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Superbia - a Latin term signifying "Pride", which, in use, is most often intended to have a negative connotation (mosaic in the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière).
Superbia (mosaic, Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière)

I like the concept: a celebration of the diversity and beauty of our community. But, really, the name "Pagan Pride" is so unfortunate.

It seems like the originators of the Pagan Pride Project stumbled upon the name, and now we're all stuck with it, despite the sometimes negative connotations of the word "pride" and despite its conflation with the much more important Gay Pride1.

I am proud of the accomplishments of members of my community, I believe in the ideas of Paganism to make us better people and to bring us spiritual satisfaction, and I am glad to claim "Pagan" as one of my identities, but I am not proud to be Pagan. Claiming a religious affiliation isn't something to be proud of; it is neither an inborn trait nor an earned title2.

I wish it could be "Pagan Awareness Day" or "Pagan Community Day", but we probably can't change that. Regardless of the name, we can make our local events great through volunteering, participating, and offering our time, energy, and money to showing our community to its best. Happy Pagan Pride Day to all those whose celebrations are still coming up; let's make our events something to be proud of!

We're not generally a religion that tries to convert people, but we are sometimes called a religion of converts - even now, very few Pagans grew up in the faith. Pagan Pride Project events might be as close as we come to proselytizing, simply by virtue of being public and publicized events. We're into Pagan Pride season, and since Pagan Pride events do tend to attract new Pagans and the curious public, I'm willing to bet a lot of them have a "Paganism 101" workshop.

I can't imagine seeing "Christianity 101" on a church fair schedule. You don't learn Christianity in courses or workshops like you would a hobby. There isn't beginner and advanced Christianity (not for the laypeople, anyway). To be considered an active Christian, a person must believe in the Christian God and probably attend services and say prayers. For a lot of Christian denominations, any deeper understanding of the theology is optional, but the books about both Christian belief and Christian action are in the Religion section of the bookstore.

In contrast, to be an active Pagan, a person must often be their own theologian and priest. They have to create their own religious rituals and conduct them. Even as part of an established tradition and a group that practices together, there's greater demands than to just follow a script. If you believe in the supernatural, than you must be part of an energetic flow at least, and often must be actively working with spirits or deities. If you don't believe in the supernatural, there's still a lot of psychology and work involved in being a part of a good ritual, much less writing one.

We're also generally a religion of orthopraxy - "correct action" - versus of orthodoxy - "correct belief". To simplify a great deal: Christians believe Christian things; Pagan do Pagan things. We do need workshops and books that treat our religion like a hobby to be learned; we don't have an equivalent to the sinner's prayer, unless it is the solitary self-initiation ritual that so many of us fumble through, shaking hands lighting candles while trying to remember which order the quarters are called in or the words to our deity invocations. Those varying rituals, often individual to each person, don't have to mean accepting the Goddess into your heart, but can be just practicing the skills of setting up sacred space, going through the motions of raising energy, and grounding and closing the space - it is the sampler of Pagan ritual.

There is Pagan theology, of course. It is a growing field, and I'm grateful to see it. After doing all the Paganism 101 stuff, there are philosophical issues to wrestle with, even if we aren't going to declare some of the answers to be definitive. Still, our books about the various ways to believe in Pagan ways are vastly outnumbered by the books of how to do Pagan things, and both usually end up in the New Age section of the bookstore. It is easy to get a bit self-conscious about our religion that acts like a hobby.

Even at Pagan Pride, we don't try to convert people to Paganism, but just inform them about who we are and what we do (and, unfortunately for our framing, sometimes what we don't do). I don't think we're even a religion of converts, really; we're a religion of student practitioners. And I hope it remains so, even if it means that our religious books continue to be put in the Occult and New Age sections of the bookstore. We aren't the same as most other religions, so maybe we shouldn't be treated the same. Let's embrace the Paganism 101 workshops and all it means about who we are.

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.

1

A group of trees as seen from below

The Web of Blessings - "The Art of Being Led":

"When we can't comfortably talk about power, we lose the ability to be responsible with our own power, and we can't accurately assess the power we are giving to our leaders. We also lose the ability to hold our leaders accountable. But the truth is, we who are led are the ones who give our leaders their power. We decide (or at least we *should* be deciding) to allow them to influence us and our communities. The relationship between a community and its leaders is a type of explicit or implicit contract – the community agrees to be led in exchange for giving that leader respect, power, and influence. The leader agrees to lead (and to work on behalf of that community, by performing the services and duties that their form of leadership requires) in exchange for the community giving them power, respect and influence."

