Interview meme, the sacred in my life
So
angelweed posted this after posting his great answers to bellamagic, ... and I said 'Interview me' and he asked his questions ...
And I spent about an hour writing a reply online … And lost it in the wifi haze … and so here's the reconstructed version. Maybe it's tighter and better, maybe there's something important missing, only the goddess of cyberspace may know (or not).
1. How did you become a Pagan? A priestess?
Becoming a Pagan …
Serendipity, like many of the good things in my life. A cup of coffee led to a conversation about personal growth work ... a seminar led to amazing new awareness about the ways I block myself ... a fellow attendee told a warm lovely story about Womongathering ... I decided on the spur of the moment to go, got lost, slept outside the gate overnight in my car ... found a flyer about Witch Camp on a table ... landed at SpiralHeart in the year of Apples of Idun.
Learned a lot about myself from Path work, opened a different channel inside my head at one of the evening rituals. Kept a journal of dreams for a little while which still reads like the start of an amazing journey.
Back in my regular mundane life I met a stranger at a book-signing in a cute little local bookstore I’d never visited before in the town we’d just moved to. She invited me to a class in the basement of a local church I’d never heard of. Cakes for the Queen of Heaven, one of the adult religious education curricula offered by the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
When the 10-week class was over, I had found: a lifelong bestfriend and several lifelong friends; a whole new way of thinking about divinity, deity, God-ness; more feminist history and evidence of lost things; within the year, a congregation to belong to in an 'organized religion' that didn't make me squick.. After class ended, about half of us formed a loose ‘women’s spirituality’ group that met for more than a couple of years. Two of us are still meeting, along with another who joined us later.
It was a couple of years before I said I was a ‘witch’, however, and longer than that before I used the word ‘pagan.’
Becoming a Priestess …
Sometime in the first couple of years I began to step into / feel nudged into the position of “she who has more experience than the rest of us.” Coming back from witchcamp I would always have things to share - tell about, demonstrate, try out - and the folks in our spirituality group were always willing to try it, debrief it, modify it. A CUUPS chapter formed, I joined the UU Congregation, I began taking my turn at leading ritual … and then leading Sunday Morning ritual for Samhain and Beltane (the May Pole being a lovely draw).
A moment came when our chapter was asked by a neighboring congregation to come do a ‘demonstration ritual’ for Sunday morning as they began looking to form a CUUPS chapter. Two of us visited on a random Sunday, talked with the planners, reported back to our CUUPSfolks. Six or so of us began to plan a ritual. And then our home congregation scheduled a Major Big Event for the same Sunday morning. It was too late to ask our hosts to find a substitute service, but we also wanted most of us to be in attendance at home. It ended up that I led the ritual, solo - and was received as a huge success. ‘Aha!’ said a voice inside, ‘so THIS is what you came for!’
After grad school (MA in Spiritual Psychology, 2001), my grad-school roommate asked if I would officiate at her wedding. I got myself credentials through the Ministry of Universal Acceptance, and did. During that experience I discovered the river of energy that runs through Pastoral Counseling and found that I could only participate in the service if I also participated in the pre-marriage conversation (so I’m more like a ‘minister’ and less like a ‘justice of the peace’ in terms of 'marrying ‘em'). In the moment of “by the power vested in me by Spirit and the State of Texas …” I reached my hand up into a palpable swirl of the current of spiritual fulfilment and grabbed up a loop of it. I brought it over the heads of the Happy Couple and into the center of our trio. 'Aha! said a voice inside, 'so THAT's where It Lives!'
Sometime not long after that I said out loud that I was a Priestess.
I noticed a few things:
-- in the moment of saying it out loud, something went ‘kachunk’ in my head and another new channel of input opened up.
-- in the moment of saying it out loud to another person, something shifted in my body.
-- since then I have often felt like an open channel for Spirit … or one that needed to be consciously re-opened by meditation, depending.
2. What three things do you most love about your husband?
My Dear Husband is the brightest, most innovative thinker it has been my privilege to know up close. His input is always valuable and his viewpoint unique in our conversations. He is open to my suggestions and often solicits my advice, twisting and turning it until it opens a new avenue for his line of thinking. Conversations with him are usually fun, especially around intellectual abstractions and around engineering design or diagnosis.
DH is generally a serene and patient presence in my life, open to lots of freedom for each of us to have our own experiences and make our own choices. Rarely has he felt threatened about anything I’ve done. Still more rarely has he ever asked me not to do it.
