RCG's Special Event
Tonight, out of plan for most normal months, there was an extra special event. The founder of RCG came and we held an extra night all for her. Chanting and a pot luck and a talking at the place where we always meet. I've been hinting but not revealing for a good while about something big that's going to happen for me toward the end of this month, and this is another step in the process of it.
Five years ago, in my early twenties, with Christine I stumbled into the first meeting I would see of a group called the Reformed Congregation of the Goddess. It was not love at first sight. In fact, it was the very clear and powerful reaction to being utterly uncertain of large groups of women that eventually made me return after that first meeting and it's strange Dianic-feminist moments, and two months and five years I wrote in this very journal,
Women, especially women in droves, make me nervous. One women, or tiny groups of them, are normal and even predictable. Being raised with boys and choose boys as friends first from that raising (case and point: my first three people I know outside of Tiffany at St. Mary’s; all boys) makes me lean toward what boys have always said girls/women are like in droves even if I know they’re not usually right. So it makes me nervous to be considering spending large amounts of time, and especially time devoted to the craft, with droves of women.
Before them it's not even that I feel nervous, it's beyond that. I feel naked. Like I'm not sure what to say or do and like I might be five and about to trip again. And it's that feeling that makes me know I'm in the right place to be challenging myself. I've decided to stick with the group, for the once a month rituals, and to take up their elemental class when this one closes and they start the newest element. I think being in a large group of women will flush out some of me.
Five years and two months ago I went back.
Even when Christine refused to go back with me.
And five years and two months later, tonight, for the first time I met the founder of RCG, while the heft of a very important decision has been weighing on my heart. I learned so many things about the beginning of RCG (& RCGI) that I did not know about in. It was founded in the year I was born, and it was the first women's religion acknowledged by the IRS. But then we segued almost like a sudden drop into the things I love best and lose the ability to explain most to people.
These groups, the institute, all the circles and classes connected to them throughout the world, come down to some of the most amazing values and beliefs. That you say what you believe, and that you say that you believe it. That there is doctrine and there are no principles. RCG is about enacting the sacred that is within yourself and sharing it with the women who come together to share their sacred with you.
That there is absolutely no spiritual fidelity in the mix. There is not 'either/or' choices, no exclusion or division, as they embrace every truth each woman might have at any time. And they embrace the different paths, religious choices, loves, lives, everything. They don't hold themselves different or better than fathers or husbands or sons or brothers, simple that they set this time, with these people aside, to be women's work with other women.
These words came home so hard and so true. Most of all of the people reading these words know that I embrace a duality. I collect all I can of God-related books. I have male counterparts to my fun and spirituality and magic in COTES, Sacred Well, Clans, CMA, etc. Where I walk the path hand in hand with all the world, both male and female.
But here in RCG, I found a home among women. A home not fostered or encouraged by modern day America. Among the singularly that I was born in, the cycles I have passed through and will go to later. Dozens on dozens of daughters and sisters and mothers and grandmothers. Going through so many different and same things. I have learned here, and still am.
In 2007 and 2008 I started helping with ritual works as well as scribing for meetings.
I went away. The words that haunt me, naming me in these two years, are correct. I got out to get in. I spent about four months unwilling to even consider teaching and helping in RCG when I came back. Even hiding from the one woman who was sweet and gentle and who simply longed to meet me after hearing about me for so long. It took a little time to adjust back in.
But then Heart Chakra class came. And I taught. And then Crown Chakra. And I taught. And then I was requested to come help lead Samhain's Third Thursday, and in the same conversation I became one of the facilitators for December's Closing the Chakra's Path. And I started finding my footing again. Not the footing I had left, but the footing I could make, as me, as the girl who left and learned and returned and still deeply loved all these women and this work they did together.
Then someone asked me an important question and I began pondering it.
For weeks. For more than a month now. Because it is as much as me as it is about everyone else.
But I feel what my heart wants, to give and take. I wrote on a brown ribbon at Lughnasad, I will lead, and I will learn. There are about three or four people who've known I've been pondering this decision and the important slow, nervous, not quite certain heart beats I've had in it. But it feels right now. Certain. In the depth of my heart, where it beats is slow and steady.
In my heart. In the wake of White's dedication. In the wake of taking my name. In the wake of stepping up so much. In the wake of Gold's community. In the wake of my community and all it's done for months. For years. In all that it has changed for me, and all I wish to help give that glory and chance to all other women who would walk in our door.
