The omen could hardly have been clearer. I guess you could say that a wall spoke to me.

It was spring break of my junior year in college. I'd come to Minneapolis, ostensibly in search of a graduate program. Actually, I'd come in search of a community. In search of a people.

My friend had picked me up at the train station. Driving home down Lake Street, I saw it.

Minneapolis is a City of Murals. There it was, covering the entire side of a building.

Flowers, butterflies. (Hey, it was the 70s.) These words:

 The Goddess says: My children, a new day is coming.

I hadn't even set foot to ground yet, but already I knew where I belonged.

Since then I've heard stories about the Miji Dojo, the women's self-defense center whose mural had spoken so directly to my heart.

By the time I got to town two years later, the dojo was long gone, dissolved in acrimonious intra-feminist squabbling, and it took me a year (in those pre-internet days) to meet the pagans that I'd come to Minneapolis to be one of.

Well, it's going on 40 years now. I live (as I have for more than three decades) a few blocks from the wall where that mural once proclaimed its message of hope.

I've traveled far and lived elsewhere, but somehow I've always come back. Probably I'll die here some day. (I'm hoping for another 40 years, but who can say?)

Later today, I'll be addressing the Twin Cities Pagan Pride celebration at Minnehaha Falls, one of our most important local holy places. Then we'll process down into the caldera to make our Fifth Annual Harvest Offering to the Falls.

I think back to the 19-year-old that I was then, about to make the decision that would shape the rest of his life.

I wonder what he would have said, if he could have foreseen this day.

But, of course, in a sense, he did foresee it.

So happy Pagan Pride, folks.

We've come a long way to get here.