Amazon.com Widgets
Currently viewing the tag: "Bishop In The Grove"

Letting go of Bishop in the Grove

Written By on

Bishop in the Grove is just shy of three years old. The coming Solstice is its anniversary.

I’ve written here about my doubts, my interests, my questions and my fears. I’ve engaged with Pagans, polytheists, Druids, Christians, atheists, Buddhists, Humanists, and many a wayward Witch. I’ve written my way into and out-of Paganism, and I’ve found myself reoriented back toward the religion of my youth. This blog has documented a great many shifts in my thinking; some exciting for my readership, and others not so much. I’ve offended people, challenged people, encouraged people, praised people, and in all of it done my best to be honest, kind and thoughtful.

I’ve fallen short a few times, but I’ve given it my best.

And now it’s time to say goodbye to this blog.

h-k-d - Man walking away
I’m no longer walking in that grove I entered into back in 2010. I’m investing myself in a completely different study, one that is not the blending of Pagan and Christian paths that I thought it might be. I’m building community with other Christians — on ground and in person — and I’m planning to undergo a focused course in spiritual direction after the 1st of the year. I’m actively discerning what feels like a “call”, and considering the possibility that this call is one to ministry. I’m not certain whether this is a call to ordained or lay ministry, or whether it might just be a call to a simple Christian practice. But I know that my heart is being pulled to serve others. That’s how this whole wonderful mess got started.

Writing on this blog allowed me to cultivate a voice I never knew I had. It validated the part of me that isn’t the performer, or the “minor-league celebrity,” or any of the other things I’ve been known for in my music career. It validated something much simpler and more ordinary, but also much richer and more complex: the pull toward the Divine.

I will continue to write about my journey on my new web journal, Holy, and I will keep BITG online as a web archive. I’m looking forward to using the new Ghost blogging platform, which emphasizes simplicity in web publishing. It’s much less dependent on the “bells and whistles” you might find in a WordPress backend. I’ve given thought to blogging my way through the Episcopal Lectionary, or maybe even the Daily Office. I’m not sure yet. But feel free to follow along, if you’d like.

I pray that all those who have visited this blog and contributed to my spiritual journey continue to grow in your own spiritual lives. I pray that you be led to the spiritual homes that nurture you, and that inspire you to engage fully with the world you live in. I pray that you increase your capacity to love, and that you extend this love outward and inward without reservation.

Thank you for walking with me.

Blessings, Teo

Will you walk with me?

Written By on

aloha_75 - Walk with me

In yesterday’s post on The Wild Hunt I talked about Awen and about my creative process. It wasn’t standard fare for that site, and not the most widely read and shared post that I’ve written, but it was a very natural thing for me to write about.

A song is little more than a conversation between the songwriter and the listener. The more honest the songwriter can be about her truth, the more deeply the words will connect with the listener. A song can be a testimonial, a sermon, a proclamation, a confession, or a plea, but a song is never a monologue. There is always the listener, and though the listener may not be able to communicate directly with the songwriter she is processing what she hears; translating it, transmuting it, absorbing it, becoming it or rejecting it. As the songwriter has undergone a personal transformation in the process of writing the song, so, too, will the listener undergo a similar process when she hears the final work. The more raw the former, the more impactful the latter.

I write songs. It’s my gig. For about 1/3 of every month I’m in Los Angeles writing, doing work in the ever-evolving Music Industry, and I really enjoy it.

When I started this blog I was of the mindset that there needed to be a separate space for me to do my spiritual work. I couldn’t allow overlap with the promotional work I was doing around the release of my album. That could get messy. Too many people were invested in the success of the project for me to put that in jeopardy by being transparent, I though. But what I’m coming to discover is that there is really is no way to avoid overlap.

You don’t have your “spiritual life” in a vacuum. You are all of the things that you are, pretty much all the time.

At least, that’s my experience.

For me, my creative process opens up spiritual understanding. And many times my spiritual explorations lead to creative inspiration. It’s interesting to me that I was so desperate to compartmentalize my life when I started this blog considering that many of my songs are directly influenced by different periods of my religious life. You can’t extract my spirituality from my music. Just ain’t gunna happen.

So why keep the music apart from my spiritual work?

