This idea so flabbergasted me I need to put it out for feedback. My friend Jan – an interfaith minister but in no way, shape or form in love with the war gods -- thinks the new Guiding-Goddess world needs ‘congregations.’
Whoa! One of the nastiest words in my vocabulary is ‘congregation.’ To me it smacks hard of War-God-ness.
But the more I turned it over in my mind, the more I thought she miiiight be right.
War-god congregations give people a lotta stuff they can’t grab in other places: people sworn to love ya no matter what your breath’s like Sundays; free babysitting – and unlike those boing-eyed, bubble-gum-popping sitters at the bowling alley – these people look like they came from planet earth; friends for your kids you actually like (even Scouts are sposed ta let in kids with 40-piece artillery collections and the habits of trolls).
The other thing I liked about my childhood war-god congregation was Sunday School. I got to air my feelings about the deity. And people actually listened.
So waddja think? Could our covens, temples and other Goddess groups grab anything from the congregation?
But forget about being a “flock.” We’d hafta be something like a ‘pack’ or a ‘pride.’ Or – whaddya call a group of leopards?
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Thnx to wcm1111 for the foto
Hmm-I'm pretty divided on this one.
ReplyDeleteI see the points for having congregations.
But whenever it's been tried in Paganism it seems to fail quite shortly thereafter.
This may be because we're not, as you pointed out wrt Goddess folk, very sheeplike.
Many free and unorthodox thinkers do not make a great congregation-plus (in Paganism anyway) we attract our fair share of deeply disturbed individuals, who aim straight for leadership roles, and don't hesitate to create trouble.
But perhaps just-Goddess-folk would be better. The matrifocal plan could encourage egality without hierarcical bickering-I don't know.
Love,
Terri in Joburg
This is our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. We can't be organized because we don't trust organizations.
ReplyDeleteI've considered the need for Goddess 'churches' because they have advantages. Christians receive weekly indoctrination in their beliefs, and it's combined with a sense of fellowship and the rush of doing the "right thing." That's powerful reinforcement, and it enables them to work en masse for a stated purpose that is established by their hierarchy.
I just don't see any way to get it to work. People have tried. RCOG, Reformed Congregation of the Goddess, is a loosely formed organization that has had some success. I'm a member, but I'm not near any groups. The problem has been that no one has been able to come up with a definition of Witch or Goddess worshipper or Pagan that didn't start a huge Witch War. We are people who focus on detail - that's what led us to the Goddess - and that means no one quality applies to all of us.
There's also a financial problem. There's a strong "publish or perish" vibe in the Goddess community and many of the leaders feel threatened about sharing information freely. Everyone wants to carve out their own little niche.
I've been thinking about trying to start a Woman-Only Goddess 2.0 site, but I figure that won't go any better than the Wiki (which I have to move to another site) did.
I think the societal form we need to go for is a Pride like lions or a Pack like wolves. Those are powerful animals that can work together for survival, and that's what we're talking about here. Survival. We need to put aside our differences so we can act collectively, but I don't know how to get us to do it. I know it's necessary, though. Any ideas?
MORGAINE: This is our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. We can't be organized because we don't trust organizations.
ReplyDeleteATHANA: I think Jan’s talking about not the Church, but the small, local group that is separate from the higher-up (nasty) structure that is The Church. Congregations can even spin off from anything higher-up and just do their own thing. Which appeals to us Goddess worshippers. We can be small but close-knit prides or covens or packs.
ATHANA: But are there things about the ‘congregation’ we could steal to make us Goddess people happier, healthier and wealther? Of course our groups are and must be different in a zillion ways from anything Abrahamaic – we work in circles not rows, we actively participate in ritual so much more, we prefer worshipping outdoors v. indoors, we dance whereas they sit like logs, etc., etc.
MORGAINE: I've considered the need for Goddess 'churches' because they have advantages. Christians receive weekly indoctrination in their beliefs, and it's combined with a sense of fellowship and the rush of doing the "right thing."
That's powerful reinforcement, and it enables them to work en masse for a stated purpose that is established by their hierarchy.
ATHANA: I can’t see goddess congregations/packs/prides ever organizing in any hierarchical way. If ever we’d organize into something beyond the individual pride it would be a circular organization, and not one but probably several. And maybe they’d come and go, and I think that’d be alright – and maybe even good. Here’s one thing that concerns me: there are a lot of baby boomers about to inherit zillions from their parents – as Jean Shinoda Bolen puts it, the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world (or something like that). I’d love to see Goddess get some of that wealth. We need it to fund people who want to write, sculpt, and think-tank for Her. But we need a trusted organization to receive donations and dole them out properly. An organization donors would trust, and that we prides would also trust.
MORGAINE: I just don't see any way to get it to work. People have tried. RCOG, Reformed Congregation of the Goddess, is a loosely formed organization that has had some success. I'm a member, but I'm not near any groups. The problem has been that no one has been able to come up with a definition of Witch or Goddess worshipper or Pagan that didn't start a huge Witch War. We are people who focus on detail - that's what led us to the Goddess - and that means no one quality applies to all of us.
ATHANA: I think it’s ok that we don’t agree on everything. I think we all do agree on this: Goddess is central to our lives and should be to the earth and everything on it. Or how would you put it? What is it exactly that we all agree on?
MORGAINE: There's also a financial problem. There's a strong "publish or perish" vibe in the Goddess community and many of the leaders feel threatened about sharing information freely. Everyone wants to carve out their own little niche.
ATHANA: I think the war gods have done a fat number on us women in this regard. We need to work on it in ourselves. The Earth and world needs women to get strong and part of that means learning to trust each other more. On the other hand to some extent maybe our generation just has to live with this, and work like the dickens to teach the next generation of women to do better.
