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Chew on THIS, Pagans.

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We set fire to the kitchen last night.

Metaphorically, I mean.

The conversation started while I was preparing dinner, and it continued on throughout the meal and into the clean-up. I woke up thinking about it, and I feel compelled to share some of it with you, my readers; my community of dig-deepers.

I’m not sure how to tie all of this together just yet, and I feel like some of these ideas may be much more foundational for me than I’m even aware. This may be future book-stuff, to be honest.

Buckle up. I’m about to throw a lot your way.

Embodied Theology

My friend has reached the conclusion that any theology which is not an embodied theology inevitably leads to fundamentalism. I asked for clarification.

“By ’embodied theology,’ do you mean, any theology which locates the divine in some place other than in our body, in the place we live, in our immediate world?”

“Yes.”

I instantly saw what she meant, and agreed. Then, I paused.

But doesn’t this create a problem when we approach our altars or ritual spaces and invoke deity/deities to come into our space? Doesn’t the need for invitation imply that they are not present to start with?

I voiced this concern.

“They’re already there,” my husband stated.

Then why, I wondered, do we use language that implies separateness from the Gods or other spiritual beings? Is that useful? Or, more importantly is it accurate?

(Chew on that.)

Reciprocity

There is a conversation happening among some Pagans about the need to make offerings to the Gods in order to win their favor. In essence, I lay some relevant item on my altar and ask that my offering be received, and then — Gods willing — the Gods comply.

My friend framed this as, “Capitalist Theology.”

When she said those words, my mind broke a little.

The idea of reciprocity is very important in ADF as a foundation of right relationship to the Gods. We give as a sign of respect, and to justify our asking. But to assert that in order to get something from the Divine we must first give a gift is very much like saying, “In order to get a paycheck, I must show up at work and do my necessary duties.”

Capitalist Theology.

A different idea of theology was offered up as an alternative: Grace Theology.

(If you feel a Christian-language trigger, please recognize that and try to put it aside for a moment. Take “Grace” to represent something broader, and more universally relevant a concept. If you don’t think it is, we can discuss that.)

Rather than work for your blessings, which is an extension of a Capitalist Theology, one simply acknowledges that there is already a great providence in the world, and we are best served (and best able to serve) by creating more space for receiving. The cultivation of our openness and ability to receive is the foundation of a Grace Theology.

(Now, chew on that.)

Altar Talk

Here’s the thing — every morning I make offerings at my altar, and I use language that asserts that I’m making these offerings to honor and respect the Gods, Ancestors and Nature Spirits… and to be in good favor with them. The question is, when I’m doing this what is going through my mind?

Do I really think that the Gods need my little thimble of oil? Does the Divine need anything? If I don’t believe that these things offerings and sacrifices are absolutely necessary in order to be on the Gods’ good side, what is the purpose of daily ritual?

The conclusion I reached, somewhere between clearing the table and pacing around the kitchen, was that we do these things to create an awareness about what is happening within us; what is already, always occurring. Everything we do in ritual is (or, perhaps should be) focussed on creating an inner awareness of a spiritual constant (i.e. the presence of the Divine in its various forms).

If I make offerings, I am doing so in order to create the experience of gratitude, respect, and reverence. Making regular offerings is also a way of experiencing my commitment to a personal religion, my commitment to the Gods.

(Still chewing?)

Reciprocity + Grace

There can be a balance, we decided as we sat on the countertop, bellies full, between reciprocity and grace. Reciprocity provides people with an opportunity to experience humility, gratitude, thankfulness. These are all useful human experiences. Grace also teaches a kind of humility, because one must accept that no matter what is given, materially speaking, no gift is really necessary.

There is a tension between these two ideas.

Perhaps — and this is the idea that really set me ablaze — it is the act of holding tension between reciprocity and grace that is the foundation of any genuinely relevant theology.

(All chewed out?)

Get ready to spit it out!

Take the time you need. Think on these ideas for a minute. Think about it over the weekend. Think on them for a lifetime, if you’d like. But, really sit with them. Let them burrow deep.

Then, let’s continue this conversation. Share the conversation with a friend. Take it wherever you feel like it should go. Ask questions! Tell me a parable! Anything!

I can’t wait to read your thoughts.

The Urgency to Understand Pantheacon

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I brought my little tin-can altar to Pantheacon, and set it up in my hotel room on the glass, circular end table next to the lounge chair. The conference program was rather stern about not burning incense or lighting candles anywhere in the hotel, but I chose to believe that the rules didn’t include small tea lights and mini-tapers on end tables. Honestly, if I’m standing naked before an altar I can guarantee you that I’ll be the first to notice if something catches on fire.

Bringing my altar with me provided a feeling of continuity at the start of the unfamiliar experience, and doing ritual this morning offered a similar sense of familiarity as I try to make sense of all that’s happened over the past few days. I’ve resisted posting platitudes about Pantheacon, either on my blog or on Facebook, because the experience of this gathering was profound for me. It’s worthy of more than a quick summary.

