Spring 2009
I was hanging out at the preschool after classes with a klatch of moms who shared lunch while our children played. The discussion wandered from construction contracters to men in general. At one point one of the moms realized they were trashing men, paused, looked me in the eye, said, "No offence," and went right on trashing men.
This was the most blatant encounter with what I would call "The Soccer Mom Club." The SMC wasn't limited to any particular place. At other times, I could be speaking with one or two member of the SMC; but if they reached a critical mass, they would either slowly close ranks into a circle with me on the outside, or spontaneously Feel The Need to Have a Deeply Personal Discussion (which would be signaled by a demi-glare -- eye-brows down, head thrust forward, chest turned away and a shoulder aimed in my general direction, and an unspoken "why don't you run off and do your little guy-things?" -- before backs were turned toward me). If I didn't get the hint, the conversation would stall, and in the awkward silence, I would be stared at.
I could never quite tell if I was being excluded because I was a guy, or because I was gay, or both.
March 2009. Under the (non) guidance of the new(ish) settled minister, I officially withdrew my membership at the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans and the UU in Eugene. I was devoting a whole lot of time to something that wasn't speaking to me. This resulted in a bitchy, sarcastic, thirty page critique of (Eugene) NeoPaganism. The Nice Version got posted to the blog.
When I think about my spirituality, I wish I could do it in a community setting, but I haven't found a community that's a good fit. My credo is that one should attempt to live in a state of dynamic balance between different modalities of being (logical, emotional, physical, spiritual) and the cosmos. OK, and I like numinous moments.
I'm still interested to some extent in group Neo-Pagan Ritual with other Gay Men, but the more I think about it, the more gender and eros seems like a mask deity wears for the benefit of human comprehension. And the less involved I become in gender and orientation identity politics, the more connecting spiritually to trees and avoiding humanoid depictions of deity makes more sense.
April 2009. Still feeling the burn of not preparing for preschool, Mark and I started looking at various kindergartens a year early. We decided that most schools are pretty much the same, that the individual teachers probably have a larger impact than the general school, and that Parent Associations are functionally the same as cults.
We were pretty sure we'd try to get into a Montessori school, mostly because we already knew some of the teaching staff there and because it was less than four blocks away from our home.
July 2009. While at the beach, The Child cut open his big toe with a clam gun. This happened at the same time that I was alone with him on the beach, on the strand, when the tide turn and inundated all the plastic pirates we'd set up in the sand.
Part of me wanted to gather all the plastic toys floating away in the surf while I slung a shrieking child onto my shoulder for the trek back to the beach house. I jogged from the surf until my breath started coming out in puffs. I walked quickly through the dunes and grasses, wondering if The Child's toe was still attached. And then I started walking, with a stitch in my side, realizing that I would be a failure if a tsunami were coming and that I was a total failure anyway because now my Child would be maimed for life because I couldn't toss him over my shoulder and run a half-mile over sand in less than three minutes. And I was an unfit parent. And a lousy gay husband for being out-of-shape.
Thankfully, Mark was at the house, because the rest of the folks there were Mostly Not Helpful.
August 2009. We're not sure if it was coming off of the water slide at the local pool the wrong way, or catching The Child a million times in the pool at my folks', but over the summer I developed Ithiopathic Adhesive Encapsulitis. Every now and then I'd have a moment where I would forgot that my shoulder and humerus were essentially fused, reach out to catch a football or open a door the wrong way, and nearly fall over from the pain.
I wound up seeing a physical therapist who seemed have gotten his certification straight out of high school (he was young). The pain meds I was taking to help me sleep through the night made me loopy and destroyed my short term memory; after a while weren't doing anything to help, so I stopped using them. I ended up doing a zillion stretches.
I was lucky, because although my shoulder Really Hurt A Lot, it didn't hurt all the time. And the PT helped. But I still couldn't lift things or get books from shelves above my head. Having a frozen shoulder made me feel ancient and useless and crippled.
Not being able to move my shoulders made dancing the Abbot's Bromely Horn dance at Shrewsbury difficult, and sleeping on the ground in a tent impossible. This was the first time in almost a decade that I hadn't camped on site at Shrewsbury -- and I didn't miss it.
