It started after a meeting today with Heaven, which went loverly. I haven't often gotten time to just chat with her and it was a nice and refreshing in the middle of my usually rather solitary weekdays. It was a general check in prior to the big event of Ordination, and at the end of it she made a connection about one of my dedicating deities that I never really noticed.
The Dagda and community.
He's always been a robust god to me, the type of rougish Father figure that warms the heart and inspire one to be the best of oneself. He's one of those wandering transiant gods, that has one foot in the Otherworld and one in this. A god of duplexity that represents the primal brash parts of humanity and the intangiable mysteries of beyond.
But in all that I never really thought of his connections to community and that connection within myself. It is true though, he is a cheiftian God, in many ways to me THE Cheiftian God. And that goes hand in hand with comminuty, it is the heart of being a Cheif. Caring and tending to your people, your clan. That's something I can get behind all the more, because I love my community, and strive to be of use and merit to them.
This thought of community and how important that is lead into thinking about a post my dear coven sister recently made about how she feels the world needs more pagans, and more specifically about changing the PR of paganism. How would one go about making better PR for paganism or at least bringing the middle grade of us into the "mainstream". The answer in my mind appears to be directly to connected to community.
First you would need to get a 501 3K for non-profit status. That would then open the doors to applying to grants for community projects.
Of course that in itself wouldn't be easy, as I'm sure that there would be prejudice against a "pagan" organization and really it would be against our nature to hide that fact. But the fact is that if the project is appealing enough and the grant proposal is strong, and with the powers behind us we would get the support from somewhere.
Then the mind starts thinking about what sorts of projects would a community such as CAYA want to give to our greater community. A few thing immediatly come to mind.
- An enviormental project to either help with the up keep of the wildlife and parks in the area, could be a concert or fundraiser to donate to the parks and rec. paired with a clean up commity.
- A women's shelter, or some program that helps such a facility
- A community garden with educational courses
I think it would be good to begin associating paganism with humanitarism and enviormental charity. I mean it just freakin' makes sense! After all that's what we are about, within our own kind we are constantly helping our neighbors, we pride ourselves on that. Further there is such a strong connection with the Earth and we all know the problems that are arising , and further with our combined knowledge we know how things can be done better. So why not expand that? Why not reach out beyond our circle?
There are reasons, fear of ridicule from those who don't understand, or worse fear us themselves and purposfully misunderstand. And were we buried deep in a part of the country that is continually cruel to change and different flavor it would be one thing. But were better place to start reaching out than here in the bay area.
The chance of doing good appears to out weigh the bad in my mind. So much could start to be done. We could start living what we believe to an even greater extent, after all there is no small number of us. CAYA is growing and rapidly, as such we can start to really make a difference.
Maybe we aren't ready to go all non-profit and what not, but we could do other things to start with. We already have a seasonal food drive, we could as a community could start doing community work, cleaning up parks, volunteering at animal shelters. Maybe could find a local farm or start a CSA group membership, making it easier for more people to actually support local agriculture.
It'd be a lot of work, but wouldn't it be worth it?
Something to chew on.
Branwen
4 comments:
You know, Rabbit is actually working on the non-profit thing. I love the idea of doing good works in the name of Paganism. I mean, I think many of us do those things anyway, so why not bring a little light to the fact that we're pagans and we're doing good for our community? Maybe the herb and tree walks could include picking up trash as we go...
~ Rowan
OMG, you totally hit on a bunch of things that have been rattling around in my brain! I've been thinking a lot about the idea of a pagan non-profit, and I think that there are a lot of great things that could be done there.
Have you looked at Hands on Bay Area? A group of us at my office are using that to find things to volunteer for; though not specifically pagan, it would be fairly easy for a bunch of us to sign up for an event. And there have to be some things that can be organized without "official" status.
And, of course, I'm always a big fan of using the internet and user-generated content to get the word out there. If the mainstream media only wants to concentrate on the wacky stuff, why not skip them and go directly to the audience?
Steph
I feel the same way. I really want us to get incorporated as a Church and get our 501 c 3 status so we can get the land.
Of course you're already working on non-profit status, lol. Doesn't surprise me. (And how awesome by the way)
Just for the record I have experience tracking down and writing grant proposals.
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