On Operation Christmas Child; Colonialism Masquerading as Charity

Earlier today I met a stunning Ichneumon wasp & deep-hearted & wise Birch Moon Wisdom on Instagram commented that wasp medicine is afoot. I agree! On so many levels, now that I have almost recovered from how beautiful she was, my meeting with her was significant, but perhaps more of that soon. In the meantime, I am reminded that several times in my life I have been accused of being 'waspish', that insult which is so often cast at women who speak their minds. And this week I have had to speak my mind in a way which I'm sure was unwelcome, & that's where I come to the angel because this was about Christmas.

In the 1,000 year church last Sunday we were given a talk on Operation Christmas Child, whose parent organisation is Samaritan's Purse, a US Evangelical Christian group which provides disaster relief throughout the world.

Operation Christmas Child organises thousands upon thousands of shoeboxes to be filled with Christmas gifts by well meaning people, including in our schools and churches, & then distributed to children who have been affected by war, famine, poverty, disease, & natural disasters. Since 1990, more than 168 million children in over 160 countries have been given shoeboxes; an astounding feat. It sounds so lovely, so kind, & in this complex & bewildering world we so need things that are kind. But truly Operation Christmas Child isn't kind or lovely at all. 

Firstly, Operation Christmas Child is evangelical, hoping to convert children & their families to Christianity; the sort of Christianity that voted Donald Trump into the White House & believes him to be doing 'God's work'. Ironic then that this organisation which professes to care for children supports a man who has overseen the removal of migrant children from their families, the deportation of parents whilst their children were at school through ICE, & the incarceration of children at the border with Mexico. Whether evangelism itself is a good thing might be debated (I say not) but evangelism of this nature; fundamentalist & done by offering shiny gifts to vulnerable children who are first obliged to attend a 'prayer meeting' is beyond both religious & human decency. And it could so easily be argued that the inequality of power in that exchange makes it almost impossible for any conversion to be freely arrived at. As one commentator said, "You have desperate people and you have someone who has food in one hand and a Bible in the other."

In addition, the president of Samaritan's Purse is US evangelist, Franklin Graham who has been accused many times of hate speech & who was quoted in last Sunday's talk. Indeed it was that that made me investigate the organisation more deeply. 

Franklin Graham has spoken out against LGBT rights & in favour of conversion therapy, he supported the Iraq war & most definitely supports Donald Trump. Furthermore, he considers Islam to be "evil and wicked" & has said that Muslims should not be allowed to enter the US. It is ironic that his own organisation is named after the parable of the Good Samaritan, a story about overcoming bigotry towards those we consider 'other'. That is certainly not something that Franklin Graham is able to do. And, in addition, he is the highest paid CEO in the charity sector in the US. It must be hard indeed to consider the opinions of others when you can't hear them over the rattling of your own money.

In short, Operation Christmas Child benefits financially & otherwise from the continuation of war & injustice; a worldly system of greed openly supported by their president. You cannot provide 'relief' to the victims of war with one hand whilst cheerleading for it with the other. 

And this is certainly not the teaching of Jesus, a radical preacher in an occupied land who spoke out against injustice in all its forms. We must remember that he was murdered by the forces of Imperialism, and Operation Christmas Child is Imperialism in action; self-soothing by offering shallow charity, whilst ignoring, feeding, & even benefitting from, the deeper roots of injustice. Chillingly, Revd. Giles Fraser points out that US evangelism "systematically confuses the kingdom of God with the US's burgeoning empire. It is no coincidence that the mission fields most favoured by US evangelicals are also the targets of neo-conservative military ambition." And, of course, the more children and adults in distress, the more money Franklin Graham & Samaritan's Purse makes, and the more opportunities they have to create compliant & reliant Christians. This is the most terrible face of Christianity, and of any religion. 

Indeed, this is not truly Christianity at all. To follow Christ is to be counter-cultural, to demand the 'world turned upside down', to 'do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly' (Micah 6:8), or to do our best to at least. Operation Christmas Child/Samaritan's Purse is none of these. It is thinly disguised Colonialism by another name, and it preys on well meaning people, including my kind friend at church, who wish to share their prosperity with those who are less fortunate to spread its poison.

I am pleased to say that several organisations in the UK no longer support Operation Christmas Child by allowing their premises to be used as collection points. These include, Oxfam, the South Wales Fire Service, DHL, the Inland Revenue, & the Co-op. Surely our churches and our schools must do the same.

If we are to survive these times we must be better than this. We have to have difficult conversations, look and think more deeply, speak out; even if that means being considered 'waspish', be willing to listen and to change, sometimes to give up what we had held as good and precious and kind. And we have to transcend the attitude that tells us that a few plastic gifts in a shoebox makes up for hundreds upon hundreds of years of systematic exploitation and oppression. Then we might truly be doing God's work.

But, until we do, Christ have mercy.