Late 2009, I sold two stories to Thaumatrope, a Twitter e-zine. With a 120 character limit, these were fun to write and gratifying to see tweeted. I wrote one in thirty seconds, in the clutch of inspiration, after The Child ate a Christmas Angel Cookie's wings off. Sadly, Thaumatrope closed a year or so later.
This year was the first year where I was confronted by the limits of my body. I think I don't worry too much about getting old, but it would be really nice if I wasn't in chronic pain. Also, opening doors shouldn't be that hard.
Showing posts with label CUUPs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CUUPs. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Decade in Review: 2008
Feb 20, 2008. A CUUPs ritual was planned for the full moon eclipse. Although I voiced my suspicions, no one confirmed that the full moon would be visible from the church site. Five minutes before the eclipse began, one other person appeared. We looked for the moon, but it was below a near-by hill. Ten minutes later, as I was leaving to go watch the eclipse with my family, a third person appeared and wondered why I was leaving.
Later, I hooked up with Mark and The Child at the Eugene Reservoir, where the Eugene Astronomy club had set up telescopes. After my family left, I watched the dark moon and harped for it and for the people milling around the telescopes. Most folks appreciated the gesture for the gift it was, and I can't think of nicer (if laid back) public ritual.
June 2008. Savoré closed completely. The retail store closed and the web store as well. Even after almost three years, we still hadn't found a replacement.
September 2008. Suddenly, The Child was Ready for Preschool. The clingy days were over. Mark would come home from work and the two of us would be sitting on the couch, looking straight ahead and not making eye-contact, waiting for Mark to step through the door.
We asked around for preschool recommendations, and the next thing I knew, I was touring a preschool connected to a church. Little "Gee, these folks are Extra Religious" alarm-bells were going off in my head, but I kept telling myself that some pretty cool parents had recommended the church.
Then I put down Mark as the other parent on a form. The pre-school teacher started back-peddling and babbling, and the next thing I knew, I was in the principal's office with The Child.
"Well," he said. "This has never happened before. I think I'd have to speak to my bosses before we can let your child attend. It's really in the best interests of The Child for him not to attend [because we will let all the kids in a preschool for four year olds know that men who have sex with other men are going to Hell and The Child's family is damned and we don't want him to have go through hating his Devil Dads and being shunned as a sinner by the other kids]."
Since I didn't want to have a Scene or Educational Moment with The Child sitting there wondering when we were going to have lunch, I said. "You know, I think there's been some mistake, and I should be somewhere else."
So Much for Hippy Eugene. On a happier note, we found the right school, in a church a few blocks away from The Wrong Church. We had to wait a few more months to get in, because A Child's Educational Application Process must start three weeks after conception if you want to get into the Yale Track.
On a slightly related note, around now I got a phone call from a UUCE member who was working on a sex-education panel for the UUCE youth. She needed someone on the panel who had multiple sex partners and wondered -- since I was a gay man -- if I knew any gay men who would be willing to sit in on the panel. No, she didn't realize the implied assumption that all gay men are sleeping around; Yes, she was suitably horrified when I pointed out what she was asking. All in a Day's Work as Mr. Gay Resources at UUCE. Sigh... I'd sort of hoped there might be gay spiritual men at this liberal, welcoming church.
December 2008. My short story, "Up" (this was before the movie of the same name) was accepted at the (then) Whidbey Student Choice Award (now the Penn Cove Literary Award) This was a cheery Wordos Holiday Story, where a socially isolated protagonist has to deal with the aftermath of a fatal family car crash. My worries that I might be unconsciously trying to kill my family off were eclipsed by the fact that this was my second (professional rate) sale.
In terms of writing, 2008 was tough -- I was getting stories out into the mail, and although I was getting rejections more quickly than I had before, no one was buying. The Whidbey sale helped me not feel like a "wanna-be has-been."
Later, I hooked up with Mark and The Child at the Eugene Reservoir, where the Eugene Astronomy club had set up telescopes. After my family left, I watched the dark moon and harped for it and for the people milling around the telescopes. Most folks appreciated the gesture for the gift it was, and I can't think of nicer (if laid back) public ritual.
