Indra's (Ether)Net

I'm on the internet. I think folks are still figuring out what that means, me included. I have a calling to manage information and support the communities that form around information, and digitized info in particular. Sometimes I really wish I didn't but I'm here and not a physical therapist, I guess! I love the way the internet transcends geography. I just got pinged via the hangout by another distance aspirant who's up early (lol, and I'm up late!) talking about how amazing the moon is tonight and wishing everyone blissful awe. 

The ether, the internet, is new space and it's changing and getting better (and worse) ridiculously quickly as we explore its limits against our own. Perhaps someday there will be a priest/ess of Indra's (Ether) Net, and... Ok, I have Just Been Informed that I must tell you this is totally half baked  in order to actually share. So. This is totally half baked, and I have a lot of research to follow up on and deeply consider before proposing anything of the sort in a for reals sort of way, so totally hypothetically consider pretty much all of this. Also huge whoa, I see Indra's Net also tied to weaving, much like Athena, and not only have she and I been chatting about strategy and wisdom re work and "civilization" but weaving cards were some of the founding technology used in computers and thus she is connected via weaving to computer-related things and the resulting online communities as well. Again before iPad totally glitches out, covering my bases, totally half baked idea and I don't even really know quite what that means yet, but in the moment it is sort of an intense serendipitous connection to have found. 

So... That happened.

More Thoughts on Priest/ess & Witch

OH!  These things so much!

priest/ess 5: priest/ess at large by Yeshe Rabbit
Premonitions of Melissa on the Wild Hunt by Alley Valkyrie

To be honest, I would have put those things in category witch, for myself, but if others perceive these things as priest/ess 'at large' or other priest/ess work, I can certainly roll with that.

Perhaps it is that 'witch' is what I practice, priest/ess is in the how I express that practice.  It's definitely an 'at large' situation, and most people don't recognize it as it's happening.  When The Rainbow Lady was still alive, she approached my husband, me, and a very young M1 in the co-op my husband would soon run and told us we had a very special child and asked to bless her right there in the store.  Of course she could!  The Rainbow Lady, after all!  I suppose that's her acting as priest/ess for us.  Many people talk to me about the things they can't tell their families -- the grocery store cashier who tells me about the dolphin tattoo she wants because of the deep spiritual resonance she feels with them, but her family is super evangelical Christian and she could never do it and she doesn't know why she just shared that with me.  The people who sense the librarian, 'ready reference' source of knowledge who ask me where things are, how to get places, etc.  Librarians joke that it's a librarian thing, but we're all sort of priest/esses of access to knowledge -- people know we either know the answer or can find the answer, and as a service role, that we are near compelled to provide assistance by our nature.

The birds either tell me things, or bring me the intuition I need to interpret things, often via crow, raven, robin, or hummingbird.  The plentiful finches & jays, sparrows & swallows tend not to for whatever reason.  The last thing the crows brought me was impending news that N would not survive.  One flew up close and landed on a nearby perch while I was out in the hammock, looked at me, croaked, nodded, and I knew.  Sometimes the bees share as well, but mostly they bring me calm.

I suppose I should tell P at some point that his bff's father (and P's cousin) stopped by a day or two after he crossed over, in the middle of the night, to see where P ended up living.  I was putting the old lady cat food away, stepped into the dark kitchen and could see him out in the street, smoking a cigarette.  The silhouette was unmistakable, the logger boots, & everything.  Just standing, smoking, looking at the house, I could sense the wry, quiet grin he had when he was content that things were right.  I suppose it could have been someone else, but...  I suppose I haven't told this story because I don't really do 'ghosts', but in the moment, it was so clear.

I have helped a lot of kids learn to respect nettles (and thistles too, but this is the nettle story) -- "THEY HURT ME!" (thwacking away at the nettles with a stick). "You must be gentle with nettles, they are asking you to respect them, they are very good for you! -- look, I can pet them and they don't hurt me!"  "How!?"  "Gently, across the leaf with your finger tips, like you're petting a cat ever so softly!  Try it!"  "Noooo!  O-okay... oh!"  "They'll still demand your respect, but if you recognize them and treat them with respect, you'll get stung much less!"  I'm rarely stung by nettles now, even when I accidentally brush against them.

Many other examples, but these sorts of things are part and parcel of the way I explore and experience existence.  How I interact within the world.  So many things to revisit, restore, reclaim, remember.

On Priest/ess & Witch

There have been various discussions that have crossed my radar lately on what  it means to be Priest/ess.  I am engaging with a coven as an aspirant, for the first time in a 25-ish year solitary practice and... thinking...  I identify as 'witch'.  It's sort of but not quite really the same.  As others have pointed out, priest/ess is a bit of all sorts of things, from ritualist, to counselor, to spiritual mentor, to minister, etc.

I figure part of engaging as part of a group is that I revisit reading All The Things from many perspectives, find what is resonating with me, what isn't, and while I've been doing that all along, the context of 'aspirant', traveling a specific (even if still significantly self-defined) path, changes things for me somewhat.  Being part of something bigger means I am part of a shared trajectory.

What I am leading to, and puzzling over right now is this -- in so far as witch and priest/ess have significant parallels, and in so far as I identify as witch, but not particularly priest/ess (or even necessarily called to identify that way) -- is it just a semantic difference in pursuing the shared deeper knowledge that I seek, without necessarily taking on the particular word of priest/ess?