There are several fine, Christian and otherwise, alternatives to Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes. Here are a few that I've been told about. Please let me know if you know of others.

https://linktohope.co.uk/shoebox-appeal-2019 ~ provides shoeboxes to families & the elderly to those in need in Eastern Europe

https://www.msrm.org.uk/liab.html ~ a Mustard Seed Initiative supporting children in Eastern Europe 

https://www.marysmeals.org.uk/get-involved/campaigns/the-backpack-project ~ a year round initiative to fill a backpack with everything children in Malawi need for school; clothes, art materials etc

References:

http://emilyjoypoetry.com/7-reasons-not-to-participate-in-operation-christmas-child-this-year   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritan%27s_Purse#Controversy   http://humanistlife.org.uk/2015/10/14/why-parents-shouldnt-support-operation-christmas-child/   https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/news-opinion/truth-behind-your-childs-operation-854545   https://baptistnews.com/article/10-alternatives-operation-christmas-child/   https://baptistnews.com/article/stuffing-shoe-boxes-for-the-worlds-poor-maybe-you-should-reconsider/#.WbXydbJ96M8   https://humanism.org.uk/humanism/humanism-today/humanists-doing/good-causes-and-charities/samaritans-purse/   https://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/jan/15/fundraising.guardiansocietysupplement   https://sites.google.com/site/occalert/   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/nov/10/religion.society   https://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2013/10/operation-christmas-childs-shoebox-campaign-just-propaganda-tool-christianity   http://www.inminds.com/occ.html   https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/news-opinion/wont-donating-christmas-charity-shoebox-13796645   https://www.secularism.org.uk/charities/operation-christmas-child.html   https://www.secularism.org.uk/opinion/2014/11/  

On Fat Thursday

Polish Faworki or “angel wings”, Wiki Commons

Today is 'Fat Thursday', a traditional Christian feast marking the last Thursday before Lent, a shortened form of the Old English word len(c)ten, meaning "spring season".

Now mostly celebrated in parts of Germany, Spain, Italy, and Eastern Europe, Fat Thursday is dedicated to eating, overindulgence, and celebration. Hoorah! In Poland, where today is known as Tłusty Czwartek, people will have been queuing outside bakeries to gather up traditional Fat Thursday foods such as Faworki or “angel wings” (pastry with sugar), and Pączki (huge doughnuts filled with rose hip jam). Syrian Catholics celebrate today as 'Drunkard's Thursday', and, in many places in Rhineland women stage a 'ritual takeover' of town halls and also cut off men's ties, which are seen as a symbol of status; days of revelry before the deeper, more reflective, days of Lent. The World Turned Upside Down.

And today, and the days that follow up until Shrove Tuesday/Pancake Day, are also an opportunity to joyously use up all the fatty and sugary food that help us to feel cosy and warm in the winter so that we can give ourselves a 'spring clean'. We so often think that we should give up all these foods for New Year when we are still deep in the winter dark but we are setting ourselves up to fail. That isn't what our bodies or spirits want in the winter. This is the time; when the earth is letting go of her winter blanket of fallen leaves, which have rotted back to feed the new, and fresh growth is appearing from the bare ground; all those hot little plants; cleavers, nettle, chickweed, dandelions, jack-by-the-hedge, little spring saints coming to wake us up from sluggish winter sleep. But we need to be stripped back to bare earth too, both physically and metaphorically,and that is Lent ~ Enlentment, Enlivenment, Enlightenment.

It is very easy to be angry with Christianity, so threaded through with 'power over' ways of thinking, with Imperialism, with patriarchy, but then we live in a culture that is addicted to anger. You might say that anger has become as addictive as sugar. I was angry with Christianity for decades, and often I still am. It is so often more Herod than Christ. But there is so much beauty in it too; the absolute determination to love, to demand justice for the poor and oppressed, to be a force for good in a world which contains so much of the opposite; to act justly, walk humbly, love mercy, often at personal cost. And we need much more of that. And, increasingly, Christianity considers 'justice for the poor and oppressed' to include our Mother Earth and non-human beings, having been used for so long to justify the separation of earth and spirit (oh, and God was referred to as 'She' in the sermon we had at church last Sunday, and not for the first time either). There is much mending to be done, and finding beauty on the other side of anger is part of the mending, that we might all honour, love, and respect one another's paths more deeply, and find our own enhanced as a result.

And so we come to Fat Thursday. The pre-Lenten season, which will continue until Ash Wednesday on 6th March, is not a time for self-denial but for considering what makes life sweet, and yet hidden within it is the seed of the coming Easter story; the crucifixion, the empty tomb, and the Resurrection ~ a journey that all life is making now, and we with it. In these days leading up to Lent we might then consider what it is, whether food or some other habit, that keeps us 'locked in a tomb' and prevents us from being truly alive, how we might better live a Risen Life. These are the things that we may choose to change during our Lenten journey to come. How might we prepare for the Returning Light?

Rosehip Advent ~ a poem

Rosehips at St Nicholas Church, Newington, December 2018

Earlier in December I attended the most welcome Quiet Day reflecting upon the seven 'O Antiphon' prayers or chants, also known as the 'Great Os' and the 'Magnificat Antiphons', led by priest, poet, musician, and chaplain of Girton College Cambridge, Malcolm Guite at The Royal Foundation of St Katharine in Limehouse, London. These prayers, whose origin is unknown but have been existence since at least the 6th Century if not long before, are read through the last seven days of Advent in deep relationship to and either side of Mary's defiant canticle, the Magnificat, sung as she accepted the challenge of birthing and mothering the Holy Child; 

"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my soul rejoices in God my Saviour...