June 2008. Savoré closed completely. The retail store closed and the web store as well. Even after almost three years, we still hadn't found a replacement.
September 2008. Suddenly, The Child was Ready for Preschool. The clingy days were over. Mark would come home from work and the two of us would be sitting on the couch, looking straight ahead and not making eye-contact, waiting for Mark to step through the door.
We asked around for preschool recommendations, and the next thing I knew, I was touring a preschool connected to a church. Little "Gee, these folks are Extra Religious" alarm-bells were going off in my head, but I kept telling myself that some pretty cool parents had recommended the church.
Then I put down Mark as the other parent on a form. The pre-school teacher started back-peddling and babbling, and the next thing I knew, I was in the principal's office with The Child.
"Well," he said. "This has never happened before. I think I'd have to speak to my bosses before we can let your child attend. It's really in the best interests of The Child for him not to attend [because we will let all the kids in a preschool for four year olds know that men who have sex with other men are going to Hell and The Child's family is damned and we don't want him to have go through hating his Devil Dads and being shunned as a sinner by the other kids]."
Since I didn't want to have a Scene or Educational Moment with The Child sitting there wondering when we were going to have lunch, I said. "You know, I think there's been some mistake, and I should be somewhere else."
So Much for Hippy Eugene. On a happier note, we found the right school, in a church a few blocks away from The Wrong Church. We had to wait a few more months to get in, because A Child's Educational Application Process must start three weeks after conception if you want to get into the Yale Track.
On a slightly related note, around now I got a phone call from a UUCE member who was working on a sex-education panel for the UUCE youth. She needed someone on the panel who had multiple sex partners and wondered -- since I was a gay man -- if I knew any gay men who would be willing to sit in on the panel. No, she didn't realize the implied assumption that all gay men are sleeping around; Yes, she was suitably horrified when I pointed out what she was asking. All in a Day's Work as Mr. Gay Resources at UUCE. Sigh... I'd sort of hoped there might be gay spiritual men at this liberal, welcoming church.
December 2008. My short story, "Up" (this was before the movie of the same name) was accepted at the (then) Whidbey Student Choice Award (now the Penn Cove Literary Award) This was a cheery Wordos Holiday Story, where a socially isolated protagonist has to deal with the aftermath of a fatal family car crash. My worries that I might be unconsciously trying to kill my family off were eclipsed by the fact that this was my second (professional rate) sale.
In terms of writing, 2008 was tough -- I was getting stories out into the mail, and although I was getting rejections more quickly than I had before, no one was buying. The Whidbey sale helped me not feel like a "wanna-be has-been."
Decade in Review: 2007
Feb 17, 2007. New Moon. After months and months of knowing I was a finalist, I received the news that I had placed Third in Writers of the Future! I was going to LA for a week-long workshop. I'd submitted twelve manuscripts over a four year period and it had finally paid off!
March 2007. Having jump-started CUUPs at UUCE, I was encouraged to give a four-minute presentation at a local Interfaith gathering. After a brief introduction Neo-Paganism, I lead a quick visualization of the four elements. The presentation was well received, probably because I used my radio voice (someone commented that I should make relaxation tapes). The presentation resulted in a jump in CUUPs attendance.
I'm trying to find the exact date, but sometime around now the Rev. Carolyn Colbert retired from being the UUCE minister. She'd been serving there for seven or so years, and everyone was used to her style. With her departure, a search began, and various interim ministers took over the pastoral care of the church. What I learned from this was that I'd been coming to UUCE to hear Carolyn's sermons, which I always found challenging.
A year or two of being parents put the final nail in the coffin as far as our involvement with the gay community went. Not that we were terribly active in gay community events after the Outdoor Club (a local LGBTQ hiking group) imploded, but we stopped hearing much or seeing our gay friends. And then they began the exodus to Portland.
Sometime in the spring, I went to a Eugene LGBTQ Community building event, held at a local high school. After listening to folks talk about self-esteem issues on the University of Oregon campus, lesbian dance parties, queer youth, and the logistics of building a Eugene Queer Resources Center, the question came up about community. What did members of the LGBTQ community want to build for ourselves?
