thoughts from a threshold

Today is my birthday (I’m 33). I’ve spent a bunch of the past few weeks thinking about something specific - about creating the life I want to live in.

I’m single: almost three years post-divorce, and now back at a point where I’d like to consider the possibility of a serious relationship again. But to do that, I need to make space and continue working on balance (and on continuing to expand my social circles a bit.)

I have a still-new coven, and how do I want that to take shape and grow? And how do I give it space to do so, and ways to incorporate ideas and things that are not me? We’ve got a good start, but there’s still a lot of work.

There are a lot of things that interest me: how do I make time for them, or figure out which ones to do? Music is a big thing on the plate, and it’s somewhat emotionally fraught for complicated reasons. There’s writing, and there’s fiber art, and there’s baking, and all the books I want to read, and somewhere in there exercise would be a good idea.

I have an ongoing relationship with multiple deities (the joys of polytheism). How do I continue to nuture and expand and explore within that context?

I have dear friends, family of choice, and family of origin, all of whom I want to spend time with. How do I balance that against scheduling limitations, and other things that also matter to me?

And how do I make my home, my hearth, my work the kinds of space I want to spend time in - between doing the things I want, and managing the mundane responsibilities as well as possible (dishes, laundry, bills).

These things are, to my way of thinking, the most fundamental kind of magic: reshaping my own life at the most fundamental levels with focused intention and desires. But these are all big and complicated issues.

So, I started with a party.

I knew that what I wanted for my birthday was a day full of good food, good company, and great conversation. What I got was all of those and then some (there was also some fabulous mead, and some very thoughtful and caring divination readings.)

But how did I get there?

Well, first, I have loving and caring and generous friends (who are also good cooks) which helps rather a lot. My covenmate hosted (she’s got more space suitable for a larger gathering) and another friend brought homemade scones, a range of delicious fruit spreads, and there was all sorts of other goodness.

Now, a couple of years ago, I might have made a few plaintive noises about what I wanted. And I might well have gotten some of it (I have nifty friends, after all.) But this year, for a range of reasons, I felt a lot more comfortable being quite specific.

And look! Wonderful things happened.

Why did it work?

Well, I was asking for help with things that the people helping generally like to do. That never hurts.

And while this was something of a production (both my covenmate and I spent most of Saturday cooking and otherwise prepping) it was the kind of production we generally *enjoy* doing a couple of times a year.

And third, it tied into other things. It’s a time to celebrate harvest and plenty and abundance - a gathering of great food and conversation and reflection on what to ponder as we move into the dark half of the year certainly fit very tidily in that. And, having poked our heads out and been sociable, we can now focus back on the coven building for a few months.

It’s not only a good model of friendships (and I am deeply grateful to everyone who helped make this happen - whether it was obvious stuff like cooking, or just showing up). But it’s very much a model of how I want to priestess. I obviously have Opinions and Ideas and Plans - capitals quite intentional. But I also want to be doing things I can do with people I care about, and find the things *they* enjoy and look forward to, and so on.

Getting that mix right yesterday? Very hope-inducing for my coming year and years.

The Witches Weekly blog asks a question this week. This week’s asks about Pagan Pride, in part saying “Do you feel it is just a day to gloat about being pagan, or do you think the genuine purpose behind it is to show that there are strong pagans in every community?”

I wanted to answer this one, because I’m both on the board for our local one and have some mixed feelings about it. Obviously, I think overall it’s a good idea - or I wouldn’t be putting my time and energy into it. (I’ve been Programming Chair or co-Chair for the last three years, and this year picked up some additional responsibilities.)

Incidentally - if you’re local, please come. Twin Cities Pagan Pride will be October 4th and 5th at the Sabathani Community Center in Minneapolis. Much more info to come at the link, but there will be vendors, programming items, rituals, entertainment, and all sorts of other goodness.

