a poem I found this solstice

SUMMER SOLSTICE,
BATTICALOA, SRI LANKA


The war had turned inward until it resembled
suicide. The only soothing thing was water.
I passed the sentries, followed the surf out of sight.
I would sink into the elements, become simple.

Surf sounds like erasure, over and over.
I lay down and let go, the way you trust an animal.
When I opened my eyes, all down the strand
small crabs, the bright yellow of a crayon,

had come out onto the sand. Their numbers, scattered,
resembled the galactic spill and volume of the stars.
I, who had lain down alone, emptied,
waked at the center of ten thousand prayers.

Who would refuse such attention. I let it sweeten me
back into the universe. I was alive, in the midst

of great loving, which is all I've ever wanted.
The soldiers of both sides probably wanted just this.

- Marilyn Krysl

love conquers all

One great thing about great loves is that just when you think you couldn’t be more in love, you find yourself turning it up another notch. Today, my love affair with this city called San Francisco went up to eleven.

Standing in the morning light in the rotunda of City Hall, with the bust of Harvey Milk beaming at me, I, for the second time this lifetime, performed a wedding ceremony for my friends Morgaine and Lann. It was nineteen years ago today that I handfasted them on the beach at Point Reyes in Northern California. Afterwards, the wedding party went back to their Lagunitas home to feast and celebrate into the night. I still can remember the mountain of summer strawberries. Today, there was no feast or party afterward, except for the cupcakes that were given to each couple when they received a marriage license and the cheer that went up when they flashed it to the crowd that was waiting outside of City Hall. My friends were legalizing something that had come to fruit many years back. We took only a few hours off this morning to get it done. But, those few hours proved to be potent.

I didn’t expect to cry so much. Is there any force quite as powerful as love? The slyness of it never ceases to amaze me. I invoke love often, but still, so often it sneaks up on me. The way the heart seems to catch, and then expand, the welling up of inexplicable tenderness…it comes when it will, and I should have expected it to hit me like tidal wave today, but somehow, I didn’t. No matter how often invoked, there's no way to prepare for when it truly comes and for the workout it gives the heart when it fully inhabits it. There's a reason some pray on their knees. When love overtakes you, it both exalts and drops you down.

Last night, watching the news, my girlfriend sobbed watching Del and Phyliss make their vows. I was moved, but was also savoring what Jewelle Gomez, a black lesbian who got married last round when it was an act of civil disobedience and wasn’t going to this round when it has become legal, recently said; “Just because we sat in at Woolworths didn’t mean we liked the food”.

But there I was today, crying my eyes out in the rotunda, my heart opening like a golden gate, falling all over again in love with San Francisco, in awe of the craziness of licensing love, and the exquisite wackiness of humans and their rituals. A Pagan Priestess legally marrying her lesbian friends in the rotunda of City Hall, with cameras clicking and love conquering all.

I live in a city that has a bust of a gay rights activist smack dab in the middle of City Hall. He caught and held my eye in the midst of it all. I think that golden idol was as alive as anything. He was smiling today.

I am too.

a movement or a market?

"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." Philosopher Eric Hoffer

An aspect of embracing a magical life that I love is that when I'm musing on something, the world tends to jump in to engage in conversation with me. I open books to just the right passage, or overhear conversations that illuminate my thinking. Yesterday I opened the latest copy of The Week to the quote above. Perfect!

Like anything, it doesn't hold the whole truth, but doesn't it speak to something we've all seen? It certainly speaks to what's been going on in my head about three communities I inhabit which are movement/cause based.

This month is Pride month in San Francisco. My girlfriend is an organizer for the Dyke March. What makes the Dyke March both a difficult and a worthy thing to put on is that it's put on completely free of corporate sponsorship. And, they've had offers. Big Ones. The Pride parade is brimming with corporate advertising, and this month there is money to be made in hawking rainbow colored tote bags, hats, and other assorted trinkets from China. I don't think the cause for rights for the LGBT community could ever degenerate totally into a racket, but certainly there are rackets to be developed along the way. If we continue to hold onto our right to be legally married, you can bet there will be a tide of queer wedding and divorce rackets rising up. There's truth that in movements gaining popularity, there's good and bad money to be made.

My post on narcissism got picked up and widely spread throughout the internet Feri community. Feri is a tradition of magic, which I suppose could be called a movement. It started out small, and now is gaining some popularity. Like when Reclaiming was gaining steam, I'm seeing a growing number of people attempting to teach Feri as a career. . My post prompted some great questions, including if the wand system and the idea of a Grand Master draw people to the tradition that are prone to narcissism and needing to feel special. These "merit badges" hold meaning for many, but I'm not alone in fearing they bring us closer towards rackets. I love and respect the holder of the Black Wand I know, but I foresee a day when the business of teaching Feri will degenerate into the racket of selling black wand training to any students who can pay the price.

While this respectful discussion was going on in Feri cyberspace, there was a discussion in the Reclaiming community that came at this from another angle. Reclaiming is a tradition of magic that strives to be a movement and has causes aplenty. Over a year ago I'd suggested that links to blogs by community members go up on the tradition's web page. My suggestion got no argument, but no action either.

Suggesting it again, in response to a request for teachers to send in new or revised links to their pages, created a brouhaha that shed light for me on the split within that community. The main arguments against it were; the webpage is a kind of "front porch" and shouldn't lead to any of our dirty laundry being displayed, reading blogs that say anything critical of Reclaiming would prematurely end the "honeymoon phase" for those new to the tradition, and, last but not least, the web page is for "marketing". Thankfully, for my side of the split, there was a swell of voices who wanted the web page to be a community resource and not purely a recruitment tool. It looks like a list of blogs will go up, and my guess is that they won't affect business as usual in Reclaiming, but maybe they will slow down the degeneration into it becoming simply one more racket.

Writing this, I realize that actually there are four of my communities this discussion is pertinent to. Blogging in itself is a movement. It's a movement I've loved being in, with its different voices and multitude of individual stories, for the most part not selling anything. There are those who have turned it into a business, and my guess is there are plenty of rackets out there too. But what I have appreciated in the blogosphere is being able to access stories of peoples lives and their thoughts and opinions devoid of the motive of profit.

The moment that occurs when there is money to be made in a movement or cause is an important one. That's a moment to seize and really stretch out. I don't know if there is any way to stop the slide into racketeering, but perhaps there are ways to slow it down.

The Dyke March, blogs without advertising, respectful discussions on community e-lists, and websites that are a community resource and not advertising copy, these things slow down the degeneration into the racket which is the predominate culture. But, I'm sad to say, even the Dyke March is selling tote bags this year from China.

Oh, well.