Gearing Up for Change in August

About 27 months ago (2 years, 3 months), I left my job with the family non-profit to pursue other projects. I felt great about it. I was sad to leave the work I found so meaningful, but was also excited to have more time and energy to devote to concerns a little more core to my values. That, and being able to be openly out of the Broom Closet and not have to make the 77 mile round trip commute anymore felt like a huge relief.

Since then, I have done many things. I have co-directed/produced/performed in 3 plays about gender. I have written 3 novels and a mess of poetry (that is an official unit of poetry, for sure). I write this blog and have recently begun a couple others, I have organized various retreats and special events, I have done some community organizing and activism, I do my energy work, and the list goes on. I have had a lot of failures and almost as many fiascoes. I have learned a lot. It is good.

And now, I am officially BORED. I got there. I am amazed it took this long. I sit to read, and am bored by the book. I read my blogs and feel restless. I exercise and wish it had a point. There is only so much media I can consume. I create projects, like drums and wirework and Easy Buttons, etc., but I have to stop and let the glue dry, and at this point we have enough invested in drums that as soon as we finish the next round of prototypes, we need to be focused on selling before making more.

Feeling this restless and bored is a great sign, I think. It is a sign that my health has improved to the point that I have the physical energy to feel like I want to be doing more than I am, rather than feeling grateful that I can lay in bed for half the day because I am in pain. I find that I keep going over my to do lists in my head, trying to accomplish more on my various projects. And the thought of getting an active, part-time, cash-paying job excites me.

Every year, things move in August. Shift happens. I can already hear the whine of the engines as they rev up....

A Failure to Thrive?

I want to be a part of a thriving pagan community in Nashville. And honestly, I think we are not thriving. Of my peers, we are drifting away. In the larger community, there seems to be condemnation instead of compassion. At community events, there are cold shoulders more than warm hearts.

Why? Why are we not thriving? Part of it is economic. We are poor, tend to be too independent minded to really thrive in hierarchical work environments, and are hamstrung by the fact that so many of the networking and opportunity contacts run through the Christian churches. We have our choice of 1. pretend to be Christian for the benefits, 2. stay in the broom closet and just don't talk about religion, or 3. be open and risk being punished and discriminated against (and it is a significant risk with a likely bad outcome).We therefore often choose to be invisible and therefore have trouble finding each other, and when we do find each other, we are not as able to support each other as much as we might like.

Part of it may have to do with the burnout of clergy. Many of our older clergy have stepped aside, burned out, chosen not to actively lead anymore. In my personal circles, some left without having fully trained their initiates to a level where they could step in as leaders.

Part of it is politics, I think. A little too much of an insular mindset, combined with the distrust of outsiders who might out you, and added to an opinionated conviction in the superiority of your own personal practice, can combine into a very fractured community.

Whatever the contributing factors, though, I want to begin generating new energy, meet fresh faces, and enrich the pagan community. To that end, I have an iron or two in the fire for beginning a pagan discussion group at the UU. Something to generate energy, and to draw in interested folks. Something to get the wheels going. It would feed a growing need within me, to see this community strengthened and thriving.

Once Again Around the Bardic Circle

Once upon a time I was a part of a Bardic Circle (referred to as Bardic), that met every week to share the bardic arts with one another. It could be something we created, or not. It could be any format or genre, including prose, poetry, song, music, visual arts, crafts, etc. Technically speaking the crafts and visual arts are not bardic arts, but whatever. We met for over two years, and then circumstances changed and we petered out and quit meeting. There has been a lot of debate and discussion about why it petered out, everyone has their pet theory, but the reality is, it did and we all moved on to other creative projects, many of them very close to our hearts.

Now another community member (who was not a part of Bardic), has reopened the discussion of reestablishing the circle (it goes in cycles). This is where it gets interesting. Pet theories have been trotted back out about what went "wrong" or why we quit, and there is an email thread of various conditions and needs of various potential participants.

Bardic worked because the energy for it worked. We had one person who was unfailingly passionate about it and so did the poking about scheduling and venue each week. We had a default venue at that person's house, although if someone else wanted to host they were always welcome to, and we did change venues around. We had an informal food convention whereby there was food, sometimes dinner, sometimes more snacky. And when it was bedtime, the host would holler, "Get Out Of My House!" But really, it worked because it fed something in us, and so we kept coming back week after week.