When I was my turn to speak I said, "Hi, my name is John and I'm a gay dad." (pause for applause) "My husband would be here, but he's at home caring for our child. I'd like to remind planners that if you want to include more parents, many toddlers take a nap at this time [11 AM - 1 PM]. So, I have a question: could the gay dads in the audience raise their hands?" One other guy in a room of about a two hundred raised his hand. "Thanks," I said, "that's kind of what I thought." ("But hooray for lesbian moms, too," an older woman across the aisle said encouragingly.) I sat down. The other gay dad disappeared by the time the meeting finished.
As Mark pointed out later, just because someone else is a gay dad doesn't mean that we'd get along with them or want to hang out. Which is true, but still....
May 2007. I attended a wonderful local writers' workshop with Ellen Datlow. She wasn't enamored with "The Colossus of Rhodes," but she did like "Sky Dance" (although apparently it's too much like, "Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death").
August 2007. I flew down to LA for the Writers of the Future (WOTF) workshop and awards ceremony. Fellow Wordo Damon Kaswell had also placed in that year's volume, and we flew down together. At the LA airport, some of my luggage got lost, which included my wedding jacket and shirt.
My roommate during the workshop was Tony Pi, the other half of the Canadian team which was in a friendly, unofficial contest with the Wordos to get into WOTF. The workshop was like a giant Wordos marathon, only with more professional advice.
What I learned was that I could pound out a rough draft of a 4000 word story in in less than 24 hours. Writing it was scary, because we had to interview a stranger as a character prompt. My stranger was a kind of homeless, down on his luck, hot-chocolate loving, fifty-something art-dealer theologian.
I could follow some of his rambly connections very easily and throughout our conversation I kept thinking, "Oh crap; we sound like we've started in similar places and what do I need to do so I don't turn into some shabby, damaged prophet, mumbling a burnt-out vision to himself in the streets?" Considering how this Ghost of Christmas Future kept sitting in the middle of the story I was feverishly trying to write, I'm amazed I produced any manuscript at all.
What I learned is that writing is a business, and that there's a lot of competition. Charles Brown sat down with us, and the first words as he looked around the room were, "Out of the twelve of you sitting here, only one or two of you are going to make it."
This was followed later in the day by a moment where I overheard a hotel hallway conversation. Another hotel guest asked a big name author who all the folks in tuxedos were (we were getting fitted). And the author said, "This is part of the Writers of the Future contest; these folks are all writers."
"Oh! Writers! And who are you?" the guest asked. "Are you famous? Have I read you?" I could imagine her reaching into her purse for a pen and pad to autograph.
The big name author told her who he was. "I write science fiction and fantasy."
"Oh," she said, obviously let down he wasn't Stephen King, Tom Clancy, or John Grisham. It was obvious she didn't read the genre and she'd never heard of the author before.
I let myself into my room, thinking, "And let this be a lesson unto you."
I learned that it's good for my mental health to hang out and talk with other writers.
I learned I should have started banging out a novel as soon as I had heard the news I'd placed in WOTF so I could have a draft of the manuscript to hand out to various folks and agents.
I learned that KD Wentworth remembered "Briallan Dreaming of Myrmidons," "Skies of Dreaming," "Sky Dance," and "The Colossus of Rhodes" -- stories that had made it to semi-finalist status in previous years -- and we had a great conversation about writing, editing, and submissions. The woman who had been a gatekeeper became a new friend.
Mark and The Child came down for the ceremony, as did my parents. The ceremony was kind of cheesy, but I loved it anyway. And it was validating; instead of wondering what the heck I was doing, my family could now say, "Well, he's an award-winning author."
There was a lunar eclipse, which wasn't the most visible from the hotel, shining the the sky of LA.
Oct 2007. Damon and I appeared briefly on the local TV station to talk about our stories in Writers of the Future. It was part of a four month period of book signings up and down the Willamette Valley. Damon and I had a lot of fun, and I learned how to hawk books.
Shortly afterward, I took a break from being the Wordos chair. About four years prior, Jerry Oltion wanted a break from running the Wordos meetings. He called a meeting of various folks and because I was so consistent about attending that I got dubbed key-holder. For the next couple of years, I was part of a triumvir consisting of Eric Witchey, Jay Lake and myself. and then the next thing I knew I was facilitating the meetings. And then gas prices went up and folks from out of town stopped coming to Eugene for Wordos messages and for a while I was running things solo. But I was done facilitating, and I took a break from the Wordos.
