musings

My necklace broke the other day; the simple wooden crescent moon strung on a piece of twine. I’m feeling bereft without it around my neck. My pentacle has long since absconded (in a long, not very interesting story involving a 19-year-old baby dyke who hasn’t realized she has a ginormous crush on me).

My necklaces were the only outer sign of my pagan identity; aside from a handful of friends, I am, as they say, in the broom closet. Even in Hippietown, most people are vaguely New Age, of The Secret and Law of Attraction variety, which means they seem to believe in everything and nothing. Or they’re Buddhists. Now a crescent moon or a pentacle won’t scream “WICCAN” the way a cross or a star of David represent their respective affiliations. But they have deep significance to me, and that was the important thing. Even staying with my parents, four houses down from the Catholic church that three generations of my family have attended, I felt comforted knowing I had these personal symbols with me.

But losing them seems reflective of  where I’m at right now, spiritually speaking: I don’t know. I’m feeling at a loss, and have for some time now. I’ve been trying, and failing, to create a meaningful daily practice for myself, some little ritual or prayer, anything to help me integrate my spirituality with my every day life. Because it’s not separate, I can’t separate my spirituality from my sexuality (it’s not a coincidence that I discovered Goddess and came out at the same time), my current career path of holistic medicine, my politics. But I feel fragmented anyway. At the same time that Goddess and Wicca has led me to places literal and figurative that I’d never imagined, I feel like I haven’t progressed much at all from my early days of clandestine ritual-making in my dorm room.

I’m tired of Wicca–even my half-assed, wildly eclectic fiercely queer Goddess-centric version of it–being something I read about. As Chesterton put it, I want my religion to be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

I think I need to stop being a solitary. I don’t know how that’s feasible, given my circumstances, but dammit, I’m lonely. It’s fucking hard, crafting a religious practice out of whole cloth all by your lonesome. I want a coven, or a least a circle, of people to celebrate and explore and meditate and pray with. I need some elders and teachers and crones to help me out (ever try to guide yourself through trance? Good luck).

Which is a bit of risk. Being a solitary practioner can be a cover story for safety. Honestly, deity scares the holy shit out of me. That’s why I fought so long against the idea of being a pagan. And every single time Goddess grabbed me by my hair and dragged me, kicking and screaming, back into the circle. I long to have an ecstatic experience of Goddess and I’m terrified of it at the same time. So I want some friends to join me when I go exploring the crazy rave that is earth-based spirituality. So I’m putting it out there, officially: listen up, Universe. I don’t how, or where, or when, but send me a circle to study and dance and ritual and play with, or send me to them, or however it works. It’s kinda boring, all by myself. If I wanted a boring spirituality, I would have stayed Christian.