For Immediate Release
DC Pagans to Hold Halloween Ceremony Countering the New Apostolic Reformation Cursing Prayer Campaign On October 30th in Lafayette Square Park
Priestesses and priests from the Washington, DC Pagan community will hold a Celebration of the Divine Feminine and Religious Freedom in Lafayette Square Park across from the White House on Sunday, October 30th, 2011, as a protest to the New Apostolic Reformation’s 51-day prayer campaign targeting Pagans, Wiccans, Witches, Druids, Heathens, and other Goddess-worshipers nationwide.
The New Apostolic Reformation is a Dominionist group of Christians preaching that all feminine forms of deity are demonic. The NAR is engaged in a 51-day campaign of imprecatory prayer to create a fundamentalist Christian theocracy in the USA. Republican presidential hopefuls Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry are influenced by the NAR agenda.
Reverend Barry Lynn, United Church of Christ minister and executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said, “Some people think the Dominionists and the New Apostolic Reformation are a newfangled movement. I call them what they are: the Religious Right in a new gown. They're not fooling anyone. This is the same old bunch of theocrats we've been dealing with for more than 40 years. It's the same crew that believes only its narrow version of Christianity is acceptable and pleasing to God. It's the same collection of people who believe their religion gives them the right to run everyone else's lives.”
Rev. Lynn went on to say, “I have news for them: Wiccans and Pagans are part of the American religious mosaic, and they're here to stay. Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison gave us religious liberty - and that means religious liberty for everyone. The followers of nature-based faiths are going to use it because they don't want to lose it. What could be more in keeping with the great American tradition?”
Katrina Messenger, a writer, teacher, blogger, poet and Washington, DC native, will be the main celebrant in Lafayette Square Park. Ms. Messenger said, "The methods used by the NAR and other Dominionists are founded upon hate, fear, and ignorance. Their demonization of our Gods and Goddesses uses inflammatory language that can lead to violence and discrimination against followers of minority religions. We have choices in how to respond to this threat to our freedom and our faiths. Many are resorting to prayer, some to writing letters, and some to defensive strategies. We decided to honor the Queen of Heaven, the Goddess Inanna, in a public space, and demonstrate the very freedoms the Dominionists seek to destroy." Ms. Messenger is the founder of Connect DC and the Reflections Mystery School in Petworth.
Event organizer Caroline Kenner is a Washington, DC-born shamanic healer and teacher who now lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. “Nationally, many in our community are appalled by the scurrilous lies about our Goddesses spread by the New Apostolic Reformation. We Pagans are proud American citizens entitled to all the religious freedom granted by the Founders of this country in our Constitution. We are dismayed by the hate-filled rhetoric the New Apostolic Reformation uses, and we wish to show the public that our Goddesses are beneficent and peaceful deities.”
The event in Lafayette Square Park begins at noon and ends at 5pm on Sunday, October 30th, Samhain eve to many Pagans, leading into one of the most holy days of the Pagan year. “Samhain, or Halloween, is the Feast of the Ancestors in some of our Pagan religions. We will invoke the Founding Fathers and Mothers of our nation during our ceremony, along with a multitude of Goddesses from pantheons both ancient and modern. Among our Goddesses will be Lady Liberty and Columbia, the Goddess who stands guard atop the Capitol Building,” said Ms. Kenner. “The New Apostolic Reformation people would topple Columbia from Her pinnacle, and rename DC the District of Christ.”
There will be a number of people offering prayers during the ritual, including a Unitarian Universalist minister and celebrants from several Pagan faiths. After the religious ceremony, there will be drumming, dancing, chanting and energy raising designed to protect people in all fifty states and DC who support freedom of religious belief and practice for everyone. People of all faiths or none are welcome to join the event.
Sacred Space, an annual conference on metaphysics, mysticism and magick, now in its 22nd year, is the sponsor of the celebration in Lafayette Square Park on October 30th. Supporting organizations include Connect DC, Reflections Mystery School and Gryphons Grove School of Shamanism. Individual supporters include Washington, DC Pagan bloggers Hecate Demeter, Literata and David Salisbury.
For more information or to read the NAR curse against Pagans, visit: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildhunt/2011/09/the-new-apostolic-reformat...
CONTACT:
Caroline Kenner
301-384-8455
301-412-1760
mythkenner@aol.com
Posted in
Submitted by katrina on Wed, 10/19/2011 - 1:29pm.
