It was not my . . . → Read More: Ten years perspective]]> About ten years (and two weeks) ago, I went to the first Seeker class with the group I would later join. It met in the back room of a coffee shop that isn’t there anymore, and several of the teachers left the group a few months later for various reasons.

It was not my first introduction to Paganism, or Wiccan-based practice, or magic. After all, I’d been reading fantasy books with characters who were Pagan for quite a while. I’d had some powerful experiences in college that lead me to explore some basic magical concepts like centering and grounding.

And I’d always believed that the Gods were many and varied, notes and strands of melody singing out in the cosmos in infinite combination, as only someone who was raised on daily stories of Greek mythology can.

I’d also taken my time.

I’d been an active Catholic throughout high school and college (after becoming Catholic when my parents returned to Catholicism when I was 13). There was a lot I’d loved about my college Catholic community, in particular, but I also had frustrations. (The role of women in the church. A desire to create ritual, not just facilitate it. A growing certainty that my GLBT and polyamorous friends were not doing something wrong or sinful, but something that was often complicated, given society’s biases, but something that could be and often was joyous, loving, and wonderful.) There are still things I think many Catholics get right, and do wonderful things with – but it’s a place I visit, and chat with, not a place I could live.

I was approaching 25, engaged, working at my second job after college, going to grad school part time. I’d moved halfway across the country the year before, and I’d taken the time to figure out what I wanted out of my religious life.

After a lot of reflection, I knew I was a happier person when structured complex ritual was a part of my life (at least sometimes). I wanted a path that included music in some way. That worked with the polytheistic view of my world. Something that had a cohesive way to explain some of the magical and energetic experiences I’d had. And something that could help me … be better. Do better. Learn more.

I looked at other religions, too. But I kept circling back to some strand of Paganism.

And so, I found myself in the same place as hundreds, thousands of people before me. I’d read some books. I’d browsed Witchvox. I’d wandered and lurked through alt.religion.wicca and alt.religion.wicca.moderated on Usenet, and various mailing lists. I’d gone to a few public rituals in the community, and gotten a better sense of what I really wanted. I’d sent out some emails (embarassing ones, in hindsight, but hey.)

Three separate people ended up pointing me at a particular group, also on my short list from that Witchvox research. And so I said “Eh. Let’s try them first.” And then had to wait until they offered introductory classes at a time that fit with my grad school schedule.

And so, that May, I found myself in that room, with a dozen other people, and four or five people from the group, depending on the week. Over the five classes in the series, the number of students got smaller. (That’s pretty common in things of this kind.) I heard a lot of things I already knew. (Book knowledge has never been the problem for me.) But I was listening, more, to “Is this a place I could see myself? Are they doing things that will stretch me in the right ways?”

I thought they were. And now, ten years later, I’m even more sure of that.

(I should note here: I don’t think my path is everyone’s path. In fact, I think it’s the right fit for very few people. I’m a lot more interested in helping people figure out what their thing is, the thing that makes their spirit sing and dance and delight the way mine has.)

Those ten years have brought amazing changes to me. I got married – and divorced. I dedicated with the group in September, initiated in early 2003, and went on to gather in my second and third degrees. I hived off to form a new group – ok, that one is still in process, because the rest of my life needs to settle. But I look forward to that.

And in between, my life’s shifted and changed. I’ve gained a relationship with two deities very near and dear my heart, in ways that I would never give up, even though I still have a hard time talking about it. And a number of other deity relationships that, while less immensely personal, I treasure and delight in.

I’ve had ritual experiences that fundamentally changed how I viewed the world, in the best possible ways, that gave me more understanding of myself, of what I could offer, of what I could become given a nudge into the void in the right direction.

I’ve had the privilege of being part of other people’s spiritual learning. I taught Seeker classes myself for the better part of four years, was the primary teacher for Dedicant classes for a year, wrote a number of rituals, and have had endless conversations online (as well as writing a lot of supplementary and discursive commentary.) Some of which people say is very useful.

And I’ve been part of other people’s initiations, an experience I always treasure and am humbled by. I’ve also seen other friends move away from Paganism, into paths that call their hearts, and considered it a part of my job as their friend to help them think about that in all the ways that lead to a clear decision, not the one I might prefer.

And somewhere in there, I’ve learned to actually have visuals in my meditations, and explain how I sense and experience energy to people who don’t hear it. I’ve figured out (mostly) how to pace teaching for people who are not like me in how they learn. And I know where a lot more of my own personal sore points and foibles are, and what to do about them so they stay my problem, not someone else’s.