He has shown strength with his arm; 

He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty."

This is not Mary, meek and mild. This is a fierce call for radical change, not a request but a demand, not a plea but an expectation. As Rachel Held Evans writes in her, 'Mary, the Magnificat, and an Unsentimental Advent'; 'With the Magnificat, Mary declares that God has indeed chosen sides.'

I wrote a little about Mary's subversive prophecy, and how it has inspired many in their fight for justice, in the Novena for the Fallen Through here.

And each of the 'Great Os', written to hold Mary's Magnificat in prayer and power, call in Advent (the time of waiting) to a name of Christ, to one of his attributes written of in Scripture, the first of which is Feminine; 

17th December ~ O Sapientia (O Wisdom)

18th December ~ O Adonai (O Lord, O Secret Name)

19th December ~ O Radix (O Root)

20th December ~ O Clavis (O Key)

21st December ~ O Oriens (O Dayspring/O Light)  Beautiful indeed for Winter Solstice!

22nd December ~ O Gentium Rex (O King)

23rd December ~ O Emmanuel (God With Us)

These too are songs of longing for what might be, to what is coming to be, to what already is. 

You can read Malcolm Guite's tender and powerful poems in response to the 'O Antiphons' beginning here. They are both beautiful and thought-provoking. 

And here is mine; my own fierce and defiant call for change, and for a Spirit threaded through with frost and fox-fire.

Rosehips, Kingsclere, Hampshire. October 2018.

Rosehip Advent

O Come, as Child of Promise in a rose hip’s seed.

Come, as Child of Edge and Liberty.

Come, as whore, as outcast, refugee.

Come as displaced child in a sinking boat.

Come, homeless in a doorway without a winter coat.

Come, as arms dealer, pimp, and pedlar of Austerity.

O Come, to us so blind we cannot see.

Come, as tyrant and oppressor too.

Teach us that our opposite is not the opposite of you.

O Come, and birth the World Turned Upside Down.

Come, King of Kings who wears a peasant’s crown.

Come, as defiler and defiled,

Come, trailing grace notes as heron wing and wild.

O Come, as fox fur and flame’s flight.

Come, as frost to break our frozen fallows into Light

Come, as darkness birthing mercy’s seed.

Grow through the cracks in every place of violence and greed.

Let every cell and atom sing in your Key.

Give starling, wren, and sparrow their authority.

Come, as Root of hawthorn and of briar.

O Wildflower Worker Come, as Wisdom’s starving child.

Come, in the places no one thought you would.

Although the ancient stories make it clear.

Take shape in every place of rage and fear.

Come nettle-leaved to cleanse the bitter blood.

O Come, be born with us, in us, and, for Christ’s, sake stay.

Help us see we still have time to go home another way.

(Jacqueline Durban, Advent 2018)

References: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Antiphons

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/

https://rfsk.org.uk/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnificat

https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/unsentimental-advent

https://rachelheldevans.com/about/

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2018/12/17/o-sapientia-an-advent-antiphon-4/

Further reflections on the O Antiphons can be found on Julia Holloway's website at http://www.umilta.net/sophia.html

and Malcolm Guite can be found speaking on 'Waiting on the Word' in Advent at St Paul's Cathedral here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w8ey2q28ZY&t=74s

On the Christian Resources Exhibition

Christus Pantocrator in the apsis of the cathedral of Cefalù, c. 1130. GNU-free documentation licence, Wiki Commons

I don't write much about Christianity here, although it creeps in sometimes. Being more known for my Goddess work, I find it hard to talk about for fear of excluding anyone or appearing to have abandoned my devotion to She~Who~Is, which would be very far from the truth. However, I felt that I would share an experience that I had yesterday as I think that it speaks to the heart of many spiritual paths. I must say that I had the most disheartening, and in some ways blessedly enlightening, day which I am still feeling wobbly from. It was dark moon after all, but now the moon is newly born and I am reflecting on my experiences.

I went along, with some friends from the church I attend, to the Christian Resources Exhibition at Sandown Park in Surrey. I love a day out and a new experience. I believe that the exhibition has been running for more than 30 years and so I thought that it might be interesting to go along. And I was right!

I had a lovely time with my friends, and know that there were many people of good heart at the exhibition, but I am left with the impression that the mainstream manifestations of Christianity in this country, and no doubt in others, is nothing more than Corporate power feeding itself through religion. So many lovely, genuine people circling a dying star when there is so much life to be had a breath away.

