weird
Friday 16 February 2007 | I like a cookie
The New Mexican provides this helpful listing of all the spiritual groups in Santa Fe—anything that could be even remotely considered a congregation has been included, from the Assembly of God to A Course in Miracles to the Wiccans. It is, quite frankly, like dropping in on a Fellini cast party. These people are weird—probably a word many of them have gone to some trouble to reclaim. But since I did come upon this listing while wandering online looking for a Feri group in the area…well, let’s just say that Wyrd is relative. Sometimes I feel lonely in my non-identity as a recovering Buddhist/crypto-pagan, and I make another stab at seeking validation and reinforcement. Despite these dozens of religious clans, though, I never seem to find any which will house me, which is possibly just as well. Our Lady of the Woods in Los Alamos faithfully observes sabbats and esbats; I went three times one year—Samhain, Mabon, Yule—before I gave up. It was, put bluntly, too Gardnerianly goofy by half and I was all gripped up by my overdeveloped and Zen-inflected sense of black dignity and, well, contempt, for anything not thrumming with concentration. If nothing else, the good people of OLW are out and proud; and that’s a brave thing, in a time when widows still fight governments to get pentacles carved on their dead husbands’ gravestones. But your unreliable author remains solitary.
Feri priestess Thorn Coyle’s February 5 blogpost may have rattled the bars of the pagan community’s cage a bit, but I think she’s right on as usual:
A large part of the reason we are not on [Jack] Kornfield’s radar, I would hazard to guess, is because most of us are not on board with the project of deep self-transformation, and those of us who are just haven’t been at it long enough. Where are our deep polythealogians, grappling with issues of soul development, or what we really believe or experience about our Gods? Where are our practitioners who have practiced so diligently we know they are masters because they radiate kickass centeredness and wisdom rather than just raw power? How many Pagan or Magickal Elders do you know whom you just want to stand near because they give off some energy you wish to learn from? For myself, I can think of three, but that is all. And I’ve met a lot of people in my travels.
The Brujo and I have a running thread of dialogue about the primary spiritual quality we seek to hold and embody as we age. Humility, has been my word for it. And I’ve seen it most often in monastics, whether Buddhist or Christian—in men and women who’ve devoted their lives to silence and service; the Brujo says he’s most familiar with it in black musicians (I just typed 
“magicians”)—people who’ve spent decades grappling with the discipline of their instruments, honoring the practice and performance of music against the social riptide of how we usually measure success. I’m guessing Thorn’s three elders were Victor and Cora Anderson, and maybe Starhawk? Her point, however painful, Manjusri/Artemis-style, cuts to something true: My personal daily practice may be earth-based and Goddess-centered, but the community of those who seek? Not so. Right now there is no community, for me, other than the altogether elsewhere; but then Brodsky used to say we were all writing for dead poets anyway. And the Muse/daimon/duende doesn’t care how lonely we feel; she just demands devotion.
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