well as in joyous celebration of our years together, on this land. We anticipate a year of profound, deep and healing work, intentional farewells, glad welcoming of new Mysteries, and laying the foundation for the continuation of this community, this philosophy, this dream that has touched the lives of so many.

Please join us.

_______________________________________________

Happenings mailing list

Happenings@lists.dianasgrove.com
http://lists.dianasgrove.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/happenings.

I’m curious what others would like to see change with Pagan rituals, particularly the public ones that engage your personal frustrations, whether the ritual is overly silly, overly serious, or just ho hum.

I would like to see a makeover of public rituals; or at least, of many of the public rituals that I’ve been to.

I think rituals can be lackluster because, in part, while we may get training in the ritual liturgy of a specific tradition, we’re not necessarily trained in the professional skills needed of a ritualist. I’ve heard priest/esses invoking elements and deities with what was probably brilliant poetry, but either I couldn’t hear their voices, or they had no inflection in their voice because they were reading it off a piece of paper. I’ve heard ritual facilitators ramble on for 10 minutes about a topic while the participants around me kind of chatted with their neighbors;  he was droning on, and we couldn’t really hear him anyways.

In the vein of seeking excellence in Paganism, I have seen some amazing rituals, and I really believe that dedicating to the craft of excellent public ritual is worthwhile for the whole community, so I’m writing this from a sincere place of love for community.

I’ll admit some of my biases. I find find rituals that are just about *doing ritual* to be boring. I tend to like rituals that have a deeper personal growth component. I also have a love/hate relationship with old time seasonal customs; I like the idea of them and the connection to the past, but many of those customs have no meaning or context for my urban ritual audience. Or, they can bring up gender or other issues that are challenging in a modern context. One item someone mentioned that she finds offensive in ritual is the great rite represented by the chalice and the blade–that symbolism might work with a particular crowd that’s keen on occult/alchemical symbolism, but for most of the Pagans with a feminist leaning, it’s offensive.

I also have a bias toward ecstatic energy work, so I find that I enjoy a good chant, but many of the “old school” chants I’ve heard in rituals don’t do anything for my spiritual experience.  I love a musically interesting chant, preferably that doesn’t have a predictable rhyming pattern, but that’s simple enough for a group to learn.

For my part of the ritual excellence quest, I spent 4 years learning how to be a professional ritualist. I try to bring tools for ritual excellence to my community as well by teaching the ritual arts, and what makes a good ritual regardless of tradition. It’s possible to have a public ritual, that honors the season, and that is inclusive of the many folks present even if they are solitary and used to their own way of doing things, while also making space for people to go deep and have a transformative experience.

Actually, the Diana’s Grove rituals don’t honor the sabbats at all, though somehow I feel more connected to the earth and the cycles of the land doing rituals there. Reclaiming rituals honor the sabbats, but there’s usually a focus on personal growth work as well. Typically if I’m offering a sabbat, I look at what’s going on in the earth, and look at what’s going on in the community, and I craft a ritual to give people personal work to do that is reflective of the season.

And it’s true that if someone’s attending one of my public rituals once or twice a year, they probably won’t get to have as impactful an experience, because I believe that about half of a ritual’s effectiveness is the ritual skills of the facilitator team, and about half is the involvement and investment of the community. So if they don’t know anyone and aren’t really invested, then they probably aren’t giving as much of themselves, and the way I see energy working, they don’t get as much back either–I look like energy as blood flowing through a pumping heart. I have to give in order to get, or it just sits there and stagnates.

It’s hard to open up like that, and I can speak from my own experience. While I find that every Diana’s Grove ritual I’ve been to has transformed me in some way, there were a lot of rituals I had a hard time allowing myself to emotionally connect. Maybe I had a bad day, or a disagreement with someone in community, or I had things on my mind and was frozen over. I also have difficulties in general emotionally connecting to people. I also have a difficult time getting into a trance state, so there are a lot of times when many people in the group around me are deep in trance, and I’m kind of hanging out and metaprocessing things.

I find it’s sometimes easier for me to have a trance experience when I’m facilitating the ritual; maybe facilitating keeps my conscious mind busy enough that my emotions can peak out. I also tend to have spiritual/divine communion experience when planning rituals; that moment of the shiver up the spine when I know the gods are there, part of the ritual, and that the working will work for the community.  Often that’s where I get my most profound experiences if I’m facilitating a ritual, before the rite even happens.

Either way–I really feel compassion for folks who don’t find they are getting anything out of public rituals, and reading the aforementioned blog posts, seeing posts on lists, and talking to people in many communities, it seems that this is a larger phenomenon.

I wonder how much of this comes from ritual form stagnation–where what many people were taught as the proper form for a ritual in their tradition, interferes with the ability to  bring in or adapt ritual tools and techniques that would make the rituals more inclusive and engaging.

Even little things like when people must line up at an altar to do something in the ritual, or when each person must smudge the person next to them in a circle. That can take a long time even with 13 people; with 80, insisting on the one-at-a-time form is excruciating. I respect that that is part of many traditions rituals, and I attend a lot of different groups’ rituals in Chicago and when I travel, but I can hold respect while also feeling frustrated at rituals like that.

And please keep in mind–I’m not trying to bitch about anyone’s rituals or insult your tradition. I’m just talking about the actual impact of ritual components on participants, and which ones work and which ones don’t, because I’m hearing more and more people who say they don’t go to community rituals because they’re bad, boring, silly, or in general just don’t inspire them.

It’s also worth pointing out that the ritual components that work on one group my not work on another. I work best with open-language trance journeys, rather than guided meditations which tell me exactly what I’m seeing, or shamanic drumming which has no specific guidance other than the drum beating.

I also work best in an ecstatic tradition where there’s lots of movement and opportunities to interact during the ritual, and where we close out with singing, dancing, chanting, and drumming, ideally with more post-ritual drumming too.

Some people really don’t like active rituals like that, and I respect that.

I’ve seen some people who really resonate with intensely scripted rituals and liturgies.  Some people really resonate well with the really silly rituals, or with the really formal ones.

I find that I work well with rituals that are intense–where there’s space for joy in our spirituality, but not likely anyone’s casting the circle in a tutu with bubbles, unless it’s a follies night with a talent show

So–I wonder what leaders offering public rituals can do to raise the bar in ritual excellence, and to make rituals more impactful for participants, as well as more inclusive of different ritual styles, and more traditions than just Wiccan.

Thoughts?