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Will you walk with me?

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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

Top of the Week at BITG

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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!

Looking a little closer at Pagan Leaders, Clergy, and Teachers

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"La Lecture," by Auguste Renoir

An online academic journal called Hybrid Pedagogy posted a piece that I wrote about a student’s perspective on pedagogy, which for those (like me) who aren’t teachers by trade, is the method and practice of teaching. There is a discussion happening in academic circles about the changing roles of teacher and student. The “brick and mortar” classroom is being supplemented, and sometimes replaced by online learning environments, and social media tools, like Twitter, are becoming discussed as possible teaching tools.

This discussion may not seem relevant to anyone outside of the academy, but I think it warrants some attention from the Pagan Community, a.k.a. the Pagan/Polytheist/Recon/Eclectic/Many-named people. There might be a parallel worth exploring.

We had a discussion about the difference between what we want from Pagan leaders and what we need from Pagan leaders a few months back. These questions continue to be relevant as we consider how to include our voices in interfaith dialogue, as was suggested we do in a recent Wild Hunt post, or as we ponder with Drew Jacob (a “non-Pagan”) how Paganism might grow into a world religion.

I’d like to open up this conversation again by asking: Should Pagan leaders serve, among other things, as teachers within the community?

DruidMeb voiced something to this effect in her response to “What do we want from our Pagan leaders?“:

“I expect our leaders to not only be polymaths but to also to be compassionate pastoral counselors and gifted teachers. However, in the Neopagan community, we are often inundated with a plethora of self-declared leaders, many of whom do not possess the requisite characteristics to lead well. The failure of these individuals to effectively direct and prepare their members may often lead to burnout, drama, and Witch wars.

The ethical thing to do, if you wish to be a leader, is to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to provide a welcoming and safe spiritual home for your members. If you are lacking in a particular area, you must be mature enough to recognize it, compensate for it or balance it out somehow, and attempt to rectify your shortcomings by educating yourself. If a leader is unwilling to look at their own work critically and evaluate their own efforts, then they are no one I’d want to follow.”

If Pagan leaders or clergy are to serve the Community (big “C”), or their individual community (their grove, their circle, their local Meetup group, etc.), as teachers, should they be involving themselves in conversations about pedagogy outside of the Pagan Community? Teaching comes quite naturally to some, but there are still techniques and skills that are worth exploring in a more formal academic environment. Perhaps those considering a life of service or leadership within their Pagan tradition have cause to pursue this kind of education.

Kate Dennis, a spiritual director and interfaith minister, explains her role as a leader in a slightly different way on “What do we NEED from Pagan leaders“:

“As Pagan clergy I don’t so much see myself as a leader as a resource. My  knowledge and experience is something for others to draw from so they can enrich their own experience of spirituality worship. In the larger context, I am only one of many resources and not an absolute.”

Leader, teacher, clergy — I’m not sure that there is even widespread agreement about the definition of these terms among Pagans, and this may be a good starting point for dialogue.

How do you define these three roles/positions? Do you see there being a connection between a Pagan leader and a Pagan teacher? How about “clergy” — does that word sit well with you?

If you’re a part of a Pagan tradition that trains people to lead or teach, what informs your pedagogy?

Feel free to teach me what you know by posting a comment in the thread below, or engage with a fellow reader about her ideas. And be sure to visit the Hybrid Pedagogy piece to get more context about this discussion on pedagogy.