Some background:
Our event is quite large. This year, I think we’re the only 2 day event in the US. (We discovered on doing our first one last year, that two days is actually easier on the people putting it on than one day was - plus there’s all sorts of additional opportunities and time available.) We have about 20-25 programming items planned this year (I’ll be doing a final count tomorrow as I prep the schedule.), 4 rituals, and other excellent things.

The way I see it, our Pagan Pride event serves several related functions:

• Providing a space for people curious about Paganism to come and learn more about various paths and local community options.
• Providing a non-threatening place for people who have family and friends who are Pagan (or who are just curious) to see a little of what we do (and for some general education.)
• Providing a place for different parts of our local community to come together and share ideas.

We’re lucky in the Twin Cities: we have a sizeable and diverse Pagan community. We have not one, not two, but three stores focused on the Pagan community (and a few others that are more generally metaphysical.) We have a long running full moon open circle, public Sabbat rituals on a regular basis, and a wide range of classes offered. (I’m currently taking a series on herbalism, and am signed up for an astrology class in October and a runes class in early December.) There are a number of active, thoughtful groups in town, who do good things in their own religions and paths.

But at the same time, all the separate paths and groups in the area don’t always get together that often - so it’s nice to have one time a year where people can see all sorts of different kinds of approaches in one place. I think that’s good for those of us who identify as Pagan - and I think it’s a great thing for people who are interested in a Pagan religion, but aren’t quite sure where to start.

I think we generally do a really good job - people learn, they talk, they have a good time. We’re pretty pleased. So what are my mixed feelings?

1) How good a job are we doing at truly sharing the Pagan communities in our area?

This is a hard one to answer. We do a good job of showing some of the variety and range of Pagan religions. But at the same time, not every group is represented every year (we actually have enough groups in town I’m not sure every group *could* be in a single weekend - but in reality, people’s time and energy and schedules have a role.) Some groups have an long-running presence. Some groups I contact never reply and don’t participate as a group.

So, is it a true snapshot of our community? We try, but it’s obviously imperfect.

2) How welcoming are we to people who are new (and often nervous) about Paganism?

Again, we try, but we’ve also had comments over the years about people who’ve come in, gotten nervous, and gone out again. Some comments have been about people wearing ritual robes or obvious jewelry. Some have been about the topics of presentations. Some have been about other behavior.

Overall, we’ve made a decision that we’re not going to tell people what to wear - and that other than basic public behavior issues, we’re not going to tell people who to talk to, or what to do. We do encourage people to be welcoming, and we do have some plans this year to help guide newcomers to some particularly useful places (by having a list of particular workshops and events of interest to people new to Paganism), but I still feel like we could do better at this.

Part of it, though, is about volunteers. I’d love to, for example, have a simple 30-45 minute workshops running every hour or two that just talked about “What is Paganism”, gave a rundown on different kinds of paths (the various witchcraft traditions, reconstructionists, etc.) and answered simple questions. But we need an actual person who’s willing to do that, who will do it fairly and with good information, and who would be willing to cover the same material 4-6 times in a weekend. And who doesn’t have other demands on their time.

3) How we’re trying to do several things at once.

My goal with programming has been to have a little bit of everything - but as I’ve been told on our surveys, this sometimes leaves people with too many choices. This year, I’ve been fortunate enough that scheduling has mostly made it easy to have some clearly defined ‘tracks’ within programming: we have 3 adult programming rooms (plus the ritual space), and I’ve mostly managed to schedule things so that there’s one ‘brand new to this’ kind of topic, one topic for people who’ve been around for a while, and one topic that’s sort of in the middle - usually some kind of specific technique or approach or interest.

But it does sort of get away from Pagan Pride’s core mission of being focused on people unfamiliar with Paganism. Our eventual hope is to split off a day for people who’ve been Pagan for a while into its own event, and have workshops on topics of interest to people in a number of paths - for example, on things like pastoral counseling issues, group dynamics, or specific magical or ritual techniques.