On Saturday, February 26, 2011, Cherry Hill Seminary held its first ever graduation ceremony at the Sacred Space Conference. I delivered the following as my commencement speech. It was an honor and a privilege to participate in this historic event.
Often we encounter moments of wonder without noticing. We see a rainbow over the water and we do not even stop and stare. We see the top of the mountain poking through the clouds and we miss our stairway to heaven. A flower opens its inner bud and we are too busy, in too much in a hurry to appreciate its final unveiling.
I wonder sometimes if we even notice the beauty, majesty and mystery that surrounds every single day. It is our collective loss when we are absent from the everyday miracles that surrounds and infuses our lives
But today we have an opportunity to pause and reflect during just such a moment. We have set aside this time with an intention of being present and aware of the meaning of this within the lives of these graduates yes, but also within the cultural journey of our diverse intertwining communities.
I have witnessed such moments before in my life when as an African American I was able to attend African American studies courses at Howard University taught by African American professors. I have had friends and colleagues who have shared with me the delight of studying Women’s Studies at a Women’s college from Women professors.
So I truly GET what it means to be a pagan in a pagan seminary studying our own culture, liturgy, history and scholarship from pagans.
It is so important to be mirrored and mentored by our own. Now of course, you don’t have to be an African American, a woman or a pagan to mentor us, but sometimes, every once in a while, it feels so good when it is even possible.
And that is one of the wonders of this moment today. We are holding a pagan graduation ceremony at a pagan conference for OUR pagan seminary. Do you get what that means?
My parents were part of the community that built my neighborhood Catholic school when the Catholic school in our area would not admit blacks. Those black World War II veterans took it upon themselves to build the best school possible for their children. Years later at the first graduation, those working class parents stood proud as they collectively acknowledged and welcomed those first graduates.
I can imagine how they felt, proud and hopeful not only for their own children but also for what they together had accomplished. And that is exactly how I feel today, and I bet many of you feel the same way. Yes, we congratulate each of the graduates, but we are also proud for us as a community.
We need to soak in this moment for a while … until it begins to dawn on us how much this means for every single one of us.
But then, this moments doesn’t just belong to us as a community, it also belongs to Cherry Hill Seminary. Cherry Hill has all these years attempted to fill a hole within our vast and diverse community. It wasn’t just to provide a quality education, or bring together world-class instructors – oddly enough that is pretty easy to do. Just look at this conference and others like it that occur all year long. No, they had the vision and foresight to identify a need for professionally trained clergy. Every major religion in this country had a seminary of some sort that awards divinity degrees, except for pagans. Cherry Hill stepped up and met that challenge.
We should be proud of Cherry Hill Seminary and all the academics, clergy and other professionals that founded, supported, guided and today keep it moving forward. We should donate to Cherry Hill and we should encourage our up and coming clergy and academics to consider them.
Will everyone who works at and for Cherry Hill please rise. Let’s support these people and let them know just how much we appreciate all they do for our community everyday.
And so I have honored this moment and Cherry Hill, now it is time to honor the graduates.
It is customary at graduation ceremonies to offer advice to the graduating class. And this advice varies from being pretty straight forward to being funny and off color – I am capable of going either way. In fact some of the suggestions I received were surprising even to me. And for a drink later, I might share some of it with you.
Because right now I need to rein it in just a little … a wee bit … because I do have some important advice I need to share.
Mostly because I think you know for example, what color snow to avoid, and what not to do directly facing the wind. I think you know how to both cross the bridge and pillage the village before you burn them.
So I am going to stick to the stuff you may not know, and if later you feel you lost out due to missing the standard graduation advice component, complain to Maggie and she will gladly refund your graduation advice surcharge – no questions asked.
Because first I need to tell you graduates what you represent to all of us before I tell you what you need to do going forward. So here it is ... brace yourselves.
You are our future. That’s it. You are our future.
Normally we say these words to the young and fresh faced graduates who have not yet clearly stepped into the real world. But it doesn’t matter how old, or how experienced you are. For us, you represent our future.
Because you are the ones that sets the bar of how high, how far, how good, how smart, how committed, how serious we can be as a community.
You are our future.
You are our highest potential.
And of course, it is not just you, it is also all the instructors and administrators. But you are the product of this system they collectively fostered. And from you we expect the best and the brightest.
You are our lights of the coming dawn.
You are our future.
You mirror back to us our highest potential and because of this, you are our ticket to the future.
But that can be a heavy burden, acting as projection screens for our brightest shadow. How can you possibly carry it? It is so deep and so vast it might obscure your humanity or dampen your own brilliance.
