Pagan Chaplaincy

You Need This Book

2011-08-26T17:15:00.000+01:00

Three years ago it was Mindfulness. In the late '80's it was Project 2000. I've lost count of the stuff in between but at least this says what it means: Be Intelligent. And Be Kind. I'm hopeful that this will go some way towards altering the industrialisation of looking after people because it addresses it. It might be kinder if this book was not £25 but it looks like being a good investment. Here's the review from the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Intelligent Kindness: Reforming the Culture of Healthcare

Intelligent Kindness is a powerful new approach to healthcare reform. Ballatt and Campling argue that the NHS is a system that invites society to value and attend to its deepest common interests; it is a vital expression of community and one that can improve if society, patients and staff can reconnect to these deeper values. To do so will improve quality and patient experience, as well as morale, effectiveness, efficiency and value for money.

Relentless regulatory and structural NHS ‘reforms’ have failed to avert scandals and left many health service staff feeling alienated. Industrial and market approaches to reform, whatever their merits, urgently need to be balanced by an applied understanding of what motivates and assures compassionate practice. The authors examine this topic from a wide variety of perspectives, including psychoanalytic thinking, group relations, neuropsychology, social psychology and ethology.

This book calls on policymakers, managers, educators and clinical staff to apply and nurture intelligent kindness in the organisation and delivery of care, and offers advice as to what this approach means in practice.

Readership: This book will be essential reading for health service managers, clinical leads, politicians, policy-makers and health journalists.

About the authors:

John Ballatt - Independent consultant advising on health and social care and organisational systems, Leicester.

Penelope Campling - Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist at Francis Dixon Lodge (a therapeutic community), Leicester.

Carers Week: Caregiving and Truth Telling

2011-06-06T06:13:00.000+01:00

Sick people are grumpy and often angry. Wise Elders can turn bratty and difficult when they feel less able and under threat. I knew that going in. The trick was not to match these moods with more of the same, which, by and large, I avoided.

From Sia's Full Circle blog

It's The Economy, Stupid.

2011-06-03T13:57:00.002+01:00

Voluntary Euthanasia is going to become legal in the UK within, please Goddess, my lifetime. Elderly people live longer, we don't want to pay for their wellbeing and we don't want to care for them ourselves because we've been told that being employed is far more important and that caring is someone elses job. But we can't bear to hear the endless story of elder abuse in hospitals and care homes either.

Many conditions that would previously have killed us have now become chronic conditions and the health service was never meant to care for chronic conditions that can last 50 years. That's not to say that it shouldn't - it absolutely should - but whether we like it or not it all costs money, and our population is growing, aging, becoming more and more unwell . . .

The London School of Economics is discussing it. Is there a Pagan thealogy of assisted suicide? Because there certainly are any number of Christian takes on the subject, some of them not as hardcore as we might imagine.

ps Jack Kervorkian, a poineer of assisted suicide, died today aged 83.

Spare A Thought For Carers

2011-05-31T10:55:00.000+01:00

There are over six million unpaid carers in the UK alone. They range from small children to old age, and care quietly for family, friends and neighbours. In 2006 it was estimated that this silent workforce saved the UK economy around £87 billion that would otherwise had to be spent on social and medical care.

The 30th May is a Bank Holiday in England. I, and my fellow carers, will not get a day off, nor get paid extra, or at all, for working.

Carers are often forgotten, hidden, silent and isolated. Children who cannot learn to grow and play with their peers, because they care for their parents and siblings. Skilled and talented people who cannot work or create because their days, and often their nights, are spent caring. There is no time, nor is there energy for a social life. Holidays are rare, if ever. Careers, dreams, hopes and futures are surrendered daily, silently, to meet the needs of love.

As carers, there are 'rights', legislation, policies... and little support except from peer groups. Pride goes out of the window as poverty is enforced in very many cases. There is not a vast package of welfare benefits available to carers, as many people believe. Caring becomes a lifestyle. So does begging.

Carers need to be nurses, secretaries, chambermaids, housekeepers, cleaners, gardeners, taxi drivers, psychologists, counsellors, cooks, personal shopper and PA. Carers are companions, lifelines and advocates. We get no training, we learn through neccessity.

Carers are often exhausted, get little sleep and are expected to carry on. We are human, we get lonely, frustrated, irritated.. then feel incredibly guilty because our problems are so much less than those of the person for whom we care.

Carers are at risk of depression, isolation, injury and poverty. You cannot solve all these problems, but there IS something you CAN do. Many carers find any kind of social contact difficult, through time, expense... or the fading away of their social networks. Many rely on email and phone to stay in touch and remind ourselves we are human. An empty inbox can be a body blow when you are down.

All I ask is that you look at your friends and aquaintances and identify the carers among them. I can almost guarantee that you know at least one! Then pick up the phone, write a letter, send an email, a joke, a smile and LET A CARER KNOW YOU CARE.

Please, if this makes sense to you, pass this around.

Thank you.

----------------------------------------

The creaking wakes me.

Four a.m., and again I am poised,

Ready to rise from the sofa bed,

Conscious of the steel strut against my spine.

Above my head, in the room once mine,

The bed that was mine once upon a time

Grinds against the wall.

He is wakeful again.

Another bad dream?

There are many.

There are tears.

There is fear and ‘what if’s?’

Every day.

Even the wonderful dreams hold pain,

The pain of loss and memory

The pain of what was and what should have been.

Reality is his nightmare.

“It is shit being me,”

I can dream too.

I can watch the flaying of a loved one,

A mangled body, broken in hate,

Love disembowelled by madness.

I stifle my screams in the pillow

Or sob in the bathroom, quietly.

Even now.

I can see the scars on his chest

The tubes went in there, and there, and there..

No escape from heartache and memory,

Even in hope.

Body aches,

Mind is tired,

Bones hurt,

Muscles beg for peace,

Wedded to exhaustion.

The last shreds of youth

Leached away

Worry is my bedfellow.

Yet, how dare I complain?

How dare I feel tired?

He should be dead,

Fighting each day,

Hunting life with passion,

Pursuing the impossible,

Grasping its tail

With paralysed fingers.

I the squire, he the knight,

The dragon of disability

And the worm of despair,

The quest, the grail of normality.

Our shield is laughter

And gentle lunacy.

Our armour a refusal

To accept pain as answer.

My sin is hope,

My sin despair

Poised on the knife edge

Razor sharp, each step cutting.

My burden, guilt.

Failure to protect

To prevent the unpreventable

Failure to heal the unhealable

Illogical, ridiculous.

Yet human.

Because I am his Mum.

And because I care.

Sue Vincent

Moral Cretins

2011-03-28T10:35:00.001+01:00

A guest post from Mogg Morgan

The so-called Kidwelly Sex Cult Case probably raises all sorts of mixed emotions amongst the UK’s many occultists and Pagans. It has just the kind of lurid details that make it difficult to focus on the core issues in the case and the temptation must surely be to keep one’s head down and hope the scandal blows over. And after all, rational discourse largely stops as soon as the boogeyman of Aleister Crowley or to give him his full name “Mr Aleister Satanist Crowley” or “Sir Aleister Notorious Crowley”, enters the narrative.

Let me say right out that I think the culprit Colin Batley and his accomplices are moral cretins (The same term was applied to Karen Mathews – who faked the kidnapping of her own neglected daughter in order to claim some putative award). People like Colin Batley claim they are following the imperatives of the Devil, Satan or Aleister Crowley for the bad they do. And the courts and the media are happy to accept that the long dead libertine Aleister Crowley and his works are somehow responsible for the wrong people do. I’m not sure if they ever bother to discover which came first, the Batley’s violent, abusive personality or his interest on Crowley and his Thelemic religion – it is just assumed that one must have caused the other. But I say that in the end the evil people do is down to their own moral failings.

The details they are reported from the trial show to my admitted practice eye that these people have misinterpreted and misunderstood Crowley and more especially his Thelemic Religion that has many thousands of law abiding modern disciples. Contrary to what you may hear in the press and indeed even in some Pagan commentary, in my opinion Thelema is not an immoral creed. Its famous axiom “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” (reported as “Do what thou wilt” in some new reports) is an ideal intended for an enlightened community of refined adults. Its core myth is found in the Early European novels of Rabelais, where he envisions an ideal community as an escape from the chaos, crime and madness of the times. Its motto is indeed “Do what thou wilt” (Fais ce que voudras) but this commune can only function if certain kinds of behaviour are excluded. In other words perverts such as Colin Batley would be excluded from the Thelemic community, for the simple reason they are dominated by their most base desires.

Crowley emphasises this very point in a pamphlet called Liber II, widely circulated amongst all true seekers of the Thelemic religion. He is at great pains to emphasis that “Do what thou wilt” is not the same as “Do what you want”. In comparative religion this approach is more akin to yoga and indeed it is in the widely despised Tantrik texts that the explanation of Crowley’s system really lays. But in short Thelema aims to develop enlightened, compassionate human beings.

For a more modern version of the rules of an ideal community – see John Rawls’ “A Theory Of Justice” which contains a “thought experiment” not unlike Rabelais’s “Abbey of Thelema”. The whole is the subject of the Harvard University’s first freely available online course on Justice – see www.justiceharvard.org/

For press reports of the trail see http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2011/03/13/aleister-crowley-s-influence-on-colin-batley-and-his-followers-91466-28326466/#ixzz1GToHTpW9

The Kidwelly group’s actions show them to know none of this. They are merely venal criminals who use the widespread fear and ignorance of Paganism and magic as a smokescreen for their abusive personalities. This case has very little to do with any genuinely held religious beliefs but is about one person using his power over others to fulfil his own perverted needs. I venture to guess that his personality was formed long before he ever heard the name Aleister Crowley and absorbed the popular myths about Satan and the Devil, As 'cult leader' he found a way to gain power over other gullible or otherwise vulnerable people.

It is easy for us to be sidetracked by the sensational details, which shows just how powerful the image of “cult leader” is in mainstream society. The details of the trial make me seriously doubt that he ever had contact with a genuine, Thelemic or Crowleyian group or was aware of the appropriate training in the tradition. His knowledge of Thelema is superficial and minuscule and based on unsupervised reading and uninformed secondary sources, perhaps even the media. I have no problems condemning what Colin Batley has done and feel sure I am not alone in my condemnation.

Mogg Morgan with contributions from Kym and Floortje

Caring For The Pagan Patient

2011-03-28T10:34:00.000+01:00

Thank you for your regular readership - who'd have known that a such niche subject would have so many people returning to read about it?

It makes me hopeful that the wider community of Pagans can contribute to the non-Pagan understanding of the needs of Pagans in hospital. Well over a decade ago I wrote a small booklet on the subject that has been thoroughly plagiarised and it's overdue a revamp.

But any information will be so much more meaningful if it comes from the horses mouth rather than me simply giving my limited experience and understanding of what the greater body of Pagans might need.

So if you've ever been in hospital, please share your experience here, at a sister blog, Caring For The Pagan Patient. If you know someone who has been or is or will be an inpatient, let them know about this resource and encourage them to contribute. Ask the question on your own blog or webpage. When you have your next Pagan gathering, bring it to your friends attention: ask them to consider how they might get their spiritual needs met if they have to become an inpatient, ask those who have been patients how it was for them, what, if anything, they would have done differently, what they really needed and didn't get, what they didn't expect and were pleasantly surprised by. You know the kind of thing - what would you want your non-Pagan carers to know about your needs?

It's been impossible to get this project going in the past but with 540 hits in the last couple of weeks - I know, we should all write about Satanic Abuse if we want a massive increase in traffic! - I'm hopeful we can move this along a little.

Enjoy the huge Full Moon and consider how simple and satisfying it is to contribute to the health and welfare of your sisters and brothers.

Japan

2011-03-28T10:31:00.002+01:00

"Several well known Pagans have joined with Peter Dybing in his effort to raise $30,000 to assist victims of the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Selena Fox, Starhawk, Patrick McCullum, T. Thorn Coyle, Anna Rowe, M Macha Nightmare, Star Foster, Jason Pitzl-Waters, Morgana, Ivo Dominguez Jr, Holli S Emore, and Katrina Messenger have all made statements in support of this charity initiative.

Dybing has set up a fundraising page to gather donations from Pagans to send to Doctors Without Borders. This organization has teams on the ground in Japan and is setting up medical treatment centers."

Like everyone else, I am speechless at what has happened - what is happening - in Japan. As well as passing the message on about Doctors Without Borders, if you're on Facebook take the time to read these translations of tweets from Japanese people.

This earthquake has reminded me of that Japanese goodness that had recently become harder and harder to see. Today I see no crime or looting: I am reminded once again of the good Japanese spirit of helping one another, of propriety, and of gentleness. I had recently begun to regard my modern countrymen as cold people … but this earthquake has revived and given back to all of us the spirit of “kizuna” (bond, trust, sharing, the human connection). I am very touched. I am brought to tears.

We're living through extraordinary times, many of us are facing unpleasant futures one way or another, and the Japanese are showing that grace under pressure is possible, none moreso than the people who have been working in the nuclear facilities for a week. More, that just allowing our natural urge to reach out and work with and for each other makes life infinately more bearable, whether that's committing a slow and fairly certain suicide to try and avert meltdown or cheering people up by offering them a toilet and a place to rest. It's a natural instinct in us. If dogs can manage it for each other, so can we.

Pagan Complacency

2011-03-28T10:30:00.002+01:00

Of course, it doesn’t help when Paganism is associated with this behaviour as it is in today’s Daily Mirror but theology has to be considered and created without PR in mind.

Over the last couple of days I’ve heard Pagans saying things along the lines of, “I don’t see what Satanic abuse has to do with Paganism, do we really want to be associated with that?” and I find my heart just sinking.

It’s as Nottingham, Orkney, Cleveland and Rochdale never happened.

Ian and Penny Campbell, both Wiccans, after being found totally innocent, were as welcome in their community as a fire in an orphanage. Their children were put into care. Here’s a transcript of part of the first four-hour formal police interview:

Police Officer: "Do know anyone else who, or have you heard of anyone else who, practices the occult?"
Ian Campbell: "No. I don’t know of anyone who practices that kind of religion."
PO: "Have you any knowledge of the use of statues in practicing the occult? What about the ritualistic killing of animals? Ritualistic dress, as in gowns, that type of thing? Do you have any books about witchcraft?"
IC: "Umm, Wicca witches and things like that? Yes in the kitchen?"
PO: "Wicca witches? What’s that?"
IC: "Well paganism, you don’t know about paganism?"
PO: "I don’t."
IC" "It is not against the law. Paganism is basically about people who believe in mother Earth. It’s not witchcraft as in, you know, flaming voodoo sort of things."
PO: "I have information that you were involved in devil-worshipping ceremonies. Have you ever been into devil worship?"
IC: "Not at all."
PO: "The information we have is that it has taken place and that you did use it to dress up in a long white gown and wore masks, as did your wife, and that you carried out some sort of ceremony during which there was dancing, and that your children were dressed up in a similar manner to yourselves and there was music being played, described as Indian music. And also that during this, some form of chanting and praying took place. Further to that, there was information given to us that whilst this was being conducted, it was being videoed on a camcorder. Have you been in a position of seeing any videos which would depict serious sexual abuse? People being killed, and I’m not talking acting here? Have you ever drank the blood of a chicken? Have you ever witnessed anybody else doing that? Ever drink the blood of any other animal?"

And here's one from a (discredited) Channel 4 documentary

JOURNALIST: Do you remember the interview with Bea Campbell? The one that was filmed for the Channel 4 programme?
JEAN: Yes.
JOURNALIST: So, are you a witch?
JEAN: No. I’ve never been into ought like that.
JOURNALIST: Then why did you tell Bea Campbell that you were?
JEAN: She came to see me at work. She had Chris Johnstone the social worker in tow. I was really angry about it. I’d only just got the job and the last thing I needed were social workers turning up and asking to speak to me. I told them I didn’t want to be in their program.
JOURNALIST: What happened then?
JEAN: Chris Johnstone said that if I didn’t do the interview and say that I’d been a witch, I’d never see me kids again. I was trying to get them out of care at the time. So I agreed to do it. I just thought I’d get me kids back.
JOURNALIST: So then you did the interview?
JEAN: First Bea Campbell took me to a bank and cashed a cheque and gave me £150. JOURNALIST: If you lied for Bea Campbell, why should we believe what you are saying now?
JEAN: Because now I know the truth. Chris [Johnstone] lied to me about getting me kids back. I was never going to get me kids back. And I were never a witch.

Geoffrey Dickens, MP, tried to pass a bill on April 15, 1988 that would prevent children attending Pagan ritual. As he made his statement in the House of Commons he mentioned Chris Bray, the owner of a Pagan bookshop called the Sorcerers Apprentice, by name and Bray was hounded by the local and mainstream media and had to have police protection. On August 13 1989, Fundamentalist Christians broke into the shop and burned it to the ground.

Pagans who don’t think the myth of satanic abuse is a problem for Paganism need to wake up. If you hadn’t noticed, the UK has become very Right Wing and one in 6 of us is functionally illiterate. Membership of conservative and extreme Christian groups has exploded. As a society we are unsettled, scared about losing our public services, our jobs, universal benefits, pensions, having to work longer for less. We’re being taught to find scapegoats – immigrants, people on benefits, asylum seekers, any minority group will do. In other words we’re primed for (oh the irony!) a witchhunt.

Actually, you just have to read a paper or listen to the radio or read some bleedin’ pages on the internet on SatanicRitual Abuse and Paganism.

Bear in mind that this is just the state of affairs in the UK. US and African Evangelicals have a direct influence on what British mainstream Churches believe and do, and they can be both hysterical and politically influential.There jurors, lawyers, the whole shebang are childishly prejudiced.

Those of us who were Pagans in the 80’s and 90’s and had small children were pretty concerned. We noticed that the majority of the people who were accused of Satanic abuse weren’t Pagan which was reassuring, but what was desperately concerning was that the people doing the accusing were mainstream doctors, police officers, social workers, therapists, people in good standing with their professions and peers. 25 years on what I’m increasingly concerned about is that Satanic Ritual Abuse is totally accepted by many intelligent professionals with no apparent religious roots at all.

Interestingly, being intelligent people, they are also feminists and there’s a strange link between SRA and 1980’s feminism – which is when I learned both feminism and Witchcraft.

Patriarchy is known to hurt men as well as women, children, the Earth and all creatures on it. We forget that in the 70’s and 80’s married men were officially Patriarchs, they were the head of the family, and it was evident that this paradigm of men-in-power was bringing us all to the point of Silent Spring and mutually assured destruction. Feminists fiercely resisted this, developing our own family and community structures, creating relationships beyond dominion or submission for ourselves and for the natural world. This is the fertile grounds from which non-Wiccan witchcraft sprung. Other feminists took a different route, one of genuine man hating, which saw all men as rapists. Beatrix Cambell was one of those feminists. She was implacable in her belief that the family was the source of female oppression (which it often was) therefore fathers were routinely anally raping their daughters and the government was part of a huge conspiracy to cover it all up. She caused 112 children to be removed from their homes, invasively examined often more than once, and put into care. 14 months ago, she’s still going on about it in a mainstream broadsheet, with an OBE.

My colleagues aren’t mad or stupid but they probably read the Guardian alongside other papers and, being about 10 years older than me, they’d have experienced the full, exciting, creative force of second wave feminism. In all it’s aspects. Of course, that Satanic Ritual Abuse and Recovered Memory Syndrome are being taught in universities is another really worrying reason. We expect teachers to teach truthfully, but how much do any of us vet 'experts' who've written books and done other lectures, and who look and sound not at all like a frothing loon?

So Pagans who think satanic ritual abuse has nothing to do with them had better wake up.

We don’t need to make a fuss, though not so long ago the Pagan Federation would have automatically written to the Mirror to object to the word ‘Pagan’ being used in relation to the Batley's and have put out a press release making clear what Paganism does and doesn’t do. We’ve become complacent. We assume that, well, everyone knows SRA is a load of discredited old rubbish.

They don’t.

Lost Lambs?