4) How aware the public is, anyway:

Also a tricky one to judge. Due to weather considerations and rental costs, we’ve chosen a site with some drive-by traffic, but not much walk-by movement that’s a little off the most travelled areas. (Oddly, renting the public spaces in our site is *far* cheaper than a park permit and tents: our choices are between a much smaller event outside, with possible rain or cold, or a sizeable one with lots of choices inside, but not much walk-by traffic. I think we’ve made the right choice, but it has consequences.)

We also do our best to get announcements out to a wide range of local news organisations and event listings - but that’s not always something everyone reads or notices.

What to do:
None of this means that I think Pagan Pride should go away. But it does mean that I think there’s some things we should always keep in mind.

• Why are we doing this?
• What are our core audiences - who do we really want to reach, and how?
• How good a job are we doing at that? Are there things we could do better?
• Are we really giving a well-rounded introduction to the Pagan community locally? Can we improve that.
• What feedback are we getting? Is it reasonable (suggestions we can do something about) or stuff that’s way out of our budget/resources/mission? How do we educate people about the realities of what we can manage in a given year?
• Is this the best way to do this goal? Are we going about it in the most practical way?
• What gaps are there in our local community that we can fill? Which ones are we duplicating?

Recent conversation with a friend applying for training with a particular teacher near her got me thinking about a common question. A number of groups or teachers ask some variant of “What do you bring to this group/trad?”. She found it hard to answer - and in talking about it, I admitted I found it hard to answer too, back when I got asked it. (And yet, it’s on one of our lists of interview questions for prospective members, because it really is an interesting question.)

Part of the problem is a standard interview issue. What do you say that fairly demonstrates the stuff you’re good at without coming across as being arrogant? There are obviously ways around this, and many of the standard job interview approaches also apply to religious groups.

But part of it is more complicated. After all - especially with experiential things, like an oathbound trad - you may not have a lot of specific information to go on. Learning about a group, you may not know all of the things that they particularly need or value.

I’m reminded of a long stint of volunteer work I did for LiveJournal (for the Abuse/Terms of Service team, which handles user concerns and some legal issues), where our manager was very attentive not only to whether people were generally competent - but how they fit into the overall team.

I have a real knack for explaining things about technology to people who are not technology users (but particularly parents and teachers or administrators concerned about student online behavior) in a way that is realistic but compatible with the site’s policies. I’d calm them down, give them meaningful options, and they’d go away.

On the other hand, there’s all sorts of things I didn’t deal with as well. I don’t do aggressive particularly well, and while I can cope with it coming towards me, I’m not always good at squashing a particular kind of trouble-making behavior (people keep trying to see if they can get me to back down.) Plus, there were types of cases I just didn’t much like doing. (Everyone has something like this.)

If the entire team had been made up of people like me, it would have been skewed and one-sided, and there would be gaps. And it’s the job of whoever the gatekeeper is for something like that to be aware of that - and to make some decisions based on it.

Now, this doesn’t mean that if we get a prospective group member who’s just like me, or just like L, that we’re going to turn them down, because we’ve already got one like that. But it does mean that we might probe a little more for what the differences are - what strengths they have that we don’t have, what weaknesses they don’t share - and over time, encourage them into a position that continues to develop the new stuff and fill in the gaps.

Which still doesn’t help you answer the question. But it does mean that I think the ideal answer to it is something about “Here’s what I am that may be of particular interest to you in your setting.”

If I were answering that question today, I think I’d say something like this:

[but maybe shorter]

I’m a self-proclaimed geek. I’m not the earliest adopter of technology, but I’m usually at the end of the first wave, when I’ve had a chance to see how it’s most useful and how it fits my specific needs. And I do use technology - broadly and deeply, depending on what it does and what I want.

More than that, I’m a process geek. I am fascinated by how things work, how they fit together, and how to make connections between them. I am not interested in technology because it is new and shiny, but because it has the chance to make something better. Smoother, kinder, simpler, leaving more time for all the other passions and things I’m interested in. Better.