Even aside from that, which is bad enough, there were several disturbing stalls there; one spreading,what I can only describe as, anti-Islamic hate material. That stall had pamphlets deriding all interfaith work, one demanding that the UK 'return to our Christian path' and one on 'Islam and slavery'. Obviously they didn't see the irony in a religion which helped to spread Colonialism, and so slavery, throughout the world making such claims about Islam without also looking at themselves. It does nothing to help when we attack others whilst not admitting our own culpability. It is shallow to do so, at best, but I feel that it does genuine harm and makes the possibility of change less and less likely. Two young women, who were probably in their early 20s, seemed very keen on the information there. It made me feel sad. Opposite that stall was one on 'Creationism', which refuted evolution. Those two stalls were relegated to a far corner of the exhibition but they were still there. I am all for freedom of expression, and Creationism is a way of thinking that it should be possible to debate without bad feeling, but the anti-Islam stall in particular seemed very wrong.

And then, right in the centre of everything, 'Christian Friends of Israel' and the Israeli Tourist Board (with perhaps the largest stand of any exhibitor), inviting us all to go on tours of the Holy Land. I wonder whether the Palestinian people have a tourist board and can invite others to visit their holy places, which are after all more or less the same ones? And I wonder whether the 'tour of the Holy Land' includes a tour of the illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank, or of the, more than a thousand, olive groves that the Palestinian people rely on but which Israel has destroyed, or the solar panels donated to Palestine by The Netherlands on humanitarian grounds; confiscated by Israel, or perhaps the place where American activist, Rachel Corrie, was mown down and killed by an Israeli soldier driving an armoured bulldozer whilst trying to stop it destroying a Palestinian home? And then, making a nice little triangle of stalls with these, Church of England (continuing) who were informing people that attendance numbers are declining in the C of E because they allow women to be priests. What a toxic beating heart to an event that should/could have been full of Spirit.

Oh, and then there was the man who used to own the exhibition telling us his anecdotes about meeting the Royal Family in his cut glass accent, reminding me how deeply Christianity is woven in with the Establishment. I used to like the Queen until I went to the State Opening of Parliament a few years ago and saw her in her gold coach happily going to give our land back to the Tory Government who had already spent four years murdering the poor and vulnerable. There are some moments that help you see through things. That was one of mine and yesterday was another.

I did enjoy though telling someone from the Bible Society that it is a shame that Christianity gets in the way of people reading the Bible, which I consider to be full of wild wisdom. And I loved a small venture called 'Take Time', which is the idea of a lovely Baptist minister who has created some short recorded guided meditations that take you into Bible stories as though you were there. He told me that he had the idea first when he worked as a Prison Chaplain. I have done that work too, and worked in prisons for many years, and so understand the need to create a space away from the brutality of that environment. I can only imagine what a blessing he has been to many in prison. He told me some lovely stories. Yesterday, right at the end of the exhibition, I came across him and listened to his recording on the Last Supper. It was so beautiful. I emerged in tears and asked him, "how did it get from that to all of this?", looking out at the stalls and the stuff. I like to think that he understood.

Such a disheartening day but it matters to see through and beneath. There are so many beautiful people in Christianity, just as in all religions, so many activists working for change; to stop the war, to speak out for the fallen through (and without ramming religion down their necks at the same time), to provide belonging and comfort in, what for many is, a cold world. It is after all a radical, revolutionary spirituality from its very beginnings. It deserves so much better than the Christian Resources Exhibition.

Christ have mercy indeed.

On Following Starlight and Listening to a Deeper Song ~ Twelfth Night and Epiphany

'Singing Round the Star on Twelfth Night', Cornelius Troost, J.Paul Getty Museum, Wiki Commons

How easily we let go of the sacred. Tonight is Twelfth Night, and the Eve of Epiphany, which for many of our ancestors, Christian and pre-Christian, was an important night of celebration, of feasting, of starlight, and often of challenging the social order, something that perhaps we have also let go of too easily.

In our commercial Capitalist culture Christmas seems to start as early as September, and is in full swing by the end of October when the plastic Halloween remains have been swept away from the supermarket shelves. Once, Halloween was Samhain, the ancient festival of the Old Ways. Then it was the Christian three day festival of Hallowmas. Both honouring the ancestors and the beloved dead. Now, all thought of the sacred and of honouring is forgotten in the rush to tell ghost stories and paint ourselves with gore. We so often retain the echo but lose the song. And so it is with Christmas, which in Medieval Tudor England continued until Candlemas, a time of purification and blessing of the candles on February 2^nd., and again recalling the ancient sacred time of Imbolc with its celebration of the stirrings of new spring life and honouring Brigid, goddess of sunfire and the sacred flame. How deeply and beautifully these resonant threads vibrate through time and shared belief, no matter what that belief might be called. For the Tudors, it was later decided that Christmastide should end on Twelfth Night, and yet even then sacred time continued with Epiphanytide until February. Now it seems that anything with meaning ends with the Boxing Day sales and the beauty of Imbolc has melted away with the spring snows.

