This post goes with my previous post on financial costs of group work, as I think that being aware of the time we spend on something is also an important conversation to have.
Getting there:
Obviously, besides gas to get there, it’s going to take you time to get to where you’re meeting. My current driving time is 0 (for things I host) to about 30 minutes each way (heavy traffic, right after work) at my covenmate’s. More normally, it’s about 15-20 minutes. At 2-3 trips a month, that’s 40-90 minutes of driving time. Pretty reasonable.
In my former group, the drive was a bit longer - more like 35-40 minutes, and sometimes worse. When I was doing 8-10 trips out there a month, I was spending at least 4-6 hours in the car. This was slightly less fun, especially with later evening events and getting up early for work.
Preparation:
If I’m hosting, I need to spend about 2 hours preparing in advance. I live in a little tiny house (more on which in a future entry, because I want to talk about how I’m thinking about what a covenstead is), but 2 hours is plenty of time for me to do a thorough cleaning, sweep, do all my dishes, move the furniture that needs to be moved in advance of ritual, move the computer, and so on.
The good news is that much of this is work I should be doing anyway (general housekeeping) and I can keep on top of it fairly easily, or split it up over 3-4 days. The ‘day of ritual’ preparation (stuff that must be done that day) takes about 20-30 minutes, mostly moving furniture and computer and sweeping afterwards.
Ritual bread baking (for use in ritual) also takes time: the basic recipe I use means I need to be home for about 3 hours. However, most of that time is rising time: I can be doing things on the computer, cleaning, petting the cat, or working on a hobby for all but about 20 minutes.
Ritual:
Ritual takes as long as it takes, but generally, we plan on 2-3 hours (including setup and food after) for a moon, and generally longer (4 hours, sometimes more) for a Sabbat, because what we’re doing in ritual is often designed to take longer.
Discussion:
We schedule our discussion nights for a worknight, and I get up early (I start work at 7:30, so get up around 5:30.) So far, we’ve been finding that a 6-9 or 9:30 discussion works really well for us, and we’re trying to do 2 a month. 7 hours, give or take.
Classes:
In my former group, classes were twice a month, once for around 3 hours, and once for 4-6 hours. In the new group, I want to leave it somewhat more open ended, with the idea that student and teacher should be seeing each other twice a month (because this helps build connection, and keeps things on track) but that times can be variable.
Class preparation time, now, that’s a tricky one. With an existing curriculum, like the one my former group had (where teachers for a specific class had notes to work with), preparation is mostly reviewing the material, and teaching - pretty quick for most of us. For the new group, I’m redesigning from the ground up, so of course, it’s taking hours and hours and hours for each class, plus a bunch of time for the overall structure.
(This is what happens when I work in an excellent high school for years: there are all these educational theories I’ve seen in practice that I want to make some use of.)
Personal work:
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I believe that the foundation of good group work is personal work. Yes, this is hard. No, I don’t always manage to do it.
My personal goal, these days, is 5-10 minutes of moving meditation work in the morning, 5 minutes or so of devotional work as I begin my day, and ideally 10-15 minutes worth of meditative or astral work in the evening. I’m trying very hard to add 10-15 minutes of musical work each day, too.
It’s a goal - I usually manage two of the three on a good day.
I also spend a fair bit of time (probably an hour a day) reading material that directly impacts my religious life - online Pagan discussions, books, magazines, and so on. I also spend time on a regular basis writing material - posts in those discussion, entries on this blog, posts on LiveJournal, and so on. (This probably comes out to half an hour a day, but there are days I’m writing for 4 hours, and days I do none.)
One of the things that I’ve been thinking about are the actual costs of group work - in terms of both time and financial cost. I’m not talking about paying for training, mind you - just about the other things that go into it. With rising gas prices and other costs, I’ve seen more discussion of this in people looking for groups, but there are very few specifics out there.
Now, obviously, I have one set of experiences: the numbers below are not going to reflect everyone’s experience. But I do want to put some concrete numbers out there (along with where they come from) so that other people can get a general idea of some patterns.
(This gets very long, so you click on to read the details)
Recently, I’ve been seeing the phrase “I can’t find anyone near me to learn from!” quite a bit more often. And there are times it makes me wonder.
The most recent was a few minutes ago, on one of the local email lists for the Pagan community in the Twin Cities (Minnesota) area, where someone was posting because she can’t find anyone near her to work with.