That’s a question I’m asking myself as I think about the future of Bishop in the Grove.

Over the past few months my life has been reshaped in very interesting ways. I’m no longer affiliated with any particular tradition, although I am opening myself up to the Bardic Grade studies of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD). I’m living in a new city, meeting new people, and finding that just around every corner of this luscious, green place there is some perfectly ordinary, yet totally pagan joy to be experienced. I mean, there is street-side composting here! People know where their food comes from (see Portlandia episode 1 for proof). It’s almost as though this entire town is kind of pagan in practice, even if it isn’t Pagan in identity.

So there’s all of this newness in my life, which includes a newfound sense of presence in my creative work. When I go to LA to write I feel like I am doing exactly what I should be doing with my life. My writing feels certain. Solid. I feel in total alignment as a person when I’m in that creative space, and I won’t accept that that sense of alignment isn’t also connected to my Druidry.

It was the emphasis on creativity that first led me to OBOD. They start you on the Druid path by encouraging you to invest more in your creativity; to find the Awen and come to better know how it can move though your life; to help you become a bard.

And if there was anything I think I was made for, it’s that. I mean, I am already a bard, in a modern sense. This is what I do. This is what I have always done. I’m curious if there’s a way to re-contextualize the songwriting work as “bardic expression”; to sort of reverse-engineer my perspective about the spiritual nature of creativity.

I think this is a good way to move forward. I think this is the direction the Awen is moving, if you will. It moves toward greater integration. It moves toward a deepening of practice by way of investing in the practices that encourage feelings of love and wholeness.

This will be the direction I walk, friends. I hope you will walk with me.

Photo by Sam Howzit

I Was Not Ashamed at Pagan Pride

Written By on

A year ago I wrote about feeling ashamed at Pagan Pride.

The circle was to blame, I stated.

On Saturday, to my surprise, I found myself standing in a circle at another Pagan Pride, but this time I was helping to facilitate ritual. I was “West,” to be specific.

I stood in a circle, one that, when uncast, would close out the Salem Pagan Pride Day festivities, and — thankfully — I did not feel ashamed. (In fact, I can scarcely remember feeling so affected by the experience last year.) Instead I felt like I was participating in a community gathering that meant a great deal to this group of people.

I felt humbled, I think.

cieciel10_ Crochet Circle

Standing across the circle from me was a young girl, perhaps in her mid-teens, and I swear to you she was so present in that circle. When everyone turned from direction to direction, thanking the elements (which is a part of OBOD ritual but very much not a part of ADF ritual), this young girl put her whole body into giving thanks. She was participating in the theater of the event in a way that reminded me of the most pious Christians in church, genuflecting before moving through the pew and bowing their heads as the cross made its way to the altar.

This girl was doing her religion hard.

And I found that heartwarming.

It wasn’t my experience, though. I stood amidst a few OBOD members, all students of the Bardic grade, and a smattering of eclectic Pagans and I had no clear idea of what all this meant to me in a religious or spiritual sense. But looking at that girl reminded me of myself at some other point in my life. It reminded me that there was a time when I participated fully in my religion; eyes closed, hands clenched or opened wide to the sky, heart full of wonder, or mystery, or gratitude.

That was me once.

And it could be me again.

This girl gave me hope, which was something I hadn’t expected to feel when I went to the Salem Pagan Pride day event. I went with as few expectations as I could, and I was resolute not to pick aspect the event as I had last year.

Showing how something is flawed is not necessarily a constructive act, nor is it always the kindest thing to do. I’m working on being more kind.

Last year I was genuinely affected by the circle but this year it seemed benign. I wonder how much my experience in Denver was characterized by my belonging to ADF and my adoption of ADF’s ritual practice.

The Druid Fellowship is not anti-Wiccan in any way, but it does a great deal to make clear how the two trads are different. There’s a pamphlet passed out at most ADF festival booths which explains the distinctions (how ADF does not cast circle, how it sees the gods as distinct beings rather then emanations of the God or Goddess, etc.). The organization isn’t hateful toward Wicca in any way, but there was always the sense that it was important to identity how ADF Druidry, unlike OBOD, works hard to remain distinct from that tradition.

