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Want To Make The Gods Laugh?

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Make a plan, the gods say.

I dare you.

Photo by Fuschia Foot, on Flickr

Ok, ready? You’re me:

You put on your denim kilt, blue button up shirt, and patchwork hat. Your beard is tidy and trim, and your socks pulled up. You load up the car with your husband, a tupperware container of crayons, and a bag of chocolates.

Drive.

After a half hour, you’re at a little Unitarian Universalist church near the foothills.

You unload, begin to arrange chairs in a big, circular meeting room, and you wait. When you can’t wait any longer, you step outside. If you’re going to be nervous, you might as well do so in private.

While outside, you write down your plan (that one I dared you to make) another couple times to make sure you remember it. Your plan isn’t a script; it’s an outline. The plan involves no more than 5 steps, and now you’re beginning to wonder if you can make 5 steps stretch into an hour and a half.

That damn cricket won’t stop chirping.

Your husband comes out, gives you a pep-talk, and you realize you’ve got to go to the bathroom. Of course you do.

You make a dash for the john, then check your watch.

It’s time.

The workshop begins when you step in front of the group. It isn’t ceremonious. You’ve chosen not to be introduced. The first thing you do is invite the group of grownups to make abstract representations of themselves using crayons and glitter paint.

Right way they’re giggling, and drawing, and a couple look very serious about their coloring.

You’re coloring, too. You’re a big tree.

Stragglers come in. (Not according to plan.) You catch them up to speed and check your watch.

You tell everyone to write a word — one word — on their page which represents themselves.

Brows furrow, and people write.

More stragglers enter.

You collect the papers, and start to wonder if everyone thinks you’re crazy.

Once collected, you redistribute the artwork in a different order so that everyone has someone else’s drawing.

Then, introductions. You ask everyone to introduce themselves by describing the picture in front of them. You show them,

“I am a swirly, complicated movement of energy, that is both soft on the edges and pointy in some spots.”

You then tell everyone how creativity is a part of your life, and you invite everyone to do the same.

It’s about that time you realize how much you’re sweating.

It’s also around this time that you realize that people are saying some really interesting things. They’re bringing to the space ideas and concerns that you didn’t anticipate. They’re lighting up the room in ways that had nothing to do with your plan.

It gets back to you, and you freeze for a second.

Plan…plan…what was that damn plan…

You stumble through a story about a Druid festival, and then you invite people to sing.

Then something changes.

You think to yourself,

Singing. Music. That’s right. That’s what I do. That’s what this is about.

Then, you chuck the plan. You start to talk from your heart. When you do, you remember that the whole point of the night was to connect people to that creative fire — that fire in their heart. This seems possible now, because you’ve connected with yours.

Time has flown. People have shared their limitations, their creative outlets, and their doubts. They’ve laughed, and they’ve even given a collective “Hmm” once or twice.

With your heart open, and the fire lit, you lead people to the creation of a song.

The one man with a drum begins to play. You start to sing, and people join you. It’s call and response.

“We are…”

“We are…”

“We are…”

“We are…”

“Eclectic…”

“Eclectic…” 

“Steady…”

“Steady…”

You work your way through all of the words, changing the melody up with each one. People are singing. The drum is playing. You’ve created a song out of people’s words, and they’re singing it back to you.

You realize that this has all been a kind of ritual, one which began with child-like chaos and ended with a group song. You created something from nothing, and got everyone to sing.

It worked.

Today I’ll submit the workshop to Pantheacon. I’ll call it: The Songcrafting Workshop: Creating Ritual Song.

It will likely be quite different at the conference. There will be different activities, different people, and of course…

…a new plan.

The Action of Worship

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My religion is experienced in the doing.

This became clear to me as I entered the sacred space of our ADF ritual at Pantheacon, lifted my voice to invoke the spirit of Inspiration, and, for a moment, left my mind behind.

When I stepped in front of the altar and began to sing, I was performing a religious and magickal act. It was spontaneous and improvisational, and it originated from within my heart. It was the purest offering I could make.

In that moment, I was not thinking about what it meant to be a Druid. I was not weighing the strengths and weaknesses of the various Druid traditions, or squabbling over the definition of a word or title. No – I was invoking. I was calling down, stirring up, igniting the fire of inspiration in my own heart and in the hearts of all those present.

There was nothing intellectual about it.

“Worship requires action – it is not an intellectual task.”

These words came from Jean “Drum” Pagano, a man I met during my weekend in San Jose. Drum has been involved with ADF since the earliest days, and he serves in various leadership positions within the organization. Drum’s voice, in the few conversations we had in person and through his written word, resonates deeply with me.

