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March 18: In the days since posting this, it has become clear that we must practice the most strict social distancing possible, which means that we must cancel all in-person rituals and events unless they are only with those we already live with. I'm leaving this post up because the thought exercises in it are still useful for other situations where minimizing contact is important, such as when someone in your group is immunocompromised.

On an additional note, I know a lot of groups use a communal cup in their rituals, but those who aren't comfortable sharing will pour out a small amount or touch the cup to their forehead. Though that technically solves the problem, one of the techniques of ritual is bringing everyone together through the use of repetitive and identical actions. I believe strongly in trying to accommodate everyone by writing a ritual that everyone can participate in equally; whenever possible, let's not make people have to choose between standing out and compromising on their needs.

We may not gather weekly as a church, but when we gather, we tend to hug in greeting. Our rituals are full of shared food, shared drinking vessels, holding hands, and even kissing. COVID-19 and its social distancing recommendations will impact Ostara and maybe Beltane, and all the full moons and other celebrations until then, so we need to think about this.

Think carefully before having an event at all: the safest thing we can do is simply not have in-person gatherings. If you are going to have a ritual, keep the group small, encourage people to skip it if they are at all unwell, ask that people keep their distance from each other, and modify the ritual in advance.

If you've got a group with a deeply entrenched way of doing things, remember that now is not the time to cling to "tradition" if it is harmful to the greater good of flattening the curve. I have received at least 25 mass emails in the last couple of days from everyone from my puppy's daycare to my bank with information about what they are doing about this outbreak - there's no excuse not to think about this stuff in advance if you are going to be holding a ritual or event. Your participants need to know your plan so they can react according to their needs. Vulnerable people and their loved ones in particular need to decide if they should attend at all.

Outdoor rituals? If possible, doing rituals outside with all that fresh air may be healthier than someone's home where germs might be resting on the surfaces.

New pre-ritual ritual: Everyone washes their hands with soap and hot water before the ritual begins. This isn't a symbolic cleansing in salt water, but a real cleaning.

No hugging or kissing: We usually hug each other as a welcome to the Circle; I'm thinking bowing might be a substitute for us.

No holding hands: Our group starts every ritual with a short breathing meditation. We hold hands and stand close together so we can feel each other's deep breaths moving our bodies - now we will stand further apart and have no physical contact. We will have to listen for each other.

No shared drinking glasses: I circle with people with chronic illnesses and my own immune system is compromised by my Multiple Sclerosis medication, so we haven't had a shared goblet in years. We each bring our own goblets and we bless a carafe of beverages and share it out.

No passed food: Currently, we pass the food plate around the circle, speaking a blessing over it - letting our breath pass over the food and standing much closer to each other than 6 feet apart. I think each will help themselves to the food at the next ritual, if we even have food in the Circle.

Our religion is often embodied - the best rituals reach our spirits via our bodies... our bodies in movement, our bodies in community. So we have to find ways to bring our fragile bodies into ritual. If we can't use touch to connect us, we have to use our other senses. Maybe we will have to experiment with virtual/digital rituals. We have to be creative and open to change in order to be good, responsible Pagans in the time of coronavirus.

Links: Paganism in the time of coronavirus - part 2 and Paganism in the time of coronavirus - part 3: Virtual rituals.


Morning glory and mint growing together over an almost completely covered lawn chair.
A piece of our yard is the most peaceful of war zones, as morning glory and mint fight for dominance.

I had a beautiful weekend. On Friday evening, Silver Spiral had a belated Litha. It was a gorgeous ritual. In the power raising, the group was given a fairly simple poem to turn into a chant. It started as just rhythmic speaking, than acquired melody, then evolved into a call and response with a complex clapping rhythm.