November 2007. A particularly poorly attended CUUPs ritual was a wake-up call that the honeymoon with UUCE was over. Clearly, I was doing something wrong, because I wasn't attracting a consistent core group of Neo-Pagans.
Neither Ronald Hutton nor Margot Adler clones had appeared for deep theological discussions or numinous moments. Many women dropped out of CUUPs to pursue a multi-week, women-only, program entitled "Cakes for the Queen of Heaven." And, while they were warmly interested, many of the regular Sunday going UUCE members were more focused on Neo-Paganism as part of a cultural diversity course.
Into this vacuum crept prosperity-focused folks, and before long we were having rituals about writing "prosperity checks" and "reclaiming your personal power."
Around this time UUCE hired a settled minister, who everyone had high hopes for, but who ultimately (to put it kindly) did not work out. I'd thought, based on some of the things he had said, that he would engender a sense of wonder and worship with regard to the natural world; unfortunately, that never panned out.
November 21, 2007. I had a fun time being a panelist at OryCon. I had so much fun dancing Saturday night, I managed to get really sick.
December 2007. For my 43rd birthday, Mark decorated the house as if it were Savoré ("Tea the Way It Used to Be"). He dressed up like a French waiter, put lovely linens on the tables, and served tea, sandwiches and petit fours. At some point we realized The Child had pilfered quite a few petit fours and moved them to a higher table.
2007 was the Year of the Gay Pagan Writer. It felt like my writing career was picking up, and even if Neo-Pagan events had fizzled a little at the end, the year started out strong.
March 2007. Having jump-started CUUPs at UUCE, I was encouraged to give a four-minute presentation at a local Interfaith gathering. After a brief introduction Neo-Paganism, I lead a quick visualization of the four elements. The presentation was well received, probably because I used my radio voice (someone commented that I should make relaxation tapes). The presentation resulted in a jump in CUUPs attendance.
I'm trying to find the exact date, but sometime around now the Rev. Carolyn Colbert retired from being the UUCE minister. She'd been serving there for seven or so years, and everyone was used to her style. With her departure, a search began, and various interim ministers took over the pastoral care of the church. What I learned from this was that I'd been coming to UUCE to hear Carolyn's sermons, which I always found challenging.
A year or two of being parents put the final nail in the coffin as far as our involvement with the gay community went. Not that we were terribly active in gay community events after the Outdoor Club (a local LGBTQ hiking group) imploded, but we stopped hearing much or seeing our gay friends. And then they began the exodus to Portland.
Sometime in the spring, I went to a Eugene LGBTQ Community building event, held at a local high school. After listening to folks talk about self-esteem issues on the University of Oregon campus, lesbian dance parties, queer youth, and the logistics of building a Eugene Queer Resources Center, the question came up about community. What did members of the LGBTQ community want to build for ourselves?
When I was my turn to speak I said, "Hi, my name is John and I'm a gay dad." (pause for applause) "My husband would be here, but he's at home caring for our child. I'd like to remind planners that if you want to include more parents, many toddlers take a nap at this time [11 AM - 1 PM]. So, I have a question: could the gay dads in the audience raise their hands?" One other guy in a room of about a two hundred raised his hand. "Thanks," I said, "that's kind of what I thought." ("But hooray for lesbian moms, too," an older woman across the aisle said encouragingly.) I sat down. The other gay dad disappeared by the time the meeting finished.
As Mark pointed out later, just because someone else is a gay dad doesn't mean that we'd get along with them or want to hang out. Which is true, but still....
May 2007. I attended a wonderful local writers' workshop with Ellen Datlow. She wasn't enamored with "The Colossus of Rhodes," but she did like "Sky Dance" (although apparently it's too much like, "Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death").
August 2007. I flew down to LA for the Writers of the Future (WOTF) workshop and awards ceremony. Fellow Wordo Damon Kaswell had also placed in that year's volume, and we flew down together. At the LA airport, some of my luggage got lost, which included my wedding jacket and shirt.