And if the mark of a healthy spiritual life is in the connections it brings me, my life is infinitely richer now than it was those ten years ago. The deity relationships, of course, are a delight, even when they’re also a challenge. My friendships aren’t always local, but they run deep and true and strong. And there are these people, my tradmates, who I don’t always agree with – but who I love, and cherish, and know will always be a part of something dear to me. And while stuff was not always smooth and peaceful around the time I hived, I’m particularly proud of the fact that I’ve kept good relationships with the group I trained with. (And I deeply enjoy visiting them when I get the chance.)

I also look back, from this perspective, and wonder.

I’ve spent five years on the board of a local Pagan project (Twin Cities Pagan Pride), where I was part of the board that took the event to a two day event, got 501(c)3 status in our own right, and most recently have shifted to an outdoor fall festival (the public education part), and a brand new event in the spring focused on creating a space for the Pagan community to come together and share and challenge and learn (that does not involve camping…) That’s pretty neat stuff, all by itself. Helping to create a brand new moment, an event that brought people joy and wonder and learning – that’s what I live for.

I’ve written rituals, and been part of debugging others. I’ve helped friends through major medical and personal difficulty with far more patience and flat out usefulness than I would have ever imagined I had. I’ve held people when they cried, and given them help that let them face challenges in new ways. I’ve written an absurd amount, but every time I write, I get better. I’ve pummelled my brain to figure out a new way to explain something to a student or groupmate who was struggling, and I’ve done my best to figure out how to resolve conflicts in a way that was effective but compassionate.

And I’ve gotten my share of nasty emails, insults, dismissals, and much more. And of course, some places I’ve failed. Some of it well deserved, mind you. (As I noted above, I am not perfect.) And I certainly have my frustrations: with myself, with community issues, with patterns and cycles that I don’t need to repeat. I’ve had friendships change and drift away that I miss and wist for – while knowing that part of that has to do with ways I failed, somehow.

There are two things I most treasure about my religous and spiritual life these days, and a couple of others that continue to delight me.

First, that I have (as you might guess given that the word ‘phoenix’ shows up in both group names in the tradition) a number of tools for self-transformation and growth that I can use to change things in my life. That doesn’t mean those changes are instant (the past year is painful evidence of that). And it doesn’t mean I’m in control of the process.

But I feel like my training, my group work, my tradition, has given me experience enough to walk to the edge of the cliff, and jump off, and trust I’ll find my wings before I hit the ground. Not that I do that carelessly, of course. But I did it for each of my three initiations (just as it was part of the process of finding a group in the first place). And it’s lead to my facing a complicated and challenging job search, and some miserable health circumstances with a lot more grace and dignity than I would have thought even five years ago.

Doesn’t mean everything goes my way. But it does mean I tend to be less miserable in the process.

Second, I delight in having a wide range of tools at my disposal. Sabbat ritual? Simple. Meditation to help with a particular issue? Probably have one I can edit up fast. Daily or regular personal practices? Got a good sense of what might and might not help for a given situation. Ability to create my own solid, meaningful, effective ritual space and do what I need to? Yep. And a fair bit more.

It’s not that I know everything – but I feel pretty competent in a general sort of way. (What an elder deep in my affection refers to as being a professional trained stunt priestess.) It’s a lot like my other vocation, my profession. I don’t know everything there is to know about being a librarian, either. But I have a pretty good idea of what kinds of stuff I don’t know, and where it might come back to bite me, and what to do about that if it starts becoming relevant.

And that’s a pretty amazing place to be living. Lots of people don’t get here.

Then there’s the delight. Those perfect shivers of time where everything clicks in a ritual, and the chant and the incense and the colors and shapes, and the people beside you all slide into place and echo down the years. Those moments of perfect clarity in the service of M’Lady and her Lord. The inspirations of creating a chant, a ritual moment. A burst of flame from flash powder one Mabon, of the sun rising over the east bank of the Mississippi with the Morris Dancers dancing the sun up (a part of my personal practice).

Not all the moments are glorious. There’s the eternal downpour of one Beltane, where I thought I’d never get dry and my shoes squelched for days. The ritual where I worked so hard anchoring that I slept for nearly a day solid afterwards. The difficulties of any group of people doing complicated things that expose sore spots and weaknesses and frustrations. And, very occasionally, people doing things that had no excuse, that left their scars on those I care for. But all those things taught me something I would not wish to lose, too.

There were, also, of course, many hours of homework, of practice, of doing things that didn’t quite work, didn’t quite click, trying to figure out what I was missing. Of cleaning the temple when I’d rather be doing any number of other things. And there were those moments of frustration when I didn’t live up to my own standards, or let someone down. Of not knowing what to do about something, or not doing what I knew I should.