DH is a generous and playful companion under a vast array of circumstances. He has a great and refreshing store of courage and is also plagued by terrifying fear and occasional cowardice, just as I am - and we usually take turns. I dunno as I’ve ever experienced both of us being in fear at the same time, which is lovely.
Also, at 27 and still now at not-quite-60, he has beautiful legs!
3. How do the Florida/New Jersey migrations work? (Answer about mechanics, spirit, and/or emotions, as you wish.)
Mechanics: Sometime after Thanksgiving we load up the stationwagon and take three 8-hour days and two random-motel overnights to get back to the boat. During the winter I may fly home (or elsewhere) for one or two specific events, and then back. The first year we did this I was on the boat 6 weeks; this year (#3) it’s been 14. In the spring I fly home to get back into my northern life, attend camp, teach here and there … and DH stays on the boat, doing whatever projects have come up and enjoying lots of solo restauranting (which he loves). Sometime during hurricane season he’ll probably come north to visit, though he became a Florida resident a couple of years ago and gets back here at least a couple of times during the summer.
Spirit: most of my spiritual practice is much changed aboard. The space is so small it’s hard to have a fixed altar, for example, as the same tiny table serves as desk, kitchen counter, dining table, altar during ritual, and catch-all for glasses and keys. There’s no privacy, so anything I want to do must either be silent or willing to be seen and heard by a non-participant, as my DH is pretty much of a muggle (witchcamp and Starwood attendance notwithstanding). Many of my artistic pursuits don’t fit on the boat atall, so some of my spiritual practice just starves. And, though I've occasionally looked up colleagues and local CUUPSfolk, generally there's not much likemindedness in the harbor (at least, that I've been able to discover. Maybe we're all in the broom closet together).
Sometimes this is amusing, too. At Full and New moons I’m often advised to ‘go outside, into the natural world - visit the land.’ And, well, here on a mooring ball or at anchor I’m right in the middle of the natural world, sky and sea, wind and spray, no attempt at ‘climate control’ whatever … AND visiting the ‘land’ can be pretty problematic if the dinghy is elsewhere.. ‘Pick up a stone’ takes an a whole new meaning when the nearest ‘stone’ is either miles away (most of the keys are sand and crushed coral) or ten feet under harbor water (for which read: brackish plus dishwater plus diesel spills plus occasional sewage - ick).
Emotions: The transition points are hard, though at least by now I know to expect this. I struggle with loss - in the fall, the losses are: friends, partners, my UU community, my CUUPSfolks, my CovenSisters, the cat who sleeps on my bed (and will take a week to forgive me when I eventually return); the loom, the altar, the comfortable office with the expansive desk, comfortable chairs (there are NONE on a small boat), spacious bed, hot baths, reliable refrigeration, silk painting, woodworking, painting on anything but a small scale, pottery; the freedom of being a two-car family instead of a one-car, one-dinghy couple.
In the spring, the losses are: togetherness, the companionship of being a one-car family, being rocked to sleep each night (to a different rhythm each night depending on wind and waves), cruiser-net every morning (radio talk among our whole harbor of friends), the physical challenges and joys of sailing, sun, saltwater, brilliant turquoise vistas and a far horizon, warm easy weather (70s-80s year round at halfpast the Florida keys).
Usually there is tension for a week or two around each transition, and then I find the new rhythm and begin to enjoy what’s here. This goes better when I’m conscious of ‘looking forward to’ and planning ahead - so now, for example, I’ve started making notes for painting and papier mache and weaving projects for a couple of weeks from now. After unpacking and laundry and catching up with people.
4. What is your favorite innocent pleasure (other than sex)? Something you do for fun rather than self-improvement, and which you feel good about doing.
Favorite? I try not to do forced ranking - and besides, it changes.
Weaving, especially if there’s a skeletal plan with a lot of freedom in it. Silk-painting. Snuggling humans. Snuggling fur-bearing people. Standing head down in a long self-indulgent hot shower until the last tension has left. Swimming. Sailing on a broad reach in a smooth sea. Dancing … which is probably ‘favorite’ most often, and which I’m eager to get back to when I get home.
5. What question have I left out that you wish I'd asked?
Hmm. Just at present anything I said in reply to this one would open a can of worms, mainly because I’m in ‘pack and leave tomorrow’ mode. Ask me again after tax day, though; there’s probably something here to chew on.
---
If you want to play too:
1. leave me a comment saying, "interview me."
2. i respond by asking you five personal questions so i can get to know you better.
3. update your l.j. with the answers to the questions.
4. include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. when others comment asking to be interviewed, ask them five questions.