Information is my profession, my hobby, my toy, and my comfort. I can no more stop reading, stop learning, stop trying to understand, than I can stop breathing. But with that information, I bring a wide-ranging memory, a lot of background, and all sorts of other intellectual resources to whatever questions I come across. I don’t know everything - but I know a little bit about lots of things, and can often get up and running on figuring something out fairly quickly. (As long as you don’t actually require me to do the practical science and math parts, where my theory is a lot better than my actual skills.)

Experience is harder for me - but it’s something I know I must engage with. I know that I have to get my nose out of the book, and out of the library, and away from the screen, and I must go and try things. Over the years, I’ve learned more and more how to do that - and I deeply enjoy the time with wool twisting through my fingers, the feel of bread dough under my hands, the harp strings over skin, or the intricate dance and art of close group ritual.

More than anything, though, I’m a synthesist. I need to know the context of something to make sense of it. Facts and dates in history are meaningless for me without knowing the stories of the people who lived - and the arts they created. I am fascinated by the ways to approach library searches and information gathering - but they’re useless without real people’s questions.

I bring all of these to any group I’m part of. Past experiences have taught me not to overwhelm people (and mostly, how to avoid people feeling bad they don’t know the same things: I certainly don’t expect them to, I just think knowledge is nifty.) I’ll feel my way cautiously along until I get a sense of how much sharing of tangents and other unrelated information makes sense.

But I’ll also sit down some night, look at something that’s been going on, and come up with a new way to look at it. Or a new list of resources and ideas. Or a way to present something better. I can’t tell in advance what these things will be - I just know they’ll happen, and when they do, they often help.

As we move forward to considering new group members this fall, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want them to know about the group - and about what questions I hope they’ll ask me (at least, if I haven’t already shared the information.) So, a post about some of these related issues.

Sources of information:

First, there are a number of possible sources of information (in general terms). Some of these include:

Handouts/flyers:
Typically short (a flyer’s probably under 100 words) but enough to find out what’s out there, and check out their website or contact them for more info. Very general idea of their focus.

A profile on Witchvox or a local Pagan networking site.
These are usually brief - 2 to 5 paragraphs, maybe - and don’t have a lot of detail. However, they are enough to get the basic idea of what a group’s focus or interests are, and to weed out anything that absolutely isn’t what you’re looking for.

Website or other longer material:
Websites will have far more space and can give more detail. If you’re looking at a group in a well-known and widely-spread tradition or path, do some reading on the path/trad in general: it’ll give you an idea how the specific group fits. Make note of any inconsistencies: you probably want to sort them out or ask about them later.

Initial email:
I should do a post soon on “emails I’d love to get from seekers”, but in the meantime: emails should be short, to the point, and focus on any make-or-break information for you. Save your religious history, the weird thing that happened last weekend, and your esoteric view of the world for later. What’s a make-or-break thing? General schedule, location, medical considerations (allergies, mobility issues, etc.) and anything else that would make a group an absolute no-go for you.

Initial meeting
Commonly, there’ll be some sort of meeting in a public place. There’s two common options here: meeting in a coffee shop, or some sort of intro class or event. Either way, they’re an excellent way to get a lot more information about a group.

My former group offers a short series of public (by donation to cover expenses) intro classes. These give a chance to see how group members interact, and give you a sense of the primary interests and focus of the group. (For example, the fact that ethics comes up early and often)

My new group is going the coffee shop route, because our focus as a group is a little different, and because I do my best in one on one conversations with new people. In practice, this will be at least two members of the group, plus the person interested, and we’ll sit down and talk to them a little about a range of things. (I’ll talk more about our “Interested in us?” process sometime soon, since we’ve got a potentially interested person we’re meeting with next week.)

Further conversations:
As you get to know a group, you’ll have further conversations with them - and often, many further bits of information will come out quite naturally. For example, a group may not talk extensively about their history in the first meeting (just briefly), but as you spend time with them, you might hear casual references to their teachers, other tradition members, etc.

The rest of this post is about the kinds of things you might want to find out from all of these sources combined.

