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.)

The shiny new coven, Phoenix Song, celebrated our first Summer Solstice today.

It’s become the practice, in our tradition, to use the solstice as a time to revision the group for the coming year. (Yes, the timing’s a little odd, but it’s something that grew organically from stuff we were actually doing, and it turns out to work nicely.) What do we want to do together? What do we want things to be like? How do we want to honor where we’ve come from, while continuing to move forward?

In the group I hived from, the tradition has been to create something that is present in the temple all year as a reminder. In our case, that’s a little impractical (we’re doing ritual in two different spaces, and neither of us has space to spare.

We decided, instead, to do a deliberately impermanent piece of art. (Before I go any further, I want to be clear: L and I discussed whether we were okay with my posting photos, and she’s fine with it. While our interpretations and thoughts about some of this are private, the basic photos aren’t.)

L has a very lovely garden, in which she spends tremendous amounts of time. Her garden also has a flat paved part: this is what we used as our canvas. We used entirely natural ingredients: no artificial colorings like food coloring. We also paid attention to what will not cause havoc to L’s garden as things blow away, get rained on, etc.

Our materials included:

• bentonite clay (white)
• green french clay (the pale green)
• red french clay (the dusty red/brown)
• tumeric (the far more orange red/brown)
• dried safflower (the red/orange dried petals)
• dried lavender (the gray/purple ones)
• dried hibiscus (the dark red)
• rose petals (undried, from our friend’s garden last night: these are from a rose called Dart’s Dash)
• powdered eggshell - we tried something to get it to mesh to blue/purple, which did not work, but they produce a lovely dusty white that shades differently from the white clay.)
• marigold, dianthus, and a few other flowers from L’s garden.
• spoons and paper funnels to direct materials (and fingers!)

For next year, we’d really like something in the blue/purple range: this may prove to be tricky. We used far less of our materials than we’d anticipated: maybe 2 ounces each (and probably less) of the clays, and about an ounce or two of everything else. The finished space is about 8×6 feet, give or take.

Timing: I arrived at 1, we finished at 4. We didn’t do other formal ritual set-up, etc. but there was some setting up and getting things ready, and so on. It took less time than I was anticipating, but it was intense work.

If you’d like larger versions of the images (plus a couple I didn’t include here, you can go to my LiveJournal gallery.

Our workspace: note cat perfectly positioned for maximum difficulty. (This is L’s cat, a Bengal by breed. She was actually *very* good once we got started.)

Our first spiral: Everything starts at the center. Bentonite clay, red and green French clays, marigold.

Our first pause

(There was a second pause, too: check out the gallery for that one.)

We’re done:

My favorite detail shot (another in the gallery)

I have very mixed feelings about Father’s Day, for the very simple reason that it is logistically tricky to celebrate a father who has been dead for more than half your life. Especially if one is bound into the Hallmark holiday sort of model.

Not impossible, of course, and as I am a Pagan whose path includes a certain degree of ancestral honoring, certainly something I do include. Just not on random Sundays in June.

It does make me think, though. My father died when I was just over 15. We knew it was coming - the good thing about a terminal cancer diagnosis is that at least you have time to prepare. Long before the last moments of high school, or of college, I had long experience with a series of ‘last moments’ with my father.

Our last family trip together (to Quebec City and Montreal, the previous Christmas and New Year’s.) The last horse show. My last birthday (also a horse show, and a day I still consider the single most perfect day of my life.) The last time he had me help him proof the bibliography of one of his books (I got a very early introduction to academic citation). The last time he corrected my homework (a French project: Mom still has it in a scrapbook.) The last dog walk.

One thing I cherish is having been able to have those, to be deliberate about them, to know they might be the last, and to be careful to hold them deep in memory, just in case. It’s something that, I think, has shaped every relationship since: if I never see someone again in this world, I want to know we didn’t end angry, we didn’t end broken and jagged.

But I’m also aware - always, consciously, deliberately - that I never got to know my father when I was an adult. I grew up in the year he was ill - incredibly, deliberately - but 15 and very mature is not the same as 18. Or 21. Or 32. I wonder how much of my memories are accurate - and how many are an idealised image, a perfect shape brought on not by what really happened - but by the mists of half-remembered glory.