There’s a reason the Twin Cities are sometimes referred to as Paganistan.
We have a large and active community, especially given our relative size. There are public rituals, classes (free and otherwise), reasonably local festivals, and three local stores focusing specifically on the Pagan community. Last year’s two day Pagan Pride weekend had 35 workshops or discussions, 5 rituals, and a wide range of entertainment, vendors, and informational booths from groups in the area. (I’m on the board, I get to be pleased with this.)
I can drive most places in the Twin Cities I might need to in about 20-40 minutes outside of rush hours. (Maybe twice that, if you’re going from one suburb to another on the opposite side of the metro.) It makes getting to religious events around town a few times a month pretty feasible, even with gas prices where they are. (I have in mind a post about the actual costs of group membership, but this is not that post. Soon, though.)
If you don’t have a car, it’s a little trickier - a number of groups, including my former one, meet in homes which are not easily bus accessible, or not bus friendly on weekends. (In the case of the former covenstead, the nearest buses run about every 2 hours, and the closest stop is a serious walk away - not something I’d suggest after a demanding ritual.)
There are ways around that, though, with a little thought. Getting rides from someone, or getting a ride back to the nearest reasonable bus stop are both options people have used at various points. It often works out - and one of the reasons I regularly give friends rides is that I love the one on one time talking in the car, so I benefit too.
There are also a large number of resources for finding out about groups. I’ve already talked about many of these elsewhere. Witchvox is the most obvious, but there are the bulletin boards in stores, and various other online resources. I happen to know there *are* several groups that meet more towards her side of town. It’s not always obvious from the Witchvox listings (because several groups list themselves as Minneapolis or St. Paul, rather than the smaller suburb they’re in).
It is more clear if you go and look at individual group’s websites or more detailed descriptions, something that takes a couple of hours maybe, but is totally doable with a little investment of energy. (How do I know this? I went through every group listing on Witchvox a few weeks ago as part of sending out programming emails for Pagan Pride.)
There is also the other question: we’re talking here, at least in terms of Wiccan traditions, about small groups of people with a specific focus. Chances are good there *isn’t* going to be the perfect group for you right down the street. But if your life is generally in good order (as it should be if you’re looking at initiatory training and ongoing group work), you should be in a place that you can figure this out, somehow.
It may not be easy. It may take some sacrifice. (And I say this as someone whose ‘fun spending money’ for the past few years has been on the order of $20-40 a month to cover all non-necessary expenses.) But there are ways for determined people to find some solutions.
Not in the urban areas?
I have far less experience with more rural areas - I’ve lived all my life in either cities (as an adult) or first ring suburbs (my childhood) or second ring ones with reasonable transportation (college). The simple fact is that when there are fewer people, you’re probably going to have fewer and harder choices.
This is true whether you’re looking for Wicca, for a really good music teacher, for a less common sport, for a particular hobby, or whatever else: it’s a simple factor of numbers. The good news is that the methods that work for those things often work for Wicca - maybe it means coming up once a month for the weekend, instead of 4-6 times over the course of the month. Maybe it means doing some work over the phone or online (the stuff that can be done that way.) Maybe it means working out something else.
My former group had someone who drove about 90 minutes to get to us, from the middle of Wisconsin. Yes, it was a long haul. Yes, there were things she missed - she was up usually for two things a month, not more. Yes, there were times the weather was horrible, and she didn’t show up (and around here, that can be snowstorms, or it can be thunderstorms. Both are bad times to be driving.)
But everyone made it work for almost two years, before her focus shifted, and the group’s focus shifted a bit. That’s long enough for someone to get a solid base for personal practice, and to get connections to the rest of the community if they want to pick them up in future, which are excellent things.
The real question:
How badly do you want something? How much do you want to change your life to make this fit? That’s the question that *every* new interest or hobby or desire brings to us. It isn’t something new or strange or peculiar to being a witch.
Every new thing we want has challenges. If we want to do it well, we’re almost certainly going to have to invest in learning - time away from other things, money (to get to where we need to be, if nothing else), focus and attention to learn that come from other activities. We may give up time with our loved ones, hobbies, casual interests.
Witchcraft traditions just take it a little further. How much do we want this? How much do we want to invest in having a life that’s stable enough that we can take on the challenges (and joys) of initiatory work? Are we willing to work slowly towards a goal that might take two years, five years, ten years to fully achieve? Are we willing to wait for the right place, not the one down the street, or the one that looks easiest?