What you might want to know:

Obviously, some things on this list will matter a great deal to you. Others may not matter much at all. Some may matter only in a purely practical sense once you attend group events. Pick the ones you’re interested in - though I’ve tried to give some context for why these pieces of information might be of interest early on.

Look over at my list of questions to ask yourself for more detail on some of these.

Location:

Meeting place: Can you get to it (by whatever form of transportation you’d be using) at the times events occur? (Many buses run different weekend schedules: at my former group, this meant getting to the covenstead by bus on weekends was quite complex and involved a long walk - not a great combo in a Minnesota winter.)

Kind of meeting space: It might be a private home, a rented space, or some combination. Is it the same consistent location or different ones, depending? Where they meet will have an effect on the kind of rituals they do (due to privacy and practical issues). Using a consistent space can build up a persistent energy and ritual focus, but using varied spaces can help make use of the best space for a particular ritual.

Questions related to your specific needs: Think about everything from allergies to mobility issues to any other things that would make a space better for you - or a big problem.

Focus:

Group focus: Are they working in a particular tradition, path, or religion? Is it an open group, a closed one, a teaching-focused group, a working group, or what?

Now and future: For example, you might want introductory training now - but if you’re looking for a long-term group commitment, you also want somewhere that isn’t just focused on training, but that has other things to offer. Does this group do that? (Groups that don’t are fine, too - just be aware in advance.)

Doing things together: Obviously, you probably won’t get a rundown of every single thing they’ve ever done - but it can be good to know what general things they do, or to get some examples of recent group events over the past few months. This might include questions like how often they do specific things (meditations, spellwork, etc.) in ritual.

General ritual structure/method of doing things: For various reasons, you may not get the full complex explanation up front (see the last section of this post for some reasons why), but you should be able to get a basic summary. Many groups will have attendance at a suitable ritual as part of their getting-to-know process, where you can see for yourself.

History of the group:

Length of time they’ve been around: Duration is not a good marker for quality - but a group that’s fairly new will have some differences than one that’s been around for 10 years. It’s good to know which one you’re working with.

Level of training/experience of group leaders: Again, number of years is not perfect - did they do 5 years of intensive training, or one year ten times? But how did they learn what they’re teaching and doing? Did they get experience helping to run a group before leading one?

Experience level of group members: This can be tricky - there are all sorts of reasons for shifts in small group membership - but healthy groups probably have a few members who have extensive experience, a few are fairly new, and some who are in between.

Be a little cautious of groups with one or two experienced leaders, and where everyone else is very new. There are some good reasons - for example, a training-focused group together only for the duration of training or a newly founded group in their first year or three. But it’s also sometimes a sign of a leader who can’t stand to be challenged, or of some other less than great dynamic in the group.

Community interaction: Is the group involved at all in the broader Pagan community? Do they belong to a larger umbrella organisation like Covenant of the Goddess? Do they sometimes participate in (or host) general public rituals, teach open classes, or anything like that? Not all groups do these things - but it can be a good way to learn more about the group.

Connection to other groups: Within a Wiccan or Wiccan-based setting, this is where we start talking about their tradition. How do they fit with other groups in the tradition? If possible, learn a bit about how the tradition normally handles things, and use it to compare with the specific group. (This is hard for small trads, though.) Ask more questions about any differences you find.

Lineage: Some traditions pass down an energetic connection to the tradition (and often the deities of that tradition) through what is referred to as ‘lineage’. If this matters to you, ask how you can confirm their lineage. (This is not a question to ask straight off: it’s a question for when you’re at the point where you’re seriously considering a commitment to them.) You may also wish to ask tradition-specific lists or resources for help.

Expectations and commitments:

Time: Weeknights? Weekends? At times you’re able to attend, or times you have other commitments? How often do they meet, and for how long? Does this fit into the rest of your life? For training groups, ask about how much time they expect you to spend on at-home work on a daily basis.