2011-03-10T13:46:00.015Z

I'm sorry for the horrible non-editing on this post - for some reason blogger won't allow me paragraph returns or a decent font size. Life can be that random. Thanks for bearing with it.

----------------------------------------------

Here we have a number of people who have done absolutely dreadful things over a long period of time, to each other, to children and to other adults. In March and April 2009 I wrote two entries for this blog, one about my principal that, given particular circumstances, I am as capable of heinous acts as any other person and that to forget this puts criminals into the role of Radical Other. Making people Other denies their humanity and limits the expansion of our own capacity to make contact: if I claim to be in contact with the Spirit of Tree or Land or Ancestor, how can I not be in contact with these people who raped and prostituted children?

The April entry was about my understandings of Pagan theology which helps me define my own personal boundaries. Because I believe that the sexual aspects of our life are sacred then sex crimes become exceptionally dreadful. Because I believe that the people I visit are essentially my equals and not little lost lambs, then my role is not to save them. Because there is no hell then there’s no eternal damnation to save them from. Because there’s no hell I can’t grant absolution; each individual has to seek our own right relationship with the world and with ourselves.

It’s well within the bounds of possibility for one of these people to request a Pagan chaplain. They’ve used the The Book of The Law and Egyptian iconography to dominate and control their victims, I’d put a fiver on a bet that they’ve used the pentagram, circle and quarters. They’ve demonstrated the need to feel different from the rest of their community, as well as the sense of superiority that the Occult can offer. Since our definition of A Pagan is that they call themselves A Pagan, then aren’t they entitled to a Pagan Chaplain?

I’d say a very definite no. Paganism is not a religion of turning the other cheek, wise though that Christian philosophy can be. Paganism is not a religion of unconditional love, no matter what our New Age members say. Neither are we a religion of retribution, an eye for an eye has no place in our way of being. Since we share a concept of some kind of peaceful learning after death, then we can trust that learning to take place peacefully after death if it doesn’t happen before. Since we need no intermediary between our Gods and ourselves we can communicate with those Gods for ourselves. Should this be a once and for all decision? Probably not. Perhaps after some years of good therapy and personal introspection these people might be ready to take full responsibility for what they did, without excuses, becoming changed in a manner that allows them to be useful and positive in the world again. The veracity of these feelings is incredibly hard to judge, to survive prisoners have to manipulate people and the Batleys are already past masters at this game, a game that the manipulator has to make themselves believe for the deception to be successful. People who have truly accepted their culpability, who have stood in the crucible of public and private shame and guilt, are rare. Might it be appropriate for what is in effect shunning or excommunication to be reversed so that being genuinely contrite (for crimes committed rather than for getting caught) has a purpose? Otherwise, why bother with painful introspection and personal growth?

If we are anything, we are a religion of interconnectedness, relationship and balance. This doesn’t mean that we have to accept and absorb all human behaviour, it means we have to attend to the balance of our connections and relationships. Some people put themselves beyond the pale in one group and find healthy connection and relationship in others, but there are some behaviours that, on a purely ecological level, damage all human groups. Rape is one. Child sex is one. Massive abuse of power is one. Not all societies agree with those limitations, but all varieties of Pagans do, and it’s what makes Paganism as a philosophy more healthy than many others.

When Colin and Elaine Batley, Shelly Millar and Jackie Marling were caught they woke up from their reality in which they were all-powerful. It was a lack of balance and interconnectedness that allowed their world to exist at all and now, being back in relation with the rest of the world, they’re suffering the rebalancing effects of imbalanced actions that all Pagans, all thinking people, find abhorrent. Who am I to get in the way of that natural law? Apart from anything else, who on Earth do I think I am, if I believe I can?

The Depths Of Human Darkness

2011-03-08T13:57:00.010Z

Regular readers will know that I become mildly peevish when Pagans dive into the realms of fantasy and hyperbole. Paganism has been described as a religion of poetry which is itself enriching but too often it tilts over into a mistrust of the rational and dependence on desire or whimsy. Where this is purely a matter of personal taste my own preferences shouldn’t dictate how a person describes their experience. But when fiction effects how people view us, how we view ourselves, our place in the world and how we treat others then flights of imagination and exaggeration have to be called to account.

The reason I’m writing about this today, with some sense of urgency, is because claims of Satanic Ritual Abuse are steadily working their way back into the therapeutic mainstream. Every single one of my colleagues is well educated and sensible, many have extensive experience of trauma and abuse work, and a number of them understand Satanic abuse to be a fact.

During my training as a psychotherapist we endured 2, two hour sessions with a woman who described sexual abuse and Satanic abuse in frothing detail. The class clearly experienced trauma, people were weeping in each others arms at the end of her descriptions of systematic forced abortions and child torture for the purpose of Satanic ritual. She gave us all her contact details so we could arrange therapy privately with her if we needed it. She dismissed all questions with a statement along the lines of, “You need to decide if you’re an abuser, if you’ve been abused yourself, if you want to do anything about abusers or just leave children to be sexually tortured to death.”

Unusually, our tutors left the room for both sessions, presumably because they knew the content was traumatising. One solemnly told us that she was counselling a number of people who had experienced Satanic abuse. The other was subdued and asked for our discussion to be confidential when I presented him with a folder full of evidence that Satanic Abuse does not exist.

Today my email contained a piece from a woman with high status within counselling, advertising herself as an expert in ‘satanic abuse, mind control and programming.’ It astonishes me that David Ike is dismissed as someone with florid delusions but the very same content has become mainstream in counselling in the UK.

So I want to be clear about nomenclature, what has been proved and what has not been proved, and how this might affect those of us who work with people who have experienced horrific abuse. Everything I’m going to write about here is easily referenced but I’m not going to reference anything because it’s important that you do your own research. Find legal, Intelligence and government reports, research the subject yourself – everything is very readily available on the internet.

Because what is happening now is that one person who believes that Satanic abuse exists teaches 3 people, who talk to 15 people, and so on. This is how myth is made, how peoples lives are wrecked and how people who really have been abused are further abused. You need to find, read and understand this information for yourself, weigh it up for yourself.

Satanic Ritual Abuse is supposed to be abuse for the purpose of worshipping Satan. People who describe it depict ritualistic acts of extreme abuse and a highly organised conspiracy.

Some abuse is indeed ritualistic. The use of ritual during abuse is not an indication of Satanic Abuse. Ritual in abuse is used as another means of control.

There is no evidence for Satanic abuse, anywhere in the world. Scientific, forensic, medical and law enforcement agencies have not found one shred of evidence for the claims made by people alleging Satanic abuse.

Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, Rose and Fred West subjected their victims to unspeakable tortures and deaths because they were maniacs, not because they were Satanists.

Claims of Satanic abuse have been so thoroughly disproved that social work and therapy as professions suffered a loss of credibility. Too many social workers and therapists had made Satanic abuse their priority, creating a hierarchy of abuse in which Satanic abuse was so important that ‘ordinary’ sexual, physical and psychological abuse was ignored.

Proponents of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA), having lost credibility, are still pushing their wares as Sadistic Ritual Abuse (SRA). Sadistic ritual abuse occurs, but as a phrase it is almost always used by people who actually believe in Satanic abuse. They are almost always Evangelical Christians.

Religious abuse does exist. Exorcisms are a growing phenomena occurring predominantly in African Christian communities. The abuse is so great that in the UK Project Violet, a special police unit, has been set up to work with these communities. Other specialist charities have been set up to address African Christian groups who torture and murder children predominantly, but also elderly women and occasionally men who are perceived to be possessed.

Just as people who identify as members of any religion may use their religion as a way to control the people they abuse, so there will be people who identify as Pagan who will use Paganism as a way to control the people they abuse.

The issue is abuse rather than religion.

Ritual in abuse exists beyond religion. Religious iconography and terminology are used to control victims, to force their submission and their silence.

Paedophilia has always existed but repeated reports on this practice have led to it becoming less unbelievable and paradoxically more accessible to people who might not have considered it as a practice before. Extreme abuse has also always existed and proponents of Satanic abuse may have served to give abusers new ideas.

Louisiana, Illinois, Texas and Idaho have passed laws against specific acts that are often used in ritual abuse. These acts do not prejudice any religion. Other States are in the process of creating something similar.

Therapy has a shameful history in the myth-making of Satanic abuse. There is money to be made and status to be gained from writing books, offering counselling, supervision, teaching and talks. It’s been proved time and again that all of us are susceptible to ‘recovered memory syndrome’ and this is what therapists who've ‘recovered’ memories of Satanic abuse in their clients were doing. This is recognised in current Crown Prosecution Service guidance to therapists who deal with abuse of any kind. It's resulted in children and some adults who've been abused being denied counselling or psychotherapy until after their court case has finished, which can be years.

To admit that what you have been doing as a therapist is not only morally, ethically and intellectually wrong but very clearly harmful; is based on nothing but pornographic tracts that have been systematically discredited, and that you’ve made a deal of money from this leads to profound and painful introspection, potential sanction from professional bodies, potential legal action and certainly loss of income. Who wants to go there? How much easier it is to defend your practice by saying it’s all a conspiracy and therapists who don’t believe it are either stupid, in denial or part of the problem.

I’ve worked with a number of people who were abused in ways that are so horrific that they became quite mad and quite dangerous. It’s clear that highly organized paedophile rings do exist and that paedophilia crosses all classes and social groups, so I’ve no doubt that people of influence are involved in some organized paedophile groups. Working ritual with these young people was delicate and heartbreaking. To begin with I had no idea of the depth of abuse that they’d been exposed to and I thank the Goddess with all my heart that I was training in Person Centered therapy, which purposely hands over power to the client. I didn’t require that ritual happen for any festival but brought the ritual stuff along so that we could do it if the patient wanted to. Reclaiming the beauty and simplicity of ritual was a very small part of some patients healing.

I give thanks that I have a sound and solid understanding of ritual, psychologically, socially, spiritually and as an act of relationship. I thank the people who trained me as a Witch that I have an understanding of sexuality, sex, gender and their endless, healthful, joyful permutations, concepts that are still growing, healthfully, joyfully as well as at times with difficulty.

I give thanks that I’d been around as the Satanic panic of the 80’s and 90’s burst and was discredited, so that I could speak knowledgeably and sensibly with patients and staff – and I give particular thanks to the Pagan individuals and groups who did so much to bring sanity to the debate.

I give thanks to my husband who attempted to ritually purify me every time I returned from those early encounters with patients, traumatized, contaminated and with a terrible (minuscule) empathy for their experience of the very worst of human nature. Human nature as part of it demonstrably is, without need for goats or knives or human farms, can be so infinitely destructive that we don’t need the fiction of Satanic abuse to explain it. It’s curious that so many fine, upstanding professionals need Satanic Abuse to explore the depths of their own darkness – perhaps they can frame studying Satanic Abuse as more professional and intelligent than buying sensational pulp books about witch crazes or concentrations camps or Fred and Rose West - but I wish they’d do it without dragging very vulnerable people into the filth with them, and making them pay for the privilege.

Professor with terminal cancer uses illness to teach

2011-02-23T16:45:00.000Z

Professor Monte Bute

Bute has terminal cancer, and he' been using his personal perspective to enlighten students on the process of death and dying in a class called Life of the Mind.

Students in this master's level course dive into philosophy, medieval history and literature.
In a recent evening class, they watched the film "The Seventh Seal," by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman.

"Anytime I feel very Lutheran and tortured I try to watch it," he said.

Summerland Project

2011-02-19T18:56:00.000Z

THE SUMMERLANDS PROJECT

Offering accessible spiritual support to dying and bereaved Pagans across Lincolnshire …

and awareness training to those offering that support

Some of you reading this may have already have found yourselves approached about conducting a Pagan funeral service, or in the sad situation of spiritually supporting a dying friend or loved one. For others reading this, those unasked for things may yet be in the future. For those who have already had to face up to performing such services, without knowing quite how, you may have got through those difficult times, but wondered what more you could have done.

The Journey So Far …

The Summerlands Project was instigated back in 2004 as a result of requests for Pagan funeral services in Lincolnshire. Although others had confidence in me as a Priestess, I felt ill-equipped to provide these services. The writing and performance of rituals for large groups were familiar to me from many years of conducting open celebrations. My initiatory experiences had also revealed death to me to be a truly spiritual passage; so my own faith was strong, even in the face of others’ doubts. Where I felt lacking was in my ability to offer comfort and support to shocked and grieving families. Just what do you say, when suddenly thrust into the heart of a grief-stricken family, one you have possibly never met before?

I felt my way through those early services and followed them up with what amounted to bereavement support, although I knew nothing about bereavement support at the time. One of the questions asked of me by a grieving widower, was why local funeral directors had access to contact details of the Pagan Priesthood while the local hospital didn’t. While dying of a brain tumour, his wife had requested a Pagan Spiritual Advisor and was told by the Hospital Chaplain that they didn’t know of one. Upset at the thought of someone seeking and being denied meaningful spiritual support at such a difficult and frightening time, I promised to rectify the situation, without any clear idea about what exactly such spiritual support might entail!

In trying to answer the question of what was needed, the Summerlands Project was born. Throughout the Autumn of 2004, a group of a dozen or so of us met in a local Chapel to discuss the issues of death and dying as relevant to Pagans. Some weeks we had guest speakers – mediums, funeral directors, healers etc. Some weeks we held discussions, shared meditations, etc. The aims of these meetings were:

To support those of us wishing to work with dying/bereaved Pagans by examining many of the issues surrounding death and dying
To work together to come up with a training plan covering the various services needed
To identify and provide an accessible network of Pagans across the county who were willing to provide that kind of service/support

Since those meetings ended, the group has been largely internet based, but work has continued on developing resources, and an awareness training plan. We’ve worked as a community on painting wall hangings of the Sun, Moon and Stars and these have regularly been used as a backdrop to funeral rites. Members individually have been gaining experience in different fields – developing healing skills, undertaking bereavement support training, etc. The group now numbers over twenty, and is very diverse, with different people bringing different ideas and skills to the group. Membership is not limited to Lincolnshire, and includes various PF Officers from the East Midlands and beyond. We also have hospital and hospice workers and a range of healing practitioners within the group, while recognised Pagan traditions represented here include Druidry, Shamanism, Heathenry and Traditional Witchcraft.

In the intervening years since 2004, sadly, several of us have been involved in providing funeral rites for friends, and, where necessary, ongoing bereavement support for their loved ones. In 2008, Alan, a long-time friend and an active Summerlands Project member himself, passed into the Summerlands after a fourteen month struggle against cancer. And I suddenly realized I really didn’t want to help people to die, but to live! Since then, Alan has been an inspiration and an encouragement to me. As a result of the time I spent with him in his last months, my own journey has included a lengthy detour into natural healing, and to qualifying in 2009 as a Clinical Hypnotherapist. Knowledge and skills which I have since been able to use to help support others.

Where We Are at Now …

The PF and I parted company for several years (long story), but recently the President, recognizing the need for an accessible network of Pagan funeral officiants has pledged to support the Project and I have been persuaded to rejoin. So, after several years of not being sure how to proceed with our aims, we are now at an exciting point! At the risk of boring those of you in other counties, I’ll outline where we are at, and what we are looking for.

Lincolnshire is the second largest county in England. It has ten hospitals, three hospices (one covers virtually the whole county), and six crematoria. We are hoping to find at least one (and preferably more) volunteer to cover each of these facilities. Making this task harder is the fact that Lincolnshire falls into three different PF Districts – the bulk being in the East Midlands, but with North Lincolnshire falling in the North East, and the southern part of the county in the East Anglia region.

At present, we are focusing on identifying those willing to undertake the provision of funeral rites. Given the increasing number of requests for Pagan/alternative funeral rites, we felt this needed to be our priority. Currently, we have five volunteers (introduced below, with their approximate area) who are willing to cover Grimsby, Alford, Boston and Lincoln crematoria, and we are actively seeking volunteers in the Grantham and Scunthorpe areas. Although four of our six crematoria are covered, in real terms, further volunteers are always required as each crematorium has a wide catchment area, which doesn’t always translate to the area a Project member would ideally choose to cover.

Officiants are often ambassadors for Paganism, bringing as they do our spirituality to the wider world. Therefore, we need not only to be caring and compassionate, but also professional in what we do. Good inter-personal skills, confidence in writing and performing rituals, and being comfortable with the idea of death are good starting points. An understanding and appreciation of different Pagan traditions is also useful.

Once a few more willing officiants have come forward, a series of awareness raising/training sessions will be held. These proposed sessions include discussion, role play and the putting together of individual portfolios of resources. Within the Summerlands Project are individuals who don’t feel able to perform funeral rites themselves, but who are willing to support those who do. In the past, I have found this kind of support invaluable – from friends who played/sang unaccompanied at services, to those who helped with Pagan wreaths, and the layout and printing of “order of service” sheets.

These services have truly been community efforts, and the Summerlands Project itself is a community project. It isn’t intended to replace the in-depth (and often prohibitively expensive) training of other organizations – the BHA, or Life-Rites, but is more about a community coming together to discuss, and work out how best to serve and spiritually support those within that community – and then doing just that.

It is my wish by Midsummer for us to be in a position to contact all funeral directors in the county, offering contact details for a Pagan officiant within their locality.

Later, we intend to address the need for spiritual support in Lincolnshire’s hospitals and hospices. Already within the Summerland Project membership we have individuals in employment in several of these organizations. It is not necessary to work within a hospital or hospice to volunteer as a Pagan Spiritual Advisor, or “Resource” as our local hospital termed it, though. And anyone who feels they could offer these kind of supportive services in hospitals or hospices, and would like to explore the possibility and learn more, are welcome to join the Project. We are hoping to receive clear guidance and support from the PF in achieving a cross-county hospital/hospice ministry.

But the Project is not just about going into institutions such as hospitals and hospices, but about evolving the best and most appropriate ways to spiritually support members of the community who are facing their own death, or the death of a loved one. While this undoubtably involves hospitals and hospices, it also involves supporting and working with people in their own homes.

With this support in mind, an awareness training plan has been developed, running to twenty sessions. The initial sessions are a comprehensive (and sometimes uncomfortable) look at death – the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of it, and acknowledging our own fears about it. We then move onto looking at ways in which we can support others going through this process, looking at existing transitional programmes, counseling skills, energy and other forms of healing, co-meditation, relaxation and guided imagery, etc. From there we move onto more “magical” ways of working – looking at Tradition-specific imagery, “death workings” (pathworkings created for use at the time of death), holding vigils, performing “Last Rites”, blessing the body after death and a variety of other things. In time, the awareness training moves onto funeral rites, bereavement support and working with the spirit after death. We are not claiming to “qualify” anyone to do these things, but merely to raise awareness of the many issues and possibilities inherent in the work. As a group, we are here to support and encourage those who feel drawn to this kind of ministry. To help with this, we not only have the internet forum, but also have a substantial library, and various other resources which are available to all members.

Hopefully, this article has kindled a spark of interest in some of you, and you feel inspired to join us in providing these invaluable services. If so, please drop me an email at mavisenderby@yahoo.co.uk Alternatively, you can apply for membership by visiting - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/summerlands_project/

In summing up, I'd just like to say that the past six years have been a journey of discovery for me and although the work is often challenging, it is also very rewarding. And I've learnt, whatever skills and abilities we may have, often the greatest and most appreciated gift we can give is the gift of presence.

This article is dedicated to two founding members of the Summerlands Project

… our dear friends, Alan and Ken …

who now dwell beyond the Veil.

With love and gratitude to you both.

Self Care

2011-02-15T17:15:00.005Z

I’ve felt quite tearful and fragile today spending much of it wobbling around ineffectively trying to get some work done. My morning began with two counts of bad news: one in five children have experienced severe abuse and (as if we didn’t know) the elderly are routinely being abused in the NHS

A round of hand-wringing, more reports, outraged defense of nurses, the usual nonsense will ensue. I left nursing partly because I didn’t like nurses too many of whom had unresolved personal issues and no sense of personal power which led to them using patients to abuse that power rather than defending patients as a matter of basic humanity, never mind professional ethics. They wouldn’t strike on behalf of patient care because they couldn’t be bothered to think about complex issues and because taking action worked against their view of themselves as angelic martyrs.

