Giving Voice to Our Souls

Sing through my Voice

Play through my Hands

Let the way be Open.

---- Abbi Springer McBride

It began with banter and repartee between two student working in the cafe in my building at work. "Nobody likes the sound of your voice," she said, "so you should just not use it." We laughed uproariously as the young man responded and the two of them continued their playfully hostile banter.

I posted this in my status on Facebook as "overheard in the library." It shows why context is so important. A couple of people reacted to the hostility and not the humor of the remark. O one person said that when she was a child that her singing was an offense to God and she should stop singing aloud, and she carried that remark and prohibition forward to adulthood. My jaw dropped and my angry fingers typed.

From my Baptist background, my reaction was a very sarcastic "nice witness," and currently would have added a well placed expletive as well.

It reminded me that I have my own journey with that kind of silencing. When I was younger, I sang all the time and was in the school choir. My voice was relatively untrained but I still sang all the time and sang along with the radio, albums, and the television. I sang myself to sleep, I sang in the shower, I sang in the car...everyplace was a good place for song. Some where in the midst of a couple of difficult relationships, I silenced myself.

When I moved to rural New York, I got sick a lot. It was part allergies and part stress related colds and flu. I coughed a lot, sometimes for months on end. All of this roughened my voice and made it crack. Still I sang--coughed and sang. One evening, I was sitting at a table of amateur singers who said they'd like to form a choir of singers to sing pagan chants and songs at our gatherings. "I'd like to be a part of that," I said. The deafening silence as all the women looked at each other told me all I needed to know: they don't think I'm good or good enough. I shut up about that.

At the same time, I was in a relationship with a man who didn't like a lot of distractions including noise. He'd turn down the television or the stereo. He didn't even like the sound of the refrigerator, washing machine, or dryer running. He didn't like hair dryers. My life became quieter. And then too, the radio in my car stopped working so I couldn't play music and sing along. I couldn't afford to get it fixed for a long time and then when I did, it stopped working immediately.

The good news was that I became very comfortable with silence and didn't need extraneous sounds and noises to distract me or entertain me. The bad news was that I forgot how to sing and learned that I was a bad singer. I became embarrassed by my singing voice. I forgot the words to songs and I forgot to sing.

As time moved on, so did the friends and relationships; what remained was the silence and the silencing. My practice as a witch and shamanic practitioner deepened and I became a High Priestess and leader in my community. I was reading a well respected teacher on an email list who said that shamans and shamanic practitioners "gave voice" to their magic. With their voices, raised in song, they led their communities and themselves to greater healing and soul discovery.

That challenged me to confront the silencing. I re-retrieved my power song and began to sing again. Over the past few years, I've actively practiced 'giving voice' to the songs within. Our group sings alot and we have some wonderful Enchantresses in our midst. They help me to have the courage to remember and to give voice. My voice has gotten stronger and my memory has gotten better. It's all in process and it's all beautiful.

One person who responded to the Facebook thread says she makes a joyful noise using the voice the Creator gave her. And as another one said, if they don't want to hear it, they don't have to listen!

One of the things I've learned from this silencing and self-censorship, is that you don't have to stay silent. We are resonant beings and can give voice to our power and our songs. Music fills our souls and its energy wants to go out into the world. Our histories and our culture often tries to inhibit that energy, so it takes courage to give voice. Once you do give voice to your soul and your heart, you find out how much freedom you have. The gods wish us to sing every note so may you find your voice and give it to the world, loud and proud!

Bob the Dog

I've written a lot about my dogs over the years, here in this blog and in my books. Now they've both passed into the Summerlands and it feels funny to write things without them.

This is a tribute to Bob the Dog, pictured here at age 13, peacefully dreaming. He lived another year. Bob was a very enthusiastic and loving dog, embodying what I often called "Joie de Bobbie," since he loved life.
I also called him the High Hopes Dog and often hummed the high hopes song. One time, the man who co-owned the dogs with me took them out running. On their way home, they met one of my neighbors who was carrying the deer he had gotten. The neighbor put the deer down and started chatting. Then he started laughing. Both men turned around and saw Bob trying to tug the deer carcass away! Always hopeful, nothing was too large for Bob to overcome.

Bob was also very into the energy of the pagan circle. Several times, he made his way into the circle. Once when the sacred masculine energy was invoked, Bob came into circle, plopped himself in the middle and started liking his private parts. That cracked us up and was so fitting to the ritual. Once he came into the center as the priestess was leading the circle in a meditation on the birth of the Sun King. "You are my Sun King" is another one of his theme songs.