If we are, then it’s sometimes easier to step back and figure out what it takes to get there - what practical steps we can take now that will make it easier a few years down the road. But the patience to get an idea what we’re truly seeking is critical.
Yet another post inspired by interesting search strings that show up in my stats. (Incidentally, I am greatly delighted by the interest in my recent book lists and HPS theory posts. Thank you, all, who’ve been reading and commenting and passing links on!)
The search string in question was “advantage of group rituals” It’s pretty obvious, if you read various other posts in this blog that I am a big fan of group rituals. But I have not yet talked about exactly why that is.
Scratching the itch:
First and foremost for me, group ritual scratches itches inside my head that personal ritual never does. It’s something about the interaction between me and other people in a sacred space. Don’t get me wrong: I value personal work as well, and I think it’s essential for a well-balanced religious life. But if I go more than about 6 weeks without group ritual, I notice myself getting more and more off-kilter.
One of my motivations, yes, for getting my 3rd degree, is that it means that no matter where I am, I can form a new group, should I have to. I very much hope doing that from scratch in a totally new place without any other groups around I can visit won’t ever be necessary - but I feel a lot better knowing that I have the tools and skills and abilities to do so.
But why does it matter to me? Good question, and there are some reasons I still haven’t puzzled out in the more than a decade since I noticed this. But there are some I’ve figured out…
Singing in harmony:
My standard comparison on this one is singing. You can sing many wonderful, amazing things by yourself. You can move minds, change the way people see the world, relax or annoy them. But what we can’t do with the human voice is sing interweaving harmony parts by ourselves. If we want to do that kind of music - which, again, has many wonderful options - we need more people. It’s not that one is better or worse than the other. But they are different, and they sometimes do quite different things.
The experience I get from singing to myself is different than the experience I have been in the circle with a round sung by multiple people there. The energy flow is different. The sense of holding and creating sacred space is different. All sorts of things.
Different isn’t always *better* - I can have fantastic experiences on my own, and fantastic experiences in groups (and, sometimes, lousy experiences in both settings.) But I find the difference brings a lot of benefit, just because I’m getting varied experiences.
The practical bits
There are also some practical ways that group ritual is different (and has beneficial differences in at least some cases.)
Make time: It’s sometimes easier to make time for something when it’s deliberately scheduled on your calendar and involves other people (so you need to prepare ahead of time, and there are more obvious consequences if you blow it off.) We’re more accountable. But it’s not just - at least for me - about making time to be there.
It’s also about making sure there’s time in my life to prepare for it. To get myself there, to prepare mentally for ritual. And, of course, these days, there’s also planning time for the ritual that needs to happen if the ritual’s going to take place.
Requiring myself to make that preparation time also oddly makes it *easier* for me to make personal time: I’ve got a better sense of what things I might want to focus on, work with, learn about, practice, or whatever else on my own. And, sometimes, an idea of what I don’t want to spend more time on right now. In other words, it helps me set priorities and goals in my personal work, by outlining some possibilities.
Articulate: Related to this, when we’re doing things with other people, we need to be able to articulate what we’re doing. Some of my best ritual designs are because I had to get out of how my own head works and come up with something that makes sense to people who do not live in my head. (Which is to say, everyone else.)
Feedback: Other people can give you continual feedback on what they see from you, and how to deal with problems or changes that come up. This can be frustrating at times, but it’s also a powerful learning opportunity.
New ideas: You often get to experience approaches you would never have thought to work with. The group I trained with rotated who designed full moon rituals among the initiates: it was fantastic to see how different people approached different topics, and what style of ritual they chose to do. It challenged me in ways that wouldn’t happen if I were working entirely on my own.
Support: You don’t have to do everything yourself. Seems logical, from the above points, but there are times when I’m really glad I don’t have to track everything going on in circle, and can just trust other people to do their bits, and get a rich and full experience. And, of course, in emotionally challenging rituals, you can get support from the other people there in doing deep and intense work.
Challenge: Perhaps my favorite. Now, I try very hard to be rigorous in evaluating what I do on my own. But I’ve found that working with other people requires me to challenge and develop my ideas and practices in a way even the most rigorous self-examination doesn’t always reach.