I used to be a Royal College of Nursing steward, gods help me, and it was simply impossible to get any of our colleagues interested in the issues that faced the NHS at the height of Thatcherism. There was one glorious march of 6,000 nurses – out of a total of 70,000. I see little change now, other than that the majority of carers on wards are no longer nurses and are less able and less willing to think for themselves. A streak of intentional cruelty has entered the profession, and not just in elder care.

So that’s the NHS. Everyone knows patient care (as opposed to generally good medical work) on anything other than acute and high tech wards is pretty rubbish and getting much worse. But to discover that one in five children has been abused left me reeling. If we can’t care for our own children then it’s a given that we can’t care for needy strangers.

Happily, a good friend came round, she too was delicate calling the news a ‘pyrrhic vindication’ of her stance against the flood of, frankly, crap that she’d endured as she complained about the disgraceful lack of care her mother had suffered to indifferent and defensive nursing home, hospital and administrative drones. She too felt hopeless, that our entire population had apparently become brutish, futile and terminally isolated from ourselves and each other.

So we ate pancakes with Iberico ham, mozzarella, pesto and rocket, and more pancakes with strawberries, banana, lemon juice and sugar, and a large amount of tea. We moaned at each other and listened, and cared for each other and empathized and felt somewhat better.

Self care and self respect are ethical priorities for carers, not by any means a luxury. This is not to wallow in a vision of oneself as a martyr that no one must question - if the jobs so awful, don't do it. Neither is it to attack reports and people who question whether some people could do a better job, as if you are uniquely perfect in the world.

Almost every time I come into a hospital in a Chaplaincy role I begin to get burned out. I find myself wanting to cut corners or feeling guiltily grateful if a patient isn’t available, yet working with patients is fulfilling, interesting, pleasurable. Some of that is the stress of not knowing where this ward is or how that policy works. Becoming trusted and part of the team alleviates some of that stress and makes my life easier which makes my work with patients more fulfilling – I’m not having to work at putting distracting feelings and thoughts aside.

When I first began doing this work regularly I was, frankly, freaked out. Being confined in airlocks, having endless locked doors between me and fresh air made me frantic with claustrophobia, which I had to work bloody hard at disguising so that I could spend time with patients who spent months in that environment. The naked suffering and anguish that many patients were experiencing, the knowledge that many of them would never be free of it, a growing, horrified understanding of deeply shocking pasts, blew my mind. I would come home staggering, leap straight into the shower and pray, sometimes flat on my belly, for strength.

In time I became more resilient but not in denial of all those things that distressed me. My experience of overwhelming panic and anguish offered me a brush of empathy with patients – this is how some of them feel, sometimes. So it was a useful and fruitful experience and one I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I wouldn’t suggest it as a way that hospital chaplains should learn their trade.

But there was nowhere Pagan to go for wisdom, understanding, even sympathy. Getting support in a form that suited me rather than suited people who wanted to impose their reiki or crystals or chanting or other stuff that they desperately wanted to do at me and that drove me berserk, was impossible. My non-Pagan friends gave me very, very welcome tea and sympathy, a non-Pagan counseling supervisor gave me non-Pagan supervision, my Gods felt far away and I felt absolutely useless.

Where I found support was with Christian religious, nuns and monks who listened in a detached kind of way, accepted and felt no need to stop my weeping jags or make me feel better. Just suggesting the obvious, that my Gods were very close to me, as they’re close to everybody, was a great relief, and that was offered so tentatively, so respectfully that I spent some more time weeping again at their graceful humanity.

Support is something that’s best done in community, allowing others to genuinely care for us because they love us rather than because our job title renders us automatically worthy of respect, to lovingly say, 'You're not working at your best, what do you need to do that?' I know this viscerally and yet can’t seem to access it within Paganism and after years in this game I don’t believe it exists. Just as I don’t care about the excuses that nurses will have for not washing a patient for 13 days, or routinely dehydrating and starving patients to death, so I don’t care about the excuses Pagan communities have for not materially supporting the people who are doing important work on their behalf, whether that’s chaplaincy or childcare or interfaith work. If you know of a good, existing model of ongoing Pagan support then let us know about it here. I would be absolutely delighted and not a little relieved to be proved wrong.

Thousands Killed In British Nursing Homes

2011-01-31T20:38:00.001Z

The Office for National Statistics have compiled a report into deaths over the past five years in nursing homes.

Analysts found there were 667 victims of dehydration, 157 of malnutrition and 1,928 deaths linked to superbugs. Some 1,446 died suffering with pressure ulcers, otherwise know as bedsores, while 4,866 died with septicaemia, or blood poisoning. Another 4,881 had fatal falls.
According to the figures, the number of deaths linked to dehydration doubled, while those involving superbugs rose sevenfold during the previous Labour government's rule.

It's easy to make snide political points as the Tory Care Services Minister does, but the situation is not the same in an economically and culturally similar country, Ireland, which suggests that the problem is not entirely financial. There, the whole concept of caring for the elderly is perceived very differently. The vast majority of Irish nursing home staff speak the same language as the people in their care which is not a requirement here in the UK, their elderly are valued culturally and Catholicism perceives sacrifice and charitable love as virtues. It's not a perfect system but the UK warehousing and euthanizing of our elderly is bitterly shameful, attracting minimum wages and deeply unskilled workers whose efforts are not valued in any way.

Is there a link between UK secularism, where our only value is in how much we consume and can be taxed, and the ways in which we treat each other? I tend to think there is. Paganism has lots to offer society but we don't yet have a thealogy of caring for people - we're great at planting trees - and since we're not getting any younger we need to spend some time discussing that.

Voices of The Sacred Feminine

2011-01-30T14:14:00.000Z

Join Macha live on Wed., Feb. 2, at 6 pm PT, for a discussion of Pagan culture: Pagans in interfaith; Pagan seminaries; creating institutions for children and parents (schools, camps, etc.); creating (renting or purchasing) community space; caring/providing for our elders; growing Pagan elders.

Listen at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/VoicesoftheSacredFeminine

Show archived for later listening.

Pagan Clergy Ministering in Hospitals

2011-01-24T19:32:00.000Z

A guest post from Terry Riley . . .

I am the founding High Priest of the Southern Delta Church of Wicca - ATC. established in 1994 in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Over the years I have ministered to my congregation in the hospital many times. I have found there is a need for pastoral work in this area, even for Pagans. Most people when they are in the hospital have a desire to know that someone cares about them. Sometimes there are Spiritual rites and prayers that people need. This I believe is the duties of Clergy.

Overs the years I have been called, sometimes in the middle of the night, by members of my Church in need of counseling, healing, prayers, and even Last Rites performed while they were in the hospital. I have always been willing to answer my calling as Pagan Clergy. At the SDCW - ATC in our Clergy training courses this has always been expected as part of the pastoral duties of Ordained Clergy.

This is sometimes difficult to do since most Pagan Clergy are not paid and have to work full time jobs. That's why I believe that this job is a calling rather than a choice. It means submitting yourself unto the will of yours Gods and fulfilling Divine Labor.

Rev. Terry Riley

HP/SDCW - ATC

Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

2011-01-16T18:23:00.005Z

In the UK, many older hospitals were built on the sites of workhouses.(For further information Google 'hospital workhouse')

As late as 1984 I worked in a ‘mental health unit’ that still had one elderly woman who’d been born into that institution when it was a workhouse. The destruction of her entire being was pitiful, not helped by crazed attempts to find some personality with the help of ECT.

If we have any concept of Spirit of Place, then perhaps some of the misery experienced by destitute and despised people, separated from their spouse, parents and children has seeped into bricks, floors and window frames, becoming as much a part of the fabric of these old institutions as the mortar that holds them together.

Hospitals, new and old, are liminal sites, one of the places we go to when we’re not capable of living as part of the Apparent world. Hospitals and religious institutions are surprisingly close in function attended by a priesthood attempting to cure illnesses caused by our sins, whether that’s blasphemy, gluttony or smoking so that we can return to our communities renewed.

Regular readers will know that I resist and contest any nonsense about Communing With The Spirits ™, ‘Healing’, Bringing Into The Light and other dreadful bollocks. Grave upset, often centuries of it, cannot be ‘healed’ by someone warbling breathily with a rattle or by planting crystals. I do wonder, however, about the land under the foundations, the foundations themselves, the accumulated experience – not all of it painful – of the hospital environment. In some of the older hospitals I’ve visited the natural places, places where gardeners spend time, are comfortable and often very pleasant to spend time with. Gardening has been used for centuries as rehabilitation, particularly for people with chronic conditions, and it would seem that these little precious spaces are glad to be tended, will give themselves in return.

One of the hospitals I worked in was set in acres of impeccable grounds, from a commercial golf course to minute atria, duck ponds to wilderness and there’s no doubt that this very old site can absorb suffering and genuinely offer healing to patients, visitors and staff. Simply walking from one unit to another via natural surroundings that are valued and sympathetically tended is more restful than marching down neon-lit corridors or hemmed in alleys lined with dodgy refuse skips and drains. It also demonstrates that the people responsible for the hospital also value things that others might consider peripheral to medicine, like aesthetics, nature, colour and environment.

Personally, I’ve always experienced older hospitals as more accepting, more en-souled than new builds. New hospitals are undoubtedly better designed, probably cleaner, possibly easier to get around but they’re a bit too sterile for my taste, a bit youthful and brash. It’s as if the fabric of an older institution has seen so much kindness and cruelty, pain and healing, care, death, birth, emergency and tedium; has soaked up centuries of therapeutic intent that it has settled down into a kind of positive melancholy. They remind me of landscapes that have been lived with and farmed sympathetically for centuries, interaction between us and the Land creating a new Being that is neither wilderness or slave monoculture, but which has a personality and rhythm of its own.

Just as we can pay attention to the Spirit of Place in woodland or wheat field, so there is something to be learned from the Spirit of Place of a hospital, old or new, and there’re different ways to be present to it. Walking through the corridors at night gives a sense of presence. In all traditions, sleep and dreaming are important for health and for hearing the Gods; the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans used dream temples as a kind of hospital

All these people, perhaps hundred of them, dreaming together, entering the Otherworlds together. Those few souls unable to sleep. Still rooms, empty operating theatres, the building breathing out and resting. This is the time to hear the voice of the Genius Loci, the protective spirit of place and to the voices of people, events, history. You don’t need holy water or smudge sticks or to Command Restless Souls or to do anything other than be aware and receptive. Just as you would when wanting to hear the voice of any place, make clear your intent, set your boundaries, make the invitation to all benevolent Beings, and wait.

Later in the day sit quietly in one of the hospital entrances. You are a liminal person sitting within a liminal space, inside of another liminal place. Watch people come and go, people who belong and don’t belong, who don’t want to be there and who are very grateful to come in and to leave. Doorways are sacred to Janus who also rules over beginnings and endings, and to Cardea who is also a Goddess of health. “Her power is to open what is shut; to shut what is open," (Ovid) attributes that have applications in healing. Hecate, too stands in these places, She who cares for women in labour and children being born, the dying and the dead, places that are neither one thing or another which may also include people under anaesthetic or heavily sedated, and Who guards those who ask for Her protection.

The Ghost of Nurses Past

2011-01-15T08:35:00.004Z

On winter nights on a very old ward ice would form on the inside of the windows. There were 3 of us to 30 patients during these shifts and we kept warm by keeping patients warm, walking backwards and forwards with blankets and hot drinks. Getting off the ward was a relief when we could retreat to the office and stretch out over a heater or go to the canteen. The staff nurse took her break and my colleague and I watched her head canteen-wards. Half an hour later we were slightly peevish that rather than come straight back onto the ward she’d gone into the office, we’d heard the familiar sound of nurses shoes – shoes that clacked rather than rubber soled clogs – echoing up the long corridor, heard the door open and close. A few minutes later the staff nurse returned from the canteen – we’d heard her shoes come up the corridor too – and so we assumed someone else was in the office. There was no one.

I distinctly remember being amazed that I wasn’t freaked right out, but instead was aware of a sense of connection, of lineage. For 70 years nurses had been clacking up and down the corridor, entering and leaving that office and whether it was The Ghost of Nurses Past or a repeating memory didn’t matter: something strange had happened, we couldn’t explain it and none of us felt frightened. We’d experienced what today would be called Shared Personal Gnosis (SPG) a supernatural event sensed independently by two or more people. After a moment of wide-eyed silence we accepted that it was likely that this had been a ghost, just as we might accept any other fact, and got on with work. This acceptance was as much part of the experience as hearing noises and finding an empty office.

A greater part of this acceptance was probably due to the demands of nursing – there wasn’t time to discuss it or to generate the fear and excitement that often goes with talking about ghosts - and there was also something about the way in which we simply agreed that ghosts exist and we’d just witnessed one. To this day I can't rationalise it.

Welcome Yule

2010-12-22T12:00:00.003Z

There are times when you can almost hear the machinery of the universe creaking as planets align. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere tonights solstice coincides with a lunar eclipse and if the clouds stay away we’ll see the shadow of the earth move across the moon. Light and dark in movement and balance.

We’ve been living through interesting times for some years now and people are getting weary. I’m noticing that when people say that they’re feeling under the weather they can get buried by unsolicited Good Advice of incredible banality: have a cold? “Here’s a great idea! Take some honey in a glass of hot water!!” Feeling a little miserable after some days without sunshine? “Get on out there! Breathing that cold winter air will cheer you right up!!!” The value of simple commiseration seems to be lost in a tidal wave of “If you’d just do something positive you’d feel so much better!!! Get up, get going, get on with it! God helps those that help themselves!”

We’ll build a small fire tonight and extend our circle to encompass everyone else who will be celebrating this longest night, people at Stonehenge and other sacred sites, people who celebrated solstices in the past and those who will celebrate in the years to come. My Ancestors remind me that I too will die and all the echinacea in the world isn’t going to change that. My Descendants remind me that whilst teaching and advice is all very well simple love and attention creates at least two better people. The eternal movement of massive celestial bodies moving into and out of alignment helps put all striving and ambition into perspective.

Lets share time with each other for the sake of it, giving presents because we truly want to, consciously receiving the valuable, life-saving gift of comfortable company. Just spending time with people in hospital, not talking about spiritual things or doing Pagan things but just hanging out, can create a lot of warmth and pleasure and remind people that they’re more than a patient or a container for illness. You don’t have to do anything at all. You just have to be. That really, truly is good enough. And so are you.

UK Hospital Death Rates

2010-11-28T10:49:00.003Z

Some years ago I had to have a very minor examination at a local hospital. The waiting room was filled with other people waiting for the same exam and we all sat there mutely as the minutes ticked past our appointment times. A fat, slovenly nurse swaggered backwards and forwards doing bugger all and in the end I asked her sweetly what the wait might be about. She looked at me with disdain and actually turned her back and walked away. I minced off to find her boss who, when I eventually found her, told us that the doctors weren’t on site. Like attempting to open an oyster I continued to ask this woman questions until she finally told me that the doctors would not be in at all that day.

A little later I needed another small exam in a different hospital. Same kind of hanging around, same kind of nurses filled with loathing and I kept my mouth shut almost as a kind of spiritual exercise. Until I couldn’t stand being treated so rudely, so roughly any more – this was just getting ready for the exam rather than the exam itself. In the end I simply woke up and said, “What’s your name?” A tense conversation ensued encapsulating the hospital policy on name badges, this woman’s behaviour and – the clincher – the fact that I used to be a nurse in this hospital. The shift in her attitude was polar; she couldn’t have been more attentive and apologetic. It was this that really got my goat: she was capable of caring but actively chose not to.

Visiting people in hospital I’ve seen nursing staff handle patients roughly, seen an elderly person stumble and put a hand onto a nurse for balance only to have that nurses face writhe with revulsion and push the patient off shouting, ‘Don’t touch me!’ I’ve heard a desperately ill patient in a cold ward ask a nurse to pull the covers up around his shoulders as she strode past yelling, “Do it yourself.” My neighbour wept and desperately called out to be taken home, such was his distress at his treatment. I’ve supported a friend as he made complaints about the treatment his father suffered and at every point the administrators were incompetent, abused their power and treated my friend as if he was an idiot.

The NHS is very good at emergency care. Our nurses, having to participate in regular professional development, have never been more professional. And hospitals are, as any person who’s been in a hospital recently knows, killing patients. What goes on in care homes is beyond description.

What has this to do with Pagan hospital chaplaincy?

The simple presence of a chaplain on the ward makes people behave better. I doubt that there’s any research to support this assertion because it would have to start with the proposal that some ward staff behave badly and as any researcher knows, ‘That which is observed, changes.” That’s partly the point, that when a chaplain, a person with power, authority and legitimacy, walks onto the ward (rather than a relative who has legitimacy between certain hours and no power or authority) things change, particularly for people who have any kind of faith.

We have the same responsibilities as any other person, whatever their professional designation, when it comes to reporting cruelty and bad practice, and making the judgment about whether to report or not can be difficult for all kinds of reasons. But chaplains, with our fantastic, transformative gift of liminality, have the power to talk with people in ways that other staff feel unable to. A part of our job, just by our presence, is to remind everyone that they’re individual human beings with all that this entails. The machine world has always existed, all of us use each other to validate our worldview, but sometimes just by saying, ‘I see you. I see you as a person rather than as a collection of qualifications and a uniform,” creates a massive shift in attitude. It reminds us that we exist. More than that, it reminds us that we are alive, warm, sentient and have the capacity to do a lot of good and also the capacity for self-awareness and appropriate shame instead of always submitting to our place in the hierarchy of ‘Just doing my job.’

Death and Other Love Songs: On Midwifing the Death of My Father

2010-11-22T08:58:00.001Z

A guest post by Jacqui Woodward-Smith

Northern Star (for my father)

            Your journey is not mine to choose,
                 manipulate, to change or bend
            Life’s spiral path must have its way
                 Its aim unclear until the end

You drifted deep inside your mind
A second and the veil reached out
I stand upon the distant shore
My call a futile, wordless shout

        I call to you my joy, my father,
           as priestess, to the Blessed Isle
        As daughter, call you ever homeward
            to stay with me for just a while

My soul shrinks to a grain of sand
To see your hard-fought words unborn
And yet your smile, my northern star,
Would bring the honey to the dawn

        I call to you my joy, my father,
           as priestess, to the Blessed Isle
        As daughter, call you ever homeward
            to stay with me for just a while

Words lost in too many words
The meanings far from tongue or ear
But I will listen in my dreams
   and in my heart your words I’ll hear

For you have walked the bitter edge where
   fear and love entwine in wild embrace
And you have kissed Her blood red mouth
   and gazed upon Her stone deep face

        I call to you my joy, my father,
           as priestess, to the Blessed Isle
        As daughter, call you ever homeward
            to stay with me for just a while

A deep-root oak, your spirit stands
Around we spin in praying dance
To pull you back from dark confusion
To sing you home from endless trance

Will you surface from Her cauldron
Lost and caged or changed and healed?
Will life’s choices branch before you
Or has Her kiss your future sealed?

        I call to you my joy, my father,
           as priestess, to the Blessed Isle
        As daughter, call you ever homeward
            to stay with me for just a while

But heron comes to show the way
   through misty marshes of the mind
The edge of love, the edge of fear
The connection we were born to find

And when Crone Mother finally calls you
   to rest and change in dreaming womb
I will rejoice that you are with Her
But always feel you left too soon

        I call to you my joy, my father,
           as priestess, to the Blessed Isle
        As daughter, call you ever homeward
            to stay with me for just a while

            Your journey is not mine to choose,
                 manipulate, to change or bend
            But it is my joy to walk with you,
                 my father-child, your daughter-friend

©Jacqui Woodward-Smith, July – September 2007

Death and Other Love Songs: On Midwifing the Death of My Father*
by Jacqui Woodward-Smith

In memory of Ronald Henry Smith, 14th September 1929 to 17th August 2007 and for ‘She who births us, and waits for us at the end of a life, to take us to another shore’1

And when life can no longer hold you let the red and white springs sing you home …2

I thought long and hard about whether to write this article; death is such an intimate, personal thing that I thought perhaps it would be a betrayal of my father, who I loved more dearly than I can ever say. And yet, when I think about the days and months before his death, about the honesty, openness, dignity, and humour with which he approached his final moment I know that he would say that it was ok. That if it helped others to be less afraid then his death should be shared. Ultimately, his final journey was his alone, and I can only relate my experience of it, so perhaps there can be no betrayal after all. The secrets of that journey have gone with him and I can only share what I know. From my own perspective I do know that death should not be hidden, as is so encouraged in our society, and that the strongest memory I have of those last hours, and the days following it, are of the savage beauty and fierce love to be found at the heart of the Crone.