Even at his most feeble and tired, Bob greeted us with a wagging tale and a bright eye. Mike and I were both with him when he passed. It was the day after our wedding and we were talking and he was in the center of our circle when we realized that he was passing. I stroked him as he struggled with his last breaths. Finally his poor old heart gave out and he exhaled. I could feel his spirit romp to the next life, with wagging tale and supple body. He's still here in my heart. I miss him very much and he graced my life with many stories and a lot of joy.

His death was smelly and messy and Mike and I were there to take care of it. Since he died at home, we decided to take his remains for cremation the next day. As we were driving, I rolled down the window telling Mike the smell was overpowering. Then we both laughed. Bob had a way of keeping us intensely present and engaged in all of his actions, basic and sublime.

He runs with the Goddess, Lady Artemis who protected him and loved him all his life. I am grateful to Her for all the critter blessings.
Bob the Dog 1995-2009 was a wonderful companion, pal, and guy.
Fare-thee-well till we meet again.

Ya Did It Right the First Time!

I like to think that I'm not a perfectionist but I do like to be thorough and meet certain standards set by me. That does mean that I like to research and do things thoroughly in the matters of spiritual learning. Sometimes living la vida Wicca, or living in the moment, presents you with different circumstances.

At our tradition's annual retreat, we had the wonderful teacher, Christopher Penczak shared his knowledge with us. In the course of his teaching and not particularly central to the theme, he commented that Hekate held the keys to the gateway to journeying between the worlds. Her crossroads are pathways to many dimensions and realities. During one of the meditations, Hekate came to me and gave me a key, saying that I would know what it was for when the time came.

It was striking and kind of tangential to the weekend and I set an intention to do some journeywork on this subject and to talk with Hekate. Somehow, I didn't get around to it, though the intention remained. I thought I had plenty of time.

At the time, we were living with two very elderly and very dear dogs in declining health as well as planning our wedding for the end of September. I've written a lot about Congo and Bob and they are important and special; they've always lived their lives dedicated into the care of Lady Artemis. During the Labor Day weekend, Congo had an alarming episode and her decline became sharp. By Tuesday, she had stopped eating and drinking. We took her to the vet and he outlined her options. For a 15 year old dog, terrified of vets, these options weren't happy ones. Mike and I talked over these options and decided to bid her fare-thee-well.

As we talked it over with her, I talked to her about the care by Lady Artemis (whom I thank most gratefully for these long lived dogs), Hekate whispered in my ear, "I will take your little black dog for as she is special to you, she is special to me." And so in the hands of a compassionate vet and vet tech, Mike and I held her and petted her as Congo slowly faded from this plane of existence.

As I was driving home, I realized that I knew what the key was for. Under the beautiful blue skies of central NY, I opened the gateway and watched her wag her tail and run gracefully into the arms of Hekate. Congo, glorious and beautifully fit, runs with Hekate. Blessed be my girly-girl and fare-thee-well till we meet again.

And yes, the lesson is that we get the tools and we use them. There is no reset button, no do-over, and no chance to learn it deeper or better because 'ya did it right the first [and only] time.

Sisterhood of the Stained Shirts

I'm ready, I think, for the Stained Shirt Hall of Fame.

Throughout my life, I've been one or more of the following: round, chubby, firm, firmly packed, "you've got such a pretty face," fat, obese, morbidly obese, pleasingly plump, zaftig, overweight, and heavy. Struggling with the weight, criticism, and judgment is one of those life lessons; a lesson that no matter how much you learn and change, it has more to teach you.

One of the things that was always extremely and even painfully embarrassing to me was that I spilled stuff and got stains on my shirts. I'm buxom enough that my shirt is a net of safety so spilled food and drink never has to touch the ground! I was also brought up to understand that overweight/heavy/plump/fat people had to make an extra effort to be neat and clean in their appearance, otherwise they'd be judged as low-class, slovenly, slatternly, ignorant, messy pigs. So when I spilled something, it went beyond embarrassing to painful mortification.

Then I discovered, joyfully and to my surprise, that it happens to everyone. Then I found among my friends that it's a reason for laughter and affection. We are the sisterhood of the stained shirts.

I rarely wear white shirts because they get stained and are not a good wardrobe investment. I had one I bought dirt cheap so I put it on -- brand new -- and wore it to work. I look down and there are little tiny drop stains like coffee or tea. I emailed my sisters and we shared a laugh. I can even get stains on shirts I haven't even worn! Together we have found that tomato sauce can get around layers of napkins, bibs, and sweaters to stain white and pastel shirts. Not just tomato sauce, but anything in our hand-to-mouth coordination proves to be a stain in the making.