I know a little about his because I personally carried such a bright projection for a large part of my younger years and I know the cost and the struggle associated with it. So I am here to tell you what you need to do with all this hope and with all of these expectations.
You need to show us who you really are.
If we can see the real you, you will be able to teach us how to be ourselves in return.
You who carry the future, you to whom we expect so much, your job is to help us find that same hope within ourselves.
And you do this by most of all just being yourself.
And you will know when and if you are successful.
You will know if you have made a difference.
You will know if you got it right if and when you get to the future you find yourself walking side by side with all of us.
Good luck, and Congratulations!
Posted in
Submitted by katrina on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 4:04pm.
DescentStarting today, my new book, Descent: A Journey for Women goes on sale.
My hope is that this book will provide a map to the territory of descent myths. Using this map, a woman can determine which descent pattern is present within her life and find the support she needs to spiritually awaken.
From the Preface:
Throughout human history, a sacred timeless path has called to women over and over again, the path of descent. And unlike the hero's journey where at each juncture the hero attains gifts, tools, or allies, the descent journey asks us to relinquish our hard won trophies, shatter our deeply held convictions, dissolve our ego-supporting illusions, and surrender our very innocence.
Available in my Lulu.com Storefront or by clicking the above image.
Posted in
Submitted by katrina on Thu, 02/17/2011 - 3:59pm.
This reminded me of something I wrote a few months ago: http://eoma-p.livejournal.com/36134.html
Could be the start of a fun adventure - whatever words you find that fit you best, may you be blessed for it!
Wish I could be there. Very well spoken.
Katrina,
I wish you all the blessings and power you need on your journey. Thank you for these words. It is good to remember that returning to work (and thus returning to grace) bring a chance for us all to rest and have joy.
Wishing you joy in the Work.
David
Dear Katrina- Thorn reposted your blog and happy am I. Your passion, always so immense, comes blowing out in these words. So akin to my own heart and soul that it makes me have a bittersweet smile.
The Storm is only now coming to the edges of our universe and yet it will sweep and consume all that is. In the end, our beautiful universe will be so much...more? Different? Complete? Who knows?
All I do know is my soul came here to witness and be part in this period. I cannot shrink from the work. I am here with you, fae sister!
Thought-provoking piece, Katrina. Thanks.
I don't know what to call myself either. In Pagandom, I've taken to referring to myself as a Witch at Large. In the interfaith world where I'm active, I call myself a Pagan. Sometimes I call myself an uppity woman or a Second Wave Feminist. I've never really thought to publicly identify myself by my sexuality, het woman, which is very "white bread" and old-fashioned. Not only het, but serially monogamous for the most part. It seems almost a liability these days to say you're het, but I am proudly and happily so. I tend towards intellectualism but only have a BA, which doesn't carry much weight, at least in public and professional worlds, no matter how much you've studied, trained, and can articulate, even teach.
My biological heritage is Irish, Dutch, French Huguenot, Euro-mongrel. My social heritage is Roman Catholic on one side and conservative Methodist, temperance-crusading, women's rights and education on the other, with distinct East Coast sensibilities, now mellowed by more than half a century living on the Left Coast. My maternal political heritage is conservative Republican (altho what my relatives might think of current trends in the GOP I cannot imagine, since they did have brains and they did think and they did have a social conscience), yet I am much farther left in my outlook than any elected official I know. My paternal political heritage is blue collar Democratic, except that my dad broke with his family on politics and allied with my mother's family's conservatism.
I'm a former hippie, a home-birth advocate, a home death and green burial advocate, an opponent of capital punishment and resorting to warfare to resolve humankind's differences. I support the right to conscious self-deliverance. I rejoice in any and all consensual expressions of love and eros. I'm a lover and a mom.
I have never missed voting in an election and I disrespect those who don't avail themselves of this hard-won right. (I have ancestors who fought the Brits in the American Revolution.) I support workers' rights. I recognize our interdependence on this planet, so could be called a greenie. I'm a committed environmentalist in my day-to-day life (in terms of eating locally grown food, expanding public transit, recycling, preserving open space and wildlife, opposing exploitation of natural resources [strip mining, oil-drilling, nuclear facilities, agribusiness, monocultures, clear-cutting timber, overuse of pesticides, genetic modification, etc.]) I want to make the city streets "safe for dancing," as my old friend Tony Serra said when he ran for mayor of SF on the Platypus Party ticket.
Well, you got me going there, my friend. Thought-provoking read, as I said. ;-)
xo,
Macha