I’m back from Portland, that verdant stew of a city. And I’m exhausted. I’ve slept over nine hours, and I could sleep even more. The wedding was at a renovated poor farm built in the early part of the twentieth century. The big brick building which previously housed the poor and then the elderly (it also has been a nursing home) now is a hotel, decorated by a slew of artists to soften the institutional residue. Almost every surface is painted, many of the paintings reflective of the building’s past, so instead of softening things, it’s actually intensified them. The grounds are beautiful, and it’s a popular spot now for weddings. I slept there two nights, and they were restless ones. The place is thick with spirits. I kept thinking of the movie “The Shining”, it was that kind of hotel. Fraught.
Mormons, Jews, Wiccans, and my wacky eggroll family all came together to witness Jim and Dawn make their vows. And of course all the poorhouse spirits. I particularly appreciated Jim’s teenage son wearing a Megadeath t-shirt at the ceremony. It was a diverse group, even from the stance of the witchy world. Jim’s been an active supporter and participant in California’s witchcamp, which I’m blacklisted from, so it was interesting to feel that energy swirl in the mix. I noticed how I winced at every mention of ‘community” as it pertained to anything involving that energy body. This wedding season is helping me rework and rethink of what I consider to be community. Having a hodgepodge of people, who are connected only by their love of at least one of the individuals of the couple, come together to witness pledges of love and then celebrate it by feasting and partying, this has got to be one of the most potent rituals imaginable. This is what really makes and creates human community, our genuine bonds with each other, our willingness to mix it up with strangers as a result of that bond, creating new patterns and forms.
I’m thinking on the pitfalls of building community around ideology. I’m thinking I don’t really want to be part of a Jewish, Mormon, or Wiccan community, or an anarchist community or a dyke, vegan, or environmental community. What really is community to me is the people I commune with, who I feel connected to, who I can rely on. Thank goddess it’s a hodgepodge of people, a real wedding of diverse folks. I’m done with cults.
2 comments:
I'm done with cults, too! BRAVO!!
The community I live in, Capitol Hill, is a diverse community based on geography. We commune because we all live within the same couple of square miles. It's organic to commune with the neighbors.
I'm not against cults or the people who are drawn to them, only embarrassed that I was sucked so far into the cults of Feri and Reclaiming, and that I did so much personal damage in terms of destroying friendships, relationships and my own marriage before getting out of communities that were so very very bad for me.
Free at last! YAY!!
love, Reya
To me they're not so much cults as very insular ideological "communities," self-referencing, and self-reinforcing. In a cult, anyone who dared to have intersecting, overlapping, or diverse groups of friends other places would be automatically shut out (and I know, Oak, you come closest to this). But that is not most people's experiences. But the closer you get to the center, and the less outside influence you have, the more it does feel like a cult.
And that wedding was beautiful. I too loved watching the Mormon/Jewish/Wiccan/Roll-On swirl. My only regret was that there was no dancing!
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