My dad, Ron, was diagnosed with prostate cancer following a stroke in 2004. I don’t think that I had ever realised what a strong and determined man he was until I saw him fight his way back to health after the stroke but that was also the first time that I ever saw him cry and perhaps the first time that I really saw him as a human being and not just ‘dad’. In a way, I think that there are few things that have shocked me more than seeing my father cry but, through his recovery, we did develop a stroner and more honest connection, for which I am ever grateful. During that time he had many strange visions and in one he saw me shape-shift into a heron, which made him laugh, but made me think of the bird that guards the liminal spaces between life and death. It was then that I first began to consider the role that I might, as best as I was able, play in midwifing his death when the time came.

I saw him battle that stroke and win and he approached cancer in the same way; with dignity and a determination to be well. He was a fierce protector of his family and he would have considered it a betrayal of us to give in, no matter what the personal cost to himself. In the years to come I often wished that it were otherwise and that he would let go, but that was not his way. As time went on and I saw his health failing I, feeling the brush of the heron’s wing, found the courage to talk to him about death and what we both thought it would be like. He became more and more open to talking in a way that he never had, about the past and memories of his own parents and siblings, about his dreams and disappointments, and about how proud he was of my brother and I and I told him that I loved him many times (which was something that we had never really said). During this time my brother began to research our family tree and dad cried when he saw the names of all the relatives that he had never known but hoped that he would meet some of them when he died. He was also disappointed that no serial killers or highwaymen had revealed themselves! Over time I saw the masks that he wore melt away like autumn leaves and I saw the kind, funny, strong, wounded, and gentle man beneath. It was an honour to share that time with him.

Eventually, in July 2007, he was admitted to hospital with acute kidney failure and, although his kidneys improved, he was told that, as the cancer had by then spread to his bones and lymphatic system, there was nothing more that could be done for him. He received this news with courage and good humour (as he put it he had “both feet in the last chance saloon and Marlene Dietrich was singing ‘Boys in the Backroom’”!), and I think a degree of relief because the responsibility he felt to carry on fighting had been removed. He then went about giving us his final messages (mainly about looking after one another and telling us how proud he was of us) and preparing for death.

A week before he died I attended the Glastonbury Goddess Conference in honour of the Crone. It seemed so perfect to me that we would be journeying with the Crone this year and I learned much about Her nature, and my own, in that week. I had felt for months that our family was being held in a liminal space waiting for death and, through my own intuition and talking to others, found that to be very like the time of waiting for a birth. Both death and birth are transitions into another state of being and it was as though all my attention became focussed on that one thing. When I left for the Conference and said goodbye to dad in the hospital I thought that I might never see him again but I knew that we had said all that needed to be said (despite that fact that I would rather have been able to say those things to him over and over again until the end of time). At the opening ceremony I read out ‘Northern Star’, the poem that I had written for him at the time of his stroke and, by phone, asked the nurses caring for him to tell him that many people had cried. He was a man who never felt ‘seen’ and I wanted him to know that he was seen and mattered before he left.

Often as a priestess during the conference I found myself holding the energy around the doors in ceremony and reflected on my role as gatekeeper for him as he came closer to death. I felt unprepared for the task but hoped that my priestess training and some of the energy of the conference would stay with me and get me through what needed to be done. In the end though I think that it is love that helps us through; there really is nothing more that we need. Before I left the Conference I attended a ceremony where priestesses embodied the Goddesses of the Wheel of Brigit-Ana and gave oracles. I went to Cerridwen and asked Her to give my father a gentle death. Her reply has stayed with me; “he will have his own death with its own dignity” and those words seemed to free me from feeling that I was responsible for making it ‘alright’ and allowed me to let go of expectation and react to what was happening around me, rather than constantly worrying about what it ‘should be like’.

After the Conference I went straight to see dad and we talked about my experiences and his poem being read; he told me again that he was proud of me. It was a warm and lovely afternoon and, looking back, it was the last time that we shared that connection before he began to let go and journey into death. The next few times that I saw him were more difficult, as he was becoming irritated with life in hospital and frustrated that he was no longer able to help with some difficult issues that were happening in our family. He began to close down, becoming angry and uncommunicative and looking frailer by the day. I was saddened by, what seemed to be, the loss of the warm connection that we had found but reminded myself that it was his journey and that my role was as a witness. I had always felt that he would struggle to die, that he would find it hard to let go when the time came, so perhaps that ‘winding in of the threads of connection’ was exactly what was needed at the time. Whatever the reason I trusted the wisdom of his dying.

As a final gift I took a plastic box, which I labelled ‘Ron’s Box of Love’, into the hospital with some pens and paper and asked everyone to put their ‘love’ into it. On my last few visits I, with dad more often asleep than not, spent my time writing thoughts and memories on slips of paper and placing them in the box. My niece and nephew also placed things inside, as did my brother and even one of the nurses caring for dad. It felt important to spend the time expressing our gratitude for all the things he had given us, even though he was perhaps unaware of us doing so (after he had died his nurse told me that she had read some of the notes out to him and that he had smiled). One night in bed, after a particularly difficult visit, I pulled my ‘crow cloak’, which I wear to work with the energy of the Nine Morgens, over me and I heard their voices. They told me that the Death Mother was circling but that the time was not right for Her to descend. Instead they said that dad was “with the earth one”, learning about the experience of being in a failing body and how to let go of it. I also saw a vision of beautiful autumn leaves decaying back into the earth and felt comforted. The Morgens helped me to see that dad’s journey was unfolding as it should and I began to see the gifts that even something as seemingly terrible as cancer can hold in allowing us to fully experience letting go, if we have the courage to do so. I reflected on the added pain and fear that might come from a sudden and unexpected death and felt grateful that my dad had been able to, as much as possible, experience a gentle end to his life.

In the following days I returned to work but also made another short trip to Glastonbury, where I collected water from the red and white springs and communed with the landscape to gain further strength for the days to come. The morning after my Glastonbury trip I packed my bag for work as usual but also felt that I should pack the sacred spring water and some other items from my altar to Cerridwen (which I had created on my return from the conference). I had only been in my office for a few hours when I received a phone call to say that I should come to the hospital; dad had developed a chest infection and he, and those caring for him, had made the decision not to treat it. It took me two hours to get to the hospital and, by the time I got there, he was virtually unconscious, probably because of the drugs that he was being given. My mother was there, later my brother came, and we all sat together, not saying much but glad to have one another. Eventually mum needed to sleep and my brother took her home before he had to return to his own family. He said that he would return in the morning and so dad and I were left alone.

It is almost impossible to describe that night, although I still remember every moment. Dad had been moved into a side room that morning and so we were more or less left alone, the nurses only coming in a few times to check his drip. As soon as mum and my brother were gone I set up a simple altar on a side table. I felt right to create a sense of sacred, despite being in the hospital. If we had been at home I may have been more creative (lighting candles etc) but perhaps that simple collection of objects was all that dad would have wanted; he was a man who appreciated simplicity. I called to the Death Mother, Cerridwen, asked Her to be with us and sat wondering what to do then. I held his hand and told him that I loved him, that he had done all that he needed to do and had kept us safe, that he was brave and that I was proud of him, and I told him that when the time was right he could let go, that he would know what to do. I know that he heard me because I felt him squeeze my hand and a tear rolled from his eye. I repeated the same things several times during the night and also told him all the things that I had been too scared to say, knowing that this would be our last chance in this lifetime. Often I sang to him quietly but most of the time it felt right that my only role should be as a fully present witness. I wanted him to know that I was there but didn’t want to interfere.

What I learned was that death is hard work and is something that we do, not something that is done to us. The Death Mother is our partner in the dance of death and we do have our role to play. Dad was busy that night and was constantly moving his hands. I didn’t hold his hand for much of the time because it felt important that he should be able to move as he needed to. He appeared to be making something and mumbled that he had to go to work, a place perhaps where he had been most himself and had felt most creative and appreciated. He had been a toolmaker and a few days later I mentioned some of the movements that he had been making to an ex-colleague and she gasped and said that they were the movements that he would have made at one of his machines! A few times he appeared to take some food and ate it, at one point seemingly picking some fruit from a tree. I was reminded of Leslene della-Madre’s account of her mother’s death; that her mother had burrowed into the pillow as though searching for the breast.3 It seems that there is something that sustains us even in our dying and it was quite beautiful to watch. Dad worked, and I witnessed, for many more hours; he was sometimes peaceful, sometimes busy, and sometimes set his jaw with the determined expression of a small boy. I cried many times but I smiled many times too. He only opened his eyes once more and looked at me sadly, not as father to daughter but as friend to friend. I felt that that was when we truly said goodbye and I smiled at him for one last time.

Several hours later, when his breathing had remained the same, I began to think that he would live for another day and eventually slept for a few hours. When I woke his breathing was slightly shallower but still strong and I sat singing to him softly for several more hours. He continued to work with his hands and appeared to be having a discussion with someone, his face showing questioning or approval of what was being said. I began to sense that he might have become ‘stuck’ somehow; he was a strong man who had fought all his life to do the right thing and to protect his family and, although he had accepted death, it seemed that some part of him was not ready to go. It felt right to call all the goddesses of the Wheel of Brigit-Ana, which I work with as a Priestess of Avalon, into the room. I called the Mothers of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth and Maiden, Lover, Mother, and Crone, with Brigit-Ana in the centre. I asked each of them to bring their individual gifts to dad’s last moments and to help him let go when the time was right. I told them that he was a child of their soil, that his feet had walked their sacred land all his life, and asked them that they care for him and show him the way one last time. Finally I called to our ancestors and particularly to his mother, Annie, who he had spoken of so often in his final months. I asked her to come to him and take his hand. I told him again that he was brave, that he would know what to do when the moment came to let go, and that all our love would go with him to be joined with the love of our ancestors in the Otherworld; from love into love. I began to sing but, even as I began, he gave three breaths and died. The room was completely still and I felt a deeper peace than any I had ever experienced before. It was as though there was a presence of a great and luminous darkness that was both light and dark all at the same time. I believe that, at the end, the Goddess, who is Mother of us all, and his ancestors came to show him the way. There are things that I would have wanted to be different; he had wanted to die at home, perhaps there was too much sedation, perhaps there was more that we needed to say to one another, perhaps I could have been better/different/more but these are just questions and don’t matter now. All that matters is that his was a good enough death; Ronald Henry Smith died bravely and well and I was, and am, proud to be his daughter.

I sat with dad for another hour before I called the nurses and the great feeling of peace remained with us. I felt privileged to have been allowed to witness the death of another human being. Sometimes I also felt angry; if the Goddess could have taken him so easily why couldn’t She have let him stay? But I knew that all was exactly as it should have been and that She had come with love and compassion and taken him back to Her womb, which is ever changing and ever the same.

When the nurses eventually came I asked whether I could help them wash his body and was able to bless him with water from the red and white springs before he was wrapped in a shroud and taken away from me. My brother came and we went home to tell mum; life took over once more and I was deeply comforted by the feeling of family togetherness that we had for those few days. Eventually dad’s body was brought to the funeral home and I again requested to wash his body. I had expected them to say no but they seemed pleased and gave me everything that I needed. I was left alone with him and was able to bathe him and rub peppermint oil into his body. I also washed, dried, and combed, his hair, which felt like such a deep and tender act of love that it makes me cry just to think of it. When he was placed in the woven willow coffin that he had requested I was able to visit several times to sit with him and fill the coffin with fresh herbs, my mother offered a yellow rose, my brother photos of his children. Just before the lid was sealed for his funeral I marked dad’s brow with red ochre and wished him a gentle journey in the Cauldron of the Goddess. His coffin was decorated with daisy flowers and greenery, as though we had gone out into a meadow and collected them that morning. Rosemary was woven into them for remembrance. Someone who saw his coffin said that it reminded her of a Moses basket.

After the funeral I, and several of my dear friends and fellow priestesses, watched his coffin being committed, as he had requested, to the flames and the creative and transformative fires of the Goddess, and loudly sang ‘We all come from the Goddess’. It all felt very ancient, very right, and somehow comforting, and I like to think that dad would have been pleased (and probably highly amused).

I never believed that I could sit with someone in their dying, that I could wash their body after death, that I could stand and watch them taken by the fires, but I found that I could and I will be forever grateful to my father for allowing me to learn so much about both life and death. I wasn’t able to do this because I am a priestess but because I loved him and because I know that none of us can ever be whole until our lives, and within that our deaths, are touched by the Sacred Feminine, who has been so long denied.

I was ‘high’ for several weeks after dad died; as though the stardust that clings to those who have just given birth was also clinging to me, but now I journey with grief and mourning and sit in the cave of the Morgen Crows as they tattoo the story I shared with my father into my skin; I won’t pretend that it doesn’t hurt. I don’t know how long I will stay with them but I do know that everything has changed and that I, like my father, have been through an initiation whose effect is not yet clear. There is much pain and fear in dying, there is much sorrow, but, if we can learn to see through that fear, if we can question all that we have been taught, if we can sit with the Goddess in our dying, then something deep and wounded will be healed; just wait for the brush of the heron’s wing.

©Jacqui Woodward-Smith, Samhain 2007

   1. Leslene della-Madre, Midwifing Death: Returning to the Arms of the Ancient Mother (Plain View Press, 2003) p.59.
   2. Jacqueline Woodward-Smith, unfinished poem
   3. As 1. p.56.

First published in Goddess Pages 2007 and reproduced with permission

Pagan Health Survey

2010-11-16T14:02:00.001Z

From the excellent Wild Hunt blog news of Dr Kimberly Hendrick's survey of Pagan health.

Not surprisingly, she demonstrates that many Pagans tend towards a more holistic approach to health care than do many health care professionals, which leads those Pagans to seek alternatives.

Is this a uniquely Pagan stance? How enduring is this attitude? If I get knocked over I'm not sure I'd look to lavender oil and crystals to sort me out and not many Pagans I know would either. Discrepancies between Pagan and conventional understanding of mental health are particularly apparent and interesting.

Listen in to the podcast on Friday 19th and hear it from the horses mouth!

Happy Samhain

2010-11-01T06:37:00.002Z

Whichever Pantheon we work with the story is the same: the Goddess moves from Her younger aspect into the older. She seems more brutal and distant but remains the arbiter of ultimate justice and inevitable change.

May our decent into the dark womb of Winter be warm and rich. Happy Samhain!

Virtual Day Of The Dead

2010-10-24T13:02:00.002+01:00

Trinity Church offer a virtual Day of the Dead Altar on Facebook

Upload a photo to this event wall of someone you want remembered on The Day of the Dead!

This year, Trinity Wall Street is creating a Day of the Dead Virtual altar where you may place a remembrance of someone in your life who has died.

TO PARTICIPATE simply upload your digital photos, mementos and keepsakes to the event wall. Each day, the images will be collected and on Friday, October 29th, you can see your images on the Day of the Dead Virtual Altar at http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/dayofthedead.

Also, beginning October 29th, TWEET #TWSdayofthedead and your thoughts, prayers or meditations will scroll on a live Twitter feed adjacent to the virtual altar.

I don’t suppose our Beloved Dead spend too long worrying about who’s commemorating them, remembrance has been used by many cultures to honour and in some sense to give meaning to the lives of our dead. Whether we become Pagan Ancestors or live in the ancient Greek Underworld, whether we remember our dead so that they can move more quickly towards their heaven or if we go into burial mounds to bring out the bones of our dead at certain times, remembrance seems to be hard-wired into us.

Trinity’s virtual remembrance pages aren’t the first, but they are accessible to all. I found it moving to scroll down so many pictures of Beloved Dead.

What Is Remembered, Lives.

When Your Family Can't Cope With Your Diagnosis

2010-10-19T08:21:00.000+01:00

One reason why your family might not be able to "be there" if you are faced with a terminal illness may have to do with how resilient they are. Their reticence does not mean that they do not care; rather, it reflects their (often unconscious) attitudes about life and about crises. That said, the good news is that people can move from being psychologically fragile toward being psychologically resilient.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-nowinski-phd/the-new-grief-terminal-illness_b_760706.html

Thanks to Megory Anderson at Sacred Dying Foundation for this.

Support McCollum Again!

2010-10-07T18:32:00.000+01:00

His quest for equal rights for Pagans in [McCollum's} federal court case involving prison chaplaincy and the California Department of Corrections has moved to a new phase. Furthermore, Lady Liberty League has received reports that in addition to Patrick being denied access to do Pagan ministry support for certain inmates, Pagan ministers from other traditions and organizations are also being denied.

It's so tedious. The most powerful nation in the world (so far) is a theocracy. Feh.

Last Letter

2010-10-06T19:34:00.000+01:00

Ted Hughes' heartbreaking "Last Letter"

Watching The Creation Of An Ancestor

2010-10-05T21:13:00.001+01:00

I’ve just come from sitting vigil with a dying neighbour and her family, staying with her body until the undertakers came, remaining with the family for a little while then coming downstairs into my own flat. The nights have closed in and I feel securely surrounded by the lives above me, around me, all of us doing our living and dying, childrearing, grieving, enforced rites of passage and unconscious day to day existing. I wasn’t with this family as a priestess or Pagan but as a neighbour who came to see how Maria was doing. We all knew she was dying but I arrived at the point where dying became death and was priviledged to be welcomed by her family into that intense process.

What a lot of death there’s been in the last few weeks. Of course, death occurs at every moment but lately I’ve been surrounded by a more than usual number. There’s a feeling of skill and accomplishment in not being confused, frightened or thrown off balance when confronted with the absolute facts of death; remaining grounded and present creates a particular atmosphere, whether one is robed and formal or in houseworking clothes, not least that the family doesn’t have to be concerned about someone wobbling around while they’re absorbing devastation.

I was going to post the following closer to Samhain but it feels appropriate to do it tonight. Back in 1997 when I ran the Pagan Hospice and Funeral Trust Caitlin Matthews, one of the Trustees, wrote liturgy for what we hoped would become a regular event, Ancestral Remembrance Day. I came across the old papers for the event and found them still relevant. These words later entered Caitlins book, A Celtic Devotional.

Viajan bien, Maria.

Ancestral Remembrance Day

Caitlin Matthews

This format is a suggested one only: it includes ourselves as well as our ancestors an offers opportunities to clear away what is outworn in order that the renewing tide can recycle all burdens that are clogging up our lives. Please use what you will of it, adding or changing details for your personal need and circumstances. The wording has been purposefully planned to be inclusive of all spiritual traditions. You can use this format as a personal celebration or can adapt it for small group celebration, according to need.

You may wish to set up a simple shrine. This might consist of photographs of dead family and friends, some flowers or a plant, a candle or objects from the natural world that feel ancestral to you. Our prayers and ritual patterns need not be formal. Remember your ancestors as human beings, speak to them the way you would if they stood in the room with you now. The most important thing is that we bring love and perhaps forgiveness. Forgiveness is a releasing and letting go from binding ties of fear, anger, frustration and jealousy: allowing such emotions to freely go, we simultaneously release our ancestors and ourselves from complex ancestral bequests which, without forgiveness, tend to cascade from generation to generation.

Finding new ways of celebrating and honouring our ancestors is a challenge but the rewards of such remembrance are far-encompassing. Think of ways in which you can publicly mark your own ancestors: tending family graves and decorating them at Samhain, marking and hanging wreaths on your own trees and bushes in the garden, setting up a votive light in a window, organising small gatherings among neighbours and friends, are a few of the ways we can bring our public spiritual and ancestral celebrations to a wider and more public forum.