My roommate during the workshop was Tony Pi, the other half of the Canadian team which was in a friendly, unofficial contest with the Wordos to get into WOTF. The workshop was like a giant Wordos marathon, only with more professional advice.
What I learned was that I could pound out a rough draft of a 4000 word story in in less than 24 hours. Writing it was scary, because we had to interview a stranger as a character prompt. My stranger was a kind of homeless, down on his luck, hot-chocolate loving, fifty-something art-dealer theologian.
I could follow some of his rambly connections very easily and throughout our conversation I kept thinking, "Oh crap; we sound like we've started in similar places and what do I need to do so I don't turn into some shabby, damaged prophet, mumbling a burnt-out vision to himself in the streets?" Considering how this Ghost of Christmas Future kept sitting in the middle of the story I was feverishly trying to write, I'm amazed I produced any manuscript at all.
What I learned is that writing is a business, and that there's a lot of competition. Charles Brown sat down with us, and the first words as he looked around the room were, "Out of the twelve of you sitting here, only one or two of you are going to make it."
This was followed later in the day by a moment where I overheard a hotel hallway conversation. Another hotel guest asked a big name author who all the folks in tuxedos were (we were getting fitted). And the author said, "This is part of the Writers of the Future contest; these folks are all writers."
"Oh! Writers! And who are you?" the guest asked. "Are you famous? Have I read you?" I could imagine her reaching into her purse for a pen and pad to autograph.
The big name author told her who he was. "I write science fiction and fantasy."
"Oh," she said, obviously let down he wasn't Stephen King, Tom Clancy, or John Grisham. It was obvious she didn't read the genre and she'd never heard of the author before.
I let myself into my room, thinking, "And let this be a lesson unto you."
I learned that it's good for my mental health to hang out and talk with other writers.
I learned I should have started banging out a novel as soon as I had heard the news I'd placed in WOTF so I could have a draft of the manuscript to hand out to various folks and agents.
I learned that KD Wentworth remembered "Briallan Dreaming of Myrmidons," "Skies of Dreaming," "Sky Dance," and "The Colossus of Rhodes" -- stories that had made it to semi-finalist status in previous years -- and we had a great conversation about writing, editing, and submissions. The woman who had been a gatekeeper became a new friend.
Mark and The Child came down for the ceremony, as did my parents. The ceremony was kind of cheesy, but I loved it anyway. And it was validating; instead of wondering what the heck I was doing, my family could now say, "Well, he's an award-winning author."
There was a lunar eclipse, which wasn't the most visible from the hotel, shining the the sky of LA.
Oct 2007. Damon and I appeared briefly on the local TV station to talk about our stories in Writers of the Future. It was part of a four month period of book signings up and down the Willamette Valley. Damon and I had a lot of fun, and I learned how to hawk books.
Shortly afterward, I took a break from being the Wordos chair. About four years prior, Jerry Oltion wanted a break from running the Wordos meetings. He called a meeting of various folks and because I was so consistent about attending that I got dubbed key-holder. For the next couple of years, I was part of a triumvir consisting of Eric Witchey, Jay Lake and myself. and then the next thing I knew I was facilitating the meetings. And then gas prices went up and folks from out of town stopped coming to Eugene for Wordos messages and for a while I was running things solo. But I was done facilitating, and I took a break from the Wordos.
November 2007. A particularly poorly attended CUUPs ritual was a wake-up call that the honeymoon with UUCE was over. Clearly, I was doing something wrong, because I wasn't attracting a consistent core group of Neo-Pagans.
Neither Ronald Hutton nor Margot Adler clones had appeared for deep theological discussions or numinous moments. Many women dropped out of CUUPs to pursue a multi-week, women-only, program entitled "Cakes for the Queen of Heaven." And, while they were warmly interested, many of the regular Sunday going UUCE members were more focused on Neo-Paganism as part of a cultural diversity course.
Into this vacuum crept prosperity-focused folks, and before long we were having rituals about writing "prosperity checks" and "reclaiming your personal power."
Around this time UUCE hired a settled minister, who everyone had high hopes for, but who ultimately (to put it kindly) did not work out. I'd thought, based on some of the things he had said, that he would engender a sense of wonder and worship with regard to the natural world; unfortunately, that never panned out.