OBOD’s approach to Druidry is much more similar to Wicca, and as I consider starting up with my Bardic studies again — perhaps even working my way through the Ovate and Druid grades — I have to reconcile that this “simple shape” which “introduces our early minds to geometry, to symmetry, to physical and social design,” and that was held to blame for my feelings of shame last year might end up becoming a bigger part of life.

/enter_humility

natura_pagana - Humility

I have a lot to learn. I feel like a beginner again, like I haven’t spent the past two and a half years being some kind of Druid. As I make introductions into the Pagan community here in the Willamette Valley, I have to soften my edges a bit. The ways in which I’ve been hard and jagged no longer serve me, and I don’t think they’re all that helpful in the process of community building (however gingerly I approach that process).

So I’m considering the circle again. I’m asking it to forgive me for being so harsh before. I may have used it to make a point about othering in a way that was unfair to the event organizers. When I said the casting of circle turned us Pagans into The Church I was taking too big a leap. Clearly others thought so, too.

This is my 200th post on Bishop in the Grove, and yet it could just as easily be my first. I am still a beginner, and about that I am not in any way ashamed.

 

Photos by cieciel10 & Diego da Silva

A Reaction to Living

Written By on

I am on the cusp of a new beginning.

New beginnings are terrifying. And liberating. And challenging. And not without a degree of nostalgia and loss. Things have to end in order for other things to begin.

Circle of life, and all that stuff.

My house is almost completely packed up. Our bed is on the floor, without a frame. We sold the bedroom set a few weeks back — in part because we’d grown tired of it, but also for the cash. Sleeping on the floor has been a strange, college-like experience. I feel like I’m in my early 20’s again. That is… until I see someone in their early 20’s. They all have so much hair.

My blog has been still and silent for over a month. It’s the longest hiatus I’ve ever taken from blogging since I started this project in December of 2010. (See the archives for proof.) I haven’t really known what to blog about, for one. But even more than that, I’ve been aware of the fact that what I needed most was not documentation of my life, but rather a fuller engagement with my life. Blogging, or any kind of self-reflective, memoir-esque style of writing, when done with extreme regularity, can begin to transform one’s perception of their life. Instead of it being the thing that you are doing it becomes the thing that you might be able to write about.

Life is more than just content.

So I stepped back. No need for a big announcement. The blog wasn’t expiring, nor did I have any real sense of when it would pick up again. I’m not even sure it’s picking up right now, to be honest. But the time away was necessary considering the transitions that were on the horizon.

In two days I will say goodbye to Denver, to all the people who I love, and I will drive across country with my husband, our three dogs, and our truckload of stuff. We’ll arrive in Portland on Monday and then something new will begin.

And I have no idea what that will look like.

natura_pagana - Le Mat

Image by Diego da Silva

When we first started talking about moving to Portland, I had this vision of finding other like-minded Druids and starting up an ADF grove. Oregon seems like a good breeding ground for Druids, and I romanticized the idea of fostering a small community once I arrived. This could still happen, although it won’t be with ADF. I couldn’t say which group it would be affiliated with, as I haven’t been inclined to pursue membership anywhere else just yet. I’m still very, very much a solitary.

A solitary without a regular practice, at that.

So it’s interesting to imagine what this blog could become in the coming months. How, without any religious structure or form, will I continue to reflect on or engage in a spiritual life? Have I been that dependent on belonging to a group in the past that I cannot write and reflect without one?

I don’t think so, but I don’t know.

That’s the thing about new beginnings. The are necessarily shrouded. They are not transparent. There is mystery inexorably woven into every aspect of them. We don’t know where we’ll get our food, walk our dogs, build community. We don’t know how the weather will feel, how the land will look as the seasons change, or how we will be embraced by the people of Portland. We have no clear sense of what the future will bring.

But I think that those are the conditions which make possible some real magic.

So maybe when we get to Portland I’ll start blogging with more regularity. Maybe I’ll write about what it feels like to live around so much lush greenery. Maybe I’ll write about what it’s like to live so close to a river, or in a place that’s not dry as a bone. Maybe I’ll stumble upon some little metaphysical shop and spark up a conversation that leads to a post, or I’ll meet a Witch or a Druid or a Unitarian that I’d only known on Facebook, and maybe that interaction will shed light on something that has, unbeknownst to me, been hidden. Maybe I’ll discover a spiritual practice again. Maybe I’ll find the room to try something new, or better yet, to try something old, something forgotten, underutilized, or neglected. Maybe there will be more new beginnings than I know what to do with, and I’ll have to write about all of them.