But we pick up, and we go on. When religion works, it helps us change and grow and become better, more glorious, brighter in the world.

There are things I know now I didn’t know five years ago, or even three. That’s as it should be. And it makes me wonder what I’ll know in early 2013, ten years from my initiation. Or in five years, or ten.

What I hope is that the richness, the delight, the wonder, the awe that are part of my life now are more so then. That there’s a greater stability and deep roots to anchor the work and writing and teaching and sharing I want to do, both as a librarian and as a priestess. That I’ve had a chance to learn more things, and be surprised, and do more things I’d never dreamed of.

And I really wonder what the larger Pagan communities will look like then, and what I’ll be particularly passionate about doing in them. I’m looking forward to finding out.

Again, I do not claim to have all the answers: just a few things that might be of help. Mostly, . . . → Read More: Ritual limits: plans that can help]]> Last post in this three post series on ritual limits and some ways to handle them thoughtfully, caringly, and meaningfully.

• Part 1: Responsible ritual announcing (general overview)
• Part 2: Role of the event planner

Again, I do not claim to have all the answers: just a few things that might be of help. Mostly, this post is about policies and forms.

Things that can help: Policies

Policies are the first place to start, both because they give you a place to point to if someone has questions later, and because a well designed policy will help shape your actual choices and actions in a variety of ways.

Policies are also a tool you can use to drive things for your event in the directions you want. You can certainly build in exceptions (and probably should), but a clear policy will indicate what you’re aiming for and why you’re aiming for it. You can use this as a gentle tool, or as a more forceful one (and I have examples of both, below.)

Not everyone reads policies, even when they’re clearly provided. That doesn’t mean they’re not useful – policies will help you give consistent answers, they’ll help you delegate some tasks to other people, and they’ll give you a place to fall back on if someone gets cranky.

Things worth having in a programming policy might include:

• What kind of items you’re particularly encouraging (and why).
• What kind of items you are not particularly seeking (and maybe why).
• What kind of items you will not be scheduling (and maybe why)
• Will you accept multiple proposals from the same person/group? How many?
• If you have more submissions than space, how do you decide what gets priority?
• Are limited-audience proposals allowed? Do they have any additional notes/requirements?
• Practical issues: Do all presenters have to be registered members of the event? Are there discounts/comp memberships/whatever for presenters? Any other benefits?
• What are your relevant deadlines, and what happens if people miss them?

You’ll also want to have some event-specific information like any site limitations (blades, candles, alcohol, food), types of rooms being used, etc. but that should only be in your policy if you’re updating the policy for each new event.

When you’re considering ‘limited audience’ events, bear in mind that you should also be looking at this with a broader eye: an entirely dance event is not accessible to people with some kinds of mobility or other health issues. An event with flashing lights is not accessible to many people prone to migraines or who have epilepsy. Scents can be an allergy, asthma, or migraine trigger. And so on and so forth. Clear forthright descriptions help everyone out.

What kinds of items:

The first three items on that list really have to do with defining your space. How you do this is going to depend a bit on what you’re looking at doing with your event, and why, and who you expect you might get proposing stuff in the first place.

For a Pagan Pride event (with a big focus on public education), you might say: “We’re particularly seeking items that are very accessible to those new to Paganism and the larger Pagan community, or items that allow people of a variety of different paths to participate (such as a compare and contrast panel discussion).  Items that might be confusing to newcomers, or require substantial background are not a good fit for this event.”

For an event for the Pagan community, it might be more like: “We’re seeking items that allow those within the community to go deeper into a particular topic or practice. We’d prefer to avoid duplication of common offerings within the community (such as intro classes, etc.) Due to hotel restrictions, we regret that items involving alcohol or candles are not possible.”

(These are both pretty gentle examples of policy statements guiding the direction of what you want: there’s lots of room for exceptions, except for a couple of hard limits, and there’s lots of room for creative and unexpected responses.)

Questions of priority:

The other questions are really questions of priority. Some events, it may make sense to take proposals, ask presenters to pick their top choices, and then mix and match so that you have a variety of topics covered. (For example, if someone offers to present on divination, on ritual design, and on group dynamics, and you have three other divination proposals that are also great, you might ask them to do the latter two.)

Other events, it might make sense to create a policy that allows amazing presenters with wide talents to do several presentations, while limiting people with a more narrow focus or widely common interest to one presentation a piece. (This is trickier to manage in terms of the social community, though.)

You’d think it’d make sense to give priority to people who get their proposals in by a particular date, however, lots of us procrastinate, and this may mean you end up looking at a schedule that’s going to be very lopsided unless you do some adjustment (or where you have less amazing presenters than you would if you were looking at the whole range.)

