This is the prayer I offered at the We Are Family Interfaith service which was held on October 16th, 2005 to protest of the exclusion of queer representation at the Million More March. It was well received, and the Christian minister who delivered the main sermon not only made mention of my prayer, he also gave me a big hug at the end of the service. It was very touching. There is hope.
Greetings. I extend a special greeting to the ancestors and beloved dead, to the sacred allies and angels, to the elders and oracles, to the griots and shaman, to the magicians and ministers, and the priestesses and holy men, as well as to all our gods, and all our sacred paths.
I greet you as a poet, a priestess, a warrior and a witch. And I offer in honor of all who have gathered this simple prayer.
I pray to the Goddess who holds us in her mercy and cradles us in her memory. I pray to the ancestors who walk with us always even through the lonely paths of pain, anger and sadness. I pray that we find the strength to choose a new path, not the path modeled to us of rejection, bigotry and fear, but a path of inclusion, openness and fellowship. We have made a first step here today; help us to build on this miracle.
And how can we continue on this path except by becoming the very essence of what we demand from the larger community. There is a saying that goes, “whatever you find objectionable in others first change within yourself.” So I pray that we learn from our pain, how not to inflict pain. That we learn how not to twist words of faith into words of exclusion and condemnation. I pray that we learn how to extend loving and welcoming hands in the face of our own fear and ignorance. And I pray that we open ourselves to the divine within the other even as we seek others to see the divine within ourselves.
Please help us also to be leery of false calls of inclusion.
Let us recognize that a call of love that asks us to hide our beauty, genius and power is not love at all. We must never accept as valid any hand that proclaims that the only way they will love us is if we cease loving ourselves. Help us to choose instead to love ourselves, and each other.
And as we choose to extend through our own fear, help us to demonstrate to the entire nation just what it takes to build better world.
Because all the living traditions teach that the only cure for fear is love. And so we invoke this love. We invoke it into this room and into this building. We invoke love into this city. We invoke love into this country, this planet, and into every heart that faces rejection, bigotry, fear, violence, hatred and death.
We invoke love into our own hearts. Because ultimately that is the place where the transformation will begin.
And so today, in the name of all the gods, all the ancestors, and all the sacred lands, let us now turn to each other and extend the welcoming hand of community. And just for today, let us become the mirror of the summer land where all dwell together in peace, where all are recognized for the spark of the divine that dwells within each of our hearts, and where all who have labored on the road to freedom can be welcomed home at last.
Amen, Blessed Be, and Ashe!
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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
Lovely azaleas!
[cough][gag][snort][sneeze]
Just lovely...
I know what you mean.
I feel you. There is too much bs- particularly when people decide that their temperament is tantamount to truthful and ignore everyone else.
I get irked by immature extroverts or closet introverts who ignore you REPEATEDLY and then pretend you're out of line for being upset by the time they can't pretend you didn't say anything anymore. I find that the same people will ignore you if you blow up right away, too, and that it's because they just don't think that honoring what you value is important to maintaining a relationship, or even worse: that you don't know what you value at all and that it's all a mind game for their pleasure or annoyance. Then they call you passive-aggressive, aggressive, moody, touchy and temperamental. I call them "not listening".