Or maybe I’ll do something altogether different.

I don’t know.

This time away from blogging has reminded me that you have to live a meaningful life first, and then write about it. You can’t write your way into happiness, or understanding, or peace, or even wisdom. You — or, more specifically, I — cannot just parse out life within the pixels. I have to get a little dirty. I need to spend some actual time being embodied.

Writing is not a substitute for living. Writing is simply a reaction to living.

 

A few added notes:

• Check out the upcoming edition of Witches & Pagans with Your’s truly on the cover and pre-order your copy here. T. Thorn Coyle asks some insightful questions, and the conversation that ensued went to places I hadn’t expected it to go.

• The good people at Belham Apothecary (aka Horn of Hern Home Arts) sent me a delightful little gift basket of incenses, soaps, perfume blends and ritual items. The owners of the shop are a delightful young couple from Georgia, and I’d highly recommend paying their Etsy shop a visit.

• In case you missed it here is my writeup of the Sacred Harvest Festival on The Wild Hunt. I have a feeling I may do more reflecting on this experience once we get settled into our new home.

• Lastly, if you’re an Oregonian and we haven’t already met on Facebook or Twitter, please say “hello” in the comments. We don’t know many people in town, and it would be great to feel like we aren’t complete strangers when we arrive.

Bishop In The Grove on Temporary Hiatus

Written By on

Juggler

Bishop In The Grove needs to go on a temporary hiatus.

These are the words that popped into my head yesterday. As soon as I heard them, I knew they were true.

Blame it on the New Moon.

I’ve had the feeling for a little while that something needed to give. I’m a decent juggler (3 oranges, no more), but the message was clear:

DO LESS.

My schedule has been quite full lately. Between my contributions to The Wild Hunt, my seasonal entries to HuffPost, my work for the Solitary Druid Fellowship, and the small pile of books that have come my way via Witches and Pagans to review (not to mention Thorn’s book that we’re tweeting about on a daily basis), I’ve been stretched pretty thin.

Then yesterday hits. I take a meeting, and during the meeting I realize that a dream project is staring me straight in the face. A quiet voice inside says,

This opportunity is yours, if you’re willing to do the work.

And I’m willing. I knew that instantly. I want to do this. I’m uniquely qualified for the work, and excited at the challenge.

So, the blog needs a break because I need to be less divided.

The Morrigan’s presence in my life continues to reveal itself.

(What will you fight for? When will you take up your sword? When will you lay it down?) 

I’m not giving up everything, though. That doesn’t feel right to do.

Here’s what I’m imagining:

  • I give myself as long a break as I need from writing on BITG. During this time, when I feel the impulse to write about my thoughts on practice, Paganism, or anything that might fit naturally in the archive, I’ll write about it in a document entitled, “Book.”
  • I keep writing liturgies and devotionals for the Solitary Druid Fellowship. The next will be up in a week or so. Doing service work is soul food, really.
  • I continue as a contributor to The Wild Hunt and HuffPost.
  • I read books when they move me, and not accept any more for review. It’s so hard to turn down a book, but I need to get better at it.
  • I love on my family, celebrate my soon-to-be 18 year old kid, and spend time doing things that make us feel strong and happy.
  • I make music happen.

As plans go, I think this is a good one.

While I’m away, make sure you’re following the Bishop In The Grove feed. If you choose to get your posts by email, you’ll receive my next post directly in your inbox. I highly recommend doing that.

And please know how much I appreciate you. This community of readers has helped me gain clarity in so many ways. I look forward to more conversations with you.

See you real soon.

Teo

P.S. You can also follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Sometimes I post pictures of me in kilts. You won’t want to miss that.

 

Photo by Markus Lütkemeyer

The Stuff of Posts, The Stuff of Songs.

Written By on

writing

I keep three blogs now.

Three.

This means that I’m either always writing or always thinking about writing. My life becomes the stuff of posts, sometimes the stuff of songs. The medium, with its requirements of regularity and consistency, force me to see stories in my life and lay those stories down in text.