My own preference is generally to go for “Stuff that’s closest to the stated goal of the event gets priority”. If someone wants to offer 3 items that are all  very much in line with that, then cool, they get priority over someone who offers 3 items that either aren’t as much in line with the focus, or that are regularly available in the larger community. (For example, you might decide that a general intro-to-Tarot workshop was further from your event goals than one that looked at a particular approach for personal renewal if you knew that intro to Tarot workshops happened a couple of times a year already.)

To make this work, you do need to have a fairly clear statement of the goal of the event, of course.

I’m torn on the question of presenters: it’s true that there are some amazing presenters who regularly fill rooms with good reason: they’re funny, informative, engaging, and much more. Part of me always wants to say “Do as many things as you want, please.” The problem is that if you do this, you leave less space for the amazing presenters you don’t know about yet (and fewer opportunities for people to grow as presenters from a small group level to a larger community level, which will eventually be a problem), plus it can create some hard feelings in the community.

The question of limits:

The question of limits has two aspects: does it serve the goal of the event, and how much do you want to give it priority in the schedule?

First question: Are you allowing limited-attendance programming items at your event? (Whether that’s limited by experience, age, gender or sexual orientation identification, parenting status, biological status, or whatever else.) If not, you can skip this section.

There are some good reasons to allow sensibly-described limits in at least some case. Some topics are not for people brand new to a topic. Some may have legal implications. Some may be a question of focus (if you have a parenting panel, you might want parents or about-to-be parents there, not people who want to share their Brilliant Parenting Advice (even though they don’t actually have kids.)

Gender identification is a particularly tricky one to manage well (who decides?). So are self-reported biological status items (like requests that someone not be menstruating or bleeding in other ways at the time.) This doesn’t mean they can’t be done – just that the phrasing needs to be superbly clear and up front.

So, what else to decide?

If you decide that you’re willing to allow limited-attendance rituals or workshops, but that you want to discourage people from doing them unless they really want to, you do have a couple of choices in how you design your policy. For example, you could say “We’re open to considering limited-attendance events, with clear descriptions of the intended focus and requirements for entry. However, because our focus for this event is on bringing a larger collection of communities together, limited-access events will be scheduled for less desireable spaces and/or time slots if needed to balance the schedule”

Doing so makes these events less likely to take up prime time and space in your schedule, while still being present. (There are reasons not to go this way, too – but I wanted to present the option.)

The other thing your policy can do is explain how you want people to frame their focus. For example, an inclusive framing talks about who is welcome at the ritual and why, rather than saying “These people not welcome.” An great example comes from my friend Elf, who said in a recent post:

But I’d much rather we allowed pluralism, and pushed for labels focused on inclusiveness (“this ritual is for cis women to connect with their menstrual cycle energies”) rather than exclusiveness (“no men or trans women for this skyclad dance”). And I want someone aware of privilege dynamics to be checking the event descriptions and contacting presenters to point out what they might not have considered in their labeling choices.

Note the really important bit about explaining why the limit’s there in a way that is caring and not offensive. Also note that the inclusive example helps people who would be welcome decide if they want to go. (A lot of cis women I know are not particularly interested in connecting with their menstrual cycle energies for a wide variety of reasons, so they would know they should go do something else.)

Other examples might be: “Attendees should be familiar with multiple methods of banishing energy from the space, including the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram: we’ll be going on to look in detail at adaptations and variations.” or “This item is focused on the needs of current parents at Pagan community events. There will be a session on Sunday for general community conversation about the topic that is open to all.”

Things that can help: forms

This is a place where a really well designed proposal form can do a lot of really good things. (In my experience, potential presenters do not read – or at least not retain – the details of a programming policy. A good form can solve a lot of this, along with a very clear  and enforced “If we don’t get the form, you haven’t made a proposal” policy)

The trick is not to make the form too long or too complicated, because that will be problematic for people. It is also a good idea to create a form people can start and stop if at all possible, because the more detailed your questions get, the more likely people are to need to go and double check something and come back.

My ideal form these days includes:

Basic contact info:

• Presenter’s name they like to be called
• The name they want used on the program/materials, if different.
• Email address
• Other contact preferences/methods.

Item information:

• General type of item (panel, workshop, ritual, etc.)
• Title of the item
• Preferred short (2-3 word) title for schedule grids and other space-limited options.
• Item description (generally with a word count limit for the program)

Practical information:

• Any specific needs (whiteboard, projector, electricity, microphone, etc. depending on what you can actually offer.)
• Clear questions about any limits, based on what your policy actually allows. (If you do not allow limited access rituals, make that clear. If you do, ask specific questions and/or require a sentence framing the intended audience.)
• Any schedule things to try and accommodate (People should not be scheduled against other items they’re involved with. People may not want to be scheduled against specific other items they know about, and it’s nice to do that when you can, though presenters should be told it may or may not be possible.)