My current covenmate is a great example of this: I’ll poke at things over time, come up with something - and then she will, very clearly and precisely - ask me a bunch of questions that allow me to take it to the next level, or that make me look hard at certain assumptions. (She says I do the same for her: we’re a good fit for each other because we both find this incredibly useful and enjoyable.)
The only downside, so far as I can see, is that we have a very hard time having *short* conversations with each other.
[The following is something I've written up for internal coven documents, because I wanted to spell out what I thought my role was. I've run most of it by my covenmate, and included some other thoughts at her suggestion.]
Or, rather, I should say roles: I think there are a number of things going on here. To many people, the HPS is the one responsible for making sure the spiritual and religious stuff happens. At a basic level, there’s three parts to this, in my eyes: anchoring the spiritual core, providing direction, and making sure the practical details fall into place.
Anchoring the core:
No one group - no matter how fantastic, or how skilled the leadership – can be all things to all people. Part of creating the spiritual core is deciding what the core focus of the group will be – and what things are not on that group’s map, or are lesser parts of their work together. We have and must make choices. There are only 24 hours in the day.
Are we going to focus on being a working coven, with relationships developed over significant time? Or are we going to focus on training new witches? Are we going to focus on the use of music and dance in ritual, or something else? Are we going to be a small group, where everyone can fit around one table – or a larger community, with lots of people to talk to, but maybe less time to talk to each other one on one?
There isn’t one right answer here. While Phoenix Song is aiming at being a small working coven with a heavy emphasis on music and other arts in ritual, I deeply enjoyed my time in the group I trained in – what has now become a larger, enthusiastic training coven with many wonderful people.
Providing direction:
Rather than seeing or feeling energy, I ‘hear’ it – what you’d expect from a music major and composition geek. One thing that’s fascinated me since I started taking on various ritual roles is how the different roles sound to me.
Priestessing often sounds to me not like the melody (as you might assume), but like the bass line: the foundation that everyone else builds off of. Musically, these are things like what key and harmony we’re working within, or setting the pace we go at. Magically, It’s setting the basic functions, what possibilities might fit in the large cauldron of the song. As in music, everyone else gets some input – but we need to agree on some basic things, or it’s going to sound chaotic. And someone needs to make sure we’re all staying more or less on the same beat, and in the same key.
(Incidentally, I ‘hear’ the priest’s role as the melody: it is also crucial to the nature of the song, but it solidifies a particular line of potentials into something more clear-cut: it is a specific iteration, rather than the well of possibility. Consider also the elements of ‘conductor’ and ‘artistic director’ which are roles I think are more easily split by ritual leaders.)
There’s also the question of style. There are many types of music: most of us are good at some, but not all. The HPS who trained me, and who I love dearly, is such a Leo. She adores the shiny, and she radiates warmth and love and acceptance, and community simply by being there.
I tried, honestly, for about six months, to do what she did. It was always a struggle, always a constant effort. It was such an effort it got in the way of other important things. Details fell out of my head. I couldn’t relax and experience in ritual. By the end of six months, I could manage it for short periods, if I kept some of my concentration and focus on being open and welcoming in that style (and away from other needs). It never really got easier.
Me? I’m the water (and air) type. Where my former HPS is the fire at the center of the hearth, I’m the pool of water, or the well. I want to stand around it, and talk to you, and watch the dragonflies and the birds, and the ripples in the pool . Oh, but I want to talk. Talking to people, engaging the mind, is the way I best create and strengthen relationships. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the quiet presence, or the simple touch, or other modes – but the one that’s easiest for, the one that’s instinctual, is what’s going on in my head, and what’s going on in your head, and which bits we want to share, and why they’re interesting and linked to this other interesting thing.
Part of my hiving, therefore, was realizing that to be the best priestess I could be, to do the things that called to me, I needed to be working in a different bass line, a different song. One song isn’t better than another – but some fit us more closely than others.
Practical details:
This is the simplest of the functions in theory, though complex in practice. When and where are we gathering? What do we need for this ritual? Is anyone going to be absent? What needs to happen in order for all the spiritual work to go forward? What training or experience or skills do people need to participate most fully?
The priestess is not the only one taking care of these details. Delegation (and healthy delegation) is critical here. But if the priestess is responsible for keeping the spiritual work on track, then she’s got to keep an eye on these things.
That said, there are some other important roles here.