I don't know if that hunger is still there, or, assuming it was satiated, if it has been reborn. The community is changing and has changed. Bardic was a big part of my seeing my peers about twice a week--once at Bardic and once or twice on the weekend. Now I see people maybe once a month. Some people I see three or four times a year. We are drifting apart, and the passion that has bound us seems to be fading.

Maybe it could be resurrected. Maybe it should be. Or maybe it is time for something new, instead of a rehash of something old. Something to ponder, anyway.

Calling On the Compassionate Pagans

There is drama in the community. Well, that's not news, there is always drama. Get any kind of independent minded folk together and there will be conflicts. As a friend of mine said, ask any two of us a questions and you'll get five answers.

That said, there is a particular drama that makes me sad. A woman in the community got in over her head. Waaaay in over her head, with too many dependents, too many crises, not enough help. And it has led to some horrific consequences and accusations. It has become clear exactly how sensational the local press is, just by reading the articles they wrote and comparing them to the incomplete "rest of the story" as told to me by a friend. It is a hard and terrible situation. Bad choices were made, and crisis seems to have led to additional bad choices.

Thing is, she is a part of our community. There are people who know her, who are friends with her, who ask for her nurturing help. I admit I have never met her, she is a friend of an acquaintance and an acquaintance of a friend, but I did have a friend who knows her call me to process and tell me the story. (Some would call it gossip, but really, I believe it is important to keep communication open in order to keep community strong.) Apparently there are those whom she called friend who have judged her, written her nasty messages, and turned against her in her time of desperate need.

She dropped her basket. She did not ask for the help she needed, she got in over her head, she made bad choices. That said, why has the community reacted with judgment instead of compassion? And why did her friends ask her to help them if she was so obviously crossing the line into bad choices? What kind of friends and community members do we have that no one pulled her aside and firmly told her to ask for help, or offered help, or made sure that someone who could did help?

What kind of community do we have when we turn against each other in our most desperate hours instead of standing strong in love and compassion?

Sharp Sticks are Poke-y Things

I thought that once we got post-eclipse, things would settle out. Well, yes, they are getting there, but in a very, well, poke-y and not really comfortable way.

Monday this week was a hard day. We found out we are not yet pregnant, and then I opened a piece of mail that I thought was yet MORE junk mail from one of my banks, only to discover it was an account overdrawn notice. On an account I haven't used in three months. In a panic, I rush to the computer and discover that yes, someone had hacked my info and systematically emptied my account over 4 days, via atms in NY. I was just so pissed.

I called first thing in the morning, made a very early trip to the local branch, and the short of it is that I should have my money back in 10 days. So really, very little harm done. I've been meaning to close that account and move my back up money to a savings account at my main bank, but for various reasons that no longer apply, I had put it off. Well, I think I got a poke with a very sharp stick to go ahead and take care of business on it. Time to clean up my financial organization.

The same seems to be true of other things, too. I have known that I NEED to get my personal space clear and clean and organized, and yet for months I have let it coast. I will do a big chunk of what needs to get done, and then get stuck on a step, and it never gets finished. It is time to buckle down and just get it done. I just don't want to know what that sharp stick would be if I don't, and I can think of several carrots that would make it worth the endeavor.

It just seems to very clearly be time to get moving and go make things happen. The dross is eager to fall away from the seeds, all I need to do is give everything a good shake in the sieve. I can do that. Should be interesting.

Where's My Butter?

One thought that I come back to over and over again in my weaker moments involves how many experiments I have run in my life, especially in the last 2 years, and how very many of them failed. I declared 2008 the Year of the Failure. In 2009, I upgraded to the Year of the Fiasco. My frustration levels have had a tendency to run rather high.

But then I just read a bit from Rob Brezsney that included the phrase "turning up our curiosity full blast" [Facebook link] and was struck by the thought that maybe I should reframe my failures as indulgences of my curiosity. Isn't that what an experiment is? A curious thought, and then action to satisfy that curiosity? I often think of myself as "constantly churning" as a way to describe my restless urges to try new things and see if they can be successful. (There are powerful connections between "churning" and the "mouse that fell into a bucket of cream", btw.) Perhaps I should also see my "churning" action as a measure of the blast of my curiosity, that it is so close to "full blast" that I end up "churning."

It makes for a nice shift in language. Being curious has all kinds of positive connotations, excepting what happened to that poor cat, whereas failed experiments and the continuous monotonous motion of churning come off rather poorly.