And finally, you should get specific check-off on any absolutely essential policies. If you have a no scent, no candles, no blades policy, for example, make your presenters check a box saying “I understand that scent, candles, and blades are not suitable for this event.” If you need everyone to be a registered member before you finalise the schedule, put that on your proposal form with a check box (something like “I’m already registered”/”I need to know if I’m presenting, first”/and maybe an “other”)

There are, of course, a number of other points I could go into further, but I wanted to get these out of my head and somewhere they might potentially be more useful. (Both for my later use, and for anyone else who might find them interesting.)

I didn’t talk about this in . . . → Read More: Ritual limits: role of the event planner]]> A comment from a friend about my last post brought up some excellent questions about the role of a larger organisational body in the question of ritual or workshop or whatever limits. (As, in the case in question, when a ritual is taking place at a larger event.)

I didn’t talk about this in the previous post, both for length reasons, and because the event organiser side is a bit more complicated for me to talk about clearly, but my friend made some excellent points that I do want to talk about more.

Background and disclaimer:

This is my personal blog, and here I am speaking only for me, and not for any organization I’ve volunteered with, either currently or in the past. All clear? Good.

That said, my experiences shape my opinions: and you might want to know where that experience comes from.

I’ve thought about many of these issues (and the more general question of how to make public and large scale events more accessible to more people) a great deal in part because of my time on the board of Twin Cities Pagan Pride since 2005, running both the fall Pagan Pride event (a two-day event in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, though we’re planning on going back to one day in 2011 to find a space with better walk-through/casual traffic) and our new project, Paganicon, (taking place later this month), which is a weekend hotel-based conference (albeit much smaller than Pantheacon: we’re likely to have somewhere between 100 and 150 people this year, which is just fine.)

I’ve also attended a small invite only Pagan festival for several years, and ran and helped with some other community focused events in the Society for Creative Anachronism and in science fiction fandom over the years, both places I’ve learned some things I apply to my current Pagan focus. Reasonably varied experience, basically but I haven’t seen and done everything, either.

I’ve got a particular interest for various reasons in overall accessibility of events – not just mobility needs or food allergies or identity limits, but things ranging from choices in accessibility tools (i.e. lipreading seats vs. ASL interpreters vs. real-time transcription options for those with hearing impairment) to looking at things like learning style differences, scheduling, and other details.

The role of the event organiser:

The first real question here is simple: when an activity takes place at a larger event (for example, a ritual proposed in the context of a larger convention or festival), what’s the role of the event organisers in handling the questions of limits and necessary information around proposed items?

There are a variety of ways to handle this. There are also some things event planners can do to encourage the proposal of the kind of events that they want, and gently discourage the ones they don’t want. [That'll be my next post.]

The basic goal

As I see it, the basic goal is creating a space where things that interest and engage a sustainable number of participants happen. It does not need to be the one solution to every need, but the event organisers should have a clear idea what needs and hopes and roles different types of proposed items are filling.

A number of different pieces go into this.

What’s the goal of the event? Are you designing an event to draw people from a broad variety of related communities and interests, or are you focusing on a more specific area of interest? (For example: a general Pagan event is fairly broad in focus, while an event focused on a particular tradition or practice would be much narrower.)

The best programming focus for a Pagan Pride event is going to be different than the best focus for an event for those already within the Pagan community, though there are certainly places where there’s overlap. The first is going to want to include a lot of items that are at least somewhat accessible to people new to the idea of Paganism (and probably avoid more complex topics that take extensive context or explanation), while the latter can do more highly specialised items.

(When I was doing Pagan Pride programming, I aimed for having at least half the items be non-path specific, so that people on different paths could share ideas, or comments: favorite Pagan-relevant fiction, crafts and fiber arts, seasonal food traditions, things like that, in part because those things are also quite accessible to non-Pagans. I’d make different choices for a more focused event.)

The event planners also need to figure out what kind of event they can and want to support. They may, for perfectly good reasons, need to put limits on some things: they certainly do not have infinite time, energy, volunteers, space, and budget. Some of these things are educated guesses, some of them are easier to figure out. (How many people will pay to come to your event is an educated guess. What spaces you have to work with is a known limit, once you have a rental contract.)