Incluer:
One of my friends, Jo Walton, is an SF author who coined the word ‘incluing’. She uses it to describe the process by which you tell the reader about details of your created world in small ways, without ever sitting down and dumping information on them.
I’ve thought a lot about the implications for coven work. Imagine that someone walks into a group I’m leading, (often a new and sometimes strange culture for newcomers.) In this case, people look for context. They are going to look at how I behave, and at how people behave towards me. A lot of that, in some ways, is seeking incluing: they are looking for small cues and details that help put what I’m doing into some sort of context they understand.
Now, making assumptions based only on these clues can be a bit dangerous – you may misinterpret something, or assume something is more or less important than it actually is. But the basic idea remains: what I do, how I behave, how I set that bass line and tone and key for the group is going to echo out in ripple effects.
It’s my job as priestess – as one of the people who most clearly have direct influence on the nature of the group – to be as careful as possible to be aware of those interactions, of what information I’m putting out for other people to pick up. It’s not just what I say, or how I respond to someone – it’s also in my body language, in the pauses in my speech, in all sorts of unconscious details. It’s also in how things like a problematic comment by someone else is handled. Are they slapped down in public, or quietly redirected in a gentle way? Which one’s appropriate in that setting?
I am obviously imperfect at tracking many of these things. I’m human, after all. But I do keep an eye on it, and I do think it’s important.
The one person who can’t simply walk away:
In some ways, the priestess is the one person who absolutely can’t walk away without fundamental change. If, as noted above, she’s the one who sets the spiritual work in place (and in many traditions, you can function, if needed, without a priest, but not the other way round), then there’s a logical outgrowth.
Anyone else up to and arguably including the high priest of the group, can theoretically decide to go do something else. There will be consequences if they do, of course, depending on how they handle it. But fundamentally, they have an easier time walking away: it’s elements of harmony and variation on the melody, rather than deciding which song we’re singing together and setting the foundation.
This is not to say that priestesses are irreplaceable. We are replaceable.
First, there is no one true perfect priestess. And second, it’s obviously a good idea to have a backup in case of illness or other emergency. But it is to say that they’re not interchangeable: the fundamental experience is – and really, *should* be – different, depending on who is running ritual.
Priestess and the Gods:
When I sent the first draft of this to my covenmate, she pointed out that I hadn’t talked a lot about the actual ritual steps: does the priestess mediate between participants and the Gods? Is there some other role? In many witchcraft traditions, people are considered to be their own priests and priestesses when it comes to their relationship with the Gods. I strongly agree with that: there is an element of personal responsibility and interaction that I think it is crucial.
Ritual is song, ritual is theatre, ritual is art: my job as priestess is to make sure it happens, and to keep it going, but I think it’s up to everyone else there to share in keeping the song going, to step into the experience, and to see what they will take away from it this time. One person might make a decision, another might decide a hard conversation with a loved one is needed. Someone else might feel comforted or enfolded. A fourth person may feel nudged to try something new. Very different answers, but all from the same basic situation.
That goes for people’s interactions with the Gods as well: my greatest hope is that I will help create and hold spaces where that happens regularly – but whether it does is not just about what I do, but about what other participants in the ritual do. I want to help – and Gods know, I will offer advice and analysis and theory discussion at the drop of a hat. But I also don’t have all the answers. I’d much rather help people figure out how to find them on their own.
Outside of ritual:
The other question my excellent covenmate asked me was about what happens outside of ritual.
I have this theory: inside of ritual, you may have different people than usual taking on specific ritual roles (priestess or priest for a given ritual, act as handmaiden or summoner, Draw Down, etc.) all of which depend on lots of other factors. In the training-centered group I hived from, this is an obviously important part of training.
But likewise, the HPS and HP over the overall group set a lot of the tone for group interaction outside of ritual. Done well, this creates a welcoming and thoughtful and caring space. Done poorly, people can feel left out, as the currents of the ritual group swirl around them, or even attacked or scapegoated. All of these things spill over into ritual: we are constantly changed and affected by our lives, and what happens in a coven meal after ritual is certainly part of that, no less than the ritual itself.
So, boiling this down, I feel I, as high priestess (and shared with the group’s high priest), am responsible for:
1) Setting the guidelines for the space:
I’m a big fan of the Greek idea of xenia or the guest/host relationship. In that, both sides have benefits – but they also have specific responsibilities. In all communities, there are some things that are utterly unacceptable, a lot of things that are iffy but possibly okay, and a bunch of things that are just fine. Some of these are big – murder, abuse. They’re obvious.
