Mother's Night 2011
I have been watching this day move closer for quite a while, but it wasn't until this morning that it finally caught up with me. The ball of excitement, the counting down across hours as I was doing things, packing things to fill the hours. I picked up My Girl and we drove out to the house where all the Oak Grove Tribe rituals, meetings, and classes are held. Coming here is always like coming into a huge home.
You walk in straight from the door into a huge kitchen, filled with people, laden with bags that go on the large wooden table, and instantly there are yells of hello for so many. While people are cooking, and some are just talking, and everyone is everywhere. And then you're pulled into arms. And you are simply...home, swamped with family, and it is just as it should be.
The night started slowly with a whole lot of kitchen time, girls giggling and boys in the kitchen, and much time passing around the most adorable two-month old new born baby. Oxytocin is the most amazing hormone pleasure reaction to holding babies. We grazed across a whole lot of dishes as all the food was brought and set up.
Jambalaya, meat balls, butternut squash soup, little hot dogs, chopped fruit, chopped vegetables, Italian cream cake, butterscotch oatmeal cookies, cranberry cupcakes, egg nog, two bags of chips, guacamole, sour cream and green salsa combination, homemade mascarpone, sliced mango, pumpkin cake, cinnamon roll flavored candy canes, dark chocolate squares, tamales, and crème Brule almonds.
And this was all because we decided "We weren't doing a meal this time. Only snack/appetizers."
We had our great surprise moment when the surprise guest of the night arrived. I'd known she was coming, but there were only three other people in the whole of our nightly crew who, also, knew. Because it might fall through. The screams of surprise and elation filled everyone's hearts when she walked in.
We ate, and then did The Greeting, run by the Lady of the House, as it is Mother's Night and a focus on the Dsir (women's) line. We sent around the horn and everyone greeted the beginning. There was more cooking and a waiting for the last person to arrive, who arrived just as we began doing the pajama exchange. Which is a Mother's Night vigil tradition. An exchange of sleepwear which we had our secret person handed out weeks ago.
I got the Lady of House, who gave me gorgeous white-and-purple plaid pants, edged in silver thread and tied at the top with a purple ribbon, matched with a long sleeve purple shirt with trees and park bench and the words "True Love." I gave the person I got, long sleeve, long pants, button up with a blue flower on the pocket soft pjs. I exchange Yule gifts with My Girl, who gave me tons and tons more new, yummy teas.
After PJ exchange, and the arrival of our last person, who was a first time comer to Oak Grove Tribe, but a long time known person, from Goddess Grove we moved into the beginning of our official ritual times. The Lady of the House called The Hallowing, or Hammer Right, bringing in the North, East, South, West, Above, and Below. Then one of our gothi started the main ritual, calling on the Disir and then opening the floor for everyone to call someone in if they wished in specific.
We passed the horn around again to hail these people. The women of our blood lines, those who we wished to honor very specifically with all the work we'd do in the coming night, in our preparation for the future. And they were all gorgeous, and mine was the following: I'm going to break the pattern a little and call two.
First, I'm going to call the woman I did last, probably will every single year. I'm going to honor my grandmother. The woman who I've talked about growing up to be, and realized I have grown up to be, with teaching and traveling and taking care of others. Who I'm going to see this coming week, maybe for one of the last handful of times I'm going to be able. Who has been my only idol and aspiration and inspiration since being five or six.
Hail, [name].
Second, being in groups like this, like all the groups, in my life, focus so much on how much blood does not make family. The same way age and distance cannot undefined a role like this. I'm going to call L. next, even though she'll cringe when she's heard I used her given real name instead of her chosen nickname to open with as such tonight. Because she came back into my life at just the right time, and because she birthed so many things back into me, and because even if she blows this off with her simple, day by day, living her life, way, she has changed my life this year, in every way.
Hail, [nickname]
We took a break to eat food, and I spent some of that time working on our Gothi's back because he was feeling badly. Which was shortly after followed up with My Girl and I working on another one of the beautiful women there/friend from RCG. This time on her feet and legs, as she requested it. There's always something beautiful and easy to being able to work on people's bodies and skin and energy. To draw everything out, press through, reiki and self and just knowing.
After it we moved on the focus of The Wild Hunt, as Mother's Night is both a tribute to the Dsir and the preparation for the Wild Hunt, which lasts the twelve days after Yule, which are the last twelve days of the year. Which culminate in the second ritual Twelfth Night. During which there are also two focuses. The first is that during this time each of the Twelve Days symbolize the coming Twelve months, and are said to reflect by what happens on those days what will happen on those months.
(And as much I can be grain of salt either way on that idea, I had this chilling realization in the car yesterday. The 30th and 31st of last year? The first two days of the great fiasco that was Mini Christmas weekend would have lined up exactly with my last two months, my bleak November and December. .....it's was a harrowing epiphany, undeniable understanding, moment.
I may be much more careful and protective and aware of my Twelve Days this year.)
The second focus is the awareness that these twelve days are when The Wild Hunt roams the land. We got to listen to a long essay written on the background and stories of The Wild Hunt. What happened to people who encountered them, how people escaped them. Which rolled into our activity of the night which was a Wild Hunt Survival Kit based on the ideas of what you do if you see the dogs, or horses, or hunters.