John Beckett notes that for the role of clergy there are "three main things priests do: serve the Gods, act as mediators for the Gods, and serve their communities." I have a personal practice. I've sort of joked that I've taken Lutheranism to its extreme in one sense in that I don't require a mediator for my experience of the divine, though as I grow older, the idea of having others who can sometimes drive so I can simply participate as part of the chorus, or not have to have dual consciousness about what I am doing now, what comes next seems like a lovely thing, but that is more of a field trip coordinator than a mediation of the experience? Is that too granular of a distinction to be relevant for most (something I am often guilty of)? I am on the fence about defining what I do as "service" for a "God/dess" -- "belief" and "God/dess" is terribly complicated, and I have practices, but it seems a stretch to call that "service" especially given "belief".

This is getting into that lost territory, so dialing it back in again... both of these are granular and semantic in a way, and so grey and fuzzy in terms of definition for me. The third, to serve the community, seems most concrete to me -- this resonates, this I can do, one way or another or many ways. This is not grey and fuzzy for me, it just requires consensus between me and my community that the service I can/want to provide aligns with what is needed.

In a lot of ways my puzzle about disparity between witch and priest/ess is in parallel with my disparity of feeling about teacher training for gyrokinesis (all but certified) and yoga (eventually I may pursue, but...) -- I want the knowledge, I want the practice, I even want to be able to share my knowledge and sometimes my practice, but... I don't identify as "teacher". I don't want to teach classes... but I want to be deeply immersed and talk and practice with people who are extremely deeply immersed in theory and practice -- often that means my cohort is, for yoga and gyrokinesis, those who teach. And for spirituality, it seems often those people are priest/esses.

Which brings me to another puzzle of the moment -- how far can I follow my trajectory as witch practitioner, wanting to explore and know and experience all the way up to, and possibly well into the territory often marked as priest/ess territory while not taking on clergy, lay or otherwise, aspects.
I may be over thinking this, and I so often find in discussing this with others that my perspective is broadened by exposure to the creativity and both complexity and simplicity of others interpretations that I have so many other options that are open to me.
 
Yeshe Rabbit elucidates further on the roles of priest/ess as she identifies them according to her practice. Many, but not all resonate with my own practices (naturally, as she identifies as priest/ess and I do not and even in the eventuality that perhaps I do, my expression may/will likely find varying outlets because we are different people with different experiences).

Perhaps another question I have coming out of this is concurrently to discussing what clergy and priest/ess are, what are we defining against this as what non-clergy/priest/ess are? Part of defining what one is is also defining what one is not. In terms of functions of roles within an organization, even loosely defined, there is a relational aspect between roles. For paid clergy, money clarifies things somewhat for me, in that clergy is supported by the community for the spiritual services provided, whether directly (paid for services or readings, etc) or indirectly (tithing and the like where the individual services are not charged for but covered by dues, of sorts). Money, for better or worse, sort of formalizes the roles and expectations of the exchange happening.

In contrast, my analog (and maybe a more appropriate parallel) for priest/ess in my life is my professional role as a senior manager. I've managed teams as small as two, and up to four teams at a time, with 20 people reporting directly to me. I'm responsible for projects, production work, team and individual development, mentoring, coordinating in support of my organizations defined and supporting goals and objectives. I have lateral peers that I also collaborate with. I have industry groups that I participate in beyond my own organization. I know what kind of work it takes and the obligation to the various parties involved which leads me to being wary of extending additional sense of obligation as a leader within community/ies... and yet still, the draw to the deeply immersive experience lands me... somewhere, I'm not entirely sure where yet.

Dunno. It's all a long way of saying I see a parallel here with my yoga/gyrokinesis practice where I want to be so deeply immersed that my peer group is called something that I don't entirely identify with but to be not as deeply immersed is counter to my desire for such deep immersion.  But perhaps I see a parallel with my professional role, except with that money clarifies my role and expectation for responsible of that specific community and I don't have that clarity within spiritual practice?  So complicate!

I am deeply respectful of those who pursue the path that identifies as clergy and priest/ess, grateful for their shared knowledge and mentorship, sorting out my own trajectory within relationality of community is different from solitary practice.  As Alice discovered in Through The Looking Glass, and as I have come to understand as a manager, communicating and aligning language is an important piece of community defining.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master -- that's all.'   

This is largely me just trying to navigate language (and the various granularities that appear as I think through implications), community, and how/where I might fit.  As an aspirant, it may be way too early for me to consider my future with any specific group, but I also know that there are some areas where I will continue to pursue learning until logical conclusion (lol -- learning is forever! There is no end!).

In the end, I suspect I will find a way that both the semantics and actions align for my practice.  I just don't know quite what that means yet.

Apologies to all the other authors and their articles that informed my questions that I don't reference directly here. I don't want to backtrack all through my feeds to find all the articles.

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Upon going back and reading the (new to me) comments from Sunsmith and Molly on Yeshe Rabbit's post, I am given additional thought about how broadly and simply (and complexly) we can define language, semantics, and practice.  This is one of the things I love about having a community I am nominally a part of.  It is the collaborative sharing of experience that allows one to break out of the unnecessary boxes one's mind and re/create, re/craft, re/vise the world into a better place.