Of course, the Goddess blesses us in all our humanity, and as a matter of fact, shows her abundance in her many aspects. The Triple Goddess of Stains: Maiden (Tomato Sauce on a pastel shirt), Mother (Coffee/Tea on a beige shirt) and Crone (Big Splat of All) and Hag (O, the hell with it, I'm putting it on proudly). That's four, but in the Coven of the Stained Shirts, our sisters are not bound by conventional thinking). All Spills are Ours. The God became the sacrificed one because he laughed as the stain became spilled.

All hail to the sacred bib of the Goddess

Catch my spills and take them into your Be-ing

Honor my stains for they are a life of devotion

To the bounties of your harvest.

All hail to the Sacred Tide-to-Go Wand of the God

Erase my spills, if you can, from my shirt

Leaving a faded spot thereon.

Honor my faded spots as we do honor

To the spilling wisdom of the God.

Blessed Be!

As to my hall of fame contention, I have two words: chop sticks and a teriyaki sauce to die for!

This from a zaftig goddess with a stained shirt!

Whole Cloth, Holy Cloth

I'm excited by this.

On Friday night, Mike and I went to see the film, Creating Buddhas, a one hour film that explores the intersections of sacred intention, creation, mastery, and divinity-- in textiles. The filmmaker, Isadora Gabrielle Leidenfrost, is a Ph.D student and textile scholar at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

See me jump up and down excitedly because I know her. I was in one of her early films on storytelling when she was an undergraduate. She is a very special woman, creatrix, and visionary, as well as an expert and scholar. She has her own production company, Soulful Media and has already made ten films, some short and some longer, like Creating Buddhas. She mentioned she made one about church hats. I'll bet that is very cool. Her vision of bringing the soul together with fabric, textiles, thread, color and the act of creation is amazing and unique. Her vision is an art, a vehicle for understanding and reflection, and a pathway to spiritual awareness. Her energy gives this vision presence and voice.

Creating Buddhas tells us about fabric thangkas, the Buddhist tradition and craft of creating divine beings using fabric, cord, thread, and embellishments. It's a sacred act of creating a vehicle for the Divine to inhabit. It's an amazing process. This film also talks with the only Thangka master residing in the West, Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo and it follows over several months as she creates as Green Tara fabric thangka. The film brings together experts, practitioners, and others to talk about Rinchen-Wongmo's process of becoming a master as well as her present-day creation.

So absorbing is the story and the process, I forgot to look at this as a film to critique or review, but rather it is another view of Universe, the soul, and the way of creation. Through her films, the pathway is open for us to explore, experience, and be changed.

Felon Friends and Pen Pals: Reflections on the Lessons I Learned

As I related in a previous post, I had a prison ministry for several years. I learned a great deal about myself, about inmates and about the dedicated people who provide a service to inmates. This is a conglomeration of random lessons learned.

Prison and jail are not nice places. I know you are saying "DUH." I also know the inmates who wrote to me protected me from what they experienced. I had the naive notion that the majority of pagans were incarcerated by the unfair and punitive drug laws of this country. Wrong. Very wrong. The ones that wrote to me had done bad things and in some cases, very bad things. One of the rules I developed was to not ask what they did. It was better not knowing in many cases. Nevertheless, they proved to me they were sincerely seeking further education in the Craft. My weeding out process was fairly effective and rigorous.

That doesn't mean they wouldn't try to manipulate me. Prison life is all about manipulating the system. Keeping out of trouble, getting what you want, avoiding further punishment is what prison is all about. We desperately need prison reform in this country because it's all about containment and punishment. Most of the time, the only rehabilitation taking place is freed inmates are determined never to go back. Prisons and prison attitudes towards religion vary widely from state to state. Mail rooms in prisons can make or break a correspondence course. Many times, it was a struggle for the prisoner and me to convince the prison bureacracy that i was a legitimate teacher.

I developed what I consider some very good friends from this group of correspondents. One of my regrets is that I've lost touch with a few of them. I wish them well and hope maybe someday I'll pick up the pen and write, and that my letter will find them. Believe it or not, prisoners seem to get moved around a lot. Many prisoners even most that I worked with were not pagan until they came to prison. They either stumbled into it through a book or another inmate, or they observed inmates and wanted to know what it was. Some, truth be told, used Wicca as a way to scare other inmates and to manipuate they system. Some were lonely witches seeking same. My weeding out process was very effective in these matters.