I'm not going to give everything away though, because I'm sending an extra one to Hope, that the entire Tribe signed in solidarity (along with the box we're sending for her part in the pajama exchange). As we all still view her as part of our community, and she'd expressed interest in wanting to come before making the personal decision it would end up too dramatic.
A choice we all deeply respect in her making, even if no one here agreed would happen. I get why she made the decision, and I respect it. Even if I don't agree with it anymore tonight than when she informed me she wasn't coming because it would be too awkward 'for me.' But then I've, also, been the one of the two of us in community/ritual space before with recent ex's to know better of the assumption.
And there will always be many more Mother Night's to come that she'll always be welcome at. We all grow and learn at our own paces, and all paths and speeds are respected and embraced. And it was fun to be part of offering to the group we should make her part of the activity even from her great distance, so she could still feel the involvement of community, who'd mentioned her with such love and support the whole evening already, bolstering her through The Twelve Nights.
We took a mini-bio break, before we gathered for the mini sumble (which is the parallel of the huge sumble at Twelfth Night). There were three rounds to this one. In the first round you toast a God or Virtue. In the second round you toast a Hero or Ancestor. In the third round it was free for all. Mine were the following,
Round One This year in RCG we've worked very closely with the Tarot Archetypes. And while I like the Tarot I've never identified with them in a deity type fashion. But this year changed that, and in that it makes my toast to a divinity. To The Tower, whose sight saved my sanity from the fall, and to the Star, who forever lights my heart.
Round TwoI had the idea of who this should be from the moment [name] started, but it makes me feel a little shy, so I'm going to say this without looking at you all. I am giving this toast to Q.A. who defied all of modern science, all of modern medicine, who showed us what it means, the miracle, of if you know where you belong, and that you belong there, nothing in this entire world can stand in your way.
Round Three
I am calling you
I have been calling you for so long
And yet I did not think you heard
I am calling you to dance amongst the stars
And dive for pearls in the ocean
I am calling you to tiptoe on the clouds
And soar with the eagles
I am calling you to follow the rainbow
And rest forever in the peace of eternity
I am calling you to be
I am calling you to be you
You look at me
And I know that you can hear the call
And I know that you are scared
And so I shall kiss you
And that will silence my tongue
But you shall hear me calling you still
For it is yourself calling to your self
And so how could you not hear?
And how could you not come?
by Corrina Gordon-Barnes
Of important note for me was the last speech in Round Three as well, when the surprise guest started her long speech with "None of you know this, but I am here tonight because of Amanda. I came to RCG because of Amanda, too, and I'm pretty sure she's never known any of this either. Because I was once dating the ex-husband of a friend of hers, and came across a post in her journal, and came to RCG because of it. That I would never have come to this group, never come to RCG, never met any of you if it wasn't finding her writing about that kind of community and involvement in her journal."
I felt my heart contact, confused and wonder and such humility. Such deep overwhelming surprise. Later she'd even tell which specific post it was.
I write (these posts, right here, like this one, the religious in-depth ones) for many reasons, but two or three specifically. One -- for myself, to process all that I've gone through, to keep a record of my experiences, and process through the things I experienced. Two -- to share with others the mysteries and secrets of this path that so few share, nameless and mostly face-free, but enough that people who would like to know can truly deeply get to know what I do, what some of the people like me do.
To hear that I put this into the universe, and fate used it as it would. That it brought someone I dearly love to me, to the first time I met her, that it would be three years before I would even know it all started with my words, with a choice unrelated and yet always related....I am still moved and uncertain of the words to place her. I adore her. And I'm processing this whole massive idea-revelation-surprise still.
(Rereading that post I can't help even more the depth of dominoes, fate and free will. I remember my fingers in the cornmeal when we chose to give the blessing
I bless my Sisters who bring me to the Mother,
And the Mother who gave them to me in the first place.
Those words have never stopped being true. And more so tonight with this. I feel such humility and power and gratitude and a sense of destiny so much greater than myself, the weaved web of fate and freewill so intertwined.)
This last year I stopped writing about rituals and path's in the early spring. For so many reasons that I have not and cannot fully address. It's one of the biggest, longest things I chose to be willingly blind about this year while clinging to hope and force of will. To ignore my inability to write what I was working through in them, each and every single month. And so I stopped writing about my religious life altogether. And then this.
I wrote up Star & Tower, six pages long and so important, as my first facilitation, but I think I can't share it, not without lancing ground here and there that doesn't need to be relanced, won't find any solace for glaringly specific details. Because the biggest domino of the coming months happened that day. And I never wrote up the Yule ritual from earlier this week. But I thought.
I could start tonight. I could start here, with this family, and this world, and this voice who said, your words, your normal everyday words, these specific words, sharing’s, mattered, changed everything for me, my whole life'. (And how very Jonathon/Orange is all of this, too, Essie.)
Ritual ended about two hours ago and I've been writing and talking with several. My Girl compared my compared the recent Lunar Eclipse to my natal, which to the day, marked when my life shifted last weekend, when I starting making the plans for read, to be more in control and in charge finally. And I've watched our youngest member gasping and cajoling at her last half of The Hunger Games book one as she read it in here.
I've so much space and warmth in my heart tonight. And only three and half more hours until dawn. I think it is time for more tea, and maybe some catch-up posts I do still think I want back dated.