But many are small. How do you get into a conversation if people are talking rapidly and energetically without interrupting? Is it rude to correct a factual error someone’s made, or polite? (I spend time in communities where each of these is true.)
The trick is that the standards in Pagan settings are not always the same as in other places we spend time. I believe it’s part of the HPS’s job to help set the standards, and then to make sure the community standards are held to (as well as modeling and explaining them to new folks as needed.) I think everyone else in the community has responsibility for the group culture, as well, but it’s important to set the tone.
2) For generally modeling how I’d like people in the coven to treat each other
Beyond the above, I also think there are models of behavior. Someone studying, seeking to go through initiatory experiences, is often reshaping many of the ways they see the world. It’s important while that process is going on to have models to work from.
I thought a lot about this while I was in the process of getting divorced. I ended up talking a lot with several friends and acquaintances who’d been divorced, and looking at how people I respected and whose opinions I valued helped me handle some things better, and to deal with bouts of misery far more easily.
3) For setting the tone before and after ritual
I believe that a ritual event doesn’t just begin when we all form up in a circle, and end with the ‘merry meet and merry part and merry meet again’. It also begins when we’re setting up, when we’re talking beforehand, when we’re clearing things away, when we’re eating.
Phoenix Song has already made some steps in this direction: we’ve deliberately simplified our set-up so that it’s easy and stress-free for us, so we can focus on the details if we wish, but don’t feel overwhelmed. But it also can mean everything from drawing people out and asking questions, to making sure everyone gets a chance to speak. (This is, incidentally, the part I’m probably most nervous about.)
4) For making sure that people in crisis have a reliable, thoughtful, competent source to turn to if something goes wrong.
I don’t think that always has to be the HPS or HP: certainly it may make sense for someone to turn to a mentor, or to a covenmate with specific experience. But because all of these things come back into ritual eventually, if we’re doing this right, I do think the HPS and HP need to be aware of major concerns, etc. to balance and adjust appropriately in the planning.
This is a work in progress: there things I don’t know how I want to handle yet, because they haven’t come up in that specific way. On the other hand, I think this is a fairly clear idea of what I see my role as being – and how I see it playing out. The key with much of this is not about dictating something, or demanding something – but about being the kind of person that people who want that kind of space want to be around. Being that person consistently, even if I’m stressed or tired or crabby.
This is true of everyone, naturally. Just, the ripple effects are more obvious when there’s a clear group attached. What I do always has consequences, and the more I’m attentive to that, the better.
It’s also, of course, something that changes over time. The steps that are most important right now, when there are two of us looking at adding new people, are different than where we’ll be focusing (I hope!) in a few years with a stable small group who’ve worked together for a while. Which is the final role, I think: adapting gracefully and maturely to change.
Yesterday, as I mentioned, I got an email asking me about book suggestions. This turned out to be a surprisingly good motivator to get something done I’d been meaning to do for several months, which was to actually write up commentary on books I’d generally recommend.
There are four pages:
- Book Suggestions talks about how I approach the whole process. Go read it first.
- Books: Introductory Works highlights the intro books I think are generally solid starting points (but read more than one! Read many! You get better perspective that way.)
- Books with more details covers those books that go deeper into a particular topic.
- Other books worth reading includes those books which have other specific merits (and includes relevant fiction.)
I’ve added these links to the index page, as well.
I got a comment on my Critical Reading and Pagan Books article today that reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to post. Namely - why I have trouble recommending books to people who ask “I’m new to Paganism, where do I start?” (The nice commenter had asked for suggestions, and the next tab over is with going to make a stab at that - but before I could write that, it made sense to write why I’ve got trouble with it.
My background:
A large part of this is because of my professional training as a librarian. In the library world the question “What should I read?” is called ‘reader’s advisory’. There’s a reason for this. It’s not meant to be me sitting there and saying “These are the true great books” - it’s meant to be suggestions and ideas.
Note the ’suggestions’, not ‘recommendations’. There’s a difference. As a librarian, I may be suggesting books I’ve never read (because, as much as I read, there’s no way I can keep up with everything. Or even a tenth of everything!) Since I’ve never read them, I may not be sure whether there’s something that might be objectionable to the reader (or just plain not what they’re interested in. I don’t want to put my personal weight (and recommendation) behind a book I only know from “If you like X, you might like Y!” or reviews.
