Yesterday at the festival

Yesterday was the annual Pagan Pride festival in Berkeley sponsored by the Pagan Alliance.  What a great day we had! It was sunny and pleasant, and we even avoided the afternoon winds that so often knock down our altars and banners.

My coven made the East altar for the festival. (We had four directional altars, in addition to some dedicated to special purposes).  East is the element associated with air, so we had a large hanging with appliqued geese flying in a V and cut-out clouds, We always try to have a child-oriented activity at our altar, so we had a pinwheel-making project for the kids. Pinwheels spin in the wind, ergo an air connection.

During the festival, we had story-telling sessions in the Druid tent. I brought along my troll books and a few of the trolls I've made in ceramics class for a story-telling session. To my surprise, I ended up with more adult that kid listeners, so after I told a few troll stories, we ended up talking about coded Goddess imagery found within Norwegian folk costumes and domestic textiles. I am indebted to Mary B. Kelly for much of the information I was able to impart. Here's a photo of the story-telling session shot by my friend Tom Lux.

I was honored as the Keeper of the Light so I got to ride at the head of a parade, and made a speech. Here's a photo of the speech-giving process.
 

Since so many people have asked me for a copy of the speech, I thought the simplest thing would be to post it here on my blog.  I got up at 5 and wrote it yesterday morning.  So here it is:

First of all, I want to thank the Pagan Alliance for this honor. The alliance has done so much work to bring our community together, to increase its visibility, and to provide opportunities for service.  Without the alliance, there’d be no festival at all.

I also want to thank my own coven, the Coven of the Sacred Feminine, which has always been a place of deep sharing, friendship, celebration and creativity. Most of my sisters are here today taking a variety of roles, and bringing their energy to this festival. If you look over to the East altar, you’ll see some of them.

And I want to thank the many members of the Pagan community who’ve been role models, friends, and generous sources of information and networking. They live the values we hold dear.

I am  a Pagan, a witch and a crone. These days my creaky knees remind me of every one of my 65 years.  I know one of the reasons I was selected for this honor is to acknowledge the contributions of the graying members of the community.

And I celebrate the fact that I am a member of the best of all possible religious communities in which to grow old.  In mainstream society, aging women are marginalized, despised, and finally invisible. In Paganism, we crones-–and sages, which is what we call aging men—are honored, supported and often invited into the very center of things.  How cool it is to be an old woman in a religion that honors the Goddess in her triple aspect of maiden, mother and crone!

Today I want to talk a little bit about who we are, how we got here, and what we do.  The Pagan community is as diverse and energetic a religious community  as ever could be imagined. Among the Pagans I know personally—many of whom are here today—are scientists, university professors, lawyers, nurses, computer specialists, software designers, poets, dancers, musicians, artists, therapists, stay-at-home parents, college students, entrepreneurs, small-business owners, and  even other journalists like me.

We’ve become the subject of interest to a growing body of scholars who have noted we own more books per capita than members of just about any other religion, and who say the Bay Area has become the Athens of the Pagan world.  Ours is not the religion of the book, but, you might say, the religion of the whole library, and the kitchen, the meadow, the loom, the potter’s wheel, the vegetable garden, the oven filled with baking bread, and yes, even the compost bin.

Very few of us feel the need to keep our religion secret anymore. We’ve learned that other sometimes unpopular religions have paved the way for us, fighting the court battles over discrimination and our right to free expression. Many of us wear our pentacles or other sacred symbols openly, to work, in our social lives and in front of our non-Pagan family members.

 Most of us—except for the up-and-coming generation-- were not born into Paganism, but had to find our way here through what was often a difficult and painful process. Some of us are refugees from the patriarchal religions, while others came to Paganism through interest in folklore and the religious rituals of various ethnic groups among their ancestry.  Others, particularly those who join us when they’re in their youth, may have initially been drawn by what appears to be the transgressive nature of Paganism.