I recognize that there is a great deal of controversy stirring about online regarding the Z Budapest ritual, and I’m going to give myself a little more time before I write about that. I was at the scene, seated with Thorn and the other 89 silent protesters, positioned directly across from Z when she emerged from the conference room to speak at the group. I wrote furiously in my little notebook to capture as many details as I could, and I intend to put a post together that not only describes the scene of the protest, but also reflects on some of the subtler points that we miss beneath the cacophony of internet chatter and bickering.

I think it’s important to remember — not only for me, but also for those who were unable to attend Pantheacon — that this conference was much more than a single controversy over gender identity and the policies of inclusion and exclusion to ritual. Those dialogues did occur, and are worth unpacking even further. But, we must try to place a single conversation in its proper context, even if we believe that the message at the heart of that conversation is revolutionary, or urgent.

Pantheacon was, itself, a kind of ritual. We gathered in a hotel, sanctified the space, and proceeded to seek knowledge, explore community, and challenge our assumptions about who we are, what we believe, and why we practice as we do. It was a complicated ritual, and, as with most rituals, there is always room for improvement.

Pantheacon was a dynamic and enriching experience. Participating in it affirmed for me a number of things, not the least of which is that I have no qualms about identifying as a Pagan anymore. The discussion about that word, while fascinating for a time, is much less important to me than it was just a few months ago. Not only am I comfortable using the term “Pagan” to broadly identify what I do, I make the distinction that what I do is not all of who I am. Moving into this awareness is liberating.

I intend to explore these revelations in the coming days, as well as to describe what I discovered about my relationship to ADF Druidry, OBOD, and Celtic Reconstructionism, what it felt like to invoke the spirit of Inspiration into ritual space, and what immediate challenges I believe have been presented to me for my own spiritual growth and development.

I’m not going to try to do this all at once. I don’t feel an immediate urgency to understand Pantheacon, right now. I’m going to take my time, let it steep for a little longer. After all, the energy raised in a ritual truly begins to serve its purpose once the ritual has ended, no? If that’s true, then the real effect of Pantheacon begins now.

Rather than become overwhelmed by that truth, I approach my altar and light a candle. I center myself, call upon Those who I call upon, and carry on with my life. I hold on to the thread of continuity which led me to Pantheacon, and I trust this it will lead me to more enchantment, more challenges, and more opportunities to serve my community, my land, my Gods. I do all of this with a deeper sense of self, a burgeoning belief about my purpose as a writer, a teacher and a creative soul, and with the feeling of profound gratitude.

That is where I begin on the first day after my first Pantheacon.

Isaac Bonewits holds me up… Pants and all.

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I’m wearing Isaac Bonewits’s belt buckle. Have been for days.

The pewter Pan, which once held up the pants of a great Druid, is now playing his flute just above my zipper. This seems both an appropriate and terribly dangerous location for the randy God.

I’ve never been a devotee of Pan — at least, not in the traditional sense. I was a bit rowdy in my younger days. As a gay man born at the tail-end of the gayest, most sexually liberated, pre-AIDS decade in the century (1979, to be exact), I spent the better part of my early 20’s trying to make up for all the good times I’d missed.

Let’s just say… I would have made Pan proud.

But it wasn’t devotion to the Greek God, or a nostalgia for my free loving days that led me to bid higher and higher on the belt buckle, or on the “DRUID” name tag that I also won from Phaedra Bonewits’s eBay store.  No — it was Isaac. I wanted something that had belonged to him, and I wanted it for a very specific reason.

I’ve been drifting for weeks. I’ve had no personal practice, no clear sense of religious identity. One reader of mine, the writer, Gavin Andrew, asked in response to my post, Questioning Paganism…Again,

“So Teo, what do you do? What is it that resonates, in your very bones?”

It was a simple enough question. For Pagans, by and large, it is what we do that defines us. But I couldn’t answer him. Something about the simplicity of his question made me uncomfortable, perhaps because I hadn’t been doing much of anything for quite some time. My only regular act of doing was the picking apart of other people’s ideas, the dissecting of the various rituals I attended, and the mining of my own thoughts, feelings and experiences in search of good blog content.

That’s hardly a holistic, rich, and inspired spiritual practice.

If I’d been truly honest, I might have responded to Gavin in the past tense by saying:

I used to do a morning devotional, ADF style, before my home altar, during which I made offerings to the Gods (a.k.a. the Shining Ones), the Ancestors of blood, spirit, religion, tradition and place (a mouthful, yes, but I don’t like leaving people out), and the Spirits of the Land.

Used to.

I used to meditate, and seek out the presence of divine beings in my mind, my heart, my home and throughout the world I walked in. I used to feel confident in identifying as a Neopagan Druid; one who was seeking to forge something new and authentic in his life. I used to think a lot about Pagan ministry, too, as a possible vocation for me down the road.