Remember, we will be the ancestors to our decendants. Whatever patterns we lay down now will help change attitudes to death and bring the ancestors back to our communities in warming and loving ways.

SONG OF SAMHAIN
I am the hallow-tide of all souls passing
I am the bright releaser of all pain
I am the quickener of the fallen seed case
I am the glance of snow, the strike of rain.
I am the hollow of the winter twilight
I am the hearth-fire and the welcome bread
I am the curtained awning of the pillow
I am unending wisdoms golden thread

PRAYER FOR CHANGE
Weaver of Life, Reciever of Death, you teach us time and eternity and the blessings of change. In the silence of our meeting reveal to me how I also need to change. Sacred silence. Your merciful compassion is my guide.

REMEMBRANCE OF ALL INSPIRERS
I remember all in the realms of light, the dear ones and Holy Ones whose vocation is a template for my own, whose life-ways have opened my own pathway especially. May they enjoy concord, joy and felicity.

PRAYER FOR RELEASE OF BURDENS
As the year falls into darkness I ask my souls’ teacher to help me recognise what is finished, not to manipulate the powers of life and death to keep alive what is really worn out this year. I relinquish the fear and pride which may have restricted the flow of universal vitality into my life. May all the worn out things that I have harboured find their true rest and eternal home.

PRAYER FOR ANCESTRAL RELEASE
Wise Men, Wise Women, Holy Ones of all generations, I call to you to send a blessing upon all who are stuck in the past and walk the spirals of an in-turning maze: may your wisdom lead them by fresh and fruitful pathways to the blessing of the present moment. Please show to me the ancestral patterns which I inherit, the pathways of the maze which I sometimes tread myself. Help me to be aware that these pathways are not my own patterns, that I have my own way to walk.

THANKSGIVING FOR ANCESTRAL WISDOM
I give thanks for the golden links of lore that our ancestors remembered and which spill into our hands: for the treasures of tradition, for the rich heritage of wisdom, for the ancestral experience which I inherit in every cell of my body.

PRAYER FOR SOULS PURPOSE
Glad Giver, True Taker, as the raven stoops upon decay and cleanses the earth, so also do you take to yourself all scattered beings, keeping safe their souls. In the mercy of your silence I stand between life and death. May the life-blood in my veins bring me to perfect mindfulness of my souls purpose.

PRAYER FOR THE PASSING OF THE DEAD
Into the hands of the Grandparents of Life and Death I commit the souls of all who have passed from this life. I remember my own dear ones. May they find peace, clarity and restoration.

CONSIDERATION OF DEATHS PROSPECT
I consider the moment of my own death: may I be well prepared and worthy to enter the Land of the Living. May my life be lived with virtue and integrity, may my soul friends help me prepare for my death, however unlikely it now seems, that my dear ones are not weighted down with cares and responsibilities that I could have spared them. I make frank appraisal of the things which I have left undone which must be completed before I die. I consider also the legacy of wisdom I bequeath to my decendents.

HONOURING OUR LIFE
Glad Giver, True Taker, you hold the threads of life within your hands; both the greatest and the smallest creature is in your care; as I enter the cave of your silence I am remade, as the day is reborn of the night.

CONCLUSION
I light this candle to shine as a beacon for those who go homewards to their death.
May all who have died without anyone to mourne them or bid them farewell

be blessed and released from their wanderings.
May Holy Ones and Wise Ones from the realms of peace guide all wandering souls to their true abode.
May all who have died violently and without opportunity to prepare their passing

be peaceful and enter into the treasury of souls.

I raise this light for all who fear death.
May they learn that the dark is no darkness at all, that the end of this life is but the beginning of another way of living.
The blessing of love, light and life
Be upon the ancestors
Now and forever.

Happy Equinox

2010-09-21T07:56:00.002+01:00

My daughter and I went to see Starhawk last night at St James’ Church, Piccadilly. I enjoyed and was grateful for how ordinary Starhawk was: she didn’t offer to Change My Life, she hadn’t seen angels as a child or been given Deep Teachings from otherworldly beings that compelled her to pass Ancient Wisdom ™ on to us. Instead she spoke about permaculture, paying young people to grow vegetables rather than sell drugs and finding people from their own communities to teach instead of parachuting in naïve idealists. She spoke about fungi and microorganisms that thrive on and neutralise pollutants.

My girl was mildly disappointed by the talk. In her own quiet, sceptical way she wanted to be immersed in magic and ritual, to hear a great leader speak about Goddesses and power, learning how to access internal authority and effect change both externally and in ones own essential nature.

Which was what Starhawk spoke about but in such grounded terms and in such an ordinary manner that a young person had to retune away from the hyperbolic ad-speak of so many ‘alternative’ presenters to tune into the regular, everyday voice of someone who has been doing something that works for them and for people who don’t share or care about their philosophy. Disenfranchised young men probably couldn’t give a stuff about theories of interconnectedness and would rather shoot themselves dead than invoke the Goddess but can see the practical value of making a profit from something legal and useful in which they have a personal investment.

My appreciation of Starhawks talk has grown during the night as the experience settled into me. I, too, love a peak experience but the more I see people manufacturing them – the desperate ‘shaman’ disinterested in everyone other than the person with power, the dreadlocked white woman who must howl, the catastrophically anxious Reiki flower essence practitioner – the more precious and illusive such experiences become. I didn’t experience euphoria last night and a small part of me was disappointed; I wanted to break my heart open in the company of my daughter who would simultaneously experience an awakening and homecoming into my own religion. It didn’t happen.

But we walked through London arm in arm under the almost-full moon, she listened as I explained that Paganism is, if it is anything, about Being Here Now, becoming a grounded, practical person concerned with and part of the natural world. Any damn fool can buy a cheap fake turquoise bracelet and jump around under the title Earth Warrior, but it takes a different mindset to plan and grow a garden, a family, a home, and to be of use to people who don’t want to see divas but do want to eat. Sometimes, perhaps, pretending to see angels is an fledgling part of that mindset.

So this week contains both the autumnal equinox (let's just call it the autumnal equinox rather than impose a medieval boys name onto it for no good reason) and a full harvest moon. I wish you a good yield from this years work, a continued gathering of fruit and root and shelves filled with glowing preserves and stored abundance. I wish for us all an understanding of the vital importance of the mundane as well as a yearning for the transcendent, and a dark green appreciation of the immanence of the ordinary.

World Suicide Prevention Day

2010-09-10T16:53:00.002+01:00

September 10th is World Suicide Prevention Day

Here's the main page for the event and here's the link for Maytree Respite Centre.

Maytree offers a short stay in a safe residential setting where you can talk, reflect and rest - and restore hope. Maytree is a place where you will be heard, respected and accepted, without judgement and in confidence.

I've Got The Fear

2010-09-08T19:23:00.004+01:00

NB - I'm really sorry about the irratic links. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

Old Woman made her presence known and the old woman, she mixed up some of the redstain soup powder stuff and the sacred sisters drank it and got a bit affected. They laughed and made a couple of bad jokes, and lay down on their beds and drank more. And people kept on talkin’ and singin’ and tellin’ stories and the sisters got dreamier and drank more of it, and soon we knew they were somewheres with bright colours and new music and good feelin’ air and then, almost all at the same time, they crossed over and left their meat behind on their beds.

Anne Cameron

Daughters of Copper Woman

The Woman’s Press p65

...Cleopatra sent to Caesar a letter which she had written and sealed; and, putting everybody out of the monument but her two women, she shut the doors. Caesar, opening her letter, and finding pathetic prayers and entreaties that she might be buried in the same tomb with Antony, soon guessed what was doing. At first he was going himself in all haste, but, changing his mind, he sent others to see. The thing had been quickly done. The messengers came at full speed, and found the guards apprehensive of nothing; but on opening the doors, they saw her stone-dead, lying upon a bed of gold, set out in all her royal ornaments. Iras, one of her women, lay dying at her feet, and Charmion, just ready to fall, scarce able to hold up her head, was adjusting her mistress's diadem. And when one that came in said angrily, 'Was this well done of your lady, Charmion?' 'Extremely well,' she answered, 'and as became the descendant of so many kings'; and as she said this, she fell down dead by the bedside.

Plutarch, Life of Antony (LXXXV.2-3, Dryden trans.)

When Crito heard , he signaled to the slave who was standing by. The boy went out, and returned after a few moments with the man who was to administer the poison which he brought ready mixed in a cup. When Socrates saw him, he said, 'Now, good sir, you understand these things. What must I do?'

'Just drink it and walk around until your legs begin to feel heavy, then lie down. It will soon act.' With that he offered Socrates the cup.

The latter took it quite cheerfully without a tremor, with no change of color or expression. He just gave the man his stolid look, and asked, 'How say you, is it permissible to pledge this drink to anyone? May I?'

The answer came, 'We allow reasonable time in which to drink it.'

'I understand', he said, 'we can and must pray to the gods that our sojourn on earth will continue happy beyond the grave. This is my prayer, and may it come to pass.' With these words, he stoically drank the potion, quite readily and cheerfully. Up till this moment most of us were able with some decency to hold back our tears, but when we saw him drinking the poison to the last drop, we could restrain ourselves no longer. In spite of myself, the tears came in floods, so that I covered my face and wept - not for him, but at my own misfortune at losing such a man as my friend. Crito, even before me, rose and went out when he could check his tears no longer.

Apollodorus was already steadily weeping, and by drying his eyes, crying again and sobbing, he affected everyone present except for Socrates himself.

Knowing that John would be in control of his death was a tremendous source of comfort for me as well as for John. Indeed at a stage when MND had almost totally eroded his dignity, knowing he would have that control gave some dignity back to him. John's death was sad but my grief at losing him was tempered by the control he had over the way he died. Having said our goodbyes, I held his hand as the barbiturate overdose took effect: he fell into a deep sleep which was followed by unconsciousness and, after 20 minutes, death.

"kaze sasofu / hana yori mo naho / ware wa mata / haru no nagori o / ika ni toyasen."

More than the cherry blossoms, Inviting a wind to blow them away, I am wondering what to do, With the remaining springtime.

Asano Naganori

I’ve been around an unusual number of deaths lately and it’s made me slightly panicky. I’m not afraid of death but the more deaths I come into contact with the more worried I become about my own and the people I love processes of dying.

You’ll know that I’m a supporter of voluntary euthanasia which has become better understood in recent years even if it remains an impossibility for most of us who don’t have the resources to arrange a trip to Switzerland. Now, rather than heavy-handed legislation preventing us from taking direct control of our lives it’s the dear old market economy. As voluntary euthanasia becomes more attractive so more centres will be created and the cost will come down. I hope that happens soon. The free market is much better respected than people’s basic needs.

What’s making me anxious is the way in which I’ve seen people die recently, in ways that have been described as natural, but which have not been so. Doctors getting the willies around analgesia and not giving enough so that a patient who is in the final stages of dying lingers around in pain for longer than necessary: the intent is clearly to keep doctors safe rather than to offer the dying person anything. Nurses who frankly detest patients, something I find so repulsive and disgraceful that I don’t know where to begin. Nursing in the UK changed out of all recognition as soon as it became professional, something that I was in strong support of when I was a nurse myself, but the results have altered my opinion 180 degrees.

There are many other sites that discuss the shameful attitude of too many people who are in a nursing role and it is a fact that you can starve, face a serious risk of acquired infection and are certain to be subjected to contempt if you’re unlucky enough to find yourself on a ward of any description but more likely if you’re on a long stay medical (low status) ward. Which is where many of us will die. There’s nothing you or I can do about it since the causes are numerous and beyond our individual control, but this is the way it is, and it frightens me. I do not want to be at the mercy of miserable, cruel people; to have my symptoms rather than my self treated; to spend my last weeks in pain that can be dealt with but isn’t, or surrounded by people who don’t speak English and who therefore can’t care for me. That basic communication is no longer considered necessary for health care professionals is a measure of how hospitals now function.

Bringing our dying home seems to be one way to ensure that they will at least be paid some attention, and in the UK there are groups that will support us. But this work disproportionately affects the elderly and it’s hard for a person in their 70’s or older to physically care for someone who’s ill. Some statutory help is available and, once again, of an almost universally poor standard but nevertheless if they can do the heavy stuff and then get out it relieves some of the burden from people least able to cope with it. Even this barely acceptable offering is threatened by government cuts.

In reply to my blog of July 09 Joseph offered the following:

Amongst the Heathen Norse, it was not unknown to kill someone with a weapon when they were too old and infirm to fight. Doing so would offer them the chance to enter into Valhalla (because they had been killed by a weapon) rather than dying the "straw death" (dying in their bed of straw) and being denied even the chance of such a hero's reward.

Now, I’m not proposing that we immediately run off and follow this example, but it does illustrate that there are different cultural attitudes to bringing and receiving death than those we’re familiar with. We live in Christian societies, we were brought up, knowingly or otherwise, as Christians and many of our attitudes remain Christian. Often that’s entirely fine but when it comes to this incredibly sacred event it’s not automatically good enough or appropriate for Pagans.

How can we make use of this research , which seems to demonstrate that a naturally occurring chemical in a plant well known for it’s shamanic properties, reduces misery? (The comments following the piece show just how dreadful palliative care in the US can be, when medicine and populist ideology collide.) Using LSD for similar purposes has a solid history. Our counter culture cousins may or may not be using psilocybin when they become terminally ill and Pagans with our dedication to the natural world, could discuss in practical terms if, how and why we would use it too.

We do so much work in the non-practical: envisioning this and that to release wandering souls, energy work, working with God-forms, and it seems clear that this helps distract us and give us the illusion of control. Just like non-Pagans few of us work with the dying and so can be unprepared. When we’re confronted by the reality of someone in extremis it’s very tempting to unleash a panoply of techniques to distance ourselves from them. I can tell you that if anyone imposes Reiki on me when I’m dying I will haunt them for a good, long time. Ditto if any crystal is brought near me. Neither do I want anyone singing over me or twanging a tuning fork in my ear when my heels are going black because I haven’t been moved for hours on end. What I want is to be touched with compassion and care, to have my skin cared for, to be looked in the eye, to be seen as a living, precious individual in the active process of dying.

I dearly want someone to be compassionate enough to hear me when I say I’ve had enough; to bring me the equivalent of hemlock when I ask for it, someone who knows how to source it, prepare it and administer it; someone who will stay with me fearlessly as the drug gets to work and who will care for my body when it’s over. That could be a nurse or doctor. A competent drug dealer would do. But how wonderful if it could be a priestess or priest.

Connection

2010-09-02T21:34:00.003+01:00

In 2007 Dave Mearns and Mick Cooper wrote a book called ‘Relational Depth’ a minute part of which covered Mearn’s counselling work with the client ‘Dominic’. One sentence between Means and Dominic went like this:

“Dom, be here, be here drunk, but don't play fucking games with me.”

and small bomb went of in the Person Centred counselling world. You can read the rationale for the opposition to this way of being here:

Objections were founded in theory and as such are sound and worthy of discussion but in the midst of the debate was the unspoken, something indefinable, and for me it came down to issues of who counsellors often are, who clients often are, the ways in which we define ourselves and most importantly, the terror that many counsellors have of actual connection. Connection is the primary concern of the book and the work of the counsellor.

In reply to my previous piece Amanda commented:

I found myself absolutely tongue tied when I spoke to her for the first time after the event. We do not share a spiritual path, but even if it were so I do not know what I could have said to her. I am not a mother, I cannot begin to know the pain of losing a child. This is one area that troubles me as I consider continuing on the path to fully involved pagan clergy... will I ever be able to find the "language of mystery" to help with this very particular kind of grief with no knowledge of that relationship myself?

which touches on an important aspect of counsellor or clergy training: how do we empathise with people who have had an experience that we have not?

The pat answer is that we all share similar experiences and can use them to empathise with the experience of the client. There’s some truth in this but the existence of specialist support groups speaks to the importance of the truly shared experience. People can communicate in intimate shorthand without having to explain or pull their punches for the sake of the listener, a shared journey with close companions, people who don’t need to be told everything for there to be a sense of kinship.

Connection has been categorised and simplified, codified and reduced to a technique. “You can empathise with a woman who’s lost her baby because your dog died.” Not really. One of my peers wanted to prove that online counselling was able to provide Buber’s I-Thou relationship between client and counsellor. That this person wanted to prove anything in research was a measure of her need. Despite discussions she went off and did the research which, astonishingly, showed that an I-Thou relationship was possible in online counselling.

Buber spoke of moments of I-Thou relationship, brief (but timeless) instances beyond speech touching the realm of mystery; fragile, unrehearsed, attuned to agape. This goes beyond empathy into the realms of perfect love and perfect trust, connection rather than relationship, existential meaning-making and life purpose.

Buber is wonderful to read: dense, rich and complicated it takes time to absorb his wisdom. There are many other authors who build on his work and create their own whose writing is accessible and not in the least mystical without losing any gravitas or wisdom. I entirely recommend Working at Relational Depth by Dave Mearns and Mick Cooper which brings together the philosophy and research into connection of many of the most important modern voices on the subject – and builds beautifully on their foundations. Try anything by Peggy Natiello, Brian Thorne and Irvin Yalom.

Immerse yourself in their writing, try feelings on for size, respectfully experiment with your friends – see how it is to truly attempt to move into their frame of reference, see what, if anything happens. But here’s the magic ingredient: expect nothing to happen.

A very respected Pagan leader recently expressed his disgust with someone we’ve known for many years: “I've tried for years to make her less miserable. I don’t care any more.” How awful of this woman to not do what he wants. Who knows what she needs to do, or why? One thing is certain, she doesn’t exist for people to change, to make her easier to be around, to heal and Paganism is veritably heaving up with healers. Physician, heal thyself. When I’m made queen of the world all counsellors and clergy shall be made to repeat this every month, and best it be when the moon is full: “I am attempting to heal myself when I work with clients.” For better or worse.

If we have an agenda it can only come down to “Let me do no harm and let me be truly of service to this individual.” Not to heal them. Not to make them feel better. Not to stop their pain. Not to make contact or do the I-Thou thing. But to be available and worthy of contact.

So much of the time I don’t know what I’m doing with clients and ironically if I can be comfortable in the not-knowing, trusting the process, then I know something is going well.

The Power of Language

2010-08-28T14:49:00.008+01:00

Babies are strong and can tolerate conditions that adults can’t. Whilst there’re excellent evolutionary reasons for newborns of all species to be resilient it’s also humbling and touching to hear about the struggle for life and potent maternal instinct of James and Kate Ogg in Australia.

These kinds of events are hailed as miracles in some cultures and such is the relief and gratefulness of the parents and loved ones that it’s entirely understandable. Then believers come along and perceive it all as an act of their god, something that makes many classical theologians depressed: if their god is wholly simple – that is, unaffected and beyond all we can understand – then how would their god get involved in that world? If that involvement occurs then their god is no longer godlike.

Protestant theology, which perceives the bible as their god and their god as intensely interested in them, disagrees which in fact bears a close relationship to how many Pagans function. Many of us have a personal relationship with our gods and they with us. So what might Paganisms response to the powerful evidence of one child’s will to survive be?

Personally, I don’t believe in miracles but this doesn’t prevent me from experiencing intense interest or from being very moved by James’ struggle and becoming even more convinced of the power of physical touch and physical connection to change destiny. I’m aware of only a few Pagan responses to this story and they’re all based in wonder and joy. In some of the replies there’s just a hint – which I, all good midwives, good neonatal nurses and many mothers share – of “This goes a long way towards further proving that skin-to-skin contact between newborn and mother has enormous consequences.”

(The link works in formatting but not in fact! Take a look at

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD003519/frame.html

Maternal instinct is frequently correct and is sometimes the difference between life and death. Pagans seem to know that as a scientific and beautiful reality rather than as a miracle.