The only problem with shifting to a curious-based frame from an experimental or churning frame is results. Satisfying curiosity doesn't tend to imply any kind of result other than a bit of knowledge gained, whereas experiments create tangible results and churning makes for either butter or very frothy oceans and/or hurricanes.

So then really the full blast curiosity is what I have been exercising, gaining bits of knowledge and experience as I go. I can't say that I have butter or a hurricane yet, though. Would like them, but I haven't managed to produce them yet. I guess I will just keep sticking my whiskered nose into interesting new places and see if I find the secret passage to the Underbed (unfamiliar with the mystical magical realm of Underbed? Ask your cat.) or at least the magical formula for seeding hurricanes lost under the couch.

Obama Eating Crackers

My friend has a line that she uses when she finds someone attractive. She says, "I wouldn't kick them out of bed for eating crackers." Humorous, no? She was recently watching some video on the internet that showed President Obama doing something and she was struck by how good looking he is. She said, "I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers." And her wife began guffawing.

This story was repeated at a Fourth of July Pie Party (bring your favorite pie, savory or sweet), and the room erupted into laughter. It took some folks longer than others to get the joke, but in the end, no one was in doubt about the joke. My friend smiled as she admitted her obtuseness about seeing the joke when talking about Obama. It was only when her wife started laughing that she realized it was a joke.

I find this interesting because it means that in our social group (myself included), which is vast majority (presumed) white, the topic of President Obama provides an instant racialization of any topic. "Eating crackers" always meant eating a specific crunchy food that left crumbs in the bed and never going down on a white person as long as the "default" person involved was the "default" race--white. But as soon as Obama comes up, the default settings go off and racial innuendos become active.

I wonder if this Instant Racialization effect is true (for my social group) of any person of color, or if it is specific to Obama. Thinking back over other people of color in our social group who come up in conversation, I have not noticed any overtly racialized tone become active in conjunction with them. Then again, I am white, and I wonder what the POCs themselves would say. I will say, though, that the POCs in our social group are a) likely to "pass" as white (though this is not true of all of them) and b) well known as individuals. Since we are such a diverse community in terms of religious practice, gross income, and sexual and gender orientations, knowing each other as individuals instead of labels is crucial to our ability to function as a community, so I will argue that once someone is introduced around, they become a person much more strongly than they are their labels in the group the mind.

Obama, on the other hand, is not known as an individual; he is a symbolic public figure. As such, he represents many things, including various race issues. Because he is more removed from our social group than a direct member, it makes more sense that he would be held up as a symbol rather than considered more transcendent of his "identities."

That said, I am still uncomfortable with the joke. I admit that in the moment, I was one of the first to get it and one of the first to laugh. It was only after the party that I began to wonder why it was so funny, and why a slightly humorous comment suddenly became a hilarious joke due to its inappropriate racial subtext.

Post-racial society, my ass.

***I would like to add that I love using the full name and title "President Obama" since I proudly helped (a little) to elect him, but there is also something iconic about just "Obama" that I am also drawn to. I apologize and own my inconsistency in this post, but I mean affection and respect, not disrespect, in my use of each of the forms.

Slapped Down by the Universe

Embarrassed over my "Durrrr" answer to my five-year plan for money making, I sat down this week and spent several hours processing everything I needed to process in order to get over the hurdle and actually commit and get started to growing my energy healing practice. I spent several nights working on a website (which is almost ready to go live), I wrote campy ads for coffee shop bulletin boards, I developed a marketing plan (for better or worse).

I have spent 6 months kind of dithering instead of seizing my opportunity here, but I finally decided to get going and really commit. And then, after the first week of my being willing to go forth and make it happen, I find out that my opportunity is going away (probably). Due to a ridiculous situation and injustice being done to my generous friend the massage therapist, I am guessing there is about an 80% chance of no longer being able to use the office that I have been using for one week a month for the last several months. The reasons why the situation is changing has nothing to do with me, but it definitely impacts me.

My first reaction was to feel slapped down by the Universe. It has now been over 2 years since I left my "real job" to pursue other projects, and I have pursued a lot of them. I have directed/produced three plays, written several novels, done some community organizing and activism, experimented with various crafts with the potential for profitable sales, worked on community building, sent out feelers about various pagan ambitions and how might they be accomplished, and embroiled myself in a few possible entrepreneurial endeavors. And all this in addition to spending most of 2009 in bed while my spine realigned itself.