I know he loved me. I know he doted on me (I was *oh* so much his pet.) I know that his students, his colleagues, teachers and professors, actors and designers, adored him. But I don’t know - not well enough - the parts that made him human, not something on a pedestal of memory, with the rough edges rubbed smooth by time.

My siblings were lucky, in this way: they were in their early 30s when he died, old enough to have adult lives, adult relationships. My sister got married, shortly after his death, but my father never knew my nephew. And my brother’s wife and my nieces were not even a glimmer in anyone’s eye, I think. But my brother was already working on part of his own passion, and my sister was working on part of hers, and many of the individual pieces were there.

I never got to talk about Ancient Greek (his field, or rather, ancient Greek theatre was) with him: I took courses in it only after his death. I never got to discuss mythology with him, with an adult’s mind, not that of a six year old, walking to school, hanging on every story told in his rich, deep, Oxford-accented voice. I wonder what would have happened if I’d gotten good enough at French to speak it with him, rather than listening to him translate Asterix from the original books, pausing to look up idioms.

Would I even have dared to take Greek if he’d still been alive? For a long time, I couldn’t walk into a Classics department somewhere without someone recognising the name (and thinking I was as brilliant at the languages as he was.) I know my own worth: I could manage competent, but rarely brilliant when it came to translation.

There are times I remember that his death changed my life. I was not a very rebellious teenager, but I suspect my later teen years would have been rather different if he had been around. He was fiercely protective, too much so, sometimes, even when I was 13 and 14. There were things I did not tell him, because I knew he’d worry.

I would not, I think, have gone to boarding school for my last two years of high school. I might instead have graduated high school early, and gone somewhere to college - not Wellesley, probably, either, the place where so many of the patterns of my cherished adult friendships were formed. It was at Wellesley I learned to have truly deep friendships, and to talk about my emotions, and to share in ways I might never have done at other schools.

There’s only one person in my life now, outside my immediate family, that I talk to at all regularly who knew him (and she knew him as her friend’s father, someone who gave rides, and who was loved, but who was generally ignored as backdrop, because that is how you view parents when you’re that age.)

There are also the mysteries. On the grave stone that is my father’s, and that will be my mother’s, some day, there are four lines of poetry. They’re the very end of T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding. They’re beautiful. I know they were chosen deliberately. But I do not know - and have never managed to ask - exactly why. There are things I do not want to pry about, with my parents.

On the anniversary of his death, just after Samhain (and, in fact, on November 3rd, just after the Catholic All Saints day, and then All Souls, so that he might have a day all to himself), I do take time for him. I read something that reminds me of him. Some years it’s Eliot. Some years it is old and fading Asterix or Tintin books. Some years it’s Shakespeare, or Euripides, or 1066 and all that. I do a Tarot reading, just to ask if he has any wisdom for me, anything I should pay attention to. I don’t pry - he died as a devout Catholic, had been considering a production of Everyman, if he’d lived. But I welcome his presence, even if where I am now, where my religious life is now, is something he might never have forseen.

But I also keep in mind a very dear experinence. You see, before my father died, the summer before, I went to a church camp. They asked our parents to write us a self-esteem letter, to be given to us at camp. My father took the opportunity to say things that he - as he said - were hard for him to say in person. I still have it, and treasure it, and reread it at least yearly. It’s filled with his humor, his turns of phrase - and his handwriting, which was gorgeous and personal and unique - I’ve never seen its like elsewhere.

In my first Samhain ritual with the group I was to spend more than 5 years of my life with, I found myself there, hearing the last paragraph quoted back to me, not quite word for word, but concept for concept. The priestess involved had no idea of this - I think she knew my father had died, but certainly none of the details. I’d think she was picking it up from me - but I was not particularly thinking of it, or remembering specific text, or anything like that.

It was that that simultaneously convinced me of polytheism, and that convinced me that my new path was where I needed to be. And that, as I’d been a constant surprise to my parents throughout my life to his death, perhaps this was just another step along that road: not such a change as it first appeared. And that was something he treasured about me, and encouraged, even when the surprise was a bit startling.

That’s the bit I want to take away with me. I do my best to live by that letter - not because I feel I need to, or because I think he will look badly on me if I don’t. But because he saw in me, in the very tentative first steps of adulthood, so many things that I do, indeed, value. Integrity. Commitment. Willingness to take risks on specific things I value. High *high* standards for what I do. They have their challenges, but I would not give up on these things for anything in the world.

Now, I think, I am going to take myself off with my copy of the Ancient Greek translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and see how utterly tangled I get in the language. (Probably quite a lot: I’m rather rusty.) It seems fitting.

Mostly cosmetic:

Index:
I’ve created an index of posts that I’d like to keep easy access to - just use the Index link at the top of the page. These include a couple of series (like the seeker series), but also posts that are either popular or have gotten links from other places. I plan to update this about once a month - but if you see other posts you think deserve some highlighting, please let me know.

House rules:
Nothing here that should be unusual or a surprise, but getting into writing (not just in my head) seemed like a good idea. I’d rather be clear and not have any concerns than not be clear, y’know?

(People reading my LiveJournal already know this one): I finished some great conversations yesterday with the head of the school I work for, where we have found a way for me to earn enough more money I can afford to stop looking for a new job. This is very good, because the library job market right now is miserable, and this gives me some time to continue to build some specific skills and do more professional projects. (And continue working at a place I very much like, which is no small thing.)

The other side the good news is that this means I’m not moving any time soon, and thus, can truly make longer-term plans about the coven. This means I should probably start calling it by name, and note a few upcoming things.

Name: The shiny new coven’s name is Phoenix Song (my home tradition has a particular focus on the phoenix imagery), and I wanted a name that would bring together that focus with the group’s heavy focus on music and arts in ritual.

What’s coming: I do plan to have a very small website (elsewhere on this domain) by early fall. I’ll have a few more details up in a post soon about some of the structure and other choices (summarising much of what I’ve been talking about here.) We have plans to opening to considering new members sometime this fall, but exactly how is still in process, and we intend to proceed very slowly and gently.

Expect to see lots of discussion here, not so much about what we’ve chosen to do (though I’ll use it as an example) but as what I’m thinking about as I move forward with this, and what matters to me.

Friday rec:

Since I spent Monday making a new kind of bread, a bread recommendation.

I stumbled across The Fresh Loaf site a while back, and used the pita bread recipe linked from the right column of the main page with great success. They’ve got all sorts of great articles and comments and ideas for all levels of home baking.  (well, not bread machines, maybe. But everything else.) Also many really nifty recipes, many of which have photos and other commentary.

Bread is one of the most magical and nifty things I do. First, the whole process of baking bread is about transformation and change and getting something new, nourishing, and powerful out of some pretty minimal ingredients.

But more than that, it’s such a sensory process. There’s the dusting of the flour on your hands, the sweetness of the honey, the feel of the dough as you knead it, the delight of hands in warm olive-oil rich dough in the winter. I take a great joy in having fresh, homemade bread, for ritual, too.

If you’re at all interested in making your own bread, go check them out.

I finally finished (to the point I feel they should be posted) two long essays I was working on. They are:

Finding Others: Where to start looking:
This essay is based on a post I did a short while ago, when someone was frustrated by a group search: I’d been meaning to pull together a large portion of my standard advice when group seeking. It’s focused more on finding smaller groups or those focused on a specific defined path, but there’s useful ideas in there for most people seeking group Pagan interaction.

Questions when searching for a group:
Related to the above post, this is a list of questions (practical, practices, approaches, etc.) that might be useful for people who are looking for a group, but not quite sure what they’re looking for.

Please let me know if anything’s confusing or if you have other comments/things to include.

They’re both linked from the ‘pages’ tab at the top of the page, as well.

Something to be going on with, while I get through my last week of work before the summer. (Working for a school has some schedule benefits. The not-getting-paid for 3 months of time off, however, is not the fun part.)

So, tonight, I show up at L’s home, my covenmate, for what was supposed to be a scheduled role-playing game night (we play about once a month with several of my former groupmates. Yes, we’re geeks, but we have fun.) Due to computer emergencies requiring urgent repair, gaming got cancelled while I was on my way there. So, we hang out, she feeds me fabulous food (hamburgers from humanely raised reasonably local cow, and homemade hamburger buns, and and…), and somewhere in the food prep, I say

Me: Hey - I tried out new adventures in bread baking last night. I made pita bread.

L: You did? I did too!

We blink at each other in mutual amusement, comment about how it was surprisingly easy and fun, and we plan to do it again. We wander off to other subjects, and sometime later…

Me: Y’know, when I did the pita bread, I ended up using half whole wheat: it came out surprisingly well, I was really pleased.

L (looking at me slightly oddly): I did too. And yes - they did come out well.

We wander off to other topics again. Another 20 minutes down the line…

Me: Ok, I’d ask if you used honey and olive oil, but that’s probably a given.

L: Yes. But yes.

(Those being our general preferences for bread baking for the sugar + fat component in bread when needed.)

At this point, I decided I should probably blog it, just for everyone else’s amusement.

Ah, well. We’re nicely matched up, at least. And we can talk endlessly about making good bread. There are far worse things to have in the world.

Sorry for not getting further on the three things I have in draft right now (they’re all related to finding a group and evaluating a group you might be interested in). This week has been unusually busy, as it’s been graduation week (complete with two full days of meetings, and being out late for one reason or another on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday (I’ve got one more week of work to go before my summer break: as I say about this job, the vacation time is excellent, the not getting paid part of it is not so good. I’m hoping to find temp work, but am not, shall we say, entirely optimistic. (I have good skills, but it’s obviously not a great market for it.)

You are probably less interested in this than in my new tradition of Friday recommendations.

After our last formal festivity today, I saw Prince Caspian in the movie theatre, which was visually gorgeous (and I thought they did some very nice subtle things with costuming and visuals.) I’m a longtime lover of the books, allegory and all, but it’s been a while since I re-read, as I prefer watching a movie first, then re-reading, to the other way around. (I spend more time in the movie enjoying it as a movie, and less time gritting my teeth about how it’s different.) I may have more comments about it later.

My actual recommendation:

But the one I really wanted to talk about was buying more herbs. I buy my dried herbs from Penzey’s, also available online. But the store is the really fantastic thing: I walk in there just for the pick me up from the amazing smells.

Penzey’s, based in Wisconsin, produces their own dried herbs. They are high quality, amazingly inexpensive (I can walk out of there with 10 small containers of different things for $15 or so), and widely varied. I can, for example, get both cassia and cinnamon, two kinds of basil, different processed versions of rosemary (full, cracked, and powdered - handy for a friend who hates the ’sticks’ of them as a texture. They also sell a stock base (handy for people like me who live alone, and do not always have it on hand, or only need a little at a time. I make my own as well, but don’t always have it handy in the right amount), various kinds of salts, and a few other things.

My purchases this time were to restock things I’d run out of - dill, basil, parsley, and one of their mixes, Green Goddess, which is my favorite all purpose one. (It’s dill, basil, and various other things, including a little salt and sugar) that you can mix up into a delicious dip/dressing/etc. with a little yogurt. Healthy and yummy.

Really, though, one of the reasons I adore it is the hit to the sense of walking into the store - a chance to smell the mingled herbs and spices, the chance to try out sniffing unfamiliar ones, or things that have turned up in recipes I’ve looked at. And a chance to add something a little bit special to my cooking for not a large investment. I use them heavily in my bread-baking, too, of course.

Part four of my thoughts about seekers and what I pay attention to is attention to detail.

This is the one I wanted to talk about last (go see the others over here, earliest stuff at the bottom) because it’s the hardest to talk about. Sometimes, when someone starts talking about this particular aspect, it’s really easy to get locked into minutiae and details, and people feel oppressed and crabby because they don’t match up to some standard that’s not clearly defined.

So, first of all, I want to say: I do not expect anyone - not seeker, not friend, not covenmate I’ve been working with for 6+ years - to get all of this right. I do not expect myself to get every detail right. People are human, our memories are flawed, we have other things going on in our lives, and we will forget details every so often. Someone messing up on one is generally not the end of the world.

On the other hand, I don’t think that’s any excuse not to try.

What does paying attention mean?

In meeting someone new, or in approaching a group, there’s a lot of new information. Names. Remembering which name goes with which person. In Pagan settings, which name you use at which time, if people have a circle name.

There are issues of group structure (both the obvious stuff and the not-so-obvious stuff), how people treat each other, treat new members, treat the group leadership. Do senior members get challenged and asked questions about things that don’t make sense or seem inconsistent? Or are they ‘off-limits’ somehow? How do they respond?

There’s also all sorts of ritual details: doing structured ritual often involves keeping track of a lot of details. We did a new moon ritual last night, and while we were doing our circle set-up, I was struck by how many tiny details we were both tracking.