There’s another part of this: it’s supposed to be a conversation, not a monologue. Different people look for different things in books, and what they need at a given time may not be what first springs to my head. If I want to give them really *useful* suggestions, I need to talk to them. I need to ask them questions.
Here’s the thing: most people don’t know how to talk to other people about their reading, and what they look for. Some people do, of course - but often, people want books ‘like’ some other kind of book, but don’t have the detailed language to describe that. Mostly, this is because it’s not something we do all the time. (Well, unless you’re an author or librarian or just like geeking about different types of books. Lots of my friends do, but I’m well aware it’s not the way most people function.)
In fiction…
There are different ways to break this down, but I like Nancy Pearl’s approach - what she calls the Doorways to Reading. There’s a nice summary of her presentation on this as it applies to fiction over here, but basically, she breaks it down into four different doorways. Different people have different doorway preferences (they’re listed with the most common ones first)
- Story. What happens. These are the “I couldn’t put them down” books, the ones where you keep reading until 2am because you want to know what happens next.
- Character. These are the books that appeal to people who like fully-rounded or three-dimensional characters.
- Setting. These books create a very strong sense of place and time - including historical fiction, historical mysteries, and historical romances.
- Language. These books are often award winners: they’re a joy to read for the sheer way the author uses language and description.
People often have more than one preference: I’m about equally divided between character and setting, in many ways (and this is arguably why I read the science fiction and fantasy I do, but also a lot of historical mysteries.) But I also enjoy books with large doorways to story and language, when I’m in the right mood
Books also often have more than one doorway - they’re just somewhat different sizes. I’d argue, for example, that one of the reason that the Harry Potter books were so successful is that they basically manage to hit all four doorways in some way. You have a very engaging and fast-moving plot. You have interesting characters whose motivations and histories can be endlessly analysed. You have an unusual setting, and one that captures people’s imaginations. And you have - through the use of created words - some interesting entry points for people who appreciate language-centered books (though Rowling’s prose style is not similar to a lot of books that language-doorway people usually prefer.)
How this applies to Pagan stuff:
Really, a lot of the same issues apply. When someone says “Hey, an you recommend some books?”, I end up feeling stuck, because all of my professional instincts are saying “Not enough information!” When I’m on a forum discussion board, it’s generally fine, because I can ask them some more questions.
There’s also the tricky part: to ‘recommend’ a book means that I’ve read it myself, and read it recently enough that I recall any potential issues or considerations for the person I’m suggesting it to. There are books where this is easy - but there are also books where it’s trickier.
I read a lot (somewhere between 200 and 300+ books a year plus a lot of online reading), so between now and the last time I read a particular Pagan book, there might be quite a lot of material that’s gone into my brain. Remembering the specific details of what a given book said, and whether I had significant concerns about it often doesn’t stick well without some review. I’m working on improving that, by rereading things, and taking notes, but it’s a slow process, and fairly far down on my priority list
Now, I have done a bunch of thinking about this, since going to Nancy Pearl’s workshop last March. One of the things that’s clear to me is that people look for Pagan material in specific ways. I’m working on a write up of that, but in the meantime, have a couple of links to other material:
- Helpful things to tell people when asking for book suggestions
- Book recommendations index
One of the good things about working for a school is the vacations.
(There are also downsides: my breaks are unpaid time, and I don’t get any say in when I get them - it makes it very hard to do things requiring time off during the school year.)
Last summer, I started a habit of doing a short retreat each quarter.
- Last July’s was focused on things I needed to finish before getting my 3rd degree. As part of it, I did a day of no words - didn’t talk (even to the cat), didn’t read, didn’t write. I did survive it, but it was an interesting experience.
- November’s was focused on preparing for my 3rd degree ritual (I did the retreat work over the Tuesday evening-Sunday of Thanksgiving, with the ritual itself on the Saturday)
- I took some brief time in February to decompress and relax.
- I managed to not do one in 2nd quarter, because I just couldn’t get time clear in the schedule in ways I could do something meaningful with.
And this week, I’m doing another one. I have a lot on the agenda, but in a different way:
- Revamping my daily schedule to make sure that time for things I really care about (making music, playing the harp, dancing, doing devotional and meditation work) happens every day. Less of the random webbrowsing.
