I'm feeling a tad wrung out, for the last two weeks have been quite a soul washing. I've walked the beaches of my youth, crying as the sun set over the waves, wishing a dear friend a good journey to the other side of the veil. I've flown across the continent to priestess a handfasting in the rolling hills of West Virginia, stepping into the last night of the week's worth of magic and mayhem which is Spiralheart Witchcamp. I'm home now and in the midst of a week of seeing clients, many who have experienced the wheel being in spin too. Funny how that works when you are a therapist!
Breathing and listening, this is what I am trying to do, encouraging my clients to try as well. And I am trusting my intuition, that gut/heart feeling you get that flies across all reason or logic. I trusted this last year, and trusting this allowed me to be both at Spiralheart this last weekend, and in Cannon Beach the weekend before. I followed my intuition, and it lead me where I needed to go.
The Spiralheart community wanted the same team back this year that taught last year, and I was part of that team. We'd done a great job, especially in modeling working as a team and priestessing in alignment with the Reclaiming Principles of Unity.
When witchcamps first began, Reclaiming teaching "teams" played like Martha and the Vandells and Bruce Springsteen and the E-street Band rather than ensemble groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The music/magic of all is exhilarating, the players all top notch, but there is a world of difference in the experience of playing in the band if the band has the moniker of Paul McCartney and the Beats or Mick Jagger and the Stones rather than the inclusive Beatles or Rolling Stones. For many years witchcamps and Reclaiming events were publicized as "Starhawk and Reclaiming" for the pragmatic reason that Starhawk’s name was more recognizable than Reclaiming’s. It brought more people in, but there was a price. It created a strong template of the big priestess and the less important backup, a template that still structures reality in much of Reclaiming.
I've been a major force trying to shift this paradigm, opening my big mouth time and time again, and more importantly, modeling that ensemble teaching still allows every player to shine. Last year’s team at Spiralheart shone to such a degree that divisions between teacher and student teachers melted away. We were a circle of witches and priestesses, all with our own skill sets, all important and vital to the magic.
I loved the team last year, I loved the community, and I loved the land, the spirits that dwell there, and the top notch gourmet meals. A few weeks after I happily agreed to come back with the team, I got the strongest feeling that it wasn't right, a feeling I couldn't shake. It made no sense, but using my divinatory tools; tarot, trance, and just plain deep listening, the information all pointed to one word; home. I needed to focus on home. My standing up for a paradigm shift has lead me to be unwelcomed at my home camp, the one that holds on tightest to the old paradigm. I translated the word home to mean I needed to once again focus on trying to participate at California camp, struggling to have it come into some kind of alignment with the principles of unity. This was reinforced by the news (which turned out to be incorrect) that the structure was changing at this camp. Teaching at home became my focus. What can I say? Mistakes were made. Again.
I reluctantly bowed out of teaching at Spiralheart, pulled by the feeling I could not shake, the word home. I put energy once again into healing the riff between the group of us blacklisted from California camp and those who have supported the old structure. It quickly and painfully became clear that the structure was not actually changing, and that even those who don't particularly like the structure, were still wedded to staying in it. I learned a valuable lesson; if both parties don't want, or can't envision resolution, resolution is not possible.
Meanwhile, a friend had to bow out of teaching at B.C. camp, and asked me to take her place. I said no, but when one of the organizers called me weeks later, I found myself agreeing. Why? Home. The theme is the Wizard of Oz. I agreed to teach at B.C., believing that my strong intuition to focus on home as opposed to going to Spiralheart must mean that I really needed to do the story where the refrain is “there is no place like home”, that this is where my priestessing was needed. And, maybe the magic at B.C. might be needed to lead me eventually back home, back to being able to feel comfortable in the local Reclaiming community.
On Thursday night, as the plane took me towards the handfasting I’d agree to do at Beltane, back to Spiralheart, I found myself laughing to myself. My intuition was right. In the service of home, I needed to forgo teaching at Spiralheart this year. If I had been teaching there, I would have faced a horrible decision; to fulfill my commitment to teach, or break it at the last minute to go to what I once called home – Cannon Beach. My intuition steered me right. That weekend needed to be left clear to honor Jan, to be amongst those I consider family. This past year has seen me grappling to make sense of my intuition, and in doing so, I’ve followed trails that led nowhere. With time, it all became clear. Thank goddess I trusted it. Next time, maybe I won’t try so hard for it to make sense, next time, maybe just having it will be enough.
Next week I go to B.C. My intuition is my yellow brick road. Following it, that is the trick.