Different people are different. Your ideal program is not everyone else’s ideal program. This kind of thing turns into something of a puzzle, because you’re also balancing what you think people want to see against what people actually propose, and the two do not always link up in useful  or obvious ways.

Variety is therefore good, as long as it’s tied to the core goals of the event. You don’t want every item to sound similar to every other item. And you  really don’t need duplication: even in a divination-focused event, you would not want three different Tarot 101 workshops with nothing that clearly distinguishes one from the other.

However, you might well want three 101 level workshops that approach Tarot reading in markedly different ways, or you might have three different teachers talk about how they teach 101 classes. With clear descriptions and thoughtful scheduling, this might be a really cool compare and contrast opportunity for the right audience.

So how do you balance it?

Here, we hit a particular combination of problems.

Not everyone knows everything: Your nice programming staff folks presumably get the same 24 hours in a day as the rest of us. It’s safer to assume that there will be gaps in their knowledge.  (Even the folks who’ve been around the community for decades haven’t lived everywhere, learned every path, etc.) Sometimes those gaps will be minor. Sometimes they will be substantial.

Programming best practices, therefore, do their best to make it easier for the programming staff to do their job – namely, create a schedule that does not put all three items on Specific Topic at the same time, and to deal with any limits, special requirements, etc. that may be involve with the help of the presenters, and to be aware of topics that may need delicate or thoughtful handling. But they don’t expect the programming staff to be experts in every field – that way lies misery and failure and lots of hurt feelings.

Expecting the programming staff (or any event staff, while we’re at it..) to mindread is an exercise in everyone’s frustration. Event planners can and should make it easy for people to tell them the information they need to know (we’ll come back to this), but presenters making proposals also have a responsibility to do their best to clearly indicate any limits, specific needs, considerations, or other topics. They know their topic and proposal best.

More eyes is better. Since no one person is going to know everything, more eyes help a lot. (I’m a librarian. I *still* don’t know everything: I just have a highly trained set of skills in where to start looking.) However, this means building enough time into your deadlines that reliable, thoughtful people with broad experience in the relevant communities can look over your proposals and say “Hey, should that have more clarity?”

Do not expect attendees to mindread either. People will read programs and other information when they are tired, wired, undercaffinated, underslept, distracted, and much more. Make things as crystal clear as possible, in unambiguous but caring wording, if you are expressing limits, restrictions, or other absolutely necessary information, etc.

Fundamental questions:

Now, we come to some fundamental philosophical questions. Like most philosophical conundrums, there is no one right answer: however, answering “Yes” to some of these questions may logically require a “Yes” or “No” to others.

Should all items be ‘open to all’? This is one approach to take: create a policy that all official items at the event must be open to all registered attendees. However, this has two problems.

First, realistically, there are practical, health, and other limits that mean they won’t be. An event beginning at 11pm is not accessible to people who need sleep and who also need to get up early. An event that is open to very young children is not suitable for some kinds of work (and an event at 9 or 11pm is probably also not going to work for them.) An event that has a lot of dancing is somewhere between less accessible and not accessible to someone with mobility challenges. A dimly lit event is not accessible to someone who lipreads. I could go on, but you get the idea.

There may be no stated limit on who can walk in the room, but some people will end up feeling like they’re left out. Statements about how “all events are open and welcoming to all registered members of the convention” will just make them feel more so, and with good reason.

The other problem is the personal history issue: there will be times, in any sufficiently sized community, that people will have significant personal differences. Someone running a ritual may need to say “Other people are welcome, but one specific person, my ex-husband who’s trying to get custody, isn’t.” We hope not to need this one often, but it’s common enough that sensible event planners should be keeping the possibility in mind and have policies that deal with it.

What’s the difference between protected spaces and discriminatory spaces? There is a long history of events offering shared community space for people in a particular situation – whether that’s people who share a gender identity, an orientation identity, a racial or ethnic identity, having shared a particular kind of experience.

Many people find these valuable and important, both as a way to help manage strains and stresses of a larger event (where they may feel marginalised in various ways), and as a way to connect with other people with similar experiences. Removing limited spaces from the entire event also removes these.

How do you solicit the right balance? People do not propose the precise combo of things you’d like to see. It might a great idea, for example, to have rituals that speak to every possible range of a particular identity or range of experience. However, your chances of actually getting people to propose compatible items that fit every possible need in the spectrum of choices in a single event are … well, unlikely. That leaves event planners in the position of either needing to go solicit people to run a particular thing, or of leaving gaps. Neither is a really great solution.

(I’ll also add a particular planning challenge here: sometimes you think you’ve found just the perfect balance between different areas of focus or interest, and then all of a sudden, one of them has to cancel and you may not have time to find a workable solution.)