These past tense practices are not completely lost to me, though they’ve often felt that way. I like to think that they’ve just been on hiatus; frozen in a stillness indicative of winter. They’ve been trapped under the snow; hidden from the sun.

But, the fire of spring is soon to return.

Imbolc, the holiday which honors the Goddess, Brighid, to whom Isaac was devoted in his life and whose symbol I had tattooed to my wrist on a pilgrimage to Ireland, is just a little over a week away. The winter cannot last forever, and neither can this spiritual stasis. The sun will return, and with it – I hope – will come a renewed, pious fire within me.

I bought Isaac’s belt buckle because I wanted to have something tangible to remind me of these things that I used to be passionate about. I wear it to aid me in connecting to the person who stood still before an altar, heart open, raising offerings to the Great Mystery, in all of its various parts and persons. I wear it to instill confidence, to inspire curiosity, and because it makes me smile. I wear it because Isaac was a person who believed in excellence, and who assumed that all of us were capable of such — if we were to commit ourselves to doing the hard work.

This is what I am doing now. This is how I’m beginning to re-engage with my spiritual practice.

Do the work, I imagine Isaac saying as I fasten Pan to the tattered old belt once worn by my grandfather.

Do the work.

So, this morning I returned to my altar for the first time in months. I tightened up my belt, and did the work.

My Portable Altar

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I have been away from home for nearly five full days. This isn’t that unusual. My work takes me away rather often. But, this is the first time I’ve traveled at all since I began my work on the Dedicant Path.

The trip I’m on now, which still has another 3 days yet, has been a kind of trial run in maintaining my spiritual discipline on the road. As the year goes on I will likely have cause to travel for 2, perhaps 3 weeks at a time, and keeping up with my work – specifically my daily devotionals – is very important to me.

I trust that the academic side of the DP work may be put on pause during long trips. One can only carry so many books at a time, and – alas – most Druid-relevant titles haven’t made their way to a digital format….which, I might add, strikes me as a little strange. You’d think, as Nature Worshippers, we’d be on the forefront of non-tree based media. Why aren’t our titles on the iTunes or Amazon bookstore?

I digress.

I’m OK with taking a pause from academia. But, worship? Worship goes with.

Enter, the travel altar.

My portable altar

This little Altoid box contains all I need to set up the Hallows and create a sacred space for my  morning devotional. Items I brought with me:

1. Matches
1. A tea-light candle
3. A dram of the water from my home-altar chalice
4. An itsy-bitsy offering dish
5. A photo of an Oak tree (just like the one here on Bishop in the Grove)

On this trip I had the pleasure of visiting a great, nearly 200 year old Fig tree, and I picked up this small piece of broken branch from the ground beside it. I’ve been using it for my Sacred Tree (but the photo worked just fine before then).

Having this portable altar has brought my daily tradition with me, and as a result this trip has been imbued with a new spirit and an invigorating energy. There has been a sense of continuity and integration. I’m still the same Druid-y Teo I was back home. I didn’t shed that as soon as I stepped on the plane.

Blessings to Rev. Michael J Dangler for sharing this idea with me. If you find yourself in a situation where you might need to travel, or if you would simply like to have the ability to ritually connect with the Kindred wherever you are, I highly recommend fashioning for yourself a little kit like this.

My Altar: A First View

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My altar is my Cathedral.

It is the place where I go each morning to worship, to pray, to meditate.

I make my altar new with each ritual I perform, infuse it with more of my essence, my intention, my magic.

There is fire on my altar.

There is water on my altar.

There is wood on my altar.

There is a place to make offerings to the Three Kindred, and there is special recognition of Brigid, my patroness.

Atop my altar is The Awen, and Brigid’s Cross.

I placed The Awen above all else because, to me, The Awen represents the Source of All Things. It is, in my understanding, the First Inspiration, the Eternal Fire, The Essence of us all.

The Brigid’s cross is a sacred symbol that I acquired during a pilgrimage I made to Ireland almost 10 years ago. I journeyed as a Christian, along with a group of other pilgrims. On this trip, I first encountered Brigid, visited her sacred well, and established my first, conscious connection to the Irish land.

I have placed a statue of Brigid on my altar. She stands, serene and prayerful, at the edge of a well. At her feet are two young sheep. Her head is framed by the rays of the sun.

I grew up in a tradition that accepted statues as useful tools for focus, but not physical embodiments, necessarily, of the Divine.

I chose to have a statue on my altar because I value the reminder of the Personhood of Brigid. She is a real, active force, and seeing a physical representation of a person helps to keep that understanding forefront in my mind during worship.

In front of Brigid, I have placed the candle, the wand, and the chalice.

I stand before this altar in the morning and make my offerings. I give thanks. I pray. I meditate. I am filled with wonder at just how close the Kindred are.

They are no more than a deep breath away.