Spirit
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.
Where to begin. There is so much swirling around me and within me at the moment, that I seem to fade into the background noise.
Who in their right mind would want be front and center to all of this ... madness and chaos?
I want to hide. I want to run away. Surely there is a place free from this ... storm.
But I have no place to hide, no where to run. It is too wide, too deep ... can’t get over it, around it or through.
So now what?
When I look around at the outer world I see signs of structural and ecological decay. I see our cultures carrying the contagions of neglect, abuse and alienation. Where there should be guilt, I see conceit. Where there should be accountability, I see a deficiency of outrage or shock.
But I also see signs of wellness, the evolution of holistic systems, and the reconnection of mind, body and soul. Where there is pain and conflict, I see attempts at reconciliation. Where there is fear and loneliness, I see signs of cooperation and connection. Where there is hunger and spiritual thirst, I see nurturance and spiritual depth.
So life is not without its salves.
But it is turbulent nonetheless. For every Apostolic reformationist, there is a Pagan permaculturist -- or at least I hope so. But the storm itself never recedes.
And so I retreat. Into the private world of my own makings. And here too, the storm rages.
My home is falling apart around me, my medical bills are piling up, my finances are dire and my schedule is too full given all the physical limits I have to endure.
But still ... for every sorrow, there is hope. For every pain, there is laughter. For every worry there is joy. But the storm still rages.
So I retreat into the work. And here finally there is calm. There is silence. There is softness, a place to rest. And here within my work, I breathe ... shallowly at first, then deeper as I return to grace.
But then I am conflicted. Why does peace for me exist only in the places between? Why can’t I bring this peace with me? What use is this bliss if I cannot bring it to bear within the worlds, the people, the pain, the decay and the fear. What use is my serenity if it is outside of the very worlds I occupy.
So I surge forward into life bringing with me all the bliss, peace, silence, softness and generosity I can muster.
And yes, I still stand in the midst of the madness, but I am not afraid. I rest within the swirls of chaos and I surrender to it.
I am one with the pain, the loneliness, the decay and the conceit ... and I am filled with peace, outrage and compassion. I am angry and I am delighted, I am grieving and filled with hope, and I am silent and screaming.
It is so easy to retreat from it all. It takes a bit of madness to face the abyss .... and smile. And I am grinning like a Cheshire cat as I surf the currents spilling tears over all I see and sense.
I am crying for all the pain and I am crying for all the beauty. May my tears bring moisture to the thirsty. And may my ramblings bring nurturance to anyone suffering in the storm’s wake. Let us join hands and ride this wave together. For in all of this chaos, remember that you are not alone.
Posted in
Submitted by katrina on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 6:20pm.
Shakmah WinddrumShakmah Winddrum has passed beyond the veil and I am at a loss to truly express my sorrow and my gratitude. Thankfully, my dear sister, T. Thorn Coyle has written the very words that resonate within my heart.
We within the Order of Elemental Mysteries are officially in mourning. We stand with our sisters, brothers and warriors of the New Seed Sanctuary and their sister tradition Light Haven in love, light and ultimately in grief.
May She return to the Mystery that borne Her and may Her name resound loudly through the hearts of all who walk the path She carved out of sheer Will and boundless Love.
Shakmah will be remembered, and she will live on in our hearts, in our minds and within our work.
Ashe! Blessed Be! Amen!
Posted in
Submitted by katrina on Sat, 11/27/2010 - 11:43am.
I was thinking a lot lately on how difficult it is to comprehend those deeper elements of our psych in times of serenity and calm. It seems that we only are able to confront them when in crisis mode. This came in startling relief recently for me as I dealt with the excruciating pain associated with acute pancreatitis. I had felt this pain before, back in 2003, when I had emergency surgery to remove my gall bladder. But this time I did not have the overarching pain of Fibromyalgia masking the severity.
As it dawned on me how much intense pain I have endured … for years … I was hit with such a wave of sorrow and compassion … for myself. So here I was … almost delirious from pain, weeping over how much pain I have endured in my life. It was a moment that sort of proves how much of “mad” mystic I am.
It was when I was laying in my hospital bed, trancing in and out of consciousness due to the morphine, that I was readily admitted into the recessed areas of my psyche. And what I found there was amazing, humbling and thrilling at all levels.
There was storehouse of images, symbols and “hidden” truths that I discovered but I will save those for another time. This long post is about what I uncovered about some of our deepest collective fears.
The Flood
One of the overarching fears worldwide is of being engulfed – flood waters, landslides, and collapsing structures along with the threatening tide of too much change, technology and information. We fortify ourselves with rationalizations about these fears --pretending as if each them are separate issues. But the reality is that this fear is universal and we project that fear onto world around us. We project it onto cancer and fear cancer patients. We project it onto those who migrate into our countries and forget that humanity itself is a migrating species. We resist even changes that benefit us like universal healthcare simply because it is new. We keep trying to close the door on a room without walls or place our fingers into a dam that has already been breeched – too little, too late.
It manifests itself in my psyche as flood waters slowly encompassing more and more of my life and removing my agency. So I fear that my life seems to be out of my direct control. So an illness can roll in like a tide, knocking me off my feet and sweep me out to sea – at the mercy of waves and storms.