On Saturday morning, I went to my weekly Tai Chi class. The instructor was emphasizing the importance of paying attention to the group's timing: pushing forward together, turning together, kicking together. Doing the Tai Chi set smoothly as a group requires paying attention to the people on all sides of you and matching your timing to theirs. It also means making constant tiny adjustments to your positioning, taking some smaller or larger steps here and there or nudging yourself forward or back in order to keep spacing even and keep the lines straight. You have your workout to do, but you are also part of the whole. Ideally everyone in that whole values both of those things so the whole works as one while the individuals also work and balance their bodies in the ways they need as individuals.

Silver Spiral's rituals are firmly grounding in consent culture practices. When it is "just family" at rituals, we often rely on our long-standing mutual understandings about consent and participation, but we sometimes use an explicit acknowledgment, especially when running a public ritual:

We stand here as empowered and free individuals. We are each able to make our own choices about coming to this circle, about staying in this circle, and about how to participate in the ritual. You may leave at any time and for any reason, return whenever you want, and sit out any activity. We ask of each other only that we don't interfere with the experience of other participants.

That isn't comprehensive, of course: we do ask more of participants than just not interfering with each other's experience. A ritual is a whole that is more than the sum of the individuals in it, but that requires that all participants put effort into it.

Friday's ritual's chant started as a slightly ragged spoken poem as we figured out the words. As we found our own individual ways, we also came together. Even as I slipped into a light trance, I could find ways to follow the group's shifting chant. I could find a place where my voice belonged and hear it contribute to the whole.


A close-up of two people holding handsMy partner sometimes tells a story of the early days of our relationship. I actually don't remember the conversation, per se, but it is part of the structure of our life together. As the story goes, I sat him down and offered him a simple agreement: we will both agree to say what we mean and we will both agree to believe what the other says. If you say you are OK, I will trust your word. We aren't perfect at this, but it has generally been a helpful guideline by which to live together: a goal of perfect trust.

On Facebook recently, I linked to a rant article about Pagan Standard Time. I was mostly interested in the cultural aspect, where Pagan culture has made flakiness, lateness, and lack of preparation and planning into values. It's as if we subconsciously believe that you can't be "magical" or spiritual and still be capable of reading a calendar. My experience with assorted community organizing certainly bears this out: there are the volunteers who don't show up for their shifts and never respond to emails about whether or not they are OK; there's the criticism of leaders who insist on event licenses and insurance with their associated costs; and there's a general acceptance of everything running late from the unapologetic leaders and the shrugging "Pagan Standard Time" response from participants.

After I posted the link, a fellow Silver Spiral member pointed out the ableism in the article. When you narrow the focus from the general culture of Paganism down to the actions of individuals, you can't tell the difference between flakiness and invisible disabilities (or other life challenges) that might stand in the way of someone being prepared and on time. There are those who would prefer to be thought of as flaky rather than share the private details of their physical or mental health or other life circumstances, and we should respect that.

In a perfect world, the Pagan community would have a simple agreement: everyone would do the best they can to be on time and to be prepared, and no one would question or complain about those who don't succeed. We would give up the mythology that our magic interferes with our ability to be practical. We would trust that everyone's doing their part, even if that part seems small. We would make room for those who need more support or more time because they'd no longer be lost in a sea of people who choose not to take their community commitments as seriously as their schooling or day jobs.

Given that I can't single-handedly change Pagan culture, I will commit to this: I am going to do the best I can to start my events on time out of respect for those who made the effort to be there promptly - especially those with challenges; especially those whose challenges are invisible or unknown. I am also going to hold space for those who aren't on time or prepared. When they arrive, they'll be welcomed and included. I'll try to work with the assumption that everyone is making their best effort and that they should not have to explain or justify themselves. I will try believing the intentions and words of others with the impossible goal of community-wide perfect trust.

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A gloved hand reaching for the hilt of a sword that is stuck upright in a huge stone. My partner works in construction - in inspections to be more specific - and he sometimes speaks disparagingly of architects. They are artists, but sometimes fall so much in love with their beautiful vision that they neglect the practical (like electrical panels) and the efficient (like preferring all glass). And the world needs people to imagine beautiful things... as long as there are also some practical people around to tell them that they need to include railings on their balconies, even if that ruins the graceful lines of the building.