One or two Pagan responses have given me pause. I doubt any would say they believe in miracles, not one has any ill intent behind their comments, none would dream of using this event to proselytise or judge. But they use a language of poetry which bestows numen and a particular weight to what they say. Just as we respond to specialised medical language or the language of advertising so we respond to the language of ‘Karmic connection’ ‘ a holy gift’ ‘the quiet voice that knows truth’ and so on. That’s why the language of ritual is different from mundane language and it’s why I’ve stopped using what I perceive to be the language of mystery outside of ritual.

Because in this case it makes the mothers of dead babies failures. They didn’t have the karmic connection. Why didn’t the Goddess give them the gift of a live child? Despite hours of skin-to-skin contact and yearning and communication they didn’t bring their dead child back to life, perhaps because they didn’t listen hard enough for or were unworthy of the voice of truth. That is clearly not the intent of people who have used the language of mystery to communicate their feelings and it can’t help but have that effect.

Every mother and father that has had a premature or full term stillbirth or neonatal death will be pitched back into stinging grief by this story. Did they do
enough? Did their child have a chance that they didn’t take? Did they put too much trust in their medical team? How were they deficient? There’s no mother of a dead or disabled child who at some point doesn’t ask herself this, even if she knows that the answer is an unambiguous no. It’s only very recently that mothers were allowed to have anything to do with their dead baby. Imagine our mothers, grandmothers, other older women now wondering if they’d only been allowed to hold their baby, what if, what if. Lets not add things to feel dreadful about.

The kind of attention to pain which concerns itself with unknowing and doubt, semi-consciousness and the unconscious, can be approached most effectively through careful and specialised use of the language of mystery, sometimes through formal ritual and sometimes in less formal shifting of awareness. When we listen to and respond to people in pain this cultural language can be useful but it’s not the language of the everyday. This is why priestesses and priests are trained. It can come naturally but it has to be used carefully. Words have power.

I’ve long had a particular bugbear about the careless use of poetic language, language used to change the writers and the readers consciousness and which marks the person who speaks in this manner as seperate from the poor dumb mundanes; it’s become used by every Pagan to describe brushing their teeth. Life can be tough, tedious and banal which is just as important to our human understanding as joy, peak experiences and excitement; arguably more important to get to grips with and understand. Whilst all of creation is sacred and we are sacred beings living sacredly as part of it, we also have to maintain some perspective and keep our knickers on. Getting breathless about canning pears is a tad hysterical. And using the language of ritual casually and habitually can have unintended but horrendous consequences.

http://www.uk-sands.org/

http://www.handonline.org/

http://www.sandsvic.org.au/

http://www.marchofdimes.com/professionals/14332_1196.asp#head3

Buddhist Resource

2010-08-17T23:42:00.000+01:00

"To people who know but little Dharma, death seems something strange, something never before experienced. And because of this at least such people fear death. The question is, do we have need to fear death, or not? And if not, then why not? The answer here depends on the actions of individual people. Some people will have cause to fear dying, others will have no cause. What are the causes, which bring about the fear of death, and what are the causes which lead to a peaceful death?"

Preparing for your last breath

Laurence – Khantipalo.

Lots of information on preparing for death, dying and after death, from the Buddhist Dharma Education Association.

Pagan Medical Ethics

2010-08-09T08:16:00.011+01:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10899275

The concept of Pagan ethics is getting a good airing; as a community we’re ready to think about our responsibilities as well as our rights. But I do wonder how, or even if, we approach medical issues that other religions struggle with, things like fertility, quality of human life and the artificial manipulation of genes. Individual choice is part of the post-modern mindset which Paganism has most effectively embraced and of course no matter what any religious authorities decide on most individual religious people go their own way, choosing to have or not have assisted conception, abortions, genetic treatments for conditions such as spinal muscular atrophy and so on. Their religious leaders and societies have the debate, understandings are generated but followers generally ignore them. Beyond vegitarianism and in the US, the abortion debate (based in politics much more than religion) we're yet to really get going.

News of Ciaran Finn-Lynch and his life-saving trachea transplant grown from his own stem cells reminds us that medical science is both exciting and moving at a speed that may often be beyond what we can keep up with. New guidelines around the use of genetic tests for children demonstrates that philosophy may not move as fast as science or the free market but is profoundly necessary to protect the individual, family, society and the most vulnerable from the excesses of both. Freedom of choice for the parent has, in this situation and others, overwhelmed the rights of the child. Post modernism and raw capitalism are ironically close relatives.

So where might Paganisms start with a deasophy of assisted conception? Do we start with ‘An it harm none . . .” or the damage that is being done to the Earth by the unsustainable numbers of humans draining the basic resource of water? We already use medical technologies like surgery, chemotherapy and antibiotics so why not AI and IVF? Where do our responsibilities as a human community intersect with our individual human rights? Might we embrace infertility not only as part of the natural world that is as worthy of respect as other aspects of fertility, as much a demonstration of balance in nature as flood and fire but now also a much needed natural gift to the Earth? Might we forgo or limit reproduction as part of a sustainable relationship with the planet? This might be the most pointed definition of ‘Bioethics.’

Vegans have long experience of coping with the ethics of animal-derived medicines and treatments born from vivisection but what about the ethics of human research? Are Pagans who put themselves forward for medical research honouring animals or dishonouring their own bodies? How does being paid for the risk effect the ethics?

And since we don’t consider our children Pagan how do we make decisions about our children’s health? Is there a uniquely Pagan way or do we just tag along with our friends?

There are often no answers to these kinds of questions but in attempting to answer them we discover what is fundamentally important to us and why, not just viscerally but materially. Speaking about inter-relatedness and earth consciousness is one thing; but how do we relate to the realities of disability, poverty, mental illness?

Obstetric and neonatal care and life expectancy has improved so radically that there are already a greater number of people with learning disabilities than there were a decade ago and this number is expected to rise.

In the UK most people who have learning disabilites live with their families and 40,000 live in institutions. Although a tiny minority of these institutions are excellent (measured by the kinds of relationships you would want for yourself rather than a managerial tick box exercise) most people in institutions are not treated as well as they might be. Here are some cheery statistics:

•    Four times as many people with learning disabilities die of preventable causes as people in the general population.

•    People with learning disabilities are 58 times more likely to die before the age of 50 than the general population

•    Almost one in three people with learning disabilities say they do not have any contact with friends. One in twenty have no friends and do not see anyone from their family

•    40 per cent of people say they would like more say in what goes on in their everyday life

•    Nearly one in three people say they did not feel safe using public transport

•    Nearly one in three people with learning disabilities said someone had been rude or offensive to them in the last year. In most cases, the person who bullied them was a stranger

•    Only one in four women have ever had a cervical smear

•    More than one in ten people with learning disabilities say they never feel confident.

People with learning disabilities have a right to life. They can have rich and fulfilled lives and improve the lives of people without learning difficulties simply by being present in them. The reality is that most will die young and live as second-class citizens. Like the elderly and mentally ill they are too often used as a form of employment scheme for people who would not be able to work in an environment where clients can make use of a meaningful complaints process.

How might a Pagan ethic approach this situation? People who detest the meat industry can become vegan and have an economic effect, but how do we respond to a reality that is located between ethics and economics, between total expediency (involuntary euthanasia) and a total social revolution that values fire-fighters, teachers and people with disabilities as much as CEO’s and celebrities? We know it’s wrong to euthanize people with disabilities (Why? Just because Nazi’s did it? Is there a Pagan take on right to life, voluntary and involuntary euthanasia, quality of life?) but we are, in truth, killing them off through direct and indirect neglect and many will live lives filled with casual, catastrophic and everyday abuse.

Some of these issues are addressed directly in Starhawks' Truth or Dare whose understanding of power dynamics have been taken up by academics and practitioners. If Paganisms are more than Reclaiming what are the other Pagan ways of approaching modern medical ethics?

The temptation is to look for ultimate answers where there may only be fragmentary ones if any exist at all. But engaging with the questions, examining reality as it is rather than as we wish it was; developing new and decidedly Pagan understandings of what, why and how we value the Apparent world (as opposed and in relation to our colossal valuing of the Otherworlds) and the people in it (as opposed and in relation to the concepts of animals, Land and Nature) demonstrates a readiness to be taken seriously as part of that world.

Start here with a feminist, relationship ethic and please feel free to contribute your own favourite
Pagan medical ethic pages and sources.

Spirituality in Cancer Care

2010-06-28T17:47:00.004+01:00

Facebook is a wonderful thing. Thanks to William for bringing this to my and all his FB friends attention.

Spirituality in Cancer Care: comprehensive, peer-reviewed information for health professionals about religious and spiritual coping in cancer care. This summary is reviewed regularly and updated as necessary by the PDQ Supportive and Palliative Care Editorial Board .

I don't know why the PDQ link won't work, please cut and paste this:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancerinfo/pdq/supportive-care-board

Sacred Dying

2010-06-18T08:30:00.010+01:00

Megory Anderson of the Sacred Dying Foundation brought the following piece from the New York Times to the attention of her Facebook friends: Making Sure Patients Don’t Die Alone. The article demonstrates how enlightened young doctors can be but it also throws light onto the way we perceive death and dying: a failure to cure, an opportunity for litigation, perhaps something rather shameful. It is extraordinary that something as basic as someone being around when a person dies makes the news.

Paganism has an uneasy relationship with death. We talk about life, death and rebirth, celebrate Samhain, honour deities Who deal out death as well as Those from Whom life flows knowing that They’re often one and the same. But when it comes to the reality of the end of life we are, unsurprisingly, products of our societies. Fragmented, isolated, we can perform endless ritual and still find ourselves helpless in the determinedly real and unromantic event of death.

So many of our rites of passage are organised to be performed at seasonal gatherings but of course when we begin actively dying we’re unlikely to be able to travel, to be away from the things that make living and sleeping less uncomfortable, to have time between medical appointments or simply to have enough energy. The Pagan dying, like everyone else’s dying, disappear.

It doesn’t help that, like giving birth, dying happens in its own time. I like the analogy of midwifery for both birth and death but there are important differences: if a labouring woman encounters difficulties the midwife needs to be technically skilled because things can go very wrong very quickly. There is nothing to go wrong in the physical processes of death. Many physical symptoms can be relieved, many psychological processes can be facilitated but the outcome will always and inevitably be the same. It can even be (whisper it low) tedious to be with a person who is dying when they just don't die. Birth midwives learn to sit on their hands, be attentive and act swiftly when it's needed. People attending the dying learn to be attentive and do very little, actively.

Dying is a high energy event, it draws people to it, we all want to be in some way connected to this ultimate drama. Being involved with death brings out the worst as well as the best in people perhaps because there’s no set way to ‘do’ it. As the dying person becomes less connected to the everyday world there's a risk that they become a means for others to take a little limelight. All that unfocused energy around death and dying has to ground somewhere, and when doing nothing is the most important thing to do we can all get frustrated.

You’ll know by now that I trip up over the word ‘Healing’. I don’t like it because it’s routinely abused, particularly so around the dying. The only healing for death is death itself and it’s self evident that this hasn’t been thought through or even thought about by a great majority. People offering candle lighting, prayers, ritual and so on for the ‘healing’ of a person who is actively dying would be horrified to think they were actively working towards someone death, or conversely that they were holding a person unnaturally in a life that is finished.

The Sacred Dying Foundation is one of the premier resources around death and dying, offering ways in which to focus some of that instinctive anxiety and interest, to be helpfully involved. The following is reproduced with kind permission.

10 Tips for Vigiling and Establishing Sacred Presence

Megory Anderson

Reclaim Grace and Dignity for Your Dying Loved One
10 ideas to engage family and friends in “Spiritual Presence” for your loved-one.

1: De-clutter the bedside area.
Set the space apart using candles, music, etc., to create a calm, peaceful atmosphere. This will be the “sacred space” around your dying loved-one.

2: Within this physical sacred space, keep the focus of any conversation on the dying person.
   Allow intentional conversation with or about the person, but no idle chatter among visitors: keep that outside.

3: Take cues from your loved-one regarding practical matters.
    If there is no indication that s/he would like to discuss or handle practical things, keep these things well away from the sacred space. If you know the person’s wishes regarding privacy, make sure they are respected.

4: Take turns or assign someone as “door keeper” to shepherd the transition from the outside hubbub to the sacred space.
It can often be helpful to establish a daily or weekly schedule with family members.

5: Take cues from your loved-one regarding not only physical needs, but emotional and spiritual as well.
Don’t take center stage with your own emotions. While your own needs are certainly valid, if all eyes are on you and the comfort you need, consider stepping outside the sacred space to allow the focus to re-shift to the loved-one.

6: When s/he begins actively dying, the most important element of vigiling is your calm presence. It is a solemn gift.
To hold this quiet space so your loved-one can transition as easily as possible, use tools that you have already gathered in a “vigiling toolkit”. Items to include: special objects to hold that have personal or religious meaning (a prayer shawl, a favorite scarf, a rosary), reflective readings or books or prayers, music, candles (flame or battery). Traditional prayers are often used, but other favorite readings can be appropriate, too. The idea is to personalize these items for your loved-one.

7: If you are at home, don’t be surprised if family pets want to participate.
If possible, let them behave naturally: on the bed or on your lap, etc.

8: Friends/family who can’t physically be there during this time can still be involved from afar.
For example, someone long-distance could be in charge of mass communications, informational emails, etc. There are many online choices such as candle-lighting websites, creating a Facebook page with updates, and other internet options.

9: Ask absent friends/family to vigil with you at a designated time once or twice daily.
They could do this from anywhere in the world, simply taking a few minutes in shared thought/prayer, listening to music, lighting a candle, etc.

10: Don’t worry about making practical calls immediately after s/he passes.
Spending some time in silence can be profound and meaningful. Then, consider designating one person to go do practical things while one continues to sit quietly for as long as possible.

© Megory Anderson 2010
www.SacredDying.org

Tribal Care?

2010-05-24T15:10:00.003+01:00

Walking back from the post office this morning I met my very elderly neighbour. We stopped and talked for a little while and I noticed how frail she’s suddenly become. “I want to fly away,” she said making a gesture skywards, like an aeroplane taking off.

6 months ago her middle aged son and only child had a fit and died in her living room leaving her alone in the world for the first time in her life. Her companion animals have predeceased her and although she has a number of friends who happily help life is changing too quickly around her. Our estate is on the verge of demolition and whilst being forced to move is stressful enough for anyone, for elderly people it can prove fatal. The anecdotal evidence for this is strong enough and it’s backed up in a metastudy which demonstrates that the elderly can’t be treated as units to be shuffled about as everyone else’s needs require.

This afternoon another study winged its way into my inbox, this time from the Association of Therapeutic Communities list. From our enlightened Nordic neighbours comes research about an old peoples home as a therapeutic community.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a787554730~frm=titlelink

Here’s the final sentence of the abstract:

“The results suggest that in all organizational sub-processes - housing, treatment, administration, team work, know-how -the old people's therapeutic community functioned significantly better than the controls, namely traditional old people's homes.”

Therapeutic communities, although created and run for and by mentally ill people, are basically healthy intentional communities. Here in the UK there was one Pagan intentional community and now it seems to’ve disappeared. Why can’t we manifest what we say we really desire? The word ‘tribe’ is so overused as to become trite, so what’s preventing us from creating tribal life in a modern setting?

The non-religious intentional communities I’ve visited over the years all have money at the centre, root and heart of their being, it’s what’s allowed them to succeed. They are also highly regulated often to the point of exclusion, sometimes to the point of madness, but these boundaries hold everything else together. The religious communities I’ve visited are sustained by money, tradition, benign dictatorship and the individual intent to submit to the communities foundations. Of course, where the community prevents people from leaving abuse occurs but I sometimes wonder if some of what we call abuse might actually be appropriate communal and personal discipline.

Is Paganism ready for this kind of surrender and engagement?

Modern Paganisms began as a way for each individual to become her own priestess and in the best of worlds there would be no need for chaplains at all. Our companions would, as they sometimes do now, support us when we’re admitted to hospital; we would be personally prepared to manage our own deaths if we were involved in some kind of lethal event; we would have our chronically ill and dying close at hand, as part of everyday life and the manifestation of our beliefs. I’m worried that in our concern to compete with other religions on their terms we lose sight of what’s important to us. I long to offer my neighbour more than I do now and I long for that to be offered to my family too. Being part of a tribe, a community, isn’t a retreat from life but a deep engagement with it and for Pagans, a bottomless reciprocal engagement with all life. Can we manage it? Have we the individual and collective will?

Cherry Hill Seminary

2010-05-21T05:46:00.012+01:00

A guest post from Cherry Hill’s Executive Director, Holli Emore.

Here in the United States we have an interesting legacy connected with the term “professional” as applied to chaplaincy and other religious service. The same spirit which drove many of our early European settlers to make that daring leap across the ocean into the unknown also inspired a new way of looking at religious clergy. At the same time that new Americans rejected the hierarchies of monarchy, they often embraced self-taught clergy. The similarities between institutional religion and institutional government must have been all-too-obvious in the atmosphere which birthed democracy. Also, trained educated clergy were not always available (this is sometimes the case in rural areas even today). Protestantism is nothing if not democratic, though like democracy, it is no stronger than the weakest link, which is often a well-meaning but uneducated minister/leader. We so strongly hold to the value of individual inspiration and vision that we too easily overlook what may be gained by educating our clergy.

At Cherry Hill Seminary we find ourselves in an ongoing examination of what it means to serve the spiritual needs of a community, what skills and education are beneficial, or even essential, to such service, and where we should either forge new ground or look at the successful models developed by other religions. Certainly, we could spend all of our time negotiating the maze of professional standards put out there by professional associations, standards for pastoral counselors, therapists, chaplains, prison chaplains, hospital chaplains, and more. The U.S. military has been very rigid about the education it requires of its chaplains, but then relaxed those standards when the Middle East conflict exceeded the numbers the armed forces were prepared to serve spiritually. Part of the CHS push for future accreditation has been to satisfy requirements which may now be negotiable.

Nevertheless, setting a high bar for those who serve, and, therefore, lead us, is a good idea. One need not look far to encounter spiritual leaders who have ranged from mediocre to pathological and even murderous. One of the first courses all CHS students must take is Ethics and Boundaries. Most people think that ethics is an intuitive exercise, and trust that the Rede or the Golden Rule will get them through a rough patch. Our course challenges a student in every way possible, and by the end of the course each student has produced their own detailed code of ethics. More importantly, those students are better prepared to face the real world, with its unpredictable, ever-changing barrage of issues, predicaments and gray areas.

And then there is the reality that hospitals, prisons and other institutional settings simply must establish some kind of standards for the people they allow to have access to their clients. Ultimately, they are held responsible for the standard of care, including spiritual, and so it is only fair that they ask us to demonstrate that we are up to the task. There are worlds of issues that the average individual has no way of knowing about operating in such an environment. We will be far better able to deliver something of value to those clients if we have had the proper preparation.

To some people, the word “professional” implies that they are paid a salary for the work. Salaried Pagan clergy are not likely to abound in my lifetime. Rather, we propose that “professional” in this context signals a level of excellence perhaps not found among the rank and file volunteers. Most of us have a healthy respect for the training and apprentice-ship required of a goldsmith or accountant or social worker. But we resist the idea that a spiritual worker may need specialized training, too. I look forward to a day, in my lifetime, when Pagan clergy command respect for their expertise, not just from the mundane world, but from our own.

ps - M. Macha Nightmare's interview with TWPT offers further background on CHS.

Finding Support

2010-05-18T08:18:00.004+01:00

Speaking as an outsider, there seems to be a paradox at work in the American psyche. European people escaping religious persecution gave up homes, land and long generations of national identity to begin an entirely new life thousands of miles from all they knew for the sake of religious freedom. Almost as soon as the first principals of that freedom were enacted they were challenged to prevent Catholics from openly practicing, and so the struggle to limit religious freedom has continued right up to the present day. Despite the separation of church and state religion is absolutely central to every aspect of every American persons life, whatever their belief or lack of it.

