What We Do Right by H. Byron Ballard

The Goddess-honoring and Earth religions communities are a weird amalgam of deities and ceremonies, of colorful robes and shiny new liturgy. We are often seen as flaky and insubstantial by followers of larger, more mainstream religions, who may look down their noses at our outlandish ideas of worshipping the Earth as Goddess.

It is refreshing sometimes to see their notions about us soften a bit, to witness a sudden change of heart in the Abrahamic traditions.

I had the distinct pleasure of serving on an interfaith panel presenting a public forum on initiations and rites of passage. My fellow religious panelists--and they were fellows: each one of them a man--represented Judaism, Unitarian Universalism and the Anglican Communion. They are three men for whom I have much respect and affection, and I enjoyed each of the talks they presented.

When my turn came, I briefly outlined the initiation and rites of passage in my own Dianic Wiccan tradition. I spent most of my time describing the tribal initiation that we refer to as First Blood, contrasting it with the ritual celebrating the retention of Wise Blood, Croning. We each had 10 minutes to talk and then answered questions from the audience.

To be honest, I’m a pretty good speaker. Years of theatre and a silly sense of humor help me put my audience at ease. And years of public work on behalf of my spiritual tradition have given me a kind of sixth sense about how far to go in a mixed crowd. So there were lots of questions for me and most of them were around these two things: honoring women from the onset of menses until its cessation.

The three religious traditions represented in those three speakers didn’t have much to go on in the menses department and they were interested in what we did. The Episcopal priest was especially interested and we made tentative plans to have a further discussion on the importance of these celebrations.

There was an older Jewish woman who stayed after the program to talk about her women’s group at the synagogue. She was so wise and her heart was filled with the importance of re-weaving women into the basic fabric of the Abrahamic religions. How could we have been lost for so long?

We’re not perfect, over here in Goddessland. Far from it. We fight and snipe. Fold our passive aggression into our hearts to fester and spoil us. We don’t have organizational structures that are easy to use and we fight stereotypes and suppositions from the dominant culture all the time. We are independent and proud, sullen and cranky. We are working through layers of misogyny and waves of self-disrespect and still forging new ways of celebrating the Divine as female.

Every time we initiate a new person into our traditions, we add a building block. Every time a young woman looks forward to her First Blood (and the party after) before thinking of her prom or wedding, we forge a link in the chain of history. Every time a woman sets aside space in her life to gather with others and celebrate the Wisdom Years, we undo a little bit more of a system that has oppressed women and destroyed their lives and hopes for so long that it is hard to see where it all began.

The reality is that women keep the mainstream and institutional churches functioning, at least in the US and western Europe. It is women, for the most part, who do the unpaid labor of hospitality, altar guild and potlucks. They create programming and lead religious instruction for the children. In smaller churches, women even do the cleaning of the sanctuary. They should be honored within their own spiritual tradition, respected for the work they do to keep the spirit alive. And, as an outsider, I would like to see them raised up into positions of visible authority and leadership, where they can serve as an inspiration and as a model for a new way of doing this church-thing.

A couple of months ago I had a conversation with an old friend who is also the minister of a Christian church. He was lamenting the conservative turn his denomination was taking, telling me that at a recent convention there was even muttering about retracting the ordination of women. I shook my head in sympathy.

“Do you mean to tell me that the church has trained them, given them congregations to serve and is thinking of pulling the rug out from under their feet?”

He nodded, expecting a tirade from me. Instead, I smiled. Send those trained liturgists and ritualists, those counselors and organizers to us. Our fast-growing religions and our new houses of worship can use them. We can’t pay them. Yet. But they are welcome in the house of the Goddess. Very welcome indeed.

Byron Ballard
Asheville's Village Witch
www.citizen-times.com/villagewitch