Sacred time doesn't care for clocks and no sacred day allows itself to be caged by the limits of twenty four short hours; instead these times are a tide, rising in the land and her people and ebbing and flowing with the rising of the sun and the shining of the moon. And so it is with our winter festivals; of Solstice, of Yule, of Jul, of Christmas, and so many others. In 567CE the Council of Tours declared that the entire period from Christmas until epiphany should be part of the same celebration, Christmastide or Twelvetide. In Medieval England Twelfth Night marked the end of a winter festival that began at Halloween, the time when the Lord of Misrule presided and the world was 'turned upside down', putting away social norms and reminding everyone that the structure of society only continued with the consent of all, from the richest to the poorest. Lots would be drawn by the discovery of a hidden pea or bean in a piece of 'Twelfth Cake'. The winner, whether a peasant or a lord, would rule over the festivities, which often included wild partying and drunkenness, often through the drinking of punch used to 'Wassail' the apple trees, another ancient tradition of this night. The custom was abolished by Henry VIII in 1541 and restored and again abolished by subsequent monarchs. In the 1870s, Queen Victoria outlawed the celebration of Twelfth Night as it was feared that the revelries were becoming uncontrollable. It is so often so with the folk traditions of the common people.

'12th Night Revelers Carnival', Nola, 1884, Wiki Commons

All of this is in some contrast with the observance of the Eve of Epiphany, which falls on Twelfth Night. In Eastern Orthodoxy this is a night of strict fasting, when the devout will not eat until the first star is seen at night. That this night is so woven in with starlight is because in the Christian faith it is the time when the Wise Men, the Three Kings, or the Magi found the Christ child by following the Star of Bethlehem (subversive perhaps that the shepherds saw him first!). But of course Christianity is a faith of the desert and of heat. In our own land, these cold nights are times to kindle the fires and feast in celebration and faith that we have enough to see us through until the spring. It is not a time of denial. And yet, as always, there are resonances between these two ways which join and weave so deeply in our own earth.

For those of us who follow the older ways of hedge and hallow our homes are decorated in evergreens and sparkling lights. It was once believed that tree spirits, of holly, of mistletoe, and ivy, lived in this greenery and enjoyed the shelter of our hearth over the festive season. However, it was important that these spirits were released by burning the green on Twelfth Night to ensure healthy growth in the coming year. This tradition still takes place throughout our land, one much loved event taking place each year at the Geffrye Museum in London, where the holly and ivy used to decorate their period living rooms over Christmas is burned and celebrated with the drinking of mulled wine and the singing of carols. Returning from the fires to starlight, we find the belief that decorations, including the fairylights which represent the Star, should not be taken down before the Eve of Epiphany as the Wise Men might then not be able to find their way. Some may feel this to be an appropriation of an older belief and yet there are so many divisions in our world that I prefer reconciliation; to see that we are all following the same thread of winter light in our own ways. For Christians this may mean following the light of the Star across the desert, for others perhaps it might be in honouring the Star from which we all first had our being and the reindeer tracks followed by our far off ancestors. In The Greenwood Tarot, which vibrates with the magic of the pre-Celtic lands, The Star is one of the primary guides, just as it is in Christianity, and it is the catalyst of the creation myths of the planet, and so the first earth that was ever formed...

‘From the essence of stars in the universe, the earth was created, and was blessed. The first tree on earth was the silver birch; the World Tree. From the tree emerged its guardian, the first reindeer, the Primal Creatress, who waits until the first light, the dawn of human consciousness, aware of the guidance and blessing of her origins The Star. With an archaic singing, She drums the manifest world into being. First the four elements, the Breath of life, the Spark of life, the Waters of life, and the first land-the Foundation. Then She calls the primal forest, the birds and animals, the first people. She then marks out the first pathway with her own totem, the reindeer. And she will walk forever with all generations, so that they may remember their origins in the stars, and learn wisdom from those who have preceded them.’

(Chesca Potter, 'The Greenwood Tarot')

No, I am no longer interested in the things that divide us, or in claiming what is ours or theirs, only in reconciliation and mending. And it seems that, when we look beneath, there is so little that really needs to be mended, perhaps only a few thinly stretched and fraying strands that need some loving care. All I know is that for so many of us something precious, vulnerable, and new, in ourselves and in the world, has been born in these days. Whether it is the sun or the son, the awesome life-giving power of our solar Mother or the all-too-human fragility of the tiny child, matters so very little. We are all following our own little stars to come into the warmth of its presence as the seasons turn. We all need a thread to follow in the dark and we find it where we may.

''The Pole Star' from The Greenwood Tarot (Artist: Chesca Potter)

And what of the primal Reindeer Mother and her ancient trackways? Perhaps something of her is still to be found in the Mari Lwyd and the wassailing traditions and the Mummers' plays which take place in the orchards and inns of our land on Twelfth Night and in the weeks to come? As the 'Grey Mare' her hoofbeats still echo in the star-filled night. In parts of South Wales, the Mari Lwyd, in the form of a decorated horse's skull, is carried from house to house between Christmas and Twelfth Night bearing the legend that the Grey Mare, the old goddess, was cast out of the Bethlehem Stable on the night that Christ was born to make room for Mary and that must now gain entry to safely give birth to her foal through riddles and trickery.

“The Mare-headed Queen, the Mari-Lwyd,
I was mother of all the herds.
Ten thousand years my shining foals,
Bridled with starlight,
Saddled with gold,
Leapt the divide between living and dead,
Quickened the year with each toss of the head,
Galloped the deep of beauty
And never grew old.
Let me in!