Paganism has a lot of great "architects": people with great, beautiful visions. Some of those people are even able to execute their great ideas, having the right combination of leadership skills and practical expertise to make projects a reality. The dearth of training for Pagan leaders in most communities means that qualified folks can be at a premium, and the results can be seen in many a dysfunctional group or organization and in many a beautiful vision that never comes to pass.

I still think that's an issue, but there's another role we seem low on: tummlers. A tummler in the realm of coworking is one who incites others to action. In coworking, in fact, they have extended and explored that meaning to show how a person can nurture a community without managing it.

If you are perceived as a leader in a community, people will come to you with "you know what you should do...". I get a lot of that in my day job in coworking, and I've seen Pagans get it too. And I've seen both coworking folks and Pagan leaders become burned out as a result of trying to turn all those suggestions into reality by themselves. A skilled tummler turns "you know what you should do" into "you know what I can do" and connects people together. And they show up. Tummlers set an example of how community works by showing up and doing their part; they just don't have to be the foreperson.

I can hear it: "But if I don't do it, no one will." This approach will mean that some beautiful visions will never be created. But hopefully it'll mean we will have more people doing more things, and fewer people burning out. Become a tummler and get those architects building! And when you meet people with "boring" skills like budgeting and writing bylaws, encourage them to join in on projects and help keep the dreamers from spending all their money on one aspect or accidentally breaking the rules. Don't supervise; connect, promote, and cheerlead!

The biggest mistake you can make in community building is trying to do it on your own.1


People holdings hands Last night, some members of Silver Spiral gathered to rehearse the ritual we're presenting at Vancouver Pagan Pride Day (VPPD) on September 10th. Jamie Robyn and I had worked to create a very inclusive, accessible ritual that empowered the participants to participate. Our pre-ritual speeches include explicit permission to leave if needed, information on how to opt out of activities, alternatives and assistance for people with issues with mobility, sight, or hearing. This makes for a bit of a long period of talking at our participants before the ritual even starts, but in my experience, making sure people don't feel trapped or pressured results in freer, deeper participation, so this is time well spent. We've also made sure the rest of the ritual is monologue-free (no half-assed rituals for us), so hopefully everyone will understand the necessity and forgive us for the "lecture".

In my opinion, Pagan Pride Day is the perfect place to build consent culture in our community. It's when all our different traditions gather and when the public gets to see what we're all about. If we want to show each other and the public our best selves, the event must address accessibility, social justice, and consent. It can't just be a nod in the opening remarks either; we need to talk about it over and over again, and walk our talk in the most visible ways possible.

I am just the volunteer coordinator for Vancouver Pagan Pride Day 2016; I can't take credit for how the overall event is embracing consent culture. That's being led by ED Johnston, the event coordinator, and she has had some amazing insights into what it takes to make an event safe and inclusive. For example, the yellow wristband policy is one of the thoughtful ways we can live consent culture at VPPD. Anyone can easily opt out of having their picture taken, which makes the event safer for those who can't be publicly Pagan, for those who aren't Pagan and don't want to be labelled as such in a picture, and, hell, for those who just hate having their picture taken.

Creating inclusive, welcoming spaces is hard. It is hard to create an event that respects the needs of a wide variety of people. I know; it feels like every week there's a new consideration. And there is pushback from people who will accuse you of "political correctness", or of coddling people, or of watering Paganism down. Reading the comments on the excellent Bad Magic reminds me how many people think you have to shock people or force them to confront their challenges. I don't think that's true. I think it is lazy to depend on shock to create a religious experience. It is bad ritual art, and potentially harmful, and unnecessary. People will surprise you; if you give them safe ways to do so - if you give them a real, informed choice about how deep to go - they will push their own boundaries. Or not, and I don't see how that's anyone's business.

