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I know that many will agree with me when I say that 2018 has been rough.  As this year draws to its conclusion, I’ve been looking through old journals and have taken note of previous entries.  2016 was confusing and filled with alarm.  2017 was a fighting and frightening year.  And 2018… Well.  We’re just tired now.

When you've been doing something for six months, and everyone around you has only been doing it for five, that makes you the elder.

Gods help us all.

That was the situation back in the early days of Paganistan. At the time, most of us hadn't been doing this for very long, but the fact that we'd been doing it longer than anyone else made us the de facto elders of the community.

Incredibly enough, the community survived anyway. It not only survived, but flourished.

You learn fast when you have to. When people around you expect you to be wise, it's surprising how wise you can actually be.

Well, sometimes.

It may well be that you yourself are in this same position: a premature elder in a young community.

Here's something that came up in my leadership/community building class at Pantheacon. When someone engages in poor behavior in a public setting, it must also be dealt with publicly. While there may be a private component to the process (mediation meeting, taking the person aside to offer them feedback, etc.) the behavior must still be dealt with in as public a fashion as it originally happened. 

Why? Because otherwise the other people who experienced the harm/observed the behavior have no idea what's going on. This becomes especially important as more organizations adopt safety/anti-harassment policies. If people in the group/at the event observe the safety policy being violated, then they must see how the safety policy is being upheld.

Mystic South is a new (and awesome!) Pagan conference that was recently held earlier this summer in balmy, bustling Atlanta, Georgia.  I’ve never been to a big Pagan festival or conference, and every year Southern and East Coast folks are tempted with stories of PantheaCon or Many Gods West, much to our consternation.  Imagine how thrilled I was when friends sent me a link to a big event that was (mostly) local!

The Mystic South founders wrote on their website that when creating the conference they were focused on offering a “Southern-based conference – one that was not only [easy] to attend but also had a Southern flair and spoke of the mystic spirit of our own part of the country.  Since there [was] no such event to meet that need, we decided to create it.”  As a bona fide Southern Pagan, I was ecstatic for the chance to attend a conference that was local, affordable, and also spoke to my concerns as a Pagan practitioner and priestess living in the South.  I was also intrigued by a key concept – these folks saw a genuine need in our community and decided to step up and fill that need.  This is so, so incredibly impressive and inspiring to me!  I am humbled by their work and dedication to such an undertaking!

Most Pagan clergy do all of their work for free.

Too bold?  I take it back.  Let me try again:  “Probably all Pagan clergy do all of their work for free.”

I am still deeply affected by the events of this week, and I'm struggling to reconcile my feelings around what is going on in our country right now. How larger themes of racism, sexism, xenophobia, transphobia, and hatred have permeated the fabric of our nation so completely. Working where I do in and amongst conservative Christians as a Pagan is a challenging and often times exhausting endeavor where showing up is half the battle. 

I was on call the morning after the election news broke, and in our case, whoever is on call that day delivers the morning devotional in Chapel that morning. I've done a variety of offerings from my tradition and they have all been warmly received, but on this day I wanted to present something that spoke to deeper bonds of fellowship and used common language I knew would connect with my colleagues and yet would remain true to my identity as a Pagan. I presented this piece I had written in my Gospel of John course at Iliff a few years ago: