thoughts from a threshold

As mentioned earlier this week, I spent an hour and a half on Friday talking to the Diversity Club at the school I work at. (Both lunches, so it was different sets of kids, except for a couple who have a free period over lunch.) We had 23 students by the diversity director’s count (plus him, plus the other diversity director, who is not normally based on that campus.) Two boys, the rest girls, and mostly upperclassmen rather than freshmen.

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There is no year of my life that has not, at some fundamental level, been wrapped up in the academic calendar.

My father was a university professor: our family vacations ran on his schedule.

Then there were my years of pre-school, elementary school, junior high, high school, and boarding school (a new and different schedule, that, but still, in principle the same.) College.

Working for my college for the year after graduation. I had very little to do with students, in general (I was doing web and project design for faculty), but you could still feel the ebb and flow of the school no matter what else happened.

I moved to Minnesota, for one year *not* working for a school - but in graduate school myself part time.

And then I began my current job, where I’ve been since fall of 2000, working in an independent day school. There are many things I love about it.

One of them is how often I get to pause and reflect on how much I love it. Every year, the last week teachers are around, there’s a parade of special lunches, ceremonies, in between the meetings. Some of the process gets a little tedious - but many of them help me remember just how fantastic the people I work with are, how neat the kids are, why I enjoy getting up almost every morning. (Almost. I *am* human, after all.)

And then there’s the part we’re in right now. The beginning of the year.

It’s unusually exciting this year. We’ve moved my desk (in the hopes being in the office will make noise-distractable me a) less stressed and b) more productive). We’ve negotiated some new duties that make my salary manageable, but that give me some significant challenges. And we have new carpet (the original, from the early 70s addition, was in place until last week) and a little new paint.

We come back a week before the faculty (who will be here next week.) They’re already trickling back to look at rooms and have initial meetings with colleagues, and it’s hard to go an hour without someone stopping by to chat about their summer (always too short!) and what they have in mind.

I’ve been sorting magazines (we get about 50), a process that always brings the news of the summer back in rush. Later this week, I get to start updating our patron database (something that has to be done manually.) And next week, we’re back to meetings and faculty gatherings. The week after that, students.

All of them remind me of cycles and new beginnings, and new possibilities. I love that.

But it’s also sometimes a little weird: it’s obviously (and for some historical reasons) off kilter from the traditional agricultural busy points. Just when my religious life is telling me to go be introspective and reflective, my work life is getting hectic with major projects. Just when my religious life is telling me to work hard on goals and projects, my schedule drops out from beneath me, and I often find myself somewhat adrift as summer vacation hits.

Now, there are advantages to some of this: four of the eight Sabbats fall in my vacations generally, so it can be easier for me to prepare in an unhurried way for ritual. I get a natural sense of ebb and flow to my schedule: things build and then diminish. I’m constantly turning from project to project as cycles shift and different things become easier to work on. I’m never bored.

But at the same time, it does give me a strange perspective on the Wheel of the Year. And one I think I’m never going to quite shake, even if I eventually end up working somewhere that isn’t a school.

[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.

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.

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 experience. 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.