Two weeks from tonight I'm stepping up on the RCG Council for a minimum term of the next two years.
Five years ago, in my early twenties, with Christine I stumbled into the first meeting I would see of a group called the Reformed Congregation of the Goddess. It was not love at first sight. In fact, it was the very clear and powerful reaction to being utterly uncertain of large groups of women that eventually made me return after that first meeting and it's strange Dianic-feminist moments, and two months and five years I wrote in this very journal,
Women, especially women in droves, make me nervous. One women, or tiny groups of them, are normal and even predictable. Being raised with boys and choose boys as friends first from that raising (case and point: my first three people I know outside of Tiffany at St. Mary’s; all boys) makes me lean toward what boys have always said girls/women are like in droves even if I know they’re not usually right. So it makes me nervous to be considering spending large amounts of time, and especially time devoted to the craft, with droves of women.
Before them it's not even that I feel nervous, it's beyond that. I feel naked. Like I'm not sure what to say or do and like I might be five and about to trip again. And it's that feeling that makes me know I'm in the right place to be challenging myself. I've decided to stick with the group, for the once a month rituals, and to take up their elemental class when this one closes and they start the newest element. I think being in a large group of women will flush out some of me.
Five years and two months ago I went back.
Even when Christine refused to go back with me.
And five years and two months later, tonight, for the first time I met the founder of RCG, while the heft of a very important decision has been weighing on my heart. I learned so many things about the beginning of RCG (& RCGI) that I did not know about in. It was founded in the year I was born, and it was the first women's religion acknowledged by the IRS. But then we segued almost like a sudden drop into the things I love best and lose the ability to explain most to people.
These groups, the institute, all the circles and classes connected to them throughout the world, come down to some of the most amazing values and beliefs. That you say what you believe, and that you say that you believe it. That there is doctrine and there are no principles. RCG is about enacting the sacred that is within yourself and sharing it with the women who come together to share their sacred with you.
That there is absolutely no spiritual fidelity in the mix. There is not 'either/or' choices, no exclusion or division, as they embrace every truth each woman might have at any time. And they embrace the different paths, religious choices, loves, lives, everything. They don't hold themselves different or better than fathers or husbands or sons or brothers, simple that they set this time, with these people aside, to be women's work with other women.
These words came home so hard and so true. Most of all of the people reading these words know that I embrace a duality. I collect all I can of God-related books. I have male counterparts to my fun and spirituality and magic in COTES, Sacred Well, Clans, CMA, etc. Where I walk the path hand in hand with all the world, both male and female.
But here in RCG, I found a home among women. A home not fostered or encouraged by modern day America. Among the singularly that I was born in, the cycles I have passed through and will go to later. Dozens on dozens of daughters and sisters and mothers and grandmothers. Going through so many different and same things. I have learned here, and still am.
In 2007 and 2008 I started helping with ritual works as well as scribing for meetings.
I went away. The words that haunt me, naming me in these two years, are correct. I got out to get in. I spent about four months unwilling to even consider teaching and helping in RCG when I came back. Even hiding from the one woman who was sweet and gentle and who simply longed to meet me after hearing about me for so long. It took a little time to adjust back in.
But then Heart Chakra class came. And I taught. And then Crown Chakra. And I taught. And then I was requested to come help lead Samhain's Third Thursday, and in the same conversation I became one of the facilitators for December's Closing the Chakra's Path. And I started finding my footing again. Not the footing I had left, but the footing I could make, as me, as the girl who left and learned and returned and still deeply loved all these women and this work they did together.
Then someone asked me an important question and I began pondering it.
For weeks. For more than a month now. Because it is as much as me as it is about everyone else.
But I feel what my heart wants, to give and take. I wrote on a brown ribbon at Lughnasad, I will lead, and I will learn. There are about three or four people who've known I've been pondering this decision and the important slow, nervous, not quite certain heart beats I've had in it. But it feels right now. Certain. In the depth of my heart, where it beats is slow and steady.
In my heart. In the wake of White's dedication. In the wake of taking my name. In the wake of stepping up so much. In the wake of Gold's community. In the wake of my community and all it's done for months. For years. In all that it has changed for me, and all I wish to help give that glory and chance to all other women who would walk in our door.
Two weeks from tonight I'm stepping up on the RCG Council for a minimum term of the next two years.