MORGAINE: I've been thinking about trying to start a Woman-Only Goddess 2.0 site, but I figure that won't go any better than the Wiki (which I have to move to another site) did.
ATHANA: Do you have any ideas as to why the Wiki wasn’t used more by people?
MORGAINE: I think the societal form we need to go for is a Pride like lions or a Pack like wolves. Those are powerful animals that can work together for survival, and that's what we're talking about here. Survival. We need to put aside our differences so we can act collectively, but I don't know how to get us to do it. I know it's necessary, though. Any ideas?
ATHANA: So well put! We need to put aside our differences at least to the extent that we can all jump forward together. Ideas: the thought of getting our fair share of some of that Boomer money might be enough to motivate some of us. Think of what we could do if we all had money to buy land for our prides to meet on, money to build shelters to enter when it snows, money to pay people to do Goddess research, money to fund think tanks on how to replace the war gods with guiding mother goddesses and to help people all over the world uncover their ancient guiding goddesses, money to buy land for nature preserves and to build sacred areas, money to make movies and TV SERIES ABOUT GODDESS!!!
ATHANA: Maybe we should do some posts on fundraising?
TERRI: Many free and unorthodox thinkers do not make a great congregation-plus (in Paganism anyway) we attract our fair share of deeply disturbed individuals, who aim straight for leadership roles, and don't hesitate to create trouble.
ReplyDeleteATHANA: Terri you amaze me: you’ve just described my first and only attempt to start a Goddess group. There aren’t that many of us in the small (population wise) state of Maine, so I put out a general call for women who wanted to join a group centered around the “ancient goddesses”. I told the group I wanted us to be free to design this group, as a group, i.e. that I didn’t want to design it. But, I said, two things I did want to keep was consensus decision-making and discussion about how the Neolithic Goddess worshippers made their societies peaceful and egalitarian.
Well, one of the women who asked to join was someone who had a personality disorder (she told us this at the first meeting). I thought I could handle this, but turned out I didn’t have what it took. The woman just blew up like a balloon overnight into someone who tried to mow us all down and force everyone into following her ideas, wishes, preferences, and so forth. Every move I made she was unhappy with – and told the group so, in the group meetings. It was surreal. Didn’t matter what I did – if I said “up” she said “down.” It was difficult to get through our meetings because this woman took up so much time complaining about how, when or why something was being done. And the complaints got weirder and weirder – near the end, the group was getting 3-4 emails a week from this woman insisting that it upset her that we were limiting each meeting item to a time limit (something we were doing so we could get everything into the meeting we wanted to – a ritual, some sharing time, some discussion time, etc.).
The next thing I knew this woman was saying she didn’t want the group to have discussions about the ancient goddesses – which was one of the main reasons I started the group. When I confronted her on this she said I hadn’t made it clear that that had been my motivation for starting the group. And (the implication was) she didn’t care what my motivation was anyway, she wanted to talk about the Goddess in the here and now only, and the past could go jump in the lake.
Whew! What a trip. This woman finally left the group, but by then I think the group as a whole was a sad, uptight, tension-fraught beast. We had a hard time coming to consensus about anything. Half the group was more inclined to do ritual, the other half to do discussion, with each half showing little interest in the other half’s interests. Members began having other things to do on meeting nights. Sigh. I haven’t officially closed the group, but we haven’t met since May.
vudovCongratulations, Athana! You just got your initiation into the Witch Wars, and hived off two practices to boot!
ReplyDeleteThis is what happens when you try to pull Pagans together. There's always somebody that wants to challenge the perceived head of the group. There's always a struggle. Everybody gets fed up and goes their own way.
I saw this in a business two friends and I tried to start. It was supposed to be an interfaith center offering classes in things like astrology and Wicce, doing counseling, etc. It was a freaking disaster.
One group of nutjobs pseudo-pagans came in doing a b&d act that scared off the normal people. Then, a lady that was supposed to be running a meditation decided to channel "her angel" for us and drug in some nasty thing we had to banish. Finally, this man and woman who thought they were the only Pagans ever to reproduce started bringing their baby to the meditation circle, coming in acting like it was a coven, informing us that two other covens were fighting to get the guy to join them. (If there are such rivalries, I want no part of them or anyone who thinks that way.) We came home one night at 2 am and the guy was waiting outside our door (we lived there - never try that), mad that he didn't feel his wife was properly embraced by us (long story - I wasn't there.) And many, many more problems went on.
There was fun and good stuff, too, but it just amazed me that everyone who came through the door, or contacted us after we were on TV, was focused on me and not my partners, and not necessarily in a good way. They all wanted to dictate how we functioned even though we clearly defined our parameters.
It amazes me how contentious supposedly spiritual people can get - like the lady who asked me to perform a summer solstice ritual and then banished me from her book store because her friends said "it was Pagan ritual and had nothing to do with god" - a lot of them were into Sai Babba.
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Quote: ATHANA: Do you have any ideas as to why the Wiki wasn’t used more by people?
Yeah - everybody is saving information for their next book. Everybody wants to get paid, and that's just not going to work in this context. I know Priestesses have to pay rent, too, but we're getting nowhere this way. We simply don't have the numbers yet to support a clergy. I wish we did.
We need to take a lesson from the blogging community. Our best shot at getting the word out about the Goddess is online, and the way to do it is outreach and open dialogue. We have to gift our ideas to each other and build on them. Everybody is hoarding little crumbs of knowledge. If we put them all together, we could move the whole community forward and drag the world with us. I'm not saying everybody has to tell every idea or thought they've ever had, but there needs to be more trust and generosity among us. There is a much bigger issue here than book sales - survival of the species.