Love and light and lots of laughter to you all -- especially, today, to you who started this thread.
angelweed posted this after posting his great answers to bellamagic, ... and I said 'Interview me' and he asked his questions ...
And I spent about an hour writing a reply online … And lost it in the wifi haze … and so here's the reconstructed version. Maybe it's tighter and better, maybe there's something important missing, only the goddess of cyberspace may know (or not).
1. How did you become a Pagan? A priestess?
Becoming a Pagan …
Serendipity, like many of the good things in my life. A cup of coffee led to a conversation about personal growth work ... a seminar led to amazing new awareness about the ways I block myself ... a fellow attendee told a warm lovely story about Womongathering ... I decided on the spur of the moment to go, got lost, slept outside the gate overnight in my car ... found a flyer about Witch Camp on a table ... landed at SpiralHeart in the year of Apples of Idun.
Learned a lot about myself from Path work, opened a different channel inside my head at one of the evening rituals. Kept a journal of dreams for a little while which still reads like the start of an amazing journey.
Back in my regular mundane life I met a stranger at a book-signing in a cute little local bookstore I’d never visited before in the town we’d just moved to. She invited me to a class in the basement of a local church I’d never heard of. Cakes for the Queen of Heaven, one of the adult religious education curricula offered by the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
When the 10-week class was over, I had found: a lifelong bestfriend and several lifelong friends; a whole new way of thinking about divinity, deity, God-ness; more feminist history and evidence of lost things; within the year, a congregation to belong to in an 'organized religion' that didn't make me squick.. After class ended, about half of us formed a loose ‘women’s spirituality’ group that met for more than a couple of years. Two of us are still meeting, along with another who joined us later.
It was a couple of years before I said I was a ‘witch’, however, and longer than that before I used the word ‘pagan.’
Becoming a Priestess …
Sometime in the first couple of years I began to step into / feel nudged into the position of “she who has more experience than the rest of us.” Coming back from witchcamp I would always have things to share - tell about, demonstrate, try out - and the folks in our spirituality group were always willing to try it, debrief it, modify it. A CUUPS chapter formed, I joined the UU Congregation, I began taking my turn at leading ritual … and then leading Sunday Morning ritual for Samhain and Beltane (the May Pole being a lovely draw).
A moment came when our chapter was asked by a neighboring congregation to come do a ‘demonstration ritual’ for Sunday morning as they began looking to form a CUUPS chapter. Two of us visited on a random Sunday, talked with the planners, reported back to our CUUPSfolks. Six or so of us began to plan a ritual. And then our home congregation scheduled a Major Big Event for the same Sunday morning. It was too late to ask our hosts to find a substitute service, but we also wanted most of us to be in attendance at home. It ended up that I led the ritual, solo - and was received as a huge success. ‘Aha!’ said a voice inside, ‘so THIS is what you came for!’
After grad school (MA in Spiritual Psychology, 2001), my grad-school roommate asked if I would officiate at her wedding. I got myself credentials through the Ministry of Universal Acceptance, and did. During that experience I discovered the river of energy that runs through Pastoral Counseling and found that I could only participate in the service if I also participated in the pre-marriage conversation (so I’m more like a ‘minister’ and less like a ‘justice of the peace’ in terms of 'marrying ‘em'). In the moment of “by the power vested in me by Spirit and the State of Texas …” I reached my hand up into a palpable swirl of the current of spiritual fulfilment and grabbed up a loop of it. I brought it over the heads of the Happy Couple and into the center of our trio. 'Aha! said a voice inside, 'so THAT's where It Lives!'
Sometime not long after that I said out loud that I was a Priestess.
I noticed a few things:
-- in the moment of saying it out loud, something went ‘kachunk’ in my head and another new channel of input opened up.
-- in the moment of saying it out loud to another person, something shifted in my body.
-- since then I have often felt like an open channel for Spirit … or one that needed to be consciously re-opened by meditation, depending.
2. What three things do you most love about your husband?
My Dear Husband is the brightest, most innovative thinker it has been my privilege to know up close. His input is always valuable and his viewpoint unique in our conversations. He is open to my suggestions and often solicits my advice, twisting and turning it until it opens a new avenue for his line of thinking. Conversations with him are usually fun, especially around intellectual abstractions and around engineering design or diagnosis.
DH is generally a serene and patient presence in my life, open to lots of freedom for each of us to have our own experiences and make our own choices. Rarely has he felt threatened about anything I’ve done. Still more rarely has he ever asked me not to do it.