Behind the Broom: What the Books Don't Tell You - "You know you're a new leader when the mouths start flapping...":

"Sometimes, the heavy judgers are people who have had difficulty fitting in in other areas of the world. Upon finding themselves in a community that accepts them, they can be even more judgemental that the average Witch. It’s a fear-based thing. They fear being replaced or booted out of the community they have craved for so long that they try to vet the newcomers. It makes them feel safe."

Pagan Leadership: Community Building, Facilitation, and Personal Growth - "Paganism and Problem Solving":

"In the field of strategic design there's a saying: before you can design the thing right, you have to design the right thing. There's another axiom in strategic design: the solution is inherent once the problem is defined. In my experience as a design consultant and as a community leader, I've seen this play out fairly consistently. Often people solve the wrong problem, or never examine the problem at all. ... Yet, we can't solve our problems until we examine them. An engineer can't diagnose what's wrong with a broken machine without taking it apart."

The Wild Hunt - "Pagan Leadership Revisited: New Visions for a New Age":

"If the demands on leadership have changed within the Pagan community, what does that mean, and what does the modern Pagan leader look like? The idea that competent leadership changes with the demands of the community is one that might resonate as we are looking to our past and our future concerning this issue. There has been more momentum as of late behind the Pagan community's need for ways to guarantee that leaders are held to certain standards and expectations, and yet the collective Pagan community has a weak track record of actually formulating and implementing plans."

Power Before Wisdom - "The Harsh Realities of Leading a Pagan Group: Troubles with Followers":

"Unfortunately, as I noted before, there are VERY few pagan "followers." Most pagans consider themselves separate from needing to "follow" or serve a group in a non-leadership capacity... their attendance at events is compensation enough right?"

Dowsing for Divinity - "Pagan Leadership":

"My approach to leadership is to seek to empower others, and enable them to write and facilitate ritual and so on. However, not everyone who joins a coven wants to write and facilitate rituals, and that is alright. They may have other abilities which could be nurtured."

Pagan-Musings Podcast Channel podcasts about leadership:

Magical Experiments: What is Pagan Leadership, Part 1

Magical Experiments: What is Pagan Leadership, Part 2

Magical Experiments: Pagan Leadership Panel

PMP: Pagan Leadership Anthology Panel

Magical Experiments: Pagan Leadership Panel

Cover of "The Leader Within""The Leader Within: Articles on Community Building, Leadership, and Personal Growth":

"How do we build healthy community? Pagan and alternative spirituality groups find themselves in crisis. Burnout, drama, power struggles, gossip, betrayal, abuse, conflict, toxic personalities... or groups just fade away, unable to rally enough volunteers to get the work done. Groups gather together for spiritual work and find themselves unable to get past the challenges of group dynamics."

Cover of "Pagan Leadership Anthology""The Pagan Leadership Anthology: An Exploration of Leadership and Community in Paganism and Polytheism":

"The words "Pagan Leadership" are often met with scorn and tales of failed groups and so-called Witch Wars. And yet, as our communities grow and mature, we find ourselves in dire need of healthy, ethical leaders. Most Pagans have seen what doesn't work. But what does? This anthology features over thirty authors, thirty essays, and decades of leadership experience sharing their failures and successes as leaders as well as showing you how you can become a better Pagan leader."

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.

A view from below of a branching tree Last weekend, my spiritual family gathered around a dinner table to talk theology and eat and drink. It was the first Silver Spiral Pagan Symposium, as inspired by this post in "Under the Ancient Oaks".

The Symposium was doubling as my birthday party, so my partner and I had hired a chef as a special luxury for all of us. As fun as the potluck aspect sounded, for this occasion, we wanted it to be as little work as possible for everyone, especially since it was all planned for a Friday night. Besides overnight stuff for those staying over, the only thing our guests were asked to bring was a theology or philosophy question.