November 21, 2007. I had a fun time being a panelist at OryCon. I had so much fun dancing Saturday night, I managed to get really sick.
December 2007. For my 43rd birthday, Mark decorated the house as if it were Savoré ("Tea the Way It Used to Be"). He dressed up like a French waiter, put lovely linens on the tables, and served tea, sandwiches and petit fours. At some point we realized The Child had pilfered quite a few petit fours and moved them to a higher table.
2007 was the Year of the Gay Pagan Writer. It felt like my writing career was picking up, and even if Neo-Pagan events had fizzled a little at the end, the year started out strong.
Decade in Review: 2006
June 2006. On the solstice, Mark and I signed a zillion papers and became the owners of a new house. We probably bought at the hight of the housing bubble.
Our realtor was great; she put up with me pretending to be a drunk undergraduate and shrieking "I am soooo drunk" as an illustration of why we didn't want to live in the Student Hell part of town; and put up with Mark asking during one open house, "So, is this where they hide the bodies?"
June 27 2006. I lead a Wicca 101 ritual as a Sunday presentation at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Eugene. The presentation was a brief lecture on the stations of the sun, followed by a Tree of Life meditation and a Spiral Dance. It went really well, and everyone seemed friendly and enthusiastic. It was so refreshing to find a "Neo-Pagan Church" that wasn't a collection of (in my harsher moments) "flakey, superstitious refugees from Math and Science."
I was very excited to be at UUCE, and I was hoping for rabbinical discussions of the Spirit of Life as experienced through rituals of the four elements. In the months that followed, I had high hopes for an active Covenant of UU Pagans, actively, ardently, and jubilantly exploring the Seventh Principle (Respect for the Interdependent Web of All Existence of Which We Are a Part) with the tools of the Sixth Source (spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions) tempered with those of the Fifth Source (the guidance of reason and the results of science).
September 2006. After lots of painting and scraping and cleaning, with lots of help from my dad, we moved into the new house. About this time I crenelated what I thought was the front boxwood, but was in fact, the front azalea. Mark was horrified and the azalea has only recovered in about 2013. I've been banned from pruning or trimming in the garden ever since.
Against Mark's advice, I set up a green gazing globe in the back yard. We'd had the gazing globe in our old place's front yard and I loved it: it was an axis mundi for me. It lasted about a month before The Child grabbed its base as I was picking him up. Let's just say the whole event was like a Greek play by Euripides.
Our realtor was great; she put up with me pretending to be a drunk undergraduate and shrieking "I am soooo drunk" as an illustration of why we didn't want to live in the Student Hell part of town; and put up with Mark asking during one open house, "So, is this where they hide the bodies?"
June 27 2006. I lead a Wicca 101 ritual as a Sunday presentation at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Eugene. The presentation was a brief lecture on the stations of the sun, followed by a Tree of Life meditation and a Spiral Dance. It went really well, and everyone seemed friendly and enthusiastic. It was so refreshing to find a "Neo-Pagan Church" that wasn't a collection of (in my harsher moments) "flakey, superstitious refugees from Math and Science."
I was very excited to be at UUCE, and I was hoping for rabbinical discussions of the Spirit of Life as experienced through rituals of the four elements. In the months that followed, I had high hopes for an active Covenant of UU Pagans, actively, ardently, and jubilantly exploring the Seventh Principle (Respect for the Interdependent Web of All Existence of Which We Are a Part) with the tools of the Sixth Source (spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions) tempered with those of the Fifth Source (the guidance of reason and the results of science).
September 2006. After lots of painting and scraping and cleaning, with lots of help from my dad, we moved into the new house. About this time I crenelated what I thought was the front boxwood, but was in fact, the front azalea. Mark was horrified and the azalea has only recovered in about 2013. I've been banned from pruning or trimming in the garden ever since.
Against Mark's advice, I set up a green gazing globe in the back yard. We'd had the gazing globe in our old place's front yard and I loved it: it was an axis mundi for me. It lasted about a month before The Child grabbed its base as I was picking him up. Let's just say the whole event was like a Greek play by Euripides.
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