It means that there’s is an instinctive neighbourliness in many American communities, people tend to pull together and put their money where their mouth is, willing to support charities and services in a way that we don’t here in the UK. The founding optimism and work ethic means that where people can, they tend to. And atheists are the most mistrusted group in America. (1)

40% of respondents characterized atheists as a group that "does not at all agree with my vision of American society", putting atheists well ahead of every other group, with the next highest being Muslims (26%) and homosexuals (23%).

So religion is a powder keg and a fundamental feature of American identity. Where Paganism is mildly mocked in the UK it (along with every other non-Christian philosophy) is perceived by too many Americans as some kind of threat to the soul of the nation. Personally, I believe it would be wonderful if American Pagans were able to sidestep the religious Olympics, to not enter into litigious, strident, corporate-speak that seems to characterise so much religious discourse, but with the stakes set so high I’m not sure that’s realistic. I emailed a US hospital chaplaincy organisation to ask how many Pagan members they had. The receptionist replied: “None. Paganism is not a religion.” Pagan pals sorted this out within the hour, but when a receptionist feels so strongly about what is and is not a religion, and safe enough to announce her opinion on behalf of a national organisation, that’s an indication of how febrile the subject is.

In which case, Pagan chaplains need all the support they can get, and this is where I hope that the professionalization of chaplaincy can be most useful. To be in contact with a group of people who are in a similar situation, facing similar problems and opportunities is a blessing. This is what good supervision can offer. A confidential space, run on similar but different foundations from a magical working group, where the focus is not the client but the practitioners’ relationship with the client.

Being able to make use of chaplaincy supervision depends on a background competency in chaplaincy skills. A solid, thought-through understanding of Pagan theology, counselling skills, boundaries and ethics are a foundation from which all else flows. The most brilliant ritualist, skilled in surfing magical realms is going to run into trouble as soon as they step foot into a hospital if they don’t have an understanding of what it means to enter a hospital.

Because of the centrality of religion in the US there are already a good number of Pagan chaplains functioning in a skilled and effective way. This is how most new vocations grow, from people just getting on with the job, wanting to learn more, to share their skills so that others can avoid pitfalls and offer the service more widely. Paganism has reached a level of maturity where it can (just about) support a virtual seminary, a place where Pagan ideals are supported.

Providing an extensive education in diverse aspects of Pagan philosophy, practice, and skilled ministry;

Supplementing existing ritual and magical skills with training for professional ministry and counseling;

Serving as an ongoing resource for individual continuing education; and

Providing a forum for scholarship and community

If you haven’t already looked at Cherry Hill Seminary, take the opportunity now! This is the premier gathering and resource for people serious about the vocation of Pagan Chaplaincy. They offer Masters degrees that are required by many hospitals before they recongise a religious visitor as a chaplain.

Perhaps most importantly, they offer fellowship. You will suddenly gain access to many other Pagan people doing the same thing as you, some of whom have been doing it for a very long time. Connections are made, friendships struck up, knowledgeable peer support is available. Formal supervision isn’t yet available but this is close to the next best thing.

1 ^ Penny Edgell; Joseph Gerteis, and Douglas Hartmann (April 2006). "Atheists As “Other”: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society". American Sociological Review 71 (2). http://www2.asanet.org/journals/asr/2006/toc050.html.

Managing the Urge to Professionalise

2010-05-10T13:49:00.012+01:00

The urge towards professionalism builds up a rigid bureaucracy. Bureaucratic rules become a substitute for sound judgment.

Carl Rogers

When I was a student nurse on night duty there was an elderly man who was blind and hallucinating. He was distressed and spent much of the night yelling “Hold me tight, for Gawds sake!” We would go over and hold his hand and it wouldn’t make much difference, he’d just up the noise, begging for reassurance and containment. In the end he was prescribed sedation which brought him much closer to death but kept him quiet. One night, the registrar came on to the ward as the sedation was wearing off and the elderly man began his painful wailing. The Registrar went over to him, held his hand and asked, “What can I do for you?” “Hold me tight!” said the old man. So the registrar pulled back the covers, got into bed and shifted the old man to recline between his legs, back to chest, and held him tight. A good nights sleep was had by all. Now of course, he’d never consider doing something like this and would be disciplined if he did.

When I first began working with young girls who had been subjected to dreadful abuse and were considered dangerous, one or two of them needed to negotiate physical contact. The rooms we met in had beanbags and some of them sat on the floor cuddled up to me as we lay back, experiencing safe intimacy and basic human connection without which we all go mad. Now of course, I’d never consider doing something like this and would be disciplined if I did.

Chaplaincy is undergoing a process of professionalisation that will result in very well qualified chaplains and no certainty of high-quality work. The only positive result of professionalisation is that it’s easier to fire someone when they work outside of professional boundaries.

Time and again, history demonstrates that when a vocational group enters into the process of professionalisation what actually happens is gross standardisation and a parallel requirement for the individual to stop thinking for themselves. Employers, who may know and care nothing about the internal dialogue within a group of people sharing the same job title, begin to demand that employees have professional qualifications and a very vicious cycle is set up. Creativity is stunted, peer review becomes meaningless, relationship becomes defunct in preference to saying the right thing.

Here in the UK, this means that the most qualified, experienced but not accredited on principle psychotherapist is not as attractive to an employer as someone who has been qualified for 3 years if they are accredited. The less experienced psychotherapist has ticked some boxes, written the right words, perhaps made a few up and paid her money to the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists. Sound research demonstrates that BACP accredited therapists are more likely to have complaints made and upheld against them (1) but employers don’t care and neither do therapists who correctly perceive accreditation to be what employers (rather than clients) want. Two issues become plain here: employers want to reduce their feelings of risk of liability and people who feel strongly about being part of a professional group are likely to be status-led rather than client-led.

Chaplaincy is deep into the process of becoming professionalised. US hospital chaplains are required to have a Masters of Theology which demonstrates that they at least have an interest and background in their own belief systems. This requirement equips the chaplain with the theology she needs to serve her clients in terms of the relationship between deity and person. But a theology qualification doesn’t cover the ethics of the relationship between the chaplain and the patient, or the patient and chaplain with the institution. Various chaplaincy professional bodies are beginning to address these situations as an aside to the process of gaining professional recognition. To me, that phrase ‘gaining professional recognition’ is very telling: we want to be seen rather than ignored by important people. We want to join those important people as peers.

The model we have to guide us is a Christian one, and I have a lot of time for it. Christ was a very ordinary person who chose not to be a priest or to join the Jewish hierarchy or to work for the Roman hierarchy where he could have gained a great deal of power and influence. He visited the sick to bring them comfort rather than to offer an integrated holistic approach to healthcare and related to people as people rather than the relationship being dependent on which social group they were part of.

Meeting with administrators and chief executives is part of the work of the chaplain, as is report writing and collecting statistics. Studying the experience of other chaplains is vital, so that we can learn from their mistakes without having to repeat them and build on their successes. But desiring professional recognition - not because it allows us to deepen relationships, but because it highlights status – moves us away from humility, away from the position of liminality that is central to being a chaplain, and away from empathising with the vulnerable in preference to empathising with shareholders who need prestige to advertise their hospital.

The professionalisation of chaplaincy is inevitable. As we move through it, we would be well served to maintain a private store of cynicism, a way of being that isn’t fashionably sweetness- filled but which protects us from believing everything we’re told, in this case about how important professional status is. ‘Professional’ is very different from ‘accountable’ and the more professionally qualified a person is the more they are trusted to be left alone with vulnerable people: that equation alone should give us pause. The sad cliché of the pedophile masquerading as a Scout Master demonstrates that processes which bestow status facilitate people who want to abuse power.

ps - looking for a picture to illustrate this post I searched 'professional priest' and 'professional'. Google for yourself what comes up for 'professional': young, arms folded, mildly sexually alluring but essentially challenging. It's what we expect from the title, and aspire to.

1 Khele.S, Symons.C, &Wheeler. S. An analysis of complaints to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy 1996-2006. Counselling and psychotherapy research CPR) 8 (2) 2008: p127

Asking The Wrong Questions

2010-01-20T14:36:00.011Z

Two children are in court today being sentenced for their violence against other children.

There’s been endless handwringing over social service failures in Doncaster, over the identity of the two children, some lingering and luxuriating over the injuries and sexual assault of the other children, and the inevitable yapping about how awful the mother and her feral children are.

Politicians, social workers and psychiatrists are now asking what can be done to avoid a repeat of the horrors of Edlington. How, in an affluent society, can children emerge as savages? And what can be done to stop them?

Let’s take children into care. Actually, lets take children from families on state benefits into care. Because we don’t hear anything much about the children of the middle or affluent classes. This is very clear-cut. Children who are brought up in environments of generational poverty are more likely to become feral. As anyone whose ever had anything to do with the children of many middle class families know, when they go off the rails it’s all a bit cosmetic. A bit of Amy Winehouse-apeing and they’re almost certainly going to fall back into the arms of their family to effect a miraculous recovery, to recall their ‘wild’ days with neurotic effect. Their antics takes the piss out of people who live this life forever.

Every single person I’ve met who’s had enduring and dangerous mental illness has come from a financially deprived background. Every. Single. One. Social workers, the NHS, the entire health and psychiatric business, politicians and those parts of society that are not poor need the poor. The poor create and sustain jobs, and act as a radical Other to serve the political system: if it is so shameful to be unemployed, if it is entirely proper to hate the unemployed, then you’d better stay in employment, eh?

Doncaster was castrated and disemboweled in the 80’s when people who voted for Margaret Thatcher were responsible for the mines and other industries being violently closed. Since then, the levels of poverty in Doncaster have improved, which is to say it’s not the depressed sinkhole it once was. And it’s still, very, very poor.

Never mind sports facilities and colleges and Sure Start and taking children into care: address the cultural attitude that says it’s just plain evil to be poor while the issue of middle class child crime is entirely overlooked. I’ve known a number of middle class families whose behaviour and that of their children was considered entirely fine, a bit of a lark. In a poor family leaving children alone for the weekend, underage sex, consumption of illegal drugs by children and child alcohol abuse brings in the police, the courts, social services and the media.

The questions are not “How do we contain feral children?” but “What creates feral children?” Not, “Why doesn’t social services work?” but “Why do so few middle class families foster children?” We know how to contain violent and dangerous children: we bung them into prisons and psychiatric hospitals. We know why social services don’t work: it’s not a job that many aspirational parents want for their children. But addressing this is far more challenging, and has far greater potential for reducing personal affluence than taking the children of the poor into the loving care of the State and allowing some other kids to be battered.

As a society we demand personal safety. And we also don’t want to fund what creates personal safety: quality social housing maintained by half-interested social landlords, that cannot be sold into the private market; the best nursery workers and school teachers heading for the most deprived area; huge shame and upset that a developed country accepts that some people must be deprived; psychiatric services run by people who currently work in neonatal units and other high-status areas. The market-driven society is not a human given, you and I have chosen it. Whilst it’s just wonderful for those of us who live in affluence it has, self-evidently, created a dangerous underclass. People who have any concept of community, of the interconnection of all things need to live up to that ideal. When children are raped and smashed over the head with a sink, we are all responsible.

UPDATE: Central government is finally taking control of Doncaster after the Council finally fell apart. The Mayor, an English Democrat, is entirely unsuited to and unskilled in running anything other than a mildly racist micro-party. (Hilariously, his tagline is "Things Happen When you Vote English Democrat.") Local councilors have remained silent throughout about corruption and incompetence perhaps because they seem to be knee deep in it.

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/vote_2010/government+to+step+in+at+ampaposfailingampapos+doncaster+council/3619487

The Audit Commission said politics at the council were "dysfunctional", and demanded the elimination of "bullying and intimidating behaviour".

Every member of the Council was voted in.

Attitude

2010-01-12T13:35:00.010Z

A colleague and I sat having lunch together, talking about how his training in counseling was going. He was an experienced Christian priest not new to chaplaincy and he knew that becoming a counselor could only benefit his way of being with people. This wasn’t a pressing debate over how models vary or the theoretical foundations of his system but I was surprised when he said, “It all aids our purpose, which is healing.”

As individuals we’ll have different skills, specialties and interests in our lives as as chaplains and as people, but I think it’s worth taking some time to discuss what we mean when we talk about ‘healing’ and what role it might have in chaplaincy.

‘Healing’ is not the same as ‘curing’, but often these words are used in the same way. Many of us do ritual to ‘heal’ the Earth when in fact the Earth is not in need of healing but could probably do with some very mundane tidying up. Once more, this is a matter of being aware of the power dynamics in a relationship. For healing to occur there must be someone with the special ability to heal and someone in need of healing and the potential for abuse of power is obvious.

In my own practice, I know that I am not able to heal anyone of anything. I see my role simply to offer a therapeutic relationship, the intent of this relationship being to allow the person I’m with the space and opportunity to be any way they wish to be, with a limitation of not causing harm to anyone. My belief that this is the optimum way to approach the way of being of a chaplain is based in the Person Centered Approach, a mainstream psychotherapeutic model widely used in counseling and psychotherapy. The creator of the Person Centered model, Carl Rogers, was a professor of psychotherapy who perceived the existing models of human behavior as restrictive and models of healing to often be punitive; always an expert telling a vulnerable person what they are thinking and what they should be doing.

‘In his clinical practice he increasingly became convinced that it is always the client who knows what hurts and in what direction he or she needs to proceed if healing is to take place. The therapists function is to aid the client in the exploration and discovery of his or her own inner resources; it is not to impose, however gently, external solutions, strategies, interpretations or explanations. ”
‘Carl Rogers’ Brian Thorne 1992 Sage Publications

Person Centered people know that we’re all born pretty much perfect and that things happen to us that affect the way in which we experience life. We know that, given the optimum environment, we can all be trusted to make good decisions about our own lives and about our effects on other peoples lives. It’s a truism that humanity seems to make an art form out of cruelty, yet how would it be if every individual person were treated respectfully and trusted from birth, with guidance coming through filters of loving-kindness? It’s unlikely that we’ll ever know but all the research demonstrates that in a one-to-one, couples or group formal therapy situation of any and all models, it is the relationship between counselor and client that makes or breaks the perception of the client that the work is beneficial. Further, the therapeutic relationship is most valued by the client the more empathy and authenticity the counselor can bring to it. These three qualities of relationship are those which are the bedrock of the Person Centered model.

It’s clear that training in the person centered model and calling oneself a person-centered therapist doesn’t mean that these qualities will automatically be embodied. Many therapists who have a different theoretical model will come closer to the person centered way of being than numerous person centered therapists who translate these rigorous requirements into being sweet and nice. Sweetness and niceness is not what a person who is facing the most critical moments of their lives needs. When we’re alone in a storm and there is no shelter to be had, it’s good to have someone with us, to walk beside and accompany us, someone who can weather the storm and won’t need us to carry them. This is the essence of a good therapeutic relationship.

Because the research so clearly demonstrates that this is the case, it’s worth spending some time examining these qualities in some detail.

Support McCollum!

2009-12-02T16:52:00.012Z

There's a petition of Facebook to make Paganism a recognised religion in the UK. As far as health care is concerned Paganism is not yet, officially recognised

. . . references to religion and/or faith are taken to include the nine major world faiths: Bahá'í, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.

and yet there are a small number of Pagan chaplains working within UK healthcare.

In the US, where religion is taken so deadly seriously, a legal battle has been rattling on tediously for some time. Patrick McCollum is challenging prison policy that refuses to employ a chaplain that isn't Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim or Native American. Now, Americans United are Cherry Hill Seminary are amongst a growing number of organisations helping Patrick move the case forward.

I recently contacted an American hospital chaplaincy group to ask how many Pagan members they had and received a frankly rude reply:

There are no Pagan chaplains.
Paganism is not a religion.

So I sent a few emails to American friends, who contacted the organisation and Patrick, and everything was wonderfully sorted out within 3 hours.

Religion is such a febrile subject in the US that individuals feel empowered to make policy statements based on their own prejudices - as the chaplaincy organisation, a Federal district judge and fairly disgusting prison staff have. The upside of this is that Americans also take their own individual social responsibilities much more seriously than we do in the UK, and the downside is that Christianity dominates, oppresses other spiritualities and religions in a manner than most people, many Christians amongst them, find repellent.

Circle Sanctuary have set up a site in support of Patrick and this cause. Light a candle, pray, chant, visualise, raise cones of power or whatever you do to send loving vibes to Patrick and to those groups supporting him. It's a full moon tonight - go to town!

Thanks to The Wild Hunt for their ongoing coverage of this and other Pagan matters.

Institutional Evil

2009-11-27T12:06:00.012Z

This week has been contaminated with more revelations about child abuse by Catholic priests, an abnegation of power by the police and epic arrogance from the Catholic hierarchy

Evidence given to the Chilcot Enquiry about Gulf 2 suggests that world leaders conspired to create war. Not unusual, but still loathsome.

I’ve written before about The Lucifer Effect, Philip Zimbardo’s research on ‘What leads good people to engage in evil actions.’

I propose that in trying to understand how power, abuses of power and personal responsibility – our own and others – weave together, there first has to be a consensus on what reality is. Reality is slippery and feeds into our desires for a peaceful life and personal power. If it is reality that a hospital passes quality assessments and fulfils performance indicators then we can assume that the majority of the staff will be professional, compassionate people. Managers will be doing an excellent job. Patients will be served well. This reality can exist at the same time as a disproportionate number of patients are dying because staff are slovenly and managers don’t care. People who do care feel disempowered to act, are treated with contempt or themselves abused. (Google ‘hospital whistleblower’ for a depressing litany of examples.)

Peter Vardy and Julie Arliss write clearly about this in The Thinkers Guide to Evil

It is almost always easier to identify institutional evil in retrospect. When a person is part of the institution, many things are taken for granted that may later be seen as unacceptable.

The institutional evil of the Third Reich was clear but it was made up of millions of individual Germans who went along with a system many of them must have known was wrong. At the end of the day institutions are made up of individuals and it is individuals who are morally accountable and responsible if they fail to stand up to the evil in which they participate.

p174

When I trained as a nurse there was a rite of passage that happened when, in the second year, you were judged to be responsible enough to carry the keys. A large bunch of metal attached to a huge safety pin was handed over and worn with pride, hanging in but not resting inside of a pocket, so that they made a rhythmic clashing noise as you walked. The keys were, and remain, a symbol of authority in a highly regulated, hierarchical institution. Now, nurses are expected to wear special belts to contain keys so that a ward doesn’t sound like a prison, and still too many nurses wear this emblem as a mark of status. There’s often a link between this behaviour and not wearing a name badge. They are often more institutionalised that the people they should be caring for, secure and settled in an environment they have made their own. Challenge that comfort and you will encounter venom.

It is far easier to keep your head down, secretly despise this behaviour and, 6months later, discover that you are complicit in it. No one is actually physically harmed – not dealing with droplets of blood on the curtains surrounding a bed, or unpleasant toilets, or lying staff doesn’t actually involve physical contact.

Patients move on, or are considered, always, to be exaggerating or malicious in any complaint they dare to make. The only way to get on is to befriend and mollify the person who abuses their power, and often that means joining them in their behaviour. The purpose of the institution, whether that’s a hospital or any other multi-million pound business, is to sustain the institution. Make no mistake.

It’s not possible to avoid harm in this situation. If you don’t speak up the harm continues. If you do speak up you will become subject to harm, and you will cause harm to other individuals. It’s easy to refer to ‘Keep pure your highest ideal; strive ever toward it; let naught stop you or turn you aside.’ But the consequences of that can be dreadful. The consequences of not keeping high ideals can be even worse.

Happy Samhain!

2009-10-31T15:13:00.009Z

The cherry tree is dripping with amber; the garden, refreshed after last nights light rain, is ready for the coming of winter; all the bird feeders are full; the outdoor candles, flares and our pumpkin lantern is lit. Some dear friends are coming round in the next hour to share our huge Samhain feast and we've laid a place for all our Beloved Dead. The Ancestral altar is polished and before long our family Ancestors will be joined by those of our friends, and a pomegranete is ready to open to honour Persephone. The house is pristine and I am knackered but very happy.

Later tonight when everyone's gone I'll light our memorial light to welcome all the benevolent dead to our home for Winter, and then I'll renew the boundaries around each doorway, each window for the coming year.