Everything from the physical set-up before ritual, to how we move around the (very tiny) space in my front room, so that L could cast circle, to how we hand around and place the small candle we use to light our other candles from. (In particular, we’re both attentive that when we’re lighting things on the main altar, the lighting candle goes to in front of the next candle to be lit. It’s a small detail, but it makes for beautiful flow.)

Paying attention means that you’re aware you’re getting all this new information. You may not recognise it all consciously, but you are aware there are things going on.

And when it’s clear that you are paying attention (and retaining much of what you see),  your conversations with others can move further ahead, with new ideas, practices, opportunities, and interactions - rather than going over the same things again. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather do new stuff than go over the old stuff more times, given the choice.

Acting:

Paying attention also means you can act on the information (at least so one hopes.) Walking into a room with a group you’re interested in working with: what do you need to know?

Preparation: It can be embarrassing to show up at a ritual where everyone else has brought potluck and you haven’t. Or where you aren’t sure who the person is you’ve been talking with on email. Asking a few questions and paying attention to the instructions in email can help you feel a lot more comfortable when you show up. That’s good.

Names: Getting people’s names right is a good step. It shows you’re trying. Me? I’m lousy with names, and therefore don’t use them until I’ve gotten them firmly in my head (which usually involves hearing them several times over the course of the evening, or both hearing them and seeing them in writing). I have various tricks to help me (my former group’s combo of having people fill out an info sheet and also talking to them works well for me, for example.)

But I also notice and appreciate people who get my name right. (Jenett. One n, two ts. Pronounced JEN-et, like Janet with a ‘Jen’ instead of ‘Jan’). People who spell it wrong in an email when it’s right in front of them do make me wonder. Getting it wrong won’t make me hate you or anything - but I do notice, and someone getting it wrong regularly has me paying attention to their other observation skills. I think it’s particularly relevant in Pagan settings, where many of us have chosen names that reflect particular parts of our identity or what we wish to become.

House rules: Pagan groups often meet in people’s homes, which have their own quirks. Is this a ‘take your shoes off before entering’ house? Should you feel free to get water from the fridge? Should you check before you use the bathroom? Hosts will hopefully indicate some of this up front, but it’s useful (and polite) to remember for the next time (or at least be proactive about asking.) This is just part of getting along in a community.

In ritual: Many groups or traditions or communities have specific ways they do things (and one hopes, reasons for those choices.) Which way we turn in circle, what we say to greet deity or other entities, how we share blessings with each other, how we share food and drink. Again, no one I know expects a newcomer to get this all at once - but paying attention and adding more things each time is a definitely good sign.

After ritual: If there’s a gathering for shared food or conversation, pay attention to how people interact, who you most enjoy talking to, how the group as a whole responds to one another.  It can tell you a lot about the group.

How to help yourself:

Use resources: If a group has a website, printed material, or sends you info in email, keep it handy and make use of it. You may find a lot of your questions are answered there! If you need help with something, or it’s confusing, ask questions - but you’ll get definite points from me for looking at the information you already have first (and telling me you’ve looked at it: if I’m confusing, I want to fix it.)

Ask questions!: Very useful -and as long as you don’t keep asking the same things, shows that you’re looking to learn and trying to pay attention.

Let people know if you have a specific need: For example, a hearing impaired friend of mine who lipreads has a button she wears at large events, that says “I haven’t seen a single word you’ve said” - it helps start conversations and reminds people she doesn’t see often that she’s lipreading. (She’s also proactive about telling people what things help her.)

Same deal goes with how you learn: if learning stuff from material you read is really hard from you (and doesn’t stick), ask if there’s some other way to go through it, like talking through it with someone. I’m definitely willing to do that if asked, but I’m probably going to balance it with asking people to read on their own and discuss later unless I know that’s a problem.

These things reduce wear and tear on you - and on everyone else. Again, it lets you get on to more interesting things faster.

Consider taking notes: Not just while you’re in a discussion (sometimes that makes sense, sometimes it doesn’t) but also when you get home. Did you have questions? Do you want to get to know someone better? Did you have a conversation you want to pick up on sometime? Is there something you want to remember to bring next time? Do you want to remember someone’s name? Write down the name and a few notes about them - things you talked about, what they looked like, whatever will trigger that memory for you.

Some people carry a little notebook. I’m fond of index cards - they’re cheap, easy, don’t take much space, and they’re fast to type up later if I want to keep the notes more than briefly. Whatever works.