A Peak Experience
I continue to mull over my long involvement with Reclaiming, listening to what other people consider the babies in the bathwater, sitting with reactions and reflections in order to think of something useful to say about it all. One image that pops to mind is an incredible moment that occurred less than a year ago, and maybe that’s as good a place as any to begin.
I was in Minneapolis last Samhain with family and friends to attend my friend Donald’s handfasting, which included three days of community events and field trips they had planned. Part of the weekend celebration was attending a BareBones theater piece at a park down by the Mississippi River one evening. It was a long, involved story with large puppets, street theater, and tons of people sitting on straw bales in the gathering dark. At the end, we each took up tea light lanterns and processed down to the water’s edge.
Most of my family had long since departed to the car to wait in relative warmth for the evening to be over, but my daughter Lyra and I trooped down together to the mighty Mississippi to watch the conclusion of the piece. It was a clear night, dark with no moon, and the flickering candles and low hum of conversation felt like a gentle swarm of night-flying bees congregating near a watering hole. From upriver a wooden raft was slowly floating down with the players in diaphanous garb enacting the ritual’s end. Soon Lyra said to me, “Listen to what they’re singing.”
It was a chant sung in warbly but determined voice, being picked up gradually by the watchers on the bank. I eventually heard them singing, “When we are gone, they will remain, wind and rock, fire and rain. They will remain when we return, the wind will blow, and the fire will burn.” Lyra and I joined in, harmonizing with the crowd, and for a long while stood there arm in arm, singing with the swelling chorus on the banks, in joy and sadness for all that passes and returns.
As the chant faded and the theater ended, Lyra turned to me and said, “Are you going to tell them who you are?” “No, it’s better that way,” was my response. No one had to know that I had helped write that chant years ago, after Starhawk had asked me to set her words to music. No one had to know that I helped produce the CD on which “When We Are Gone” was recorded, that I sang on that recording, or that I had been instrumental in distributing the CD far and wide for the past 11 years.
The power of that moment was that our liturgy had gone beyond the banks of Reclaiming chant and entered the culture at large. The song was its own boat, unstoppable, wending its way through the landscape to so many new communities, touching the lives of more people than I could hope to know. One expects that of anthems, of songs launched with big money and bigger popularity, but to hear one’s own chant sung in a non-ritual venue by people one has never met feels pretty miraculous.
Great liturgy is one of the timeless contributions made by Reclaiming priestesses to contemporary Paganism — and perhaps to modern spirituality as a whole. It is why I think our history is best told chant by chant, moving out from the creation of each to its authors, what it was designed for, and its permutations over time and distance.
This significant success is testimony to the creativity that happens between us, sometimes, and to the networks of friends and colleagues we are able to create, sometimes, which help this music pass from group to group. Ironically, this successful influence of Reclaiming-generated liturgy on our culture bears little relation to the question of whether Reclaiming as a tradition or organization will endure over time. I will turn to this question in my next post. Thanks everyone for listening.
August 16th, 2006 at 6:19 am
You might want to mention any other bits of bardic lore like that to Macha, who was designated as ‘lorekeeper’ or something like that at the May 2006 Dandelion Gathering. It seems to me that Reclaiming is lacking way too much of its bardic history, and I think that whether the philosophy survives or not as a single Tradition, a sense of history is still important.
I tried to collect some things, which I’ll drop on Macha as a collection of files when I get around to it - probably sometime after September when I’ll have completed my term as SpiralHeart’s Media Cell Chair - but if you’re interested, my feeble attempt at a Reclaiming bardic history is on the web at
http://stewardspiral.net/witchcraft/pagan_music.php
August 16th, 2006 at 9:14 am
Anne, I love your ability to evoke time, place and experience in your writing. I felt I was there with you.
One of my favorite memories of MUSE Camp is the class you held on Pagan chants and songs in that wonderful Tibetan temple at Pema Osa Ling (then decorated with their 18 foot high Buddha and 4 earthy Pagan altars in the corners). That, and watching your girls make art and play on the grounds and in the pool. Good days.