May your Samhain be blessed, your coming year joyful and may peace be welcomed into all our homes.

Happy New Year!

What Kind Of Funeral Would You Like, And Do Your Family Know?

2009-10-25T14:22:00.005Z

Along with writing your will Samhain is a great time to plan your funeral. Thanks to Sophie for this link.

Interpretive Beings

2009-10-22T21:57:00.005+01:00

I’m having to immerse myself in Christian philosophy in order to get some idea of how to approach the philosophy of religion and so I try to attend as many Heythrop College open lectures as I can. What’s becoming clear is that the Christianity people in Heythrop practice is very different from the Christianity I’m used to. They discuss their god in tremendous depth, moving beyond sex and hellfire, beyond sweetness and light, into something far more reflective. They seem to use contemplation of their god as a way of meditating on their lives and way of being in the world. They, too, are distressed by the simplistic nonsense presented by so many of their peers.

I’m going to write the occasional reflection on what I learn from this course as a way of asking myself questions about Paganism and what it means for me to be Pagan. I’ll be using many other peoples' words and ideas and don’t want to pass them off as my own, and I’m also aware of the potential for knee jerk reaction if I say “St Augustine says this . . .” I’m sure St Augustine has said many things which I wouldn’t like, but if he’s said something I feel is useful how do I offer that without some Pagans immediately assuming I’ve become a fundamentalist Southern Baptist, or just rejecting the idea outright?

That’s their trip, I suppose. Too many of us have chosen Paganism because we see it as the best way to show defiance to Christianity.

Today’s lecture was about reading the “Signs of the Times,” observing what the world is communicating and deciding how we respond. The gospels and scriptures guide Christians but I wondered what our equivalents might be. I suppose the closest thing to a holy book we have is the earth itself, the whole nuanced, delicate biosphere. It offers both stability and innovation, the laws of nature can’t be changed but change is the only certainty for the earth and everything dependant on it.

The bible seems to me to be a collection of stories that people can use to justify anything they want, and so it is with out own myths and legends: CuCullain, the Caileach, Demeter and Persephone, Deidre and so on, as well as the more modern myths and legends of our contemporary elders who may in centuries become the Pagan equivalent of Talmudic and biblical characters.

(Did you know, by the way, that there’s an oral Torah?)

Paganism holds tolerance in high esteem for excellent reason, we’re all very aware of how intolerance affects our own lives, but I believe we now need to review what has certainly become a kind of dogma. Tolerance has drifted into relativism: your view of what’s happening in the world and how to deal with it is just fine and my view is just fine and everyone is entitled to their own view, their own truth including, presumably, Stalin. This manner of engaging is very superficial, its lazy acceptance requires no energy and little thoughtfulness, whereas a respectful, authentic meeting takes skill, focus, and will. It accepts the risk that everything might not always be comfortable, and that discomfort is worth it if something more valuable can be gained.

Reframing the problem as seeking understanding rather than truth, is helpful. Where people are certain of the truth we can begin to sense the beginning of a mob mentality. The Truth ™ is easy, and easy to beat other people up with, whereas understanding is collaborative, relational, mutable. How, then, to avoid the retreat into relativism?

“Whatever leads to a better love of God and humanity is a good understanding.”

My own understanding of human behaviour has lead to an increasing dislike of humanity. The sheer historical repetitiveness of it distresses me deeply so that for some years meaning has been difficult to discern, there seems no aspect of life that remains untouched by our individual and corporate stupidity. For me, this has meant retreat and if there were such a thing I’d happily enter a Pagan monastery to do exactly as I do now, but in the dedicated company of others on a similar path. As yet, there’s no room for focused community contemplation within Paganism. I’ve been so desperately moved during visits to monasteries, the rhythm of coming together and moving apart, of steady, mindful movement through the day, and can’t believe that Paganism isn’t capable of something as graceful and disciplined. As yet, however, we are not. As yet, we don't want it badly enough.

So my journey is one of how to make better understanding. “If I understand at all, I understand differently.” And it’s my belief that there are growing numbers of Pagans who want to do this too.

Science, Soul, Self

2009-10-20T22:07:00.005+01:00

There are some mysteries that we'll never fathom and some that we may just begin to understand. The concept of Soul, of the essential, non-material part of ourselves has intrigued humanity from the dawn of conciousness and various theories, from a basic animating principal to the astral body have been proposed.

Take a look at this on BBCiPlayer for a cutting-edge update of what makes you, you.

This link may be up for a limited period of time so make the best of it!

Time To Take Stock

2009-10-19T19:41:00.005+01:00

We are living through a period of history that humanity has never encountered before. The world has opened up to us in incredible ways so that although we may never visit Lhasa we know what the temples at the top of the world look like, what sounds come from them, how the people who live in and around them dress and eat and work. We have some concept of the preciousness of the rainforests and the creatures who live with it, we know that we too live with the rainforests because we understand that climate is partly regulated by them. The horrors of war are revealed where in the past they could be denied or minimized. The realities of child labour, animal experimentation and other abuses, and all other miserable realities have been brought into our living rooms at the same time as miracles of health, travel, personal opportunity, semi-democratized knowledge, and choice have blossomed.

Everything is possible at the same time as we are being told that the world is on the brink of collapse. The places where Paganism has best flourished – the UK and US - have never experienced such freedom and comfort. We no longer depend on the opinions of popes and princes to tell us our place in the world, we’re not conscripted into industrial war machines, death doesn’t have such a consuming affect on our lives and we can chose whichever version of the afterlife best suits our desires.

Modern Pagans look to the past as a source of inspiration but we ignore the flea ridden, half-starved, freezing gloom of an average European family home pre-electricity. Most other religions look to an existence beyond earthly life for good reason, experiencing earthly life as something to endure, their Deity being somewhere other than where they are. Most Pagans who have a concept of Deity understand that Deity to be immanent, present in ourselves and in all things and I believe this is significant for Pagan practice.

All other religions make sense of the world through an understanding of Deity, and so has Paganism. When Crowley, Gardner and Valiente introduced the concept of a female Deity it was beyond radical and had serious material effects. Why do Pagans claim to care so much about the planet? Initially, because we understood the planet to be a manifestation of the Goddess. We’ve absorbed animist spirituality and as well as immanence it gives us the concept of genius loci. So we have some vague thoughts about what and who and how Deity might be.

Animism, a product of belief in immanence, has important effects on our practice. If everything is alive and in relationship then what responsibilities do we have for each other? Do rocks and birds have responsibilities towards us, and if not, what makes us believe we are so unique that only we have responsibilities towards other beings?

It seems to me that there are two things fundamental to justifying our ways of being in the world: the ways in which we understand power, and the narratives we tell ourselves. If we believe the narrative of original sin, or that suffering makes us more like Jesus, or of the gifts that Kali gives us then this will effect how we feel about each other, the world and ourselves. The manner in which we live these beliefs will be affected by our understanding of the use of power.

From the dawn of human consciousness people have been struggling with all of this and I see no need to reinvent the wheel, we can use the structures created by others to gain greater understanding of who we are. Where they don’t fit us then we surely have the intelligence and imagination to create our own. But create them we must. The Unitarians, who also avoid dogma, embrace and live within an ethical code. Are Pagans dressed up Unitarians? If we’re not we need to run to catch up with the rest of the world if we expect to be respected by it.

2009-10-19T12:11:00.007+01:00

I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

Elie Wiesel

I’ve entered the stage of what’s been called ‘Post-Paganism’, a moment of awareness that Paganism as it is practiced no longer satisfies or means anything much. Apart from Samhain, I haven’t ritually marked any festival for myself for years though I make a mental nod to calendar dates and natural symbols – the snowdrop, the hawthorn flower – as they appear. My understanding of Deity has changed too, but the genesis and the final cause of my stepping out from Pagan practice is the way that too many Pagans behave.

It doesn’t matter what sacred books we do or don’t refer to, somehow we manage to interpret life to miraculously concur with our personal worldview. So it is that Christians, Muslims, Jews, Pagans, Hindus and everyone else generally conforms to their country’s legislation and social mores. Pagans may ask for time off for religious holidays but this is more a stamp of individuality than a heartfelt yearning for religious obligation, or a passion to be with the Land at a particular point in our joint journey around the sun.

If one of our strengths is our lack of a holy book then a corresponding weakness is that we have no idea what it is that we should be doing or not doing, or why, other than feeling good about ourselves. What began with the weighty “Know Thyself” passing through “ . . . if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, then thou wilt never find it without thee” has become pure solipsism. People outside of ourselves exist only as extras in the great, consuming drama of our life. We don’t actually want community at all, other than as some kind of heightened social life.

Protestations of openness, love and honouring as you walk away from a partner into the arms of his friend don’t mean much, neither do Twitters about how strong and beautiful and loved you are as your family flails about in agony. We’ve exchanged Bitchcraft (though this maintains a strong presence) for ethereal non-committal. This isn’t based in a concept of respect for personal choice and trust that we will make good decisions if we are cherished: it seems to me to be fundamental laziness. I’ll light a candle for you as you struggle with your child’s decent into drug addiction but don’t expect much more from me other than affirmation via Facebook. There is no action or event that requires meaningful group introspection or discussion.

I’ve just begun an MA in Philosophy of Religion and whilst I’m amazed at the contortions that scholars have put themselves through over the centuries to anthropomorphise Deity they also have basis' from which to make decisions. This is why Jews and Christians beleive and live as they do, because they have particular understandings of their religions. What might a Pagan theology around voluntary euthanasia be, and why? Non-Pagans might also say ‘Because I wouldn’t allow my dog to suffer like that” but is there a particularly Pagan response? Are we simply romantic, ritualised atheists? Paganism has no morality in the widest sense of the word, our ethics come down to plant trees and save the world by meditating and not watching TV. We would never dream of discussing how many children a Pagan might consider having, even though human population is the single most urgent issue facing the planet, way beyond carbon footprints and coal burning power stations. We have no answers or even suggestions on how to approach the most important issues in human life because it might impinge on someone’s personal choice.

My relationship with Deity, mainly in the form of the Goddess, continues, it’s not that I’ve given up believing that seasons change or that the Ancestors exist; rather, I’ve lost respect for the triviality that masquerades as Paganism and don’t want to associate with it. Like many Pagans, Jews, Muslims and people from other religions, I’m content to simply be in the presence of Mystery rather than wrangle over whether He/She/It is wholly simple or everlasting. But for me, the everyday application of a religious belief has to be greater than doing exactly as you like and justifying it by wearing a cloak.

Planning Ahead for a Samhain Project

2009-10-08T15:52:00.002+01:00

We never get round to it because we’re too young to die, we’ve got nothing to give away, and the kids will be looked after.

I remember reading the horrific story of a mother who’d appointed the bank to be her executor. The children’s social worker had to physically intervene between the banks representatives and a fire to rescue a photo album from the conflagration of the children’s lives. Since the bank was only interested in what was saleable everything else could go to hell.

Despite what some websites will tell you, writing a Will is a complex matter, not something you can – or should – do on a form from a stationer. Samhain seems the very best time a Pagan can consider our own deaths, who we trust (and why we trust them) to see that our Wills are properly executed, and make sure our loved ones don’t have to struggle more than they must.

Will Aid have been going for years and make giving money to a lawyer far more agreeable, since the money you donate goes to charities. Will Aid comes but once a year, sometimes not even that often, so please make use of this great scheme.

Towards An Animistic View Of Mental Illness

2009-10-06T21:31:00.005+01:00

Please visit this site:

As an animist, my relationship with my spirituality has frequently been positively provoked in discussions with people who function much of the time from within altered (as in altered from the norm) states of consciousness. For example, I spent an amazing night shift packing plastic bottles in a factory (before my nursing days) with a gentle young man, discussing the story of Lot in Genesis (Chapter 19) in which Lot is visited by angels (unknown to him) and insists on offering them hospitality. To this young man, these angels were messengers from God and in his realisation messengers from God came in many different forms, from the casual crossing of paths with a total stranger to the fall of a leaf as you passed a tree. And to him, all experiences were to be welcomed as being potentially such a messenger. In some respects, he was one of mine and I remember that one night, 25 years on,with much fondness. I didn’t see him again, but I did hear three months later that he had been forcibly detained for treatment in the local psychiatric ward.

A Doctor For Disease, A Shaman for the Soul

2009-09-20T17:11:00.005+01:00

The New York Times reports on traditional Hmong shamans working as part of the hospital team.

Bread, Salt, Mead and Honey

2009-09-15T19:44:00.005+01:00

I’ve just returned from the funeral of Jane, who lived and died in poverty. No one in her circle of friends has any money to spare either and so a local authority funeral was arranged.

Because Jane lived and died in poverty her body spent a month in a hospital morgue while one of the richest countries in the world scrabbled around to find the £753 that it costs to dispose of a human body with studied bareness. Jane was blessed to live in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea which provided a hearse and dignified undertakers. Had she not lived here, her coffin would have been deposited at the crematorium by van.

The priest allotted for pauper’s funerals could barely speak English and couldn’t find his way – and thus couldn’t lead us - around the funeral service. What he could do, however, was take the opportunity to proselytize and tell us that we would end up in paradise only if we would come unto Jesus. He wasn’t intentionally wicked, just hopeless and the kindest thought I can muster for him is that he will lie in bed tonight and wail with humiliation. He would not be chosen to run an affluent parish but he is good enough, apparently, for the very poor.

I was shocked afterwards to discover that a funeral funded by the State demands a Church of England service, but can see the good intent behind this imposition. A publicly funded funeral is the absolute last resort for people who die alone and without friends or for those of us who have absolutely no income or savings to fall back on: the dignity and solemnity due to royal dead is also afforded to people at the other end of the social scale.

The service can be very beautiful.

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/commonworship/texts/funeral/beforethefuneral.html#receiving

Personally I wouldn’t be restless in my grave if it was said over my body, but that’s because I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about and dealing with death and have my own philosophy on the matter. But it wouldn’t suit my family and friends to sit and listen to Christian liturgy with my very Pagan body on the catafalque, and since I know no one with £1,000+ to spare and haven’t got £1,000 lying about it’s likely that I too will have a state funded funeral. If, as most non-monotheists believe, funerals are for the living rather than the dead then having something that satisfies the bereaved rather than a Church they had nothing much to do with, seems important. Can this be achieved by having a friend read something less formal at some point? It feels token, a deviation allowed by a benevolent dictator.

I could take out a funeral plan and very good many of them are too. Bodies cost money to dispose of and the more we want someone else to do for us, the more we have to pay. The Natural Death Center is absolutely brilliant at helping to empower people who want to do as much as possible for their dead and a DIY funeral is guaranteed to be as meaningful as you like. But you have to plan, and plan now, because bereavement renders you pretty helpless and convention takes over.

What this has brought home to me is that income determines the religious form of a funeral. Whether or not this was the intent of the Church of England, in a multi-cultural society it’s no longer appropriate. So I can take up arms against a sea of Church and State bureaucracy, and by opposing it, go bonkers. More usefully, I can put some serious thought to how my funeral will be funded – with Samhain approaching this seems appropriate. I can beg you to think about, discuss and compose your own funeral as a Samhain project, and thus remove a great deal of weight from the people you love.

And tomorrow, Pete and I will carefully take the hair from Jane’s hair brush that, curiously, she specifically left us for some reason, and burn it with incense, rose petals, honey, salt, mead and bread, to mark her life and death in our own way with our own words.

Professionalism.

2009-08-27T13:31:00.011+01:00

Every job these days now seems to require some kind of qualificational (is that a word? It is now!) route into and through it, and the more organized these groups get the more some individuals will want to be recognized as ‘professional’. The professional counseling and psychotherapy association I belong to, the BACP, was created when individual counselors and psychotherapists decided that the public was suffering because counselors and psychotherapists had no accrediting body. They set up the BACP and approached the government to demand that only qualified counselors and psychotherapists be recognized as such. Today, people who are not qualified as anything can still offer their services as counselors. The government, who once took no notice of us, have now decided that they will only recognize psychotherapists and not counselors, which leaves a great many highly qualified counselors potentially out in the cold, and the BACP running about trying to catch up.

At the same time, the BACP created an accrediting scheme that can only be a box ticking exercise since it’s unworkable to have someone present during actual sessions to observe and assess. The BACP’s own research discovered that the greatest number of complaints are made against accredited practitioners.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a792952432

(please cut and paste, my keyboard has no wriggly line!)

Nevertheless, the larger, more prestigious and higher paying employers of counselors and psychotherapists demand that we be BACP Accredited, not because they understand counseling and psychotherapy or because they want the best people for the job but because they believe that qualifications mean they will be getting a better practitioner and because they want people who are content with jumping through hoops in preference to thinking for themselves.

It’s no bad thing to know that a person has completed and qualified from a particular line of study. Pagans want this too, we don’t want someone calling herself Lady BlueBottle, Hereditary Witch Queen of Atlantis to be involved with, well anything really, but particularly not vulnerable people or representing Paganism. We’re all tired of the fantasy-driven pronouncements of too many Pagans and their incredible claims, and we know that this behaviour is not limited to teenagers. In the non-Pagan world we also know highly qualified and experienced professional people who are untrustworthy. Indeed, the more prestigious their status them easier it is for them to be untrustworthy.

What links these things together, from a growing number of US chaplains demanding access to patient notes and counselors and psychotherapists becoming mesmerized and deskilled by professionalism, to the growing number of very honourable and simple jobs becoming dependent on qualifications is status. Pagans are still struggling to have our status as a bona fide religion recognized, and the starting point for many individual Pagan chaplains in hospitals and prisons was the demand that this corporate status was acknowledged. Those Chaplains who overstep meaningful boundaries by demanding access to patients who haven’t requested it and patient notes, are motivated by the desire to have their personal status recognized.

All of which has nothing to do with accountability. We know that human nature is likely to try and get away with what it can, there’s little can be done about that other than the blunt instrument of punishment, and rather than waiting for behaviour to become criminal it’s probably wise to have an agreed standard of behaviour for different professions. Standardised teaching can achieve something like that and yet . . . when teaching establishments have to fulfill quotas in recruitment and pass rates, which all come down to keeping the institution financially above water it all becomes a bit meaningless. But it does keep the money rolling in.

In the US the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education Inc seems to be the largest representative body for hospital chaplains. They talk about people as ‘Living Human Documents’ and have detailed manuals and standards and an accreditation process and bylaws . . . all the stuff that makes an organization look very proper, professional and acceptable – and gives the organization and its officers high status. This is the group that has encouraged chaplains to demand access to patient notes believing chaplains to have the same status as medical professionals. Presumably, therefore, they believe that doctors have the same status as chaplains.

I’d like chaplains to be accountable to their patients and themselves primarily, then the hospital they work in, then their own Pagan community and then the wider world. But I don’t have a Pagan community, I work entirely on my own and so I’m only officially accountable to the chaplaincy office and the hospital which is perhaps good enough. I would really like a chaplaincy supervision group, Pagan or otherwise - almost entirely the same as my psychotherapy supervision group where I could discus in confidence how things are going. But there isn’t one, there aren’t enough Pagan hospital chaplains to create one and UK chaplaincy groups aren’t organized in this manner.

Long manuals and documents and acronyms do little to protect anyone. Libraries filled with complex and weighty tomes of case law and precedent don’t stop people from breaking the law. What does go some way towards curbing the desire to abuse power is mutual respect and support, keeping organizations small and intimate without becoming incestuous. It can be done. And it’s inevitable that such groups will have lower status and less income.

It’s important to know what the law of the land is and what hospital policy is but this doesn’t stop individuals from working – entirely within the letter of their professional standards – in a callous and burned out manner. (Thank you, Mogg) It is infinitely harder to create, maintain and belong to a small group that actually sees you and hears you, is responsible for and to you than it is to hand over your cash to an organization and perform the tricks they require for advancement which gives you a passport to prestige and greater income.

And of course doing things the hard way requires the patience to explain to the people in suits and the people who have been conditioned to trust anyone with a string of letters after their name, that membership of a professional body is no guarantee of a better service.