Blog o’ Gnosis

Yesterday afternoon I was preparing for my first class on Children in Contemporary Paganism, to be held online that evening through Cherry Hill Seminary, by reading some of the articles assigned to my students. The first piece was a lovely essay by my old friend Mary Klein, and as I read it I remembered the time I met her (now teenage) son Robbie. Mary and Dave had come to one of our first May Day parties, and Robbie had all the enthusiasm of an almost-toddler eager to walk, but not yet able to walk alone. I have never seen a child take so many trips across a lawn and back, gripping tightly to the fingers of one or the other of his hunched-over parents. Mary and Dave were patient and good-humored, in spite of having aching backs by the end of the afternoon.

I read four articles in all, written by friends of mine and published in the Reclaiming Quarterly over the past decade. They reminded me of earlier articles that I had published about Pagan parenting, back when the Quarterly was the humble Reclaiming Newsletter. And because my mind loves nothing better than a juicy tangent, I decided I must then and there dig up my old back-issues and see if I could find those articles.

Hours later, the class was about to begin, I had a desk full of stapled copies of some old pieces, and my scanner was busy making a final PDF of a long-forgotten poem I’d written about my daughter’s birth. I was not as prepared for the class as I had hoped to be, but taking the winding trip through my closets to unearth the box and sift through old newsletters had done me a world of good.

When I first got involved with Reclaiming, in the mid-80s, I read every newsletter I could get my hands on. I craved the backstory on all these people I had just met, and wanted to understand both the personal and the political dimensions behind every topic.

In the pages of the newsletter there were arguments about how much to charge for classes (Cerridwen Fallingstar against just about everyone else, as I recall), humor pieces from the fictional housecleaner Hannah Clancy, rants from Rose Dance and Moher Downing, poetry by Francesca Dubie (before she became DeGrandis), and hilarious send-ups of favorite liturgy, like the one at right. I inhaled it all. These were my people, my new tribe, and I loved hearing about their conflicts just as much as their inspirations. It made them all the more human to me, and therefore more authentic, which allowed me to both trust them and not put them (or the tradition) on a pedestal.

As the Newsletter morphed into the Quarterly, I gradually lost interest in its content. It became more of a platform for a particular subset of our thoughts and ideals, and seemed to lose its earlier focus of intense, engaged discussion. This is not in any way a criticism of the dedicated people who kept the quarterly in print throughout that time. Having worked on the newsletter for many years myself, I know how much hard work is involved, and how difficult it is to keep up that kind of commitment over the long term.

The change was due to a number of factors, not the least of which was the decentralization of Reclaiming and its growth both nationally and internationally. With the rising popularity of blogging over the last five years or so, many of us loosely (or not so loosely) connected to Reclaiming have developed our own forums for thinking about, and talking about, the topics of the day. It has been thrilling to re-connect with old friends like Robin Weaver, Kevin Roddy, Pandora, and Sharon Jackson through the blogosphere, even as I become acquainted with many newer people through their own blogs.

Now, it appears that the Reclaiming website will be supporting this constellation of conversations, by listing prominently all the blogs hosted by Reclaiming-affiliated folks. I look forward to this major change, and not because I think it will drive more traffic to my blog. If anything, the Reclaiming site will see increased traffic from all our blogs being linked to it.

As an old-timer, and somewhat tangential to the extended Reclaiming community, I will love having easier access to what people are saying in other regions. But as a newcomer to the clan, I would love it even more. The backstory! The drama! The differences! Ultimately, our blogs are testimony to how people can disagree and yet maintain common connections. I would be the last person to characterize Reclaiming as a utopian social experiment that succeeded, but it has somehow supported a culture of inquisitiveness and a great many people who are skilled at expressing themselves verbally and in writing. That is something any tradition should be proud of, and enthusiastically share with the world.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 4:05 pm and is filed under Blogging, Spirit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.