But Mother of God, the Mary Mild,
The pregnant Maiden came,
Bursting with Jehovah seed
She entered my stable
And cried out her need.
With ropes I was dragged from the birthing straw,
Aching with foal I was heaved to the door,
Swapping warmth for bitter weather
And birth of a rival creed.
Let me in!”

(From 'Mari Lwyd', lyrics by Hugh Lupton)

'Mari Lwyd', Wiki Commons

I like to think that Mary, who knew so deeply what it was to be outcast and homeless, would not have allowed such a thing but we know too well how the ways of patriarchy try to cast woman against woman. And always those at the bloated centre seek to turn the wild edge-dwellers one against the other. I reject stories such as these and honour all who give birth to the Light in these dark days of winter. And the Goddess is far older than the Virgin.

And so, for those of us who remember the sacred and acknowledge our place as people of the Northern winter lands and its age-old traditions, the Twelfth Night revelries continue; in the Wassail and the HaxeyHood, in the burning of the green and the dance of the Holly Man, in the hoofbeat of the Mari Lwyd. We have nothing to fear from those who follow the desert star, as well as or instead of our own winter-light, and the old ways are not so easily subdued, even on this night when the Three Kings are abroad.

'Holly Man on the South Bank', Wiki Commons

And so to Epiphany on January 6^th, the day of the visit of the Kings to the Christ child after this night of bright stars. In Spain it is the main festive holiday, known as El Dia de los Reyes, and Three Kings Parades, or Cabalgatas, take place throughout the country with food being left out by children for the kings and their camels on Epiphany Eve. On the day itself a 'Three Kings Cake', baked in a ring and decorated with candied fruit, is eaten. Hidden inside is a small figure of Jesus and a bean. The person who finds Jesus will be the king or queen of that year's celebrations and the one who finds the bean will buy next year's cake. In England the 'Twelfth Cake' upheld a similar tradition but, uniquely, other items were often included, with whoever found the clove being “the villain, the twig, the fool, and the rag, the tart”. “Anything spicy or hot, like ginger snaps and spiced ale, was considered proper Twelfth Night fare, recalling the costly spices brought by the Wise Men. Another English Epiphany dessert was the jam tart, but made into a six-point star for the occasion to symbolize the Star of Bethlehem, and thus called Epiphany tart. The discerning English cook sometimes tried to use thirteen different coloured jams on the tart on this day for luck, creating a dessert with the appearance of stained glass.” (The Old Foodie) How intimately food is bound up with the sacred. Which brings me beautifully to another aspect of Epiphany.

In Ireland, January 6^th is known as 'Little Christmas', and 'Nollaig na mBan' or 'Women's Christmas'. This was the day on which women were able to lay down the hard work of the household which they had undertaken throughout the rest of the festive season, and no doubt all year, and go out to celebrate with their friends, sisters, mothers, and aunts. Children would buy presents for their mothers and grandmothers and women would light candles for every room in the house. There is some wonderful information about Nollaig na mBan in the Irish Times here and The Sanctuary of Women provide a beautiful free online retreat for Women's Christmas here. I think that next year I will make a point of gathering with my women friends for Little Christmas Day.

There is such richness to be found in our traditions, so many threads that join us rather than divide, and yes, we do let go of the sacred and of sacred time far too easily. Tonight I will honour the Star of the East and the desert child and the Star of the North and the reindeer track and, tomorrow, I trust that the light of both will lead me on.

Nights of Reindeer and Starlight (Artist: Wood Hill)

References:

http://www.thelocal.es/20170104/why-spain-loves-the-three-kings-more-than-santa

http://www.icysedgwick.com/twelfth-night-folklore/

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/twelfth-night-england-two-little-known-rural-festivals-dating-back-hundreds-years-1536581

'Archaeologica Cambrensis': Jones, David, 1888 https://archive.org/stream/archaeologiacam19moorgoog/archaeologiacam19moorgoog_djvu.txt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Night_(holiday)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Christmas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Days_of_Christmas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmastide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmastide

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/when-take-christmas-decorations-down-9500013

http://randombitsoffascination.com/2016/01/04/regency-christmas-traditions-twelfth-night-revelries

https://austenonly.com/2010/01/05/jane-austen-and-christmas-celebrating-twelfth-night/

http://thefederalist.com/2014/12/29/lets-bring-back-the-12-days-of-christmas/

https://voicewithinthecards.wordpress.com/greenwood-tarot-book/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari_Lwyd

Mari Lwyd on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc_OXXt9PeE&list=PLUN2ASn_0NgeBu1RcRxSOq2kHw4vzuKbg&index=5

http://www.thelionspart.co.uk/twelfthnight/

http://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk/whatson/events/christmas-events/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(holiday)

http://www.theoldfoodie.com/2007/01/twelfth-day-of-christmas.html

http://sanctuaryofwomen.com/blog/womens-christmas-2017-walking-the-way-of-hope/

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/on-the-woman-s-day-of-christmas-1.121479