DH is a generous and playful companion under a vast array of circumstances. He has a great and refreshing store of courage and is also plagued by terrifying fear and occasional cowardice, just as I am - and we usually take turns. I dunno as I’ve ever experienced both of us being in fear at the same time, which is lovely.
Also, at 27 and still now at not-quite-60, he has beautiful legs!
3. How do the Florida/New Jersey migrations work? (Answer about mechanics, spirit, and/or emotions, as you wish.)
Mechanics: Sometime after Thanksgiving we load up the stationwagon and take three 8-hour days and two random-motel overnights to get back to the boat. During the winter I may fly home (or elsewhere) for one or two specific events, and then back. The first year we did this I was on the boat 6 weeks; this year (#3) it’s been 14. In the spring I fly home to get back into my northern life, attend camp, teach here and there … and DH stays on the boat, doing whatever projects have come up and enjoying lots of solo restauranting (which he loves). Sometime during hurricane season he’ll probably come north to visit, though he became a Florida resident a couple of years ago and gets back here at least a couple of times during the summer.
Spirit: most of my spiritual practice is much changed aboard. The space is so small it’s hard to have a fixed altar, for example, as the same tiny table serves as desk, kitchen counter, dining table, altar during ritual, and catch-all for glasses and keys. There’s no privacy, so anything I want to do must either be silent or willing to be seen and heard by a non-participant, as my DH is pretty much of a muggle (witchcamp and Starwood attendance notwithstanding). Many of my artistic pursuits don’t fit on the boat atall, so some of my spiritual practice just starves. And, though I've occasionally looked up colleagues and local CUUPSfolk, generally there's not much likemindedness in the harbor (at least, that I've been able to discover. Maybe we're all in the broom closet together).
Sometimes this is amusing, too. At Full and New moons I’m often advised to ‘go outside, into the natural world - visit the land.’ And, well, here on a mooring ball or at anchor I’m right in the middle of the natural world, sky and sea, wind and spray, no attempt at ‘climate control’ whatever … AND visiting the ‘land’ can be pretty problematic if the dinghy is elsewhere.. ‘Pick up a stone’ takes an a whole new meaning when the nearest ‘stone’ is either miles away (most of the keys are sand and crushed coral) or ten feet under harbor water (for which read: brackish plus dishwater plus diesel spills plus occasional sewage - ick).
Emotions: The transition points are hard, though at least by now I know to expect this. I struggle with loss - in the fall, the losses are: friends, partners, my UU community, my CUUPSfolks, my CovenSisters, the cat who sleeps on my bed (and will take a week to forgive me when I eventually return); the loom, the altar, the comfortable office with the expansive desk, comfortable chairs (there are NONE on a small boat), spacious bed, hot baths, reliable refrigeration, silk painting, woodworking, painting on anything but a small scale, pottery; the freedom of being a two-car family instead of a one-car, one-dinghy couple.
In the spring, the losses are: togetherness, the companionship of being a one-car family, being rocked to sleep each night (to a different rhythm each night depending on wind and waves), cruiser-net every morning (radio talk among our whole harbor of friends), the physical challenges and joys of sailing, sun, saltwater, brilliant turquoise vistas and a far horizon, warm easy weather (70s-80s year round at halfpast the Florida keys).
Usually there is tension for a week or two around each transition, and then I find the new rhythm and begin to enjoy what’s here. This goes better when I’m conscious of ‘looking forward to’ and planning ahead - so now, for example, I’ve started making notes for painting and papier mache and weaving projects for a couple of weeks from now. After unpacking and laundry and catching up with people.
4. What is your favorite innocent pleasure (other than sex)? Something you do for fun rather than self-improvement, and which you feel good about doing.
Favorite? I try not to do forced ranking - and besides, it changes.
Weaving, especially if there’s a skeletal plan with a lot of freedom in it. Silk-painting. Snuggling humans. Snuggling fur-bearing people. Standing head down in a long self-indulgent hot shower until the last tension has left. Swimming. Sailing on a broad reach in a smooth sea. Dancing … which is probably ‘favorite’ most often, and which I’m eager to get back to when I get home.
5. What question have I left out that you wish I'd asked?
Hmm. Just at present anything I said in reply to this one would open a can of worms, mainly because I’m in ‘pack and leave tomorrow’ mode. Ask me again after tax day, though; there’s probably something here to chew on.
---
If you want to play too:
1. leave me a comment saying, "interview me."
2. i respond by asking you five personal questions so i can get to know you better.
3. update your l.j. with the answers to the questions.
4. include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. when others comment asking to be interviewed, ask them five questions.
Love and light and lots of laughter to you all -- especially, today, to you who started this thread.