When I started this blog, it was my experiences with Druidry that were the meat of my writing. Discovering Druidry was the focus, and unpacking the questions provided countless opportunities to write. What does it mean? How is it relevant? Why? Why?

If I didn’t have anything to write, I probably wasn’t investing enough in my own spiritual work. That’s how I saw it. Writer’s block? Do ritual, read something, dig deeper.

But now with these three blogs — BITG, the Solitary Druid Fellowship blog, and the newest, #allofthesongs — my writing is broken into very different themes.

The SDF blog is an extension of service. I write there, or I organize the writing of others, in order to provide solitaries the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of solitude in their lives. A deeper engagement with solitude is a primary goal of the Fellowship, and this blog encourages that with each new post.

#allofthesongs is my foray back into music. It is the blog I created to give me a place to write about music — my music — and to process what it means to be a songwriter and performer. Many of the readers of this new blog come with the hopes of hearing about famous people, but the fans who’ve been following my career for the longest seem to appreciate the candidness with which I write about my creative process. Transparency is rare in the entertainment world.

But this blog, my First and Foremost, has alluded me lately. This was the place I created to ask questions about my spiritual path, and I’m not sure how to ask those questions right now. My journey into leadership with SDF and the Solitary SIG (a sub-group of ADF for solitaries) has made the asking of questions seem less timely or appropriate. Inquiry for inquiry’s sake might seem confusing to those who are looking to me for direction.

At least, that’s how it feels at times.

Inquiry is so important, though. Asking ourselves why we’re doing the things we’re doing opens up the possibility for new awareness. Our growth is dependent upon our occasional disassembling of our preconceptions and our assumptions. We have to keep asking questions or things get stale. The soil gets hard. Nothing can penetrate it.

Perhaps this is a natural thing to be thinking as we inch closer to the spring. There are eight High Days in my tradition, but sometimes I think it would be better if we recognized the seasons between them instead. These are the days we’re living. These are the days that require context. This season of Imbolc could be filled with inquiries into what it means to me making our way to a place of planting. This time could become a time of closer inspection of what is in our pantry (the one inside) to see what remains after the winter. We could use this time to reevaluate where we are, and to make plans about where we’d like to be when the sun returns.

I think I’d like to bring some synchronicity to these three blogs I keep. The post I wrote on #allofthesongs today is one that could have easily been on this blog, and this a post could have — with a little more focus on practice and solitude — been on SolitaryDruid.org. Maybe that’s the key to managing all of this creative work; to see how the various parts of myself are not actually so separate, and to allow them to become more integrated.

Perhaps this is a season of bringing things together.

Top of the Week at BITG

Written By on

Top of the week to you!

BW Teo Bishop square

This week is starting off with a whole bunch of Internet happenings.

First, it seems that my RSS Email subscribers haven’t been receiving my blog posts since mid-December. Sorry everyone.

Here’s what you missed:

Star says goodbye to “Pagan”

Star Foster

Star Foster

Star Foster is no longer identifying as Pagan.

For some, this news may hold little relevance. People identify as they choose, right? But Star has held a rather prominent position in the Pagan media, and she’s done a lot to champion the voices of many Pagan writers (including myself). She’s done much to initiate conversation (sometimes heated) within the Pagan community, and she’s continuing that tradition with this announcement.

I posted a link to Star’s coming out on Facebook, and now there is a HUGE discussion going on around the post. I encourage you to pop over and read through the comments and respond there. I would summarize them here, but as of writing this post there are nearly 100 comments. It’s tremendous.

The timing of Star’s announcement, and the subsequent dialogue popping up on my FB post, is rather interesting. Heather Greene has posted the first in a two-part series on The Wild Hunt about “Pagan solidarity,” asking whether or not Pagans can support one another as a community, and if it is important to be a united body. In her second post she’ll be unpacking whether or not this kind of unity leads to religious institutionalism.

I wonder if the idea of “Pagan solidarity” is even approachable if the identity of “Pagan” is becoming less tenable. I may blog about this in the coming days on The Wild Hunt, but first I’d like to see how this conversation continues to evolve.