In short:

It’s the job of the planners to create the shape of the event. It is not their job to fill that shape with color and light and sound and life all by themselves: they need the presenters and ritual leaders and attendees, and all sorts of other folks to help do that for them. Clear communication about the boundaries and edges and hopes for the event go a long way to helping make that happen well – but there are some other steps you can also consider.

This has again gotten long, so I will be addressing things that can help in various directions in a subsequent post.

[It's worth noting . . . → Read More: Responsible ritual announcing]]> I’ve been thinking a lot about conversations around a ritual at last week’s Pantheacon that turned away both transgender women and men at the door without previously making it clear that it was a limited-access ritual. (Two posts with background and links to additional comments can be found here and here.)

[It's worth noting that other rituals at the event were somewhat more explicit about limitations: my quick count through the program found 4 rituals identified as for women only, 2 identified as for men only, a couple with age limitations, and one ritual with additional limitations: all-white clothing and that participants not be bleeding (either via menstruation or cuts/scrapes)]

My thoughts on this are complex, both because of some of my own deeply held beliefs about ritual, and because I’ve had several years of doing Pagan event organizing. And also because of the knowledge that gender identity, the creation of women-only spaces (and how one defines who can participate in them) are both complex topics, and ones where there’s a lot of history, and many people on various angles of the conversation who have strong feelings, many of whom have felt hurt, left out, or otherwise not listened to at various points in the debates on the topic.

My first belief is that when we are talking about participatory religious ritual, that touches about transformation of the self, vulnerability within community or before the Gods, or anything else of that kind, that a fundamental right of the potential participants is to decide whether or not to participate in that ritual at that time. That means providing sufficient information to make an informed decision.

My second belief is the idea of religious group practice as a haptocracy, a word I coined from the Greek hapto or ‘to work’. In other words, the idea that the people doing the largest work to make something happen get the most say in how it happens. The people doing the work to plan and facilitate the ritual don’t stop being participants because they’re planning the thing: they still get to decide if there are circumstances in which they would not be comfortable participating.

Based on these two principles, I do clearly believe that if a group of people want to put on the effort of a ritual, they get to decide who can come. Those choices have a wide variety of consequences and results – but they still get to choose.

Likewise, people who might be interested in attending get to decide if they want to be in that space in that way, given the stated limits, requirements, or other description.

The question of limited access:

I’ve thought a lot about the question of women-only and women-centered spaces since college, as you’d expect from someone who attended one of the Seven Sisters colleges (and one of the four that’s still an independent women’s college – the Seven Sisters were originally the women’s college equivalent of the Ivy League schools.)

My thoughts about *that* are even more complex: I didn’t pick my college because it was a women’s college, but I found benefits there that I hadn’t thought to look for, in ways that conversations with people from co-ed schools sometimes made painfully clear.

We can’t go back, and see what I’d have come out like if I’d gone to a different school (nor adjust for all sorts of other details: would I have met people enough like the wonderful friends I made there somewhere else to change me in the same ways? Who knows.) But I have to believe, from subjective experience of my life (which, really, is all I’ve got) that I’m a different person, and I believe a better person, for the experience.

(I’ll note that, among other things, college was my first real opportunity to see a wide variety of ways that women could be spiritual leaders in community settings: all of the ‘there all the time’ chaplains were women. I knew that women could do these things in various ways in different religions – but that college gave me a chance to see how different people went at the question while working with the same basic community.)

So, I’d also be rather a hypocrite if I didn’t think that limited access rituals and other experiences might not do the same thing in other settings – whether that’s a small ongoing religious group, or a one-time event.

At the same time, my social circles – and the folks I have done or do ritual with – include a number of people who do not fit tidily into society’s male/female gender duality. Some of my friends are transgender, some identify as genderqueer, some have other specific terms, or preferences. While I’m both cis-gender and heterosexual by internal wiring, I tend not to want to hang out in places where my friends are not welcome.

The real problem:

As with a number of my other rants about group religious work, the real problem here is what information should be provided in advance, and how. While the description of the ritual in this case did include a few words that are a clue to people familiar with a particular approach, it neither explicitly said “Women only”, nor defined what was meant by women.

I do know people who find mixed gender religious spaces somewhere between threatening and uncomfortable. (And more who, while they might not go quite that far, find they can relax and be at ease in a different way in women-only spaces than in mixed gender ones, and who like having the option at times.) However, I also know women who very deliberately avoid women-only identified spaces, because they have been abused by women in the past, and mixed gender spaces feel much safer to them.

There is no one solution that is going to work equally well for both these groups of people.