Have you ever met someone and felt instantly as though you understood something about them, as though something inside them was very similar to something inside you?

That’s how it felt when I met Drum.

Drum says that worship requires action, and I heard that very message echoed by other Pagan leaders during the conference. So much of what we do in our day-to-day lives is mind work. We blog about our ideas, we argue about our differences, we share memes on Facebook ad nauseam (which, in my opinion, is very low mind work), and we allow this to consume great portions of our day.

What happens, then, when we spend our lives in our mind, on our screens, and even in the pages of our books, but we do not practice the action of worship?

It is no surprise that during November and December of last year, a time when I felt most conflicted about my religious path, that my altar was a wasteland; vacant, and unused. I did not approach it because I was uncertain if I believed in the words that I was saying each morning. I thought about it, and thought about it, and when I couldn’t decide how to think about it, I did nothing.

(If you were reading my blog during that time, you might remember a change in my tone. If you weren’t, you’ll find evidence of the change in the Archives.)

The result of my lack of doing was a period of spiritual stasis. In the absence of regular worship I became a bit more cynical, a little jaded even, and there was no sign of the fire in my heart which I speak of so often. I sing from this fire. I write from this fire. I make love from this fire. Worship keeps the fire burning, even as worship is an extension of this fire.

But then, after I became tired of the cold, dim reality of a life without reverence, I began my daily practice again. When I did, something changed.

I lit a candle, prepared a chalice of water, and laid out a wand made of wood. I gave thanks to the Mother. I called upon the God who had aided me before in the creation of sacred space, and was happy to discover that I could feel His presence again. I made offerings to the Gods and Goddesses, known and unknown, to the Ancestors, and to the Spirits of the Land. I lit a fire for Brighid, and gave thanks to Her. I did all of these things, stumbling from time to time, but reverent as I could muster, and my consciousness began to shift back toward the fire.

Worship requires action. You cannot think yourself into a state of transpersonal awareness. You must do something.

I wonder (more of an imaginative act than an intellection one) if you’ve experienced something similar. Have you been through periods when you thought more than you felt? And, if so, did that throw you off? Perhaps you have a different relationship to the intellect altogether. Perhaps it is a starting point for your experience of worship.

I always love to know what my readers think, but this time I’m going ask:

What do you do?

A Beautiful Noise

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I experienced a kind of breakthrough this morning during my devotional. For the first time since I began this path of Our Druidry, I sang my liturgy.

It was a magnificent feeling.

I think the experience was so fresh, so powerful, because the sung liturgy the part of the Episcopal church service I cherished the most. As I mentioned before, I was an acolyte, and I loved the liturgy. Wholeheartedly. I knew the rises and falls of the melody, and was moved by them. I relished in them. I sang along beneath my breath. It never occurred to me before today that I could facilitate that sort of worship on my own.

I had just finished intoning the AWEN, and I was centered and still. I was listening, deeply. From the silence, I heard in my mind, “Sing to Arawn.”

(I’ve learned to follow these voices during worship, and not spend time inspecting them too closely. When you receive this sort of quiet direction, you take it.)

So I did, and the experience was, in so many ways, more natural for me than speaking the invocation has ever been.

The melodies were simple, and reminiscent of those sung back at church. To Arawn, my melody was deeper, fuller; something felt right in singing with a manly tone when calling him. To the Kindreds, I lifted the melody a few steps, and, being that I speak close to the same words for each of my three offerings, I did my best to use the same melody for each of the Three. To Brighid I sang with the most passionate tone, which was still simple in its form (the Priest is never to interject too much, as it is the simplicity and beauty of the voice paired with the meaning behind the words that creates the proper worship experience).

After making my offerings, I thrice intoned the AWEN, recalling “Amen” from church. However, while singing the word I remained conscious that the AWEN is a force, living and moving through me and the world – not simply a statement of closing (as one might use, “So Mote It Be”).

This integration of yet another tradition from the Christian experience of worship feels right to me. There are so many effective aspects to the Episcopal liturgy, and I see no reason why I shouldn’t integrate them into my Pagan experience. This mashup of religious expression is coming from a sincere place, and I believe sincerity to be the most important ingredient in one’s religious life.

So, as I am moved, I shall sing to the Kindreds. I shall lift up my voice in praise to the Gods and Goddesses, the Ancestors who have paved the way for me, and the Spirits that surround me in this great land. I shall make a beautiful noise in their honor, and they shall hear me.