Pagan Pride Day isn't the place for hard work anyway. If you want to explore your inner darkness and challenge yourself spiritually, that's best done in a trusted group that has done a lot of foundational work together. To me, Pagan Pride is both the opportunity to show off our unique collective identity and our diversity, both to each other and the public, and the opportunity to create that identity. When we gather together our tribes and traditions in a literal Big Tent of Paganism, we have a chance to set a tone and to set an example and expectations for our community. Vancouver Pagan Pride Day is leading our community towards more inclusion, more accessibility, more safety, and making consent culture a part of our religious culture. I'm honoured to be a part of it.


A maine coon cat looking unimpressed
This maine coon doesn't care either

Walking through my neighbourhood at about 9:30 last night, I ended up in a prolonged conversation with a stranger; I'll call her Jane. It started with her asking for directions and then me offering my phone for her to call her ride, and wound up with me hanging out with her on this patch of grass while her ride repeatedly put her off ("I'll be there in ten minutes." "That's what you said ten minutes ago!") until she finally got picked up.

Our conversation meanders quite a bit, touching on Jane's life history and health issues, the history of the neighbourhood, and raccoons and bedbugs. We don't have much in common. She's almost twice my age, uses a cane, and is living in a transition house after a period of homelessness. We do both love cats. Jane makes some vaguely racists comments and says some things about mental illness that I'm not comfortable with. I steer the conversation in other directions and we talk about how beautiful maine coons are.

Maybe the right thing to do would have been to confront her prejudiced comments, but I don't know this woman. If it had been someone I loved, I would have opened up a discussion to figure out what they meant and see if I could show them why the comments were inappropriate, but I have no investment in this stranger. In that moment, it isn't worth the fight to try to change her mind.1 I will probably never see her again, she has very little power to do anything with her prejudices, and I don't care enough about her to be concerned about her karma, spirit, or soul.2

I recently stopped attending a Pagan event I used to be highly involved in. Since making the decision to completely give it up, I have been having a long debate with myself about whether or not I should tell the organizers why. The truth is, the event has been going in a direction I'm uncomfortable with for quite awhile, and I hung on and kept attending, and donating time, energy, and money, in the hopes that I could help steer it back to what I used to love. But as it drifted further down a different path, my efforts lessened until I was no longer really trying to do anything. It happened slowly, almost subconsciously, and it was only after this conversation with Jane that I realized the important truth: I no longer love this event enough to fight for it. I just don't care enough anymore to deal with the discomfort of being a dissenting voice, even from the distance of telling those in charge why I won't be there. It isn't "my event" anymore; it belongs to a different group who appreciate and love the new direction. As much as I grieve for the event that was, that event doesn't exist anymore3, and what has replaced it is a bit of a stranger to me. And as much as I might wish a stranger well, in the end, I don't love them enough to fight with them over their soul.


Red Beltane flower This week, I attended an online conference for my day job. One of the themes was community building. I mentioned that my mantra for community building for my spiritual community is "work together, eat together, pray together" and I noted that you'd probably need an alternative to "pray" for a secular community. One of the other people suggested "grow together", harkening back to an earlier conversation comparing creating community to growing a garden. "Grow together" made me groan out loud. Luckily, being an online conference, no one heard that and I could compose a reasonable response.

There are two reasons I didn't like "grow together". The first - the one I gave in response at the conference - was that it is a result of community, not a way to create community. The second, unstated reason, was that I don't like metaphors.

Metaphors are useful when trying to explain abstract concepts in more concrete terms. Creating a community is just like growing a garden... until you actually want to get down to doing either one. If you want to do either, eventually you have to stop talking in pretty abstracts and make an action plan.

I like "work, eat, pray" for my spiritual family, but there are lots of other actions that could be considered crucial to community building, depending on the community: celebrate together, sweat together, sing together, play together, learn together... but since a Pagan community isn't a garden, we don't grow together; since it isn't a web or a blanket, we don't weave together; and since it isn't a ship, we don't sail or row together.