When a prisoner gets out, they rarely stay in touch. I may get a call or two or a letter. Sometimes even an email. Fortunately and happily, their new life in the free world absorbs them and they don't need a reminder of their prison life. At least that's the way I look at it.

I learned that talking about a prison ministry to others, even in the pagan world would get greeted with judgment and dismay. At a couple of points, I asked for help from the groups I was in and was basically told that I was on my own. Many people counseled me to stop and it's rather awkward for your new lover to field a call from a prisoner when he didn't know you were doing prison work. We got over that but he has never been really comfortable with my felon friends.

Fortunately I found the pagan prison ministry group on yahoo groups and they were a great resource. There are a few good websites too. California has a pagan chaplain in its prison system. Mainstream religion does a much better job at this and they have really good resources that are translateable to pagan life and ethics. Get over your prejudices about mainstream religions, they have good people and good stuff and will help sometimes more than our pagan brothers and sisters.

I learned to have good, strong boundaries and to be a little harder. No is an excellent word and I should have said it sooner. I learned that I should have stayed small. I never went into the prisons as a pagan chaplain. I'd visited prisons to review their libraries and related programs and it was not something I intended on doing. Those who do are admirable!

My feelings about this today are a little raw because of a couple of lawsuits. Lawsuits happen, it's just ironic to get sued by the people you were trying to help. I don't want people who are contemplating a prison ministry to hesitate. It is good, satisfying work and it is desperately needed in our community. Go into it eyes wide open, without naive assumptions, with strong boundaries, and keep it small. You can't help everyone, you aren't responsible for the lack of response from the rest of the community, and you will work hard. And when you're done, end it in a way that honors you as a priest or priestess and honors your students (that was a do as I say, don't do what I did moment!) The gods will smile on you and bless you for sure.

Felon Friends and Pen Pals: How it all happened

It started with a naive assumption and a good heart. We were in a pagan group together and we wanted to connect with other pagans. So we listed our names and addresses in a directory of pagan groups. This was back in the day before the ubiquity of the internet, so--hooray!-- we made connections when letters started arriving.

Here's the kicker. The letters were from inmates seeking connection with other pagans. I laughingly called my fellow witch and said thank you for the new friends, calling them "felon friends." The name stuck as we referred to the burgeoning prison correspondence as "the felon friends." There weren't many and the few inmates had intriguing stories and seemed very sincere. We sent them our newsletter and wrote personal letters.

About that time, I started offering correspondence courses. As a matter of fact, three of the four books I've written and published started out as correspondence courses. You guessed it! A good proportion of the subscribers were incarcerated pagans. As I drifted away from my former group, the felon friends continued to write to both of us, or at least to me. Inmates would pass my name on to others and my correspondence grew. It was very absorbing work and I learned a lot about how to deal with inmates. There are few resources for pagans working with inmates and sometimes the advice came from the inmates themselves. Many of them became very protective of me, giving me advice about how to tell the sincere seekers from the manipulators and the fakes.

Most of the faithful writers were eager for correspondence courses. I did a Tarot course using Learning the Tarot, and I did a "God of the Month," using my then unpublished book, The Wild God. So one day I realized I needed to 'get real' about this ministry and act like it was a ministry. I organized myself and took my in person beginning Wicca class which I call The Initiation of Athena and divided up into chapters, wrote questions, and designed a course ending with a dedication. I figured it would take a year and a day. what I didn't figure was the different mail restrictions in different prisons and different states. What I didn't figure is the enormous time it took to review and comment on the questions, to answer letters, keep good records, to make the copies and to get to the post office.

At one point, I formed it as a coven, The Coven of the Barbed Pentacle. We had a newsletter and when someone finished the course, there was a self-dedication ritual and I made up a certificate. The first person to finish was very dedicated and it took almost exactly two years. It was a happy and proud moment for us both.

One of the inmates gave my name to a newsletter that went out to incarcerated pagans across the country. I had 100 people, mostly men, in 21 states. To run a correspondence service of this size took most of the weekend and evenings during the week. It took a good investment of money (for postage and copying) and time. Most inmates are destitute but a few would send money or stamps when they could. One of the newsletter issues was financed 100% by inmate donations. A proud moment.

I would get phone calls and sometimes inmates would pass my name on to their chaplains or others so I would get calls from chaplains asking for advice on how to accomodate those observing pagan and Wiccan religions.