Pagans don’t prosletyze. There are no Pagan missionaries who go door to door, or who hand out leaflets or take to the air waves to urge others to join us.  We know that each person has to make the journey by herself or himself.  I would guess that the majority of us didn’t suddenly become Pagans, but, rather, finally found in Paganism a name for the religious stirrings and connection to the sacred earth that was always within us. I know that for me, personally, it was a matter of self-discovery, the aha! moment in which I realized I probably always had been a Pagan, despite my years and years of religious education, participation and service in Roman Catholicism.  And I know that many many of my former co-religionists are here today and to be found in Pagan communities around the world.

People who come to us because we seem transgressive and permissive soon discover that the challenge of living the Wiccan Rede—do as you will as long as you harm no one—provides each of us with a serious moral compass.  It’s much more difficult and challenging to make good choices when we must weigh each one, not against a set of written rules, but in terms of the impact our actions have on ourselves, our community and the planet.

Many come to us because Paganism is truly the ``big tent’’ with room for all. We’re sex-positive, and those who’ve been discriminated against for their gender or their sexual orientation or their ethnicity or economic status will find room here.

So where will you find us? Pagans can be found turning the compost in their bins, gathering up their bottles and cans for recycling, using public transportation to lessen their carbon impact on the environment. You’ll also find Pagans building houses for Habitat for Humanity, or in New Orleans, helping citizens of that beleagured city rebuild their lives.

Surprisingly, you’ll find a lot of Pagans in prison. Not because we’re bad people and go to prison in inordinate numbers, but because Paganism  becomes a logical life choice for many people who spend a lot of time thinking about the meaning of their actions and their effects on others.

Pagan women and men are serving our country in a number of ways. Small groups of military Pagans celebrate the turning of the wheel on bases around the world and in the middle of the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

We’re present in growing numbers in schools and universities. Children have learned our constitution protects their right to wear our sacred religious symbols in school, while high school and college students freely and openly form affinity groups and covens.

If you’re in the hospital, chances are one of the nurses or doctors giving you care is wearing a pentacle and will work hard to make sure you receive spiritual as well as medical care. If you need to see a therapist, increasingly you’ll be able to find someone  who doesn’t think it peculiar that you honor a polytheistic pantheon.

These days few bosses will raise an eyebrow when you ask for Beltane or Lammas off, and agree instead to come to work on Christmas or Passover to cover for your fellow employees.  Your boss may even take Beltane or Lammas off herself.

What does it mean to be a Pagan in the here and now? I think it means being awake, noticing, paying attention, in Buddhist terms, living mindfully.  It means having your eyes open and noting the small changes in our physical universe that herald the turning of the wheel of the year.

Pagans notice when the winter rains upholster the Berkeley Hills with green velvet, or when the full moon means low tide in the Alameda estuary. They stop, filled with wonder, when they’re distracted by the scent of blooming jasmine, or when they hear frogs singing in the marshlands.

Pagans also have good radar for injustice, intolerance, and inhumanity. Pagans make donations to organizations that care for animals, the environment, the elderly, and anything in need of help.  They’re also found giving service, trying to create a new and better world.

It’s also my theory that we Pagans are the so-called ``cultural creatives,’’ the leading-edge thinkers and doers. For us, making beautiful things, dancing in the meadow, walking in the rain and singing up the sun are religious acts. The Goddess crooks Her finger at us, and invites us to join Her in the messy, chaotic and joyful process of creation. And every morning when we hop out of bed, we see the world as fresh, ripe with possibilities.

For a number of years I taught a class at Cherry Hill Pagan Seminary. The course was intended to help representatives of the Pagan community learn how to interact with the media. I soon found that our so-called ``problem’’ was not in trying to get the media’s attention, but how to deal in a professional way with a news media that was finding us a continued source of fascination.  We’re here, we’re cool, and people want to know about us.

Look around this scene for a moment. Have you noticed that we are holding our festival across the street from Berkeley High School, behind Berkeley City Hall , catty-corner from the Berkeley Police department, and next-door to the Berkeley Farmers Market?  How much more out of the broom closet is it possible to be?  And today,in our flowing robes, our face paint, our glitter, wearing our pointy hats, and laughing in the sunlight. we are here, we are whole and we are Pagans!

Yes, this is a big feel-good day for us. We can see our sisters and brothers who share space with us inside the big tent that is Paganism. 

After all, we are a circle, within a circle, with no beginning and never ending.  So let’s go dance and sing and have a terrific day.