For Silver Spiral, "work together" means pulling invasive weeds in a local park, making giant batches of perogies, serving on community organizations, and painting walls in each other's homes and businesses. "Eat together" means preparing meals as a group, all contributing to our amazing potlucks, and enjoying fantastic conversations over food. "Pray together" means sharing sacred space, thinking of each other, and writing and rehearsing rituals for the larger community. These are real actions that lead to deeper friendships, good memories, positive associations, and, ultimately, that elusive feeling of community. No abstractions needed.


A single spoon in a sink In criminology, there's "the broken windows theory". Based on my day job managing a coworking space and my other experiences with shared spaces, I propose a similar theory for coworking and other shared spaces: the Spoon Hypothesis1. If one spoon gets left in the communal kitchen sink, it will take less than half an hour for a pile of silverware, mugs, and plates to accumulate in there too. It could be just as easily called the Abandoned Book Theory (for the library book not re-shelved), the Towel Theory (for the gym towel left strewn about the locker room instead of tossed in the hamper), or the Debris Theory (for how a random corner of a park can seem to collect garbage like a magnet), but the spoon is so emblematic.

Understand that the Spoon Hypothesis isn't about the mess accumulating around the single abandoned spoon - that's just an observation of a very real phenomenon. My theory is that if you can figure out a way to prevent the spoon from being left in the sink to begin with, you can keep the whole kitchen tidier. When people come into a very clean shared space, they are more likely to clean up after themselves. If you can come up with a system to make it easy for people to meet the minimal expectations - to put their spoon in the dishwasher - you won't have to clean up silverware, mugs, plates, or even coffee grounds and food spills. Tackle the small origin problem and the rest will take care of itself (mostly).

Though the Spoon Hypothesis originates in physical problems in shared spaces, it can be extended to other community organizational issues. For example, a podcast I was listening to talked about a problem a group was having with potlucks: people weren't bringing enough of whatever they'd signed up to provide. The solution was to create a simple list of how much people were to bring of any given kind of dish (x cups of salad, y number of veggie trays, etc.). The person said that not only did that solve their potluck problem, but that they noticed that people were more willing to help out in other ways too, like with clean-up after the event. They hypothesized that by drawing attention to one aspect of making an event run smoothly - how much food to provide - it drew attention to other aspects as well, and that giving clear instructions of what was expected of participants in one area freed those people up to think about other ways they could assist. They accidentally stumbled on a spoon problem and solved it effectively.

The problem with the implications of the Spoon Hypothesis is that it isn't always easy to identify the spoon. If the problem is that your coven's members don't seem to take the coven's events seriously - if there's lots of confusion about where and when something is, people are frequently late, members aren't prepared - that's the messy kitchen. There may be individual reasons for some members to have trouble committing, but if the whole group seems to have an issue, there may be a systemic reason or two that can be at least be nipped in the bud. Maybe your group has chosen a communication tool that is inconvenient for the majority of members, maybe events aren't being planned far enough ahead, maybe there's an incomplete understanding of event logistics among the event organizers, or maybe the leadership is disorganized so it means the members don't feel like they have to take things seriously.

Even once identified, solving the spoon problem isn't always easy. To return to the shared kitchen, we've tried to head off the one spoon with signs, with written rules and reminders sent to members, with a kitchen orientation for new members, and with two dishwashers with signs about which one is dirty. The receptionist and I joke that we need a camera that compares the current sink to an image of the sink empty and sets off an alarm when they don't match. My partner and I come up with increasingly elaborate hypothetical robots that would fling abandoned spoons out of the sink or that would follow offenders around making obnoxious noises. Other shared spaces have tried things like a layer of ping pong balls at the bottom of the sink to discourage putting things down, but who wants to clean the ping pong balls after a couple of days of people pouring out their leftover coffee and rinsing their lunch dishes over them? In the end, what has worked best so far is education. I tell members and staff about the first spoon phenomenon all the time, and after, they are more likely to spot the abandoned spoon and move it to the dishwasher, knowing that little favour has an effect out of proportion to the effort.

