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Today is Watery Wednesday, the day we share stories for and about our many communities of Pagans (however widely defined.) Today we have  ideas on how to boost empathy -- on the internet; two Pagan-themed internet campaigns; Reclaiming events in Minnesota, and finding a Pagan Pride event near you.

The internet provides us with many opportunities to create community -- or tear it down. This article from Yes! magazine offers suggestions of how we can create more empathy in our online connections.

I was going to write about something related but different in my next column.  But I read Shauna Aura Knight’s excellent post about her stance on the Frosts this morning, and the controversy she has encountered has encouraged me to change focus.  It seems to me that much of the criticism and condemnation boils down to, "She's not playing nice."  Well, here's the problem with "niceness."  I must tread carefully to protect privacy so much of my language is deliberately vague.

One of our tradition members – an initiate of an initiate – contacted my husband and priest.  She said that her teenage daughter had told her that her husband had sexually abused her.  The couple have been married for many years; the girl in question is the man’s daughter genetically.  The mother was, quite understandably, in tears.  She wanted to know what she should do.

On an otherwise entirely normal Saturday in July 2014, a group of several dozen Pagans travelled from across the UK to join together in creating something which had never been attempted before.

The Pagan Symposium was a meeting in London of representatives from Pagan groups, organised from an idea by Mike Stygal, President of the UK Pagan Federation. The goals were kept deliberately vague, but at heart, the hope was that each group would be able to come together to share their experiences, skills and wishes to assist the wider Pagan community across the country.

The challenge of such ventures, of course, is that no single group can ever accurately represent all Pagans; also, the natural reluctance of many Pagans to affiliate with any group, when our paths contain such a strong core of individuality. In the past, strong egos have been an issue, or vastly differing ideologies. The analogy of 'herding cats' was mentioned, but with the happy conclusion that this had somehow now been achieved!

I was just in a rather dispiriting discussion of sexual predation in the Pagan community, sparked by an interesting piece in the Wild Hunt. The article was good. which is more than I can say for some of the discussion that followed. 

    The piece was about the decline of nudity at Pagan events and the reasons for it.  But much of the discussion shifted to the related but different issue of why many women felt uneasy or defensive when sky clad at such events.  Despite all the energy and more than a little venom that accompanied that discussion, one important issue remained unaddressed.

When I was 18, in 1995, I was outed from the broom closet. I had kept myself in that closet, because I was afraid of how people would react if they realized I practiced magic. A friend's parents (both fundamentalist Christians) found a book I'd let my friend borrow and contacted my mom about it. She was also a fundamentalist Christian and needless to say did not approve of my spiritual choices. I was still living with her as I was in high school and I didn't have a job at the time. She told me I had a choice. I could move out or burn my books. I had a half hour to decide before she kicked me out. A half hour isn't a lot of time to make such a decision. I made a very practical choice and decided I would burn my books, because I didn't have a job and I wanted to finish high school. I hid the books I hadn't read yet and took the books I had read and told her I'd burn them. She marched me out to the back yard and I burned those books. That incident didn't discourage my practice of magic. If anything, it only made it more attractive and also made me more determined to continue learning. That incident also convinced me that staying in the broom closet wasn't going to help me, and so I decided I'd be open about my beliefs and practices, and I have been to this day.

A short time after the book burning, I was contacted by the father of my friend (I didn't know who he was at the time). He was drunk, had a cold, and told me how he was going to come kill me in 48 hours and he'd call me on the hour, each hour before he came. He started singing hymns to me. I told him if he came over I'd defend myself. I also called the police. He kept calling and eventually I disconnected the phone. The next day, in school, my friend told me that his father and step-father, in a rare moment of collaboration, had decided they were going to try and kill me. The step-father would drive the father over to do the deed. It never happened, but it illustrated to me how intolerant Christians were when it came to any religion or spirituality that wasn't of their own practice. It also illustrated what a risk it could be to be out of the broom closet.

Megalithica Books, an imprint of Immanion Press (Stafford, U.K./Portland, OR, U.S.A) is seeking submissions for Finding the Masculine in Goddess' Spiral: Men in Ritual, Community and Service to the Goddess.

E-MAIL FOR INQUIRIES AND SUBMISSIONS:
Erick DuPree:  please put “Finding the Masculine in the Goddess Anthology” in your subject line.