I was a priestess to inmates for more than five years with little help from others (more on that later). It took a lot of time, effort, and expense. It was the focus of my spiritual work, my spiritual practice, and my understanding of service to the gods. It can be and was for me, a burn-out situation. Inmates are demanding, their stories are sad, and sometimes their manipulation is evident but sometimes not. If I skipped a weekend or missed a night of writing letters, I got behind. Their letters reflected anger, disappointment, dismay, and concern.

I was getting burnt out. I was getting further and further behind. In some ways, I set myself up for failure. The process I developed was very individual and based on a personal response so there was no way to make this a 'factory' approach. One day a letter from an inmate -- for whom I'd gone the extra mile -- arrived that was a screaming accusation about how I took his money and gave him nothing in return (I used the money for the newsletter) and that I was another in a long line of betrayers of his trust.

That was the last letter I read from an inmate, with one exception. Months went by, then a year. I don't throw the letters out. I keep them thinking one day, I will write a letter of apology and maybe refer them elsewhere. I didn't end my services to them with honor and I still feel remorse and guilt over that.

Meanwhile, I was getting phone calls from the Department of Corrections, asking for information on accomodating pagan inmates observences of their religion. Ocassionally they would want someone to come into the prisons and lead groups. Amazingly, I had been able to find people. It's a rare and wonderful person who has the right kind of skills to do that. Kudos to all prison chaplains, pagans or otherwise!

As a result of some of my consulting, I was named in a law suit last year; the defendant inmate claiming that I along with the prison chaplain and warden were violating his right to observe his . Luckily for me, the Department of Corrections added me to their consultancy list so I was represented by the state attorney general and didn't have to retain my own lawyers. I just filed documents, answered questions, reviewed documents. Eventually, the case against me was dropped.

Yesterday, a letter arrived at my work, marked "legal materials." It was from an inmate demanding I provide an affadavit for his lawsuit against the Department of Corrections. The letter questioned my credentials and abilities. But more upsetting was that this inmate had my work address because the DOC had sent him a copy of the fax cover sheet. My feelings on this are still rather raw. My sense of privacy is violated and my ability to keep this work separate from my work is also destroyed. Luckily, the people who opened the mail and saw the letter are confidential and trustworthy.

And so it will go on. In the next post, I will write some reflections on the process, the call to service, and what I learned from the felon friends.

Best wishes and be good, or at least stay out of jail. It is not a nice place.

Reinventing Ourselves the Rowdy Way

I just spend some time reworking the template on this blog. Sometimes, as Mouse complains about me, I point and click faster than my know-how grows. So I had eliminated something by accident that I wanted to reinstate. Took me awhile but I was able to do it.

Then I decided to give the blog a different look. I like the calm blues and grays of this template. To my mind, I just reinvented myself in my blog. And I think we can and do reinvent ourselves as we go evolve through our lives. If you think of who you were as you graduated high school or college and compare yourself to who you are now, you discover that you have had the opportunity to reinvent yourself, and thus create and recreate your life.

A few years ago, one of my colleagues who was really quite accomplished and had several careers across his lifetime, was ranting about how he has remained consistently the same throughout those transitions. Unlike me, he said, who has reinvented herself several times. How did he know. He took my bumper sticker, "Magic Happens," as a declaration of my ability to change and shift. It happens that he was right. I had taken the opportunity as I moved to a new job in a new town to create the person I wanted to be. I grew into it over the years as he had witnessed. Sometimes it is a way to grow into the kind of person you want to be. If you can envision it, know that you can become it, you can achieve it. Ghandi said, "be the change you want to be in the world." And this is a variation on the same thing.

Be that which you want to be. It hearkens to a magical principle in spell work called "behaving as if." You cast the spell and then you behave as if it has already happened until it comes into being. You decide what it is you want to be and then you behave as if. And like spell work, you have to seize every opportunity to do the work that achievement requires whether it is to get more training or education or to stand in your power and be the strong woman you envision. Envisioning is the first step in reinvention. Doing the work is the second. Third is recognizing when it happens and thanking the powers that made it happen, including yourself.

We as goddess people, shamanic practitioners, witches, pagans or just plain 21st century people are shape shifters. Perhaps we only become wolves, leopards, dolphins or earthworms in our dreams, meditations, or journeys but we do shift who we are over our lifetime. We have the power to do it if we believe it and step into that power of Be-ing. The rowdy way is to Be what we wish to be. It's not always easy and it's not always smooth, but it is always rowdy.

Of course if you have access to online avatar creators you make the process virtual.

Be the Rowdy Goddess you want to be in the world.