(no subject)
I came face to face with the concept of desecration this weekend, and with my own thoughts and feelings on it.
For the most part, when I am at a place like Spirit Haven or Camp Gaea I have a general sense of "This whole place is sacred." There are, in each space, designated altars (one of which I help to tend), but in my sort of vague and fluffy sense of things I had not considered them particularly separate from the land surrounding them.
This past festival I ran into moments when the treatment of a place I consider to be individually sacred did not match my expectations of reasonable behaviour, and I'm still processing my response to it.
Friday night, someone took a hammer to the stone circle around the Revel Fire and smashed several pieces of the stone off. Theories about who did this abound, and no one has any concrete evidence. Perhaps it was a kid, playing with a hammer to see the pieces flake off. Perhaps it was someone who took issue with the burn ban, or with a member of the fire crew, or with the organisation in general. I can't say. It was deliberate and destructive. The damage inflicted was intentional, though it may or may not have been malicious. Finding out about it struck to my core, and it took me several minutes to come up with the word for what had been done until someone asked if the circle would be re-consecrated. This was my first personal experience with the idea that someone might have deliberately desecrated a space I held sacred, and most of what I felt can be summed up as 'shock'. Because we don't really have much in the way of forensics or investigatory bodies at CMA, our only hope is that someone saw or knows or hears something.
Then, on Sunday, it was discovered that someone had spray-painted on the altar stone and standing stone for Grandmother's Grove, another of the sacred spaces.This was announced during the Great Works meeting, because that's when it was found out. It sparked some interesting discussion of how we treat sacred spaces and what our expectations are from them. Luckily, it was not spray paint but rather colored hair spray, and was able to be removed with soap and water. No permanent damage was done there. It's most likely that this was a kid, because one of the vendors was selling the colored hairspray and fully half the kids on site had it. Again, though speculations abound our only hope of figuring this out is someone coming forward with concrete information.
Through all that is a rising awareness that we do not, perhaps, always respect the places others use for sacred purposes. This was certainly *not* the first festival where Carly and I had to deal with someone camping or parking beneath the tree at Brighid's Altar, and the response is invariably, "Well, how was I supposed to know that the sacred space extends beyond the dimensions of the altar table?" We've had consistent troubles
It's also been repeatedly brought to my attention that the Healing Station, which is dedicated in memory of a member of the Healing Staff and the place our healers use to help those who are physically or spiritually injured, is being used outside of festival times as sort of a Hookup Hut, a great place for a quick fuck while sheltered from the elements. I'm not quite sure how to articulate exactly why the last one bothers me as it does, but it may have something to do with the fact that one of the people doing so is using it to blatantly cheat on a partner who's also a member of the community. During festival, folks have had to be told, "Hey, it's really awkward to bring children in here while you're having loud sex in the back room; go find a tent," but that hasn't happened in a while. The Safety Staff has been actively working to build the energies they need to do their jobs in that space. Once those energies are firmly established and grounded there, it will be less of a problem, but while they're still fragile and in flux we would want people to be *more* careful about treating them as sacred spaces, not *less*.
Overall, though, being hit full in the face with both desecration and disregard has got me seriously considering how and why we interact with our sacred spaces the way we do, and what it means, outside of a designated 'church' situation, to designate something as 'sacred space'.
I love you all.
For the most part, when I am at a place like Spirit Haven or Camp Gaea I have a general sense of "This whole place is sacred." There are, in each space, designated altars (one of which I help to tend), but in my sort of vague and fluffy sense of things I had not considered them particularly separate from the land surrounding them.
This past festival I ran into moments when the treatment of a place I consider to be individually sacred did not match my expectations of reasonable behaviour, and I'm still processing my response to it.
Friday night, someone took a hammer to the stone circle around the Revel Fire and smashed several pieces of the stone off. Theories about who did this abound, and no one has any concrete evidence. Perhaps it was a kid, playing with a hammer to see the pieces flake off. Perhaps it was someone who took issue with the burn ban, or with a member of the fire crew, or with the organisation in general. I can't say. It was deliberate and destructive. The damage inflicted was intentional, though it may or may not have been malicious. Finding out about it struck to my core, and it took me several minutes to come up with the word for what had been done until someone asked if the circle would be re-consecrated. This was my first personal experience with the idea that someone might have deliberately desecrated a space I held sacred, and most of what I felt can be summed up as 'shock'. Because we don't really have much in the way of forensics or investigatory bodies at CMA, our only hope is that someone saw or knows or hears something.
Then, on Sunday, it was discovered that someone had spray-painted on the altar stone and standing stone for Grandmother's Grove, another of the sacred spaces.This was announced during the Great Works meeting, because that's when it was found out. It sparked some interesting discussion of how we treat sacred spaces and what our expectations are from them. Luckily, it was not spray paint but rather colored hair spray, and was able to be removed with soap and water. No permanent damage was done there. It's most likely that this was a kid, because one of the vendors was selling the colored hairspray and fully half the kids on site had it. Again, though speculations abound our only hope of figuring this out is someone coming forward with concrete information.
Through all that is a rising awareness that we do not, perhaps, always respect the places others use for sacred purposes. This was certainly *not* the first festival where Carly and I had to deal with someone camping or parking beneath the tree at Brighid's Altar, and the response is invariably, "Well, how was I supposed to know that the sacred space extends beyond the dimensions of the altar table?" We've had consistent troubles
It's also been repeatedly brought to my attention that the Healing Station, which is dedicated in memory of a member of the Healing Staff and the place our healers use to help those who are physically or spiritually injured, is being used outside of festival times as sort of a Hookup Hut, a great place for a quick fuck while sheltered from the elements. I'm not quite sure how to articulate exactly why the last one bothers me as it does, but it may have something to do with the fact that one of the people doing so is using it to blatantly cheat on a partner who's also a member of the community. During festival, folks have had to be told, "Hey, it's really awkward to bring children in here while you're having loud sex in the back room; go find a tent," but that hasn't happened in a while. The Safety Staff has been actively working to build the energies they need to do their jobs in that space. Once those energies are firmly established and grounded there, it will be less of a problem, but while they're still fragile and in flux we would want people to be *more* careful about treating them as sacred spaces, not *less*.
Overall, though, being hit full in the face with both desecration and disregard has got me seriously considering how and why we interact with our sacred spaces the way we do, and what it means, outside of a designated 'church' situation, to designate something as 'sacred space'.
I love you all.