The Solitary Druid Fellowship, and Devotionals

SDF Square LogoLastly, the work at the Solitary Druid Fellowship is going splendidly. The first High Day ritual was a great success, with about 450 people receiving the first SDF liturgy, and many joining in a dialogue about their experiences.

You can read about people’s experiences with the liturgy, and see the group interpretations of the SDF omen in our crowd-sourced Google doc.

There is also a new service provided by SDF — daily devotionals. The first morning devotional was published over the weekend, and more are coming soon. One solitary participant in SDF has already used the devotional and written about it on her blog.

I’m happy to see that people are using this shared liturgical practice to enrich their personal religious lives!

That’s all for today. Happy reading, everyone!

The Road Ahead: Being Matt Morris Again

Written By on

As many of you know, I have two names. There is the name you know me by, Teo Bishop; a name which I chose for myself several years back, and one that I took as my legal name last year. There is also the name which I’ve performed under for most of my life, Matt Morris.

I wrote the following post on my Matt Morris fan page a few days before New Year’s:

Matt Morris in Austin

This year, I got to write with Sarah McLachlan, Greyson Chance, Michael Franti, Joe King, & a whole host of amazing producers. Mary J. Blige cut one of my songs, and so did Cher.

All in all, I’d say that makes for a pretty good year of songwriting.

But being in [Ryan] Tedder’s studio did something to me. There was a moment today when I could see myself writing and recording for *me* again. It was the first time that’s happened in while.

I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions in any strict sense. But I do think that music – my music – may end up playing a more central role in my life in 2013.

This was a revelation. I’m going to do music in 2013, I realized.

Honestly, just writing these words makes my stomach knot up a bit.

Making music was all I did for the longest time. All of my 20’s were devoted to it. Only in the past few years have I allowed myself to explore another creative avenue, blogging, and that has led to wonderful growth and exploration in my personal life.

For one, I managed to get the Solitary Druid Fellowship up and running, and that project is moving forward wonderfully. I’m writing liturgies, crafting prayers and devotionals (which will be up on the site very soon), and I’m living out the kind of ministry that I wrote about so long ago:

Fire, in my imagination, resides primarily in the heart.

Ministry, as I understand it, is the act of nurturing that fire, both in yourself and in others. One who ministers is one who keeps the fire burning, or who teaches others the skills needed for this internal fire tending.

This blog has also been a commitment to my spiritual growth. Bishop In The Grove started out in 2010 as the blog of a student, and it continues to be that on a much bigger scale. Now my religious tradition, my life experience, and my readership are my teachers.

These spiritual projects mean so much to me, and I see them continuing to grow and evolve throughout 2013.

But music? How will making music – my music – fit into that picture? Should it be a “spiritual project” as well?

I’m not totally sure how to answer that question.

The Path, by Cornelia Kopp

The Path, by Cornelia Kopp

Someone suggested I make “Pagan music.” I tried that last year, and I’m not sure it’s the right way for me to go. I never felt right about making “Christian music” when I was a Christian, after all. I think it’s because I think of music, when it’s done well, as a vehicle for uniting people. It’s bigger than any one tradition, any one religion. And (pointing to my own proclivity for Universalism), I respond to music that approches something true about the human condition.

The music I make, or perhaps the music I’d like to make, is music that can be listened to by people of many different backgrounds. I’d like to write – to sing – beyond the boundaries of my current identity, my chosen tradition. I’d like to be bigger than I think I’m capable, and by doing so expand the reach of the sound into new, unexpected corners of the world.

(I haven’t thought these kinds of thoughts in a long time.)

I’m also thinking that I’d like to have my music be simpler than it’s been in the past. I’d like to make it accessible, and beautiful. I’d like it to be singable, and memorable. I’d like to write songs that I enjoy singing, that are comfortable and also challenging.

And, I should probably find a way to incorporate this music making into my daily practice. (Hmm… *twirls mustache*)

I’ve learned a lot about my readership over the past few years, but we haven’t talked much about music. Perhaps that should change.

As I look at being Matt Morris again, I wonder:

What does music mean to you? How is it a part of your life? Are you a connoisseur, or an occasional listener? Do you create music yourself, or have you always wanted to?

Is music a part of your spiritual practice? If so, how?