- Reorganising my lovely tiny little house now that I’ve lived here and know I’m staying put for the forseeable future. I did a quick overhaul cleaning yesterday, and am spending each day this week doing major reorganisation in each room. (This is much easier when the whole house is 400 square feet, and you only have 6 theoretical different spaces - bedroom alcove, front room, kitchen, pantry, bathroom, and basement. I am not worrying about the basement this week, but everything else *should* be achievable with nothing much else on my calendar.)
- Eating lots of good for me food - one of the things on my agenda for a while has been eating more yogurt, and this is a good week to make sure I get in the habit. I also still have excellent goodness from last week’s CSA box in the fridge that needs eating.
- Making some more art. And music. And writing. And all sorts of other goodness.
- Some ongoing meditation and ritual work.
At the end of it, I expect to not only be refreshed and well-rested (one of my rules this week is no alarm clocks. If I am tired and want to read and nap, reading and napping is totally fine. There will be time for the other stuff later.) But I also expect to be far better organised, so that keeping up with things in future is *far* far easier. There is nothing bad about this.
I am keeping a running list of things I want to do - many of which are very short and easy to do, like “Water herbs” and some of which are longer (resorting the boxes under the bed, or the extensive pile of *stuff* next to the closet). The latter I do while watching a movie.
I’ve started with a long bath, complete with face mask and other good bath things. And in a bit, I’m off to attack the boxes under the bed, do some more reading, and then some music.
My rec for this week is not explicitly Pagan, but I do think it has a lot to say about how we view the world, how we treat other people, and how all of that fits together and how we develop community - and family. It’s also the reason I was too busy to post last Friday. [1]
Early this year, a group of immensely talented people (Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, and Will Shetterly, along with Amanda Downum) launched an online fiction project called Shadow Unit. Its official description is “Fanfic for a TV Show that never was”. What it really is is the stories of episodes on a show in a very slightly different universe from ours. (Go read Emma’s description here: she does it immensely better than I could.)
Season one finished right after Memorial Day. There will be a Season Two (and beyond that:they have a five year arc planned.) Right now is a good time to catch up.
All of it’s free - but they are doing this as donation-supported work, so if you like it, please throw a few dollars at the donation options. The authors appreciate it! There’s also a forum, a wiki, and other cool tools to help you sort through things. (I recommend checking the wiki for easter eggs and DVD extra content links.)
[1] Four of the five (everyone except Amanda) were at the Fourth Street convention I was at. Saturday’s panel that focused on Shadow Unit was fantastic.
I’ve been quiet for a few days, because I was busily off at the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention (I had a fabulous time and I am already looking forward to next year: many excellent conversations with interesting people about books and thoughts and the world in general.) It’s also sparked some thoughts about some things I really want to change in my life, and more on that in the coming days.
Today, though, a short post on something I was discussing else-net. One of the panels I was at this weekend was about the issue of message in a story: is it a good idea to be deliberately push buttons in your readers to make a point?
Emma Bull (one of the panelists, and one of my favorite authors to boot) made a comment I’ve been thinking about ever since: that all stories have your assumptions about how the world works. This comes through in the story, no matter what else you do.
This got me thinking. Ritual is, in many ways, a story.
Rituals are also stories, in their own way. Not in the sense they always have a plot, mind you - but in the sense that they have a context they exist in (what’s in their world), that stuff happens (there is a change between the beginning state and the end state of some kind), and that the successful ones have some kind of desireable emotional effect (because otherwise, we would eventually find them boring and never do them again.)
It’s that context (and my assumptions) that defines a ritual. And it’s how it works out for me that makes a ritual satisfying or meaningful (or, when it doesn’t work, frustrating and unsatisfying.)
And, likewise: if I do a given ritual only once, it still has a context: there are reasons that make sense to me that are why that ritual was that way. When I am done with the ritual, those reasons do not fall out of my head and cause a state of ritual experience amnesia: they continue to be part of my understanding of ritual experience, and how I’ll experience other rituals in the future, for good or bad.
It’s this, I think, that make public rituals so tricky: people bring such different experiences and contexts to them, that planning for all of their past experiences and buttons and such is just as complicated as writing a story (or novel, or whatever) that everyone will like. It is, however, a way I haven’t looked at writing ritual, and I think I’m going to keep it in mind for the next public ritual I do (probably for this year’s Pagan Pride, since the board traditionally does the opening ritual, and sometimes the closing one.)