This actually came up in the new D101 class. I actually found myself admitting — in the class — that D101 is the RDG’s recruitment / screening device. Or at least one of them.
This got me thinking, and questioning, and I think my thinking along these lines is very pertinent to Dryads Realm.
Which came first: the chicken or the egg? I’ve always wanted to be part of a “nest.” I was maybe 14 or 15 when I first read Stranger In A Strange Land, (SiaSL). The book had a profound impact on my way of thinking about sexuality and religion and about how and why people form groups. I think I may have read The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, right behind SIASL, so the idea of the intentional community and the “line marriage” were also implanted early on.
Right out of high school I went to Israel. I spent the first month touring the country, and then the next 11 months living on a kibbutz. So that was my first taste of actually living in community. My mom died at the end of that year, and I came back to the states for that. I intended to go back to the kibbutz, but one thing led to another, and I found myself staying stateside and finishing college.
I promised myself over and over that I would go back, but of course, I did not, even though living in the wage-slave world has been like a sentence to me. But one finds himself suddenly married with a kid in the oven. The suddenly he has two more and his wife has become a fundy and he is going along with it all because there hasn’t been a divorce on either side of his family as far back as anyone can remember. So he enrolls his sons in Boy Scouts, becomes Scout Master of the troop they are in and receives an award three years running for being the most active troop in the Council — mainly because he can’t stand to spend any free time with his bible-believing wife.
There is also the communal aspect of Scouting. — Whenever you are at summer camp, or on a weekend campout, you are experiencing intentional community in micro. The same is true of going to Pagan retreats and conferences and festivals. You get to have a fleeting taste of what it’s like to be living with a largish group of more or less like minded people — people you actually want to be around.
I married Lynne, my first wife and mother of my three sons (Hi, I’m Fred MacMurray), because she SAID she believed in ICs also. At the beginning anyway, we discussed living communally with others. At the time, the only visible groups practicing this in the US were certain groups involved in the Catholic Charismatic Movement, most notably, the “Word of God Community” in Michigan. Through that, we met others, like “Jesus People USA” and Sojourners in Washington DC. I had strong Pagan leanings back then, but, as a child who had been raised by a Catholic and a Jew, I was pretty sure that all religion was bs anyway. It was just a matter of which BS you could live with. I erroneously felt that so long as IC was possible, any BS would do.
Historically, Catholicism has always had forms of IC, be it a monastery or a convent. Groups of spiritually oriented people have always clumped together communally. The idea of whole families doing it (as in the case of Catholic Charismatic Communities) was just a new twist.
Lynne and I belonged to a prayer group that promised to evolve into a community — HIS Community. We were kicked out because I exhibited too much Jewishness. I guess this left a bad taste in Lynne’s mouth for ICs, though that was never mentioned. She began embracing some rather anti-Catholic/anti semitic forms of evangelicalism, and over a period of time became a hard core fundy, and even anti-IC (with biblical reasons why she should be).
Long before it got that far though, I had already secretly decided that Christianity held no more value for me. I rediscovered Paganism on the internet (this was circa 1980 or so) which my job had given me access to. I started going to job related weekend long conferences — actually the Pan Pagan Festivals in Indiana, and other Pagan gatherings I would learn about. I had found my home, or at least the context.
The twins were born in 1981, and I had them and my oldest enrolled in Scouting as soon as they were old enough for Cubs. I found, in working with other adult “Scouters” more Druids (some of whom had no clue that that is what they were in to) than I had ever before.
I was Scoutmaster of BSA Troop 313 from 1989-1991. I divorced Lynne in February of 1991. In retaliation, the troops sponsor, “Peoples Church,” the congregation that Lynne had left two years before because they were “too liberal” decided to dissolve the Troop and expel me as a member (the fact that I hadn’t attended a service in