A Personal Exploration of Easter

'Supposing Him to be the Gardener', Cross Bones Jesus by Barry Parman

I have always had a tense relationship with Christianity. I don't come from a religious family, although I enjoyed church on the rare occasions when we did go because I loved my dad's beautiful singing voice and rejoiced in my mum's equally loud but tone deaf singing. My main memory though is of always feeling that I was doing something wrong that I didn't quite understand. I went to Sunday School every week and sometimes to services at the Pentecostal church, which I loved because of the passion of the Welsh pastor, but my first truly spiritual experiences were ones of connection with nature; of feeling the grass growing and all life breathing. In my teens I went along to my local free church every Sunday, mainly because my best friend's family went, and noticed that often people there weren't very kind but felt superior to others because they had been 'forgiven' by God. In my early twenties, just before getting married, I visited a local vicar with my fiancé for 'marriage lessons' and he told us that, if we argued and couldn't reach agreement, the man should have the final say. After that not only did I not think much of church but I was angry. And, as far as I was concerned, that was the end of me and Christianity. Although I still loved going into churches, I had by then discovered the Goddess path and put institutional religion behind me.

Then, in 2012, I began to sever links with my Goddess community and, feeling heart-sore, I sought out a new place where I could connect with people of Spirit. Southwark had already become important to me and so I found myself in Southwark Cathedral and made a quiet home there amongst its pale~as~moonlight walls and gently beautiful services. I liked its connection to my beloved Cross Bones graveyard (of which more another time), I liked its politics, which I had heard were radical for the church and therefore in stark contrast to St Paul's which had recently evicted the Occupy Movement from its steps, and I liked the anonymity that attending a city cathedral can bring. I still wouldn't call myself a Christian but I felt at home and I still do; as a woman of the Goddess and a hedgepriestess of Afallon, I feel no inconsistency in lighting candles to Mary as an aspect of the Sacred Feminine, nor to Jesus who I am sure would be considered a heretic were he to walk into most Christian churches today. There was much that resonated with me there.

But I have always wanted to remain respectful to the religion which had unwittingly given me a home and have avoided Easter services, finding nothing for me in the concept of a blood sacrifice demanded by an angry God as atonement for supposed sin. As Philip Carr-Gomm says in his essay, 'The Fertile Christ' in Mark Townsend's 'Jesus Through Pagan Eyes' (1), “The story of Christ currently requires two images of his death and rebirth, but in practice it is the image of his crucifixion rather than his resurrection that is used as the central icon of the faith...it is his agonising death that occupies the centre-stage...”.

Through my many years of following the Goddess path, I already acknowledged Easter as a festival of the Germanic goddess Eostre/Ostara and of the rising of spring energy and a return of the light after the long, dark months of winter. There is only one primary source for this goddess and that comes from 'The Reckoning of Time' by Northumbrian monk and scholar the Venerable Bede (673 – 735), who said that, “Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated 'Paschal month' and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate the Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance..” (2). Later in the 1880s, Jacob Grimm wrote in his 'Teutonic Mythology' that the Anglo-Saxon name 'Eostre' is related to an Old High German adverb 'ostar', expressing movement towards the rising sun. He claimed that he had found evidence of the worship of a goddess named 'Eostre/Ostara' in oral tradition and said that “her meaning could be easily adapted to the resurrection day of the Christian God” (3). The 'Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture', published in 1997, says that, "a Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn is supported both by the evidence of cognate names and the similarity of mythic representation of the dawn goddess among various [Indo-European] groups” (2). Whether she is an ancient goddess carried through oral tradition or a more modern invention makes little difference to me. I sense Goddess~as~Life moving through all that pulses green and newly unfurls its tender wings or petals at this time of year and celebrate the daily changes of life as it rises.

And so I had comfortably settled into celebrating the Sacred Feminine and the changing of the seasons at Spring Equinox and had chosen not to involve myself in the Christian Easter Festival. And then, this year, I visited Southwark Cathedral just as Lent began in February and saw German artist Angela Glajcar's 'Within the Light'. This was a large-scale installation made of several lengths of translucent white glass fabric hanging one above the other, some tattered like feathers, above the choir stalls. The light within the cathedral is one of its great beauties and 'Within the Light' was designed to reflect this light as it changed throughout the day. I found that this soft-winged beauty touched something within me and challenged my preconceptions about the heaviness and darkness of the 'blood-soaked' Christian Easter festival. Canon Gilly Myers' extraordinary sermon reflecting on the Lenten installation can be found here. I resolved to spend the season exploring Easter through my own spiritual understanding to find out whether there were ways that I could respectfully include myself in the life of the church at this important time of year. This has been a very personal exploration, and one which will continue, but here are some of my musings over the Easter period.