But as I lay in my hospital bed, a new awareness sprouted -- one that sees this onslaught as impersonal and larger than I had imagined. And how it had nothing to do with me personally. It has a name, and it is called, Life. And just like standing on the beach, facing the oncoming tide does not have to mean being thrown over. I can brace myself and participate in the movement, allowing myself to be buffeted, changed and cleansed by embracing the very things that are challenging me. And yeah, sometimes I will be knocked off my feet. So what? It is the nature of Life and shit happens.
I am still challenged by Life, but I am learning not to fear its waves. Because, yeah, I may lose even more agency as I age – and it will suck big time. But Life is not out to get me – Life is the gift I get to participate within, that is fucking fabulous at all levels.
The Island
Another major fear is of being alone. Not just being physically alone, but being alone with our fears, hopes, and ideas along with our secret desires. We feel as if no one would truly understand us. We harbor deep-seated shame over things that when examined are actually not so bad. It is one of the tenets of the 12 Step movement - that when we actually do a fearless moral inventory, we find out that we are not as horrid or bad as we imagined. One of the benefits of the web is that so many of our imagined singularities can often find community.
But even if we have found the other 1000 people in the world who wished they were born with a tail, we can still act as if no one else lives in our bones and walks our path of pain or fear or grief or shame. And when we find a person who seems to get us as any level, it is such a relief, such a balm to our troubled soul.
My version of this fear is manifested in a sense of being different wherever I go. I am the only black bi-sexual, left wing, Wiccan, warrior, poet, techno-mage and mystic I know. Oh sure, there are probably others out there, but I haven’t met them. I could parse my self-definitions enough to fit in with several groups, and I do, but I always feel like an outsider. So when I find individuals or groups that seem to fit, it often feels like I have found my long lost home … that is until my essential uniqueness raises its head. And I am left feeling so adrift and ultimately … alone.
I usually blame the group or individual for not living up to my hopes and expectations. And then my practice of self-examination kicks in, and it all comes back to me and I feel the space surrounding me very keenly.
The reality of course is that we are all alone. That is what hit me in the hospital. I was alone with my pain along with hundreds of other people alone with their pain. And if I focused on the alone part, there was no way out of my essential dilemma. So I focused instead on the parts we shared, and instantly, I was no longer alone. I gave my religion as Wicca and boom … a fellow Wiccan sent me a lovely poem from the hospital. I shared my fears, and others shared theirs. I laughed and others laughed with me in spite of themselves.
We are all alone, and in that we are together whenever we choose to be.
It is a choice not a destiny. And so I choose community, friendship and intimacy. And when I need to, I also choose to be alone in my uniqueness. And that is the best choice of all.
The Smallest Pebble
The last fear I noticed was the fear of being insignificant – a small pebble amongst a pile of pebbles or worse boulders. The “No one will know that I was ever here”, fear is one of the ways it manifests. I have seen this fear beneath the surface of so many people over the years.
One of my roles as a mystic is to “imbue value by acknowledgement.” I say “thank you”, hold doors, look people in the eyes and smile, and just acknowledge a person’s existence … a lot. It is one of the easiest and most satisfying parts of my practice. But what I had not understood was how far down this fear resides in our collective psyche.
This fear lies beneath the “It doesn’t matter what I do”, “I am not important enough to make a fuss”, and the “I cannot make a difference.” It is the burden we carry that stops us from taking action in our own lives, or in the lives of our loved ones. It causes well-meaning engineers to give up on safety measures, medical personnel to have lapses in judgement concerning patient care and inspectors to ignore blatant violations.
Closer to home, it causes me to purposely wander in the creative desert when faced with another rewrite for my book. And it cripples me in reaching out to my dear friends even in times of need. It also blinds me to the impacts of my decisions, actions and statements.
All in all, most of us feel pretty small compared to the world or to the universe. But the reality is that we are all small in comparison to all that out there! But so what -- we are small but we are not insignificant. Our Life matters to the world and to the universe … or we would not be here in the first place!
My job is not only to imbue other lives with meaning; I am the one that imbues my own Life with meaning! In other words, I realized that whatever meaning my Life holds comes from my own actions. Just like all those African-American college graduates who worked as janitors to make a living, whatever I do with my Life has value as long as I bring value to it.
And as I lay in that hospital bed, I thought of all the work I‘ve done these almost 55 years, and suddenly I did not feel so insignificant. I realized that whatever my faults, mistakes and challenges, I have done good in this world with my own hands … and if given half a chance, I will do it again and again.
Be Yourself
And lastly, just as my stay came to an end, I was reminded that all I had ever needed to do in this world was to be myself. And that was my deepest fear. I was afraid that at my core, I was insufficient. And here is where the outer world mirrored back me to me truth. “Yeah, you are insufficient to meet the demands of all that Life has to offer, but that is why there is community.” And as I looked at all the people who cared for me, who stood up for me and yes, even stood up to me – I let go of my need for control and replaced it with gratitude. And with that, I could finally be who and what I am, a person recovering from an illness and who is deeply loved.
Posted in
Submitted by katrina on Mon, 08/30/2010 - 4:08pm.
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