Costs and expenses: Charging for training is a complex conversation in Pagan settings, as a number of traditions forbid charging for initiatory training, some groups ask for dues for expenses, and some teachers charge significant amounts for training. Are this group’s practices in line with the rest of their tradition or path? If that’s not relevant, do the costs seem to be in line with what they say they value?

Other expenses: Beyond this - there are always going to be some expenses associated with a group. These might include sharing in supplying consumables for group ritual, bringing potluck food, and so on. You may also need to acquire specific personal ritual tools, books, or other things. I’ve got a post breaking down some of the costs of group work for the curious.

Group practices: Ask about any group practices or approaches that you care about. For some people, this is working skyclad. For others, it’s questions about the role of gender in ritual. For some, it’s about focus on specific deities, cultures, or other aspects works for that group. Again, my list of individual questions has lots of things to consider.

Behavior:

Finally, we move into the more nebulous things. One thing I really want to know about any group I’m interested in - Pagan or not - is how they behave, how that behavior fits with their stated values and priorities.

I always suggest people interested in a group make a serious attempt to see a group in action in ritual, in some sort of teaching setting (whatever makes sense, depending on how they train), and in some social settings. This gives you a good range of data - and should give you a chance to see at least one situation where something doesn’t quite go right, and how people deal with it.

One of my favorite things is to observe how someone treats waitstaff in a restaurant: it’s often quite revealing. (In general, any ‘treating someone who is lower on the status pole’ setting will do.) How do a group’s leaders treat students or less senior members? How do they treat each other?

It’s important not to make a decision based on a single interaction (unless it’s truly a deal-breaker for you). Everyone has bad days - but more importantly, people come from different cultures and backgrounds. What looks like a no-holds barred painful argument to many Scandinavian-derived Minnesotans (my current home) can be totally normal wrangling in the Irish or Italian homes of the Boston area where I grew up. It’s good to see how people treat each other after a disagreement, not just the disagreement or frustration itself.

Approach:

I’m really fond of the idea of figuring out what my victory conditions and my fail conditions are for choices.

For example: the new coven? My idea of a success for it is if we have a few people who are deeply interested in what we’re doing, willing and able to participate regularly and sincerely, and we have ongoing things to do together.

I don’t, however, care about having lots of people (and in fact, that’s a failure condition for me: I really do best in communities smaller than 10-12 for closer emotionally-involved work). I enjoy well-staged rituals, but I don’t care if I don’t have them. I care about having a reputation for cluefulness and general competence - but I don’t care about being popular or whether people not involved directly in what I’m doing agree with all my choices.

These things shape how I make choices for my group - just as similar things shaped my own search for a group. I wanted a group I could learn from, a group that I could build a solid structure with. What I found was much more than that - there were things in my tradition I didn’t know I wanted or was looking for, but found, which is both the way it should work, and yet something you can’t plan for.

When someone won’t answer:

It’s quite possible to hit on a topic that gets into a discussion that’s usually considered private to the group. And, for some groups, there may be oathbound material - or simply material that gets very complex to explain unless you take quite a bit of time.

For example, I can do a general description of how we approach constructing our ritual circles. But if you want me to start getting into details or specifics, that’s a much longer conversation - and really not suitable for an initial meeting, because some pieces of it are things we talk about only with people who really need the details, or they just plain take a while to explain the different facets of. So, initially, we start with some basic stuff, and delay the long/involved conversations until someone is a student.

Some of it is for privacy/safety reasons. I’m glad to give general information about where we hold meetings (neighborhood/area of the city), but I’m not going to hand out my home address on a first contact. (And, because I’m somewhat averse to answering my phone, I’ll give people my email address long before I do phone number, unless they have a particular need for phone calls.)

This topic deserves a longer conversation, but this at least gives you a place to start.

So I could reference it in a post elsewhere, I just posted a version of the Tam Lin story I wrote for a ritual over here (Complete with further explanation!)

I do have more posts with content in progress - the start of the school year always scrambles my brain and my free time a little, but I’m getting back into the swing of things this week.