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In a moment of weakness a couple of months ago, I agreed to cantor for this ritual. Now that the time is here, quite frankly, I don't really want to do it.

But I agreed to it, so I do it anyway. That's what personal honor is all about.

At first, things go fine. I'm a good cantor not because I have a particularly nice voice—it's pleasant enough, but no great shakes—but because I've got a good memory for tunes. Of the ten possible tunes to which we could sing these particular words, I can access the one that we want, on the spot. This gift of instant recall is so deeply ingrained that it took me a long time to realize that it's not something that everyone can do. That's why I'm here: gifts are for the sharing.

About two-thirds of the way through the ritual, I start in with a tune that I've just learned. Two days ago, I didn't know it, though I'd heard it before; but I'm a quick study, and it's been running through my head pretty much continuously ever since. Life for the musical is lived to an internal soundtrack. I woke up this morning with the tune running through my head.

The song starts with a chorus. The tune is catchy, and everyone sings along enthusiastically.

Then comes the verse, and a crevasse opens up at my feet.

The tune is gone.

Every performer knows that sooner or later you're going to screw up bigtime in public. If you survive it, without drying, this invariably marks a turning point in your performance career. It's the performer's initiation, really, and not everyone manages to get through with confidence intact.

But if you do, it changes what comes after. Once you've already made a fool of yourself in public and survived anyway, you lose a lot of your fear of ever having it happen again.

I open my mouth and sing. What comes out of it isn't the tune; it's not even a good improvisation.

But I keep going anyway, if unbeautifully, and in no time we're back at the chorus and back on track. Hey, this is ritual: chances are, people aren't paying particularly close attention to the details. Besides, I've been here before, and managed to come out still alive on the other side.

This is one of the lessons of the priesthood (one which, sadly, many never learn): that your job as priest is to direct the focus, not to be the focus. Sometimes that means that you have to pull the kind of attitude that a cat pulls when it runs headfirst into the sliding glass door: you sit back, preen, and radiate: I meant to do that.

Today, I gathered five candles,
some sea salt
in a small dark cauldron,
a lighter in a starry brass holder,
a rattle made of gourd,
a singing bowl,
a crow's feather,
and my determination.
I watched the candles flare
and called in inspiration,
for the faith to keep on going
in a world that too often
feels crumpled with despair.
I planted my feet,
reached out my hands,
and lifted my voice,
believing with everything
I have left
that no matter how many stories
have been told to us
about brokenness,
we're here anyway
still whole.

This past weekend I held a small summer solstice retreat with six friends. It was supposed to be larger, but people kept cancelling. It was supposed to be at the river, but risky heat indexes put us inside. It was supposed to be cooler inside, but the AC went out and we were relegated to the basement. And, it was perfect. It was just what I (and we) needed. Something that I remembered after the retreat was over was of the importance of paying attention to how you feel after something is over. Let those moments teach you.

I've been thinking and writing recently about reorienting our lives by joy and steering away from obligation. How we feel after something is over can tell us a lot about whether we are steering our lives by joy or obligation.

In the early hours of night-morning,
I am summoned
by the eclipsing moon,
waking suddenly
with a sense of delight bubbling
behind my breastbone.
My heart is beating fast
and a sense of wild, anticipatory glee
fizzes in my bones.
My feet are cold on
fine sparkles of frost
as I gaze upward,
hand against my heart
at the crescent of full moon.
I hear a noise behind me
and turn to see
the white flashes of two deer
in the woods.
They move only a few feet away
and then stand there,
dark and silent watching me.
I kiss my hand
and lift it to the moon three times.
Orion is leaning on the rooftop
and the sky is alive with stars.
I am a priestess on a spinning Earth
in the temple of night,
my body an altar beneath
a shadowed moon.
My breaths are an offering,
my heartbeat a song of praise,
in this,
a rite of resetting.
I return to my bed
and lie there
for a long time,
eyes bright,
listening to star song,
kept awake by poems.

We gathered roses
and bright zinnias
to crown their heads with flowers,
these shining daughters
who we've cradled and fed
and loved with everything
we have
and everything we are.
We knelt before them and sang,
our hands gently washing the feet
that we once carried inside our own bodies
and that now follow
their own paths.
For a moment,
time folded
and we could see them
as babies in our arms,
curly hair and round faces,
at the same time seeing
the girls in front of us,
flowers in their hair,
bright eyed and smiling,
and so too
we see women of the future,
tall and strong boned
kneeling at the feet
of their own girls
as the song goes on and on.
We tried to tell them
what we want them to know,
what we want them to carry
with them as they go on their ways:
You are loved.
We are here.
You are loved.
You are strong.
You are magical.
We treasure who you are.
This love that carried them
forth into the very world
they walk on.
We hope it is enough
to embrace them for a lifetime,
and so we kneel and sing
and anoint and adorn
and hold their hands in ours.
We are here.
You are not alone.
You are wise in the ways.
You belong.
We are not sure if tears can say
what we mean to say,
but they fall anyway
as we try our best to weave
our words and wishes
and songs and stories,
with strength and confidence
into a cloak of power
that will encircle them with magic,
no matter no matter
how far away
from us they journey.

We have come from beyond the garden,
stories both old and new in our hands.
Our breasts are bare our hips are heavy,
and we are willing to show  our incisors.
Centuries of silencing and suppression
have been unable to stick to our skins,
our lapis beads rest easy across our throats,
and red crescent moons shine upon our brows.
No longer willing to settle for giving birth
to demons or destroyers,
we bleed all over the pages  of history,
eat all the apples we please,
carve stone into shapes that tell our hearts
to remember,
and sing of the forgotten things,
untamed, unbound.
Our most reliable sacred text
is the one we write each day,
shard by shard,
step by step,
bone by bone,
breath by breath,
side by side. 

Priestessing during a pandemic has not been easy! The past nearly two years have forced a serious assessment of where I currently am in my work and my willingness to offer what I can offer and to withdraw from what I cannot.

After careful consideration, I have been working in person with a very small group this summer every week, using the Lilith Circle Guide that accompanies the anthology Original Resistance. While I do not feel ready to branch back out into larger, more public group work again, it has been a really nourishing and rewarding experience to gather in a very small group. I encourage you to consider ways in which you might set your feet to the spiral once more and to reach back out to your own community in face-to-face connection with a circle that feels nurturing, safe, and enriching to you.

They call it the “high priestess effect."

You've been there before. It may not have been the worst ritual in the world, but it was somewhere Down There among the Bottom Thirteen. People walk out of the circle feeling bored, irritable, imbalanced.

All but the high priestess, that is. She's giddy with excitement. She thought the ritual was masterful, one of the best ever.

Premise: If you want to know how a ritual really went, don't ask the high priestess.

The sad fact of the matter is that when you're leading a ritual—especially one that you wrote yourself—your perception of the ritual will be both qualitatively and quantitatively different from those of the other folks present. You have a level of investment and engagement that they simply don't. That fact must inevitably shape the experience.

It's not quite fair to put these parallax views down to incompetency: not entirely, anyway. Perhaps it's a matter of experience, really. Experienced priestesses—priests too, of course—know about the High Priestess Effect and understand that they need to temper their own reactions accordingly. The experienced priestess (or priest) knows that, of all the people in the circle, his/her experience of the ritual is the least important. The right to your own experience is one of the sacrifices that you make when you enter the priesthood.

Moral of the Story: From inside and outside, the same ritual looks very different.