We came in our all beautiful chaos, most straight from work through truly awful traffic. Altogether, the Symposium was made up of most of the local Silver Spiral members and one from out of town, spouses from various spiritual backgrounds, three young kids, and a puppy who is in training to be a seeing eye dog. We came out of the pouring rain with overnight bags and toddlers in tow. Almost all of us were later arriving than we'd planned to be, we almost forgot to set the table, and we'd poured a first round of drinks and started nibbling on the appetizers before the last guests made it in. Throughout the multi-course dinner, there were breaks for the chef to tell us about the next course, for taking the dog out, to deal with children arguing, for baby bedtime, and for taking medications. Our conversations split and wandered from deep theology to community gossip to mundane things and back. We only poured two offerings. We didn't get to most people's questions. At one point, I was in full rant mode about something - cultural appropriation, Pagan fundamentalism, something else? - when I saw the chef step towards the dining room holding a cake with lit candles, see that it didn't look like quite the moment and start turning around. I was the only one facing that direction, so I interrupted myself by laughing and waving my birthday cake into the room.

It wasn't what John described in his post: an orderly dinner with each course proceeded by an offering and a question and an evening of thoughtful, focused, adult conversation. But what it was was beautiful: the extended Pagan family in all its glory, ending with sipping a truly perfect mead at around 2 am.

In the midst of all that, we did have some great theology discussions. Silver Spiral had a head start on those because our previous discussions had covered a lot of basics about what each of us believe, so we could dig directly into more specific topics such as why make offerings, the politics of being a nature religion on unceded First Nations territory, where we think we really are when in a sacred circle or ritual space, anthrocentricism, what makes a good leader in Paganism... We took good advantage of what we did know about each other, but we also drew on the different backgrounds of our non-member guests, such as a Unitarian and someone with an intense science background (who also told us about the sweetening effect of artichokes), which enriched the conversation further. We all brought open minds, which was most important.

It's not something we will do every month or even every quarter - too much rich food, too much wine, and too little sleep, especially for the parents of small children - but we will do it again. The most important part of our symposium was definitely the people, but great food and wine does facilitate conversation and some guidelines about the topics helps guide the group. Attempting to exert too much control over an evening like this would meant missing out on the magic of a full family experience. The only thing I would have changed is putting it on a Saturday night or starting a little later so people didn't have to rush as much.

Our evening may not have been "productive", but it was spiritually nourishing and a lot of fun. I did learn some really interesting things about my friends' beliefs and got some food for thought (that will probably show up in this blog soon). I highly recommend putting together your own version of the modern Pagan symposium.

Series to date:
Our big questions - part 1
Our big questions - part 2
Our big questions - part 3: Ritual structure 2.0
Our big questions – part 4: Circling from awkward to graceful (and back)
Our big questions - part 5: Hacking our religion

Solo person sitting on the beach I am a classic introvert, and a little socially anxious. I love "my people", but I frequently find crowds and strangers overwhelming. After socializing, even with the people I love most, I need time alone to recharge. So of all the ways of being Pagan, it seems a contradiction that I identify most as a community-centred Pagan, the only kind that would seem to require extroversion.

Though it may seem to be a contradiction, I think my introversion is actually why I'm drawn to community. It can be hard for introverts to meet and get to know people, so once we've got ourselves a good group of friends, we definitely want to hold on to them. Most people want to belong to a group and be a part of something, and introverts don't always have the easiest path to finding that, making it very valuable to us when we do. I've got my spiritual family, Silver Spiral, and I have found other pockets of community locally that I enjoy working with, such as the Vancouver Pagan Pride Day team.

Community building isn't just for extroverts. Some of it is outward facing, socializing, presenting, but there are also emails to write, schedules to manage, research to do, cookies to bake... community isn't just built by people who are willing to stand up in front of a group with a vision, but also those who are willing to sit with ideas for hours to help bring a vision to life, and those - introverts and extroverts alike - who are willing to pitch in at every level, including doing the dishes. Pagans with all kinds of belief systems - deity-centred, nature-centred, and inner-centred - can and do help build community, but for community-centred Pagans, this is our spiritual work.

To be a community-centred Pagan is to have spreadsheets as well as athames as religious tools. It means that writing a rite for a group is a ritual in and of itself, satisfying a spiritual need even before the space has been cleansed. It is to recognize that there's magical energy in coordinating a potluck as much as casting a circle, that offering a workshop or a helpful blog post can be as important a religious service as an offering to a deity, and that a call to assist at a concession stand is as much a sacred duty as calling a quarter.

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