And yet, despite a constant churning and ambitious drive, I feel like the Universe has not reflected back the YES I have been looking for. I have tried so many things, put energy in so many different directions, looking for the one that is Right, knowing that when things are Right, I take one step and God'dess takes the next two for me, but it has not happened. Everything has been harder than I would have thought.

In the end, I called Dad. My father is a very practical, logical man who leads a faith based life. When we were building the nonprofit together, we really explored the ins and outs of living on faith together, and though our faiths are different, the process is the same. He was able to listen as I laid out my frustration, and then talk me through the various factors until I got to some clarity.

I have a plan now. But I will say, it has been a rocky last few days. I thank God'dess for my support network and all the people who love me.

My Own Rubric of Success: Play With It!

I have continued to ponder the cause of my deep embarrassment over not having any kind of coherent 5 year plan for my energy healing, as I posted about here. I quickly deduced that I did not have a 5 year plan because I felt lukewarm about my practice. I had several layers of self-judgment over the whole thing, including laziness, inability to think of it with right and left brains, being a dreamer instead of a planner, and fear-of-failure induced self-sabotage.

Delving beneath all that, I found two things that were really holding me up: I didn't know what the standard of success was, and I am good at energy healing without being passionate or fulfilled by it.

I am good at a lot of things, but I am really only passionate and fulfilled by pagan spaces and lifestyles, hence the goal of living in pagan community in the woods and being involved with projects that promote interconnection, sustainability, co-creation, and sacred pleasure. However, I do not have a coherent plan for making an income off my pagan pursuits any time soon; it seems like stretching to just acquire the land I dream about. A stop-gap or contingency will have to be applied in the meantime.

Of my current income opportunities, I can either choose to work on growing the highly-flexible pursuits I currently have in the works, including my energy healing practice, or I can drop them and get a regular job like waiting tables or working for a nonprofit. Neither option is one that will fill me with passion and fulfillment. That decided, it makes sense to pursue the one that offers the most flexibility and best pay, which is the energy healing.

As for the standard of success, I get to determine that for myself. Having come up through a rigidly structured educational system that I happened to excel at, I have been so accustomed to having an external authority define the rubric of success that lack of one has undermined me without my realizing it. I have now sat down and written my own goals and plan to define success within my practice, and that simple act has lifted a heavy weight off my subconscious.

I have now decided to cease being lukewarm and instead to play with growing my practice. I am not a professional; never have been. I'm not sure it is in my personality to work at being serious and impressive. Instead, I will be a free spirit who writes campy ads posted on coffee shop bulletin boards and uses a blogger webpage because it is the best I know how to manage. Who knows, I may even decorate my xeroxed ads with crayon!

Drumming for Athena

We've been getting into drums lately, my partner and I. We are excited about playing them, dancing to them, and making them. My partner is such a wonderful perfectionist that drum-making might be just right.

As part of the new obsession with drums, for the last few weeks we have gone to the Parthenon at Centennial Park and drummed on the steps with a friend or two. For those who didn't know, yes, there is a full-scale accurate replica of the Parthenon in the middle of Nashville. It is made of a sandy colored concrete, but there is a nicely tarted up Athena inside and it is intact, which is much more than I can say for the original (which I have also been to in person. I like Nashville's better, honestly.). 

We have been going in the late afternoon and staying until almost full dark (or after). Between my partner and I we have 5 drums from tiny to medium large, good for hauling in and easy to switch sounds back and forth. Our friends bring instruments, too, so the sound is always changing. Sometimes one person will play three or four drums at once, all cradled in one lap.

This past week I found myself just wanting to absorb the sound of the drums. I lay down on the giant outer step and stared up the columns to the night sky, the pink glow of the city limning the scattered clouds. There is something wonderful, something that speaks to my pagan soul, about drumming on the steps of the temple. At one point we chose a spot on the water nearby and played to the ducks (I love ducks, they wiggle their tail feathers and it makes me laugh every time), but I didn't feel that same satisfying charge as I do when we are in full physical contact with the temple itself. 

I know, I know, the city or whomever would love to say that the Parthenon is just a gimmick, left over from the World Fair, but Athena has been consecrated (I have heard the story from multiple bragging pagans around many campfires, each claiming to have been the One to do it), and there is Power there. I have gone and sat at her feet, just to have a chat. It feels right, it is right, to live in a city with a Goddess Temple at its center, and I am gratified to play drums on the stones of the Temple.