In the example of the chronically disorganized coven, the solution might be changing communication methods, setting deadline dates in advance for the usual events, creating a standard form for event organizers to fill out to make sure all the details are covered, or having the leader(s) re-prioritize. None of which are necessarily easy, but all will have longer lasting benefits than endless discussions about trying to be on time, dealing with the consequences of people being late, repeatedly lecturing people about living up to their responsibilities, or any other ways of dealing with the down-spoon consequences.

Here's the sneaky part of the Spoon Hypothesis: knowing about it gives you a certain amount of responsibility. When you start to leave something where you know it doesn't belong, there's a little voice that reminds you that other things will accumulate because of it. And when you see a spoon, you won't be able to ignore it.

Community building can be a messy process, full of miscommunications, dirty dishes, unsorted recycling, scheduling conflicts, and problems in both processes and principles. But maybe we can make it a little less messy by staying alert and cleaning up the first spoon.


Vancouver Pagan Pride Fundraiser logo Last Saturday, ED, the Vancouver Pagan Pride Day coordinator, and her team1 put together an amazing community-building and fundraising event. After the financial blow of losing tents to a wind storm at 2015's main event and the spiritual cost of having to close the event so early and so abruptly, we needed some cash and to get the community rallied again.

For the fundraiser, we had a lovely indoor venue at the Unitarian Church of Vancouver. They were having a workshop in another room in the same building as the space we were renting, so for the first couple of hours, I got to play a private game of "Pagan or Unitarian?" whenever anyone walked in the door; I got about 80% right.

It wasn't a huge space, but we packed a lot into it. There was a front table of information, including the no-photo bands, which is a brilliant idea for a public event; two aisles of wonderful vendors with Pagan-related goods (I bought a cool necklace and a book stand); a concession stand, an activity table, a ritual/workshop/performance area (where I got to put on my community ritual and a second presentation of my ritual writing workshop from last year's Pagan Pride Day), and two packed tables of prizes for the silent auction and raffles.

Event schedules & sponsor business cards We had amazing sponsors. ED had solicited a wide variety of business and private donations and there was truly something for everyone on those tables. I made out very well: a bottle of mead and the "It Survived 2015" basket from the silent auction and some gift certificates from the raffle.

As mentioned, the space was small, so we could only have one ritual/workshop/performance on at a time, which is a much reduced schedule from all the performances, workshops, and rituals we will have at the full Pagan Pride Day. Still, there was a variety of things on the schedule, including some live music.

My small part of this event was recruiting and coordinating the volunteers that we needed to help set-up and clean-up, to watch over the auction and raffles, to sell at the concession stand, and to welcome people at the front table. I had a truly amazing team of volunteers: some long time friends of mine and some people who were new to the community. And that was the most amazing thing about the fundraiser: we were surrounded all day by evidence that Pagans will pull together to create community. Sometimes, reading the ferocious online debates and hearing the local gossip, it can be easy to think that "Pagan community" is an oxymoron, but the cash in donation jars, the overflowing table of donations, and all the people who offered their time, energy, and talents to make the event a success gave me faith.

List of the Vancouver Pagan Pride Sabbats There was also a special announcement made at the event: the Vancouver Pagan Pride non-profit society will be putting on public Sabbats as additional fundraisers and community-building events. Here is our wheel of the year for the rest of 2016:

Beltane: April 29th
Litha: June 17th
Lammas: July 22nd
Vancouver Pagan Pride Day: September 10th
Mabon: September 16th
Samhain: October 28th
Yule: December 16th

The Vancouver Pagan Pride team has been doing amazing work for our community. Please listen to the radio show ED and Wendy were on, read the newspaper article ED and Julie interviewed for, like their Facebook page, and come out to celebrate Beltane with us.



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