(Even before you get into the complex question of defining what ‘women-only’ space actually means, and how to do that usefully for the context in question.)

Which is, in a nutshell, why I support the idea of groups doing the stuff that works for them, being clear about what they’re doing and who’s welcome, and supporting a wide range of diverse options within a larger community conversation and context. It’s not perfect, and it’s certainly got its own challenges on all sorts of practical levels. But it’s the only thing I can see that’s actually viable.

So, what does it mean to be clear?

It means a number of things.

Groups must be open and honest about any limits. This means spelling them out in clear, unambiguous language, up front.

While this can be be challenging to do in a limited space (such as in a printed program), technology in this day and age makes it easier to provide additional information in other formats (i.e. a group could give a brief limit in the program, and then offer further clarification in an online setting, as I’ve recommended doing with accessibility issues in the past.)

Groups also need to do their due diligence in planning:

Certain topics are hot buttons – often deservedly – in the larger community. At this point, it should probably not surprise anyone familiar with the larger community that gender-limits on ritual (whatever the reason) can be tricky to handle well.

It’s always a good move to be clear about what you want to convey, and to run it by people outside the core planning group to make sure it does that. If the people doing the planning aren’t very familiar with the larger community, that’s a good time to run it by widely-travelled friends in the larger community, the larger event programming chair or committee, etc.

Ongoing groups also have an obligation to ongoing reassessment.

As people, we continue to change, and grow, and learn. Our society continues to change, and grow, and learn. All of this changes how we talk about, and make decisions about, a wide range of topics.

We’ve seen this very rapidly in the area of gender identity and a wide range of pluralism and diversity issues in general over the last ten or fifteen years. As a result, a definition or phrasing that worked five years ago might not be the best choice now. Specific events in a community may suggest particular care around a given issue or phrasing. All sorts of things.

I use a rule of thumb that suggests that designing policies and communication to avoid problems in the past is a good starting place. (Plus, of course, any ones that you can see might become an issue.)

I do also think that groups with large-scale limits have a particular obligation to regular self-analysis to understand where those limits are coming from, and whether they’re still serving a useful role. While, as noted above, I do understand the desire of some people for gender-limited spaces, I’m also very aware that sometimes those limits come from uncertainty, fear of the unknown, or discomfort of other kinds, that don’t actually serve a useful purpose. Knowing which it is can lead to some new growth and maybe changes down the road that allow a group to include more potential attendees or members.

Recognise that limits will turn some people off:

Just as limits might bring you people interested in that shared space, it will also turn some people away. Groups who choose specific limits can do a lot to help with how that comes across in the larger community in several ways.

So what helps?

Be really clear on what the limit is supposed to do: It could be very legitimate and meaningful to create a ritual that is about the mysteries of pregnancy and giving birth to a child.

But that’s not a general women’s mystery, in the sense that it’s an experience shared by all women.

That’s a mystery that specific people with a particular genetic and biological makeup experience, if they choose to and if their bodies cooperate. It leaves out biological women who don’t ever want to be pregnant. It leaves out adoptive mothers. It leaves out people who haven’t been through pregnancy yet. It may be incredibly painful to those who have become pregnant and miscarried. (And, has been pointed out in some of these discussions, there are transmen who’ve been pregnant and given birth in their past, even though they no longer identify as a woman.)

Besides, do you really want to do ritual with groups who can’t get the “what we’re focusing on” and “who gets to do that with us” language close enough together to make sense together? I don’t.

Be clear and unambiguous about the limits in ways people can determine for themselves without having to track down someone planning the event and ask. (Which is a pain in the neck at best, and hard and embarrassing at worst: no one likes hearing “Not for you” in a one-on-one conversation if they can avoid it, and most people don’t like saying it, either.)

If you can’t make a limit sufficiently clear in a way that a reasonable person being turned away would not find overly offensive, you should probably be reconsidering that limit and/or how public that event should be.

If possible, suggest options and alternatives. I do this pretty regularly from the coven perspective (where only a very limited number of people are a potential fit). When I have to say “Sorry, no” to someone, I try to also offer a couple of other suggestions of places that they might check out instead.

And above all, give information in advance: so that people can make informed decisions without wasting their time, energy, preparation, etc. Wasting people’s time just to turn them away is just flat out rude and it’s totally unnecessary.

Conclusion:

As I said, this is in many ways a very complex issue, made more so by the fact that people have vastly different life experiences, interests, and areas of focus. It can be absurdly easy to tread on a sensitive topic if you don’t know it’s there.

That does not, however, remove the obligation to try to do it better, and with more caring, or the benefit that comes from offering options that include the largest possible range of people for the work and focus at hand.