Daily Archives: May 15, 2005

Pagan Comm(unity)?

About two years ago, I participated in a discussion group that included a number of relatively famous pagan “elders”. There was some scuffle regarding some relatively unsavory behavior on the part of one of the members, a leader of a pagan group and the erstwhile protege of one of these “elders”. This elder posted (anonymously, of course) a message that encouraged people to close ranks, to support this unscrupulous character because as Pagans, we owed it to ourselves to present a unified front against our “enemies”, to recognize and respect our “brothers” and give them more leeway, so to speak, than we would another non-relative. A recent item over at Letters from Hardscrabble Creek on whether or not “pagan community” was a meaningful construct gave me incentive to look up my response to that issue, which touches on the concept of “pagan community”:

As far as “Pagan community” is concerned, I am often troubled that some people who claim the name of “Pagan” seem to think that there should be some artificial construct (of course, it does not seem artificial to them) that connects us all at the level of our common beliefs, that there is some kind of “brotherhood” which all pagans should acknowledge and respect.

I have a fundamental question regarding this “brotherhood”, however … is this a “brotherhood” of those who CLAIM to be at one with each other, or of those whose deeds prove it to be the case?

As was said once earlier in the last century (if may have been FDR who said it), if you are a “Harvard Man”, you don’t need a class ring to prove it – your actions will make it obvious to all that you are of that caliber.

For myself, I know my brethren (that are not tied by blood) by their deeds, and not their words. And if a brother (or sister, for in fact ‘brotherhood’ implies something that smacks of patriarchy and hierarchy, of closed rooms and inequality) makes what I feel to be an error, it is my obligation to discuss it with them privately, “on the way to the church” so to speak, rather than standing up and impugning them before the entire congregation. For if we are in fact ALL siblings, then any action that affects the well-being of one affects the well-being of all. All of which goes to show that one cannot choose one’s “brothers” lightly. Yes, we are all related, we all share this plane in which to find our paths, we are all different shafts of the same light. But our “unity” is quite a different matter. The fact is that we are NOT a pagan community because we call ourselves Pagan, but are only a community if we act as a community

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Folly’s Promenade

What folly perpetrated in my youth,
before thoughts of mortality began
to permeate my eager thirst for truth
and close the width of my attention span,

has wrought its retribution over time
and haunts me on occasion? What old song
that lingers from that bygone, careless prime,
seems fractured now, its notes awry, gone wrong?

My karmic debt is, doubtless, still unpaid,
compounding interest daily even now.
And no one, not a saint, nor sacred cow,
will pay the bills that at my feet are laid.

There are no luck, no miracles, no chance;
the universe is more or less mirage.
If you would join the party, you must dance,
and pin the universe with your corsage.

And folly? What is that to never try?
What worse regret than acting the wallflower
for so long that the grand ball passes by
and you need not corsage, but funeral bower?

15 May 2005

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