Your writing has reminded me yet again that I’m grateful to Starhawk and those others who, in the early, fragile, days of the movement, kept the discussion of the divine feminine front and center long before it was ever trendy to do so. They dealt with ignorance, suspicion, and scorn, and made it possible for those of us who came later. We were then able to find Goddess inspired art, spirituality, and language that we women could relate to. To share in the meaning of it all as sacred equals in the dance of life – can anyone who grew up in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s forget what it finally felt like as spiritual seekers to realize that quest? And isn’t that the point? Isn’t finding meaning and connection at the very center of all we do? If not for their work early on, Paganism could have been just another minor movement with an outdated, patriarchal focus or it could been left behind in some occult backwater instead of empowering and inspiring thousands of men and women (in a relatively short period of time, I might add!) and influencing western culture in ways that have yet to be fully understood. Several historians have noted the tremendous influence that these women have had on the Pagan, feminist, and ecology movements, and I think it’s a fair (and necessary) point to make in this discussion we’re having now.
The inclusion of men who fought to rise above their upbringing, as we had to do, and who brought their own unique creativity and energy to the party has also been invigorating and, for my part, most welcome.
For some time now, I’ve seen elements of Pagan thought, ritual and language entering into the zeitgeist and becoming a part of our cultural garden. (Read: “The Tipping Point” for a discussion of how such social change comes about). I can now talk about things like sacred space and honoring the seasons in one’s life and raising girls with a sense of their own unique, spiritual place in the world with people who would never in their lives attend a Witch Camp. As you’ve noted, the discussion on much of what we hold sacred has now gone mainstream. The book “Cultural Creatives” is an excellent example of that.
The Wheel has turned radically since 2000. With such change, comes suffering, grief, challenge and renewal. We cannot deny or avoid this process but we can walk through that fire and come out stronger, more creative, more compassionate, deeper in spirit, more equal in relationship to others, and much, much happier.
What Pagans can do now is to ask themselves three very vital questions:
What Matters?
What Works?
What’s Next?
The trick is not to fear the answers.
Sia
Full Circle
August 16th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
Anne, that is a gorgeous story, and just right. It reminds me of finding out that more an inner faith coral group is singing my “Song to the Secret Name of the Star Goddess” in churches in the midwest. They had scored it for several voices.
August 19th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
Sorry, Anne, I’m trying an alternative way to get into my own blog.
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:23 pm
“It is why I think our history is best told chant by chant, moving out from the creation of each to its authors, what it was designed for, and its permutations over time and distance.”
Wow, wouldn’t that make an interesting book, not just for Reclaiming folks, but for Pagan culture, in general… the process of creating liturgy as a process of creating community, culture, tradition, the “behind the music” of Reclaiming. Or, if not a book, perhaps an RQ column? :)
May 22nd, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Yes, this would make a really, really great book! I hope someone writes it some day. The combination of oral history and liturgical history would be fascinating, and incredibly valuable for future generations.
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Just a brief, and belated (just found your blog) comment on music and transcendent experiences.
I’m so glad to know the source of When We Are Gone. At a Lammas camp I attended this year, it was when we sang that song during the closing ritual that I began to cry and finally “arrived” in the magnificent river valley where the camp was being held.
I met you, Anne, at the recent discussion about Reclaiming held in Seattle. We sang a song during the closing, and just as we dropped into the trance like place, where the song became a way of weaving energy and I felt tears come to my eyes “yes, this is what I’ve been missing,” a woman started speeding up the pace and clapping her hands. It was a good example of what is hard about doing a ritual where everyone is an expert and can have what they want. What was interesting to me was that the group held–partly due to your steady voice–and we kept on singing at the slower pace. I realized that this was one of the valuable skills I learned from Reclaiming: that you can influence the energy of an entire group, by staying true to your intention.
Another example. I remember one witch camp when Adrienne P created/”dreamed” a song that fit with the theme of the camp. One night, I think it was after the camp meeting, about eight of gathered outside the lodge and began singing the song. After a few rounds, I was wondering when we would stop. And then after a while I didn’t care if we ever stopped. And then after about an hour, our singing just came to a conclusion naturally. (Another great gift from Reclaiming ritual–I often find in other groups that the energy is forced and manipulated rather than allowed to peak and resolve naturally). That hour of singing was the most transcendent experience I had at that camp. I think it had something to do with being able to create something of such beauty with others and losing the sense of self in the process.
September 25th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Thanks for that, Waverly. Your experience singing at camp sounds just right. It is so true about many things: if we keep going past our kneejerk feelings of boredom, something shifts and a new landscape opens up. I love that in chanting especially.