Tell me —

How do you do music?

A New Year’s Blessing from Teo

Written By on

On this, the last day of 2012, New Year’s Eve, I offer you these words:

May you look back on the year, and feel a sense pride.

May you remember the strength of your character, the resilience of your spirit, and the inherent worth of your being.

May you know that you are a part of an ecosystem, and that your life is sustained by countless other living things.

May you have gratitude for what has been; for all that you have lost, and all you have gained

May you laugh at your mistakes.

May you forgive yourself, and love yourself.

May you be resolved to be more fully alive in the year to come; more present in your body, in your mind, and in your heart.

And most of all, may you be blessed with unexpected joys, undeniable happiness, and unending compassion in the year to come.

Thanks to all of the readers of Bishop In The Grove for being a part of my life in 2012.

Peace,

Teo

 

Teo at the end of 2012

You Say Tomato, I Say Druid.

Written By on

First image that came up when I googled, "Druid."

Ever since I took the name, Teo Bishop, and made it my own — both in a religious sense and through the proper legal channels — I’ve had cause to explain what it is that I do on this blog. My writing, as well as my deepening engagement with my own spiritual work, are both major influences on my decision to undergo this transition.

Identity is interesting, and something that often goes undiscussed. What we are, how we identify, is often more experienced than it is questioned. That is, this seems to be true for many people I know.

Then there are people like me, my queer compatriots, and my Pagan brethren who appear to always be in a rich, complicated, and often conflict-laden dialogue about what it means to be us; always debating which words are right to use, and which are out-of-bounds. In fact, it was my little inquiry into identity with publicly not-Pagan, totally world-adventurer, Drew Jacob, back in May of last year which led to his firestorm-post, Why I’m Not Pagan, and my followup piece, Pagan is the New Gay. The whole back-and-forth put my lil’Druid blog on the map.

When I started writing Bishop In The Grove, my intention was to have this blog be a place for me to document my studies through a training program offered through the American Druid fellowship, Ár nDraiocht Féin (ADF). This was going to be my Dedicant Journal, a series of writings that charted my progress on the Dedicant Path. But, it wasn’t long before my focus shifted, and questions of identity began to surface.

How was I to reconcile the Christianity of my youth with this burgeoning practice of polytheistic Druidry? What, exactly, did it mean to be a “Druid?” How could I avoid falling into the trap of allowing this new religious expression to become a kind of role-play? How was I to remain authentic, both to myself and to my community? (Dig through the Post Archive and you’ll find evidence of all of this….and more.)

The conclusion I’ve reached, which is still very much an idea to be examined, is that my spiritual and religious life is intended to be more of a dialogue than a single state of being. Any religious moniker I take, be it Christian (as it was for two decades), Druid, Neopagan, or Pagan, it is most important to me that this title is representative of an ecosystem of practice as well as serving as an introduction to a discussion on belief. The latter may not be paramount, but it is important to me. Practice also means more than how I approach my home shrine; it also extends to the way I navigate my internal world, the world of ideas and emotions, and which methods and approaches I use to engage with my thoughts and inquiries.

Druid, then, is not simply a title which connects me to ancient Celts, or to other Indo-European peoples; it is a word that is representative of a very modern, very immediate, and very personal religious expression which is influenced by a variety of modern, and possibly ancient religious technologies, some Irish, others American, and some completely unique to me; and at the same time, the word points to a practice of deliberate and persistent inquiry, introspection, and contemplation.

This resonates with me personally, and so this is how I intend to use the term.

But would you say that I have, what a friend recently called, “a Druid’s perspective?”

In an interfaith setting, where individuals are often called to speak as ambassadors for their religious or spiritual traditions, how does my definition hold up? Patheos is an interfaith blogging website, and my blog is the lone Druid’s Grove on their servers, but what I’m talking about is real, person-to-person, interfaith work.

How does the description I’ve offered of Druid resonate with you? Does it make sense? If you use the word to describe yourself, does it feel accurate to your experience? If you reject the word altogether, could you explain why?

Second, could you imagine a situation in which a modern Druid is acting as a representative for the wider community of Druids within an interfaith setting? How would you feel about there being an “Ambassador of Druidry” to other faith traditions?