I am not the first person to equate the dying and rising Jesus with other gods, such as Dionysus, Tammuz, and Osiris, many of whom have similar festivals in the spring. In this way he becomes a vegetation god, a sort of Green Man or Green Christ. Coming from a land which is so green and fecund at this time of year this image resonates deeply with me. One of my favourite images of Jesus is an image which hangs at Cross Bones Graveyard, 'Supposing Him to be the Gardener' by Barry Parman, which depicts Christ as antlered, crowned with thorns and flowers, and holding armfuls of lilies. In her essay, 'The Lily Cross and the Green Man' (1), Mara Ede-Weaving talks about a medieval mural in a small church in Godshill on the Isle of Wight which depicts Jesus crucified on a flowering lily. She sees this as symbolising both Christ's sacrifice and that of the Green Man, who offers his own body in a seasonal cycle of growth, harvest, disintegration, and renewal. In the stories of both the Green Christ and the Green Man we can find the trust that we ourselves can be cut down, lose everything, and return. They are a reminder that Life wants to live (an energy which I see as the indwelling spirit of Goddess in all things), and of non-attachment to a particular 'shape' that our life might find us in. Last night, in the midst of struggling with this piece of writing, I dreamed of Hastings Jack-in-the-Green festival. This is ostensibly a morris dancing event which takes place every year around May Day. It begins with the 'Jack'; a frame covered in greenery, crowned with flowers, and wearing the mask of the Green Man, being 'danced' through the town, and culminates with him being torn to pieces in a wildly joyous frenzy and his highly prized green leaves being distributed amongst the crowd. This again symbolizes the sacrifice of the Sacred Masculine so that the seasonal cycle can continue; we let go so that we can rise again, we trust that life will hold us and bring us back to renewal. And so it is with the story of Christ on the cross if we choose to embrace its symbolic meaning.

Hastings Jack-in-the-Green

Victorian author and druid, Owen Morgan, believed that the “core of all true religions was the worship of the life force – in the macrocosm the sun and earth, in the microcosm, the male and female genitals; in both the activities that give rise to new life – were the foundations of all religious symbolism...in Pagan as well as Christian traditions” (1). And within this is the image of the masculine as an energy which rises, falls, and rises again, in contrast to the feminine energy which remains constant. Philip Carr-Gomm points out that, in all variations of the ancient story in which a god is sacrificed for his people, “the god represents the moment, the finite, while the goddess represents the cyclic and eternity'” (1). It is this right relationship between the masculine and the feminine which brings the renewal of life, rather than atonement for sin.

Which brings me to the place of the Feminine within the Easter story. For many years, I have equated the time between Jesus' death on Good Friday and his rising on Easter Sunday with the journey of the dark/new moon, which disappears for several nights before reappearing as a tender, newly reborn crescent; life from death. The date of Easter has come to be determined by the moon, with Easter Sunday falling on the first Sunday after the full moon on, or closest to, March 21^st. In this way Easter becomes a lunar festival in contrast to the solar festival of Christmas. Often the sun is equated with the Masculine and the moon with the Feminine and I have found Easter a powerful time to explore Christ as both. In her poem, 'A Prayer of Approach', Revd. Rachel Mann writes...

                                   Christ our Sister, unite us in your holy bleeding.

                                  As you took spit and dust for healing,

                                  take our hands, cracked and huge as washerwomen's,  for God's work (4)

It is also a time when we can reflect on the role of women in Jesus's story. Jesus often used feminine imagery in his description of the Divine, particularly describing God's wisdom in female terms, and there are many examples of the importance of women in the gospels. Jonathan Merrit's conversation with Mary Demuth, which can be found here, tells us more about Jesus's radical relationship with women and it was this radicalism which led to the historical Jesus being persecuted, and eventually executed, by the authorities of the time. Malcolm Guite, in his sermon in Southwark Cathedral on Easter Sunday 2015, spoke of Jesus choosing to reveal his resurrection from the tomb to Mary Magdalene before any other. This was at a time when women were rarely listened to, or respected, and yet a woman was chosen to carry such an important message to the rest of humankind. As Malcolm Guite said, Jesus rose at Easter but this was also a powerful rising of women, both socially and spiritually. If only the early Christian church, and wider society, had been willing to listen, then or now.

In the role of Jesus's mother, Mary, we can perhaps bring together the themes of the Green Christ and the role of women. In the Christian story as it has been given to us Mary is shown only as a helpless witness to the suffering and death of her son. Although it is important to reflect on the suffering of women and mothers it is possible to explore a more empowering role than this. In the Bible women's roles are often shown as passive ones. In many of the ancient stories, such as those of Isis and Osiris, Calliope and Orpheus, Rhea and Dionysus, Dumuzi and Inanna, it is women, and often mothers, who dismember and/or restore the bodies of sacrificed gods. This echoes shamanic initiations across all cultures and, in this way, women take on their roles as mentors and initiators of the male mythic journey. I am reminded of the maenads, priestesses of the god Dionysus, who accompanied him in his wanderings and were said to rip apart wild animals in the abandonment of complete union with primeval nature. It is best not to underestimate the power of the female! We can think of Mary as a similar initiatrix if we are able to free her from the shackles of churchianity and allow her to take her place amongst other divine women. And in freeing her we are also able to liberate the historical Jesus and the mythic Green Christ to spread their message of radical love, deep compassion, connection to nature and to the wounded healer within. He becomes the Fisher King and the Feminine holds out to him the Grail of wisdom and healing.

I have come to no conclusions from making my journey through Easter this year and these will not be ways of thinking that resonate with everyone. For myself, I feel that there is much more to uncover but I have followed many roots and paths through the hedge and have found much beauty. I am lifting a prayer that these explorations will move me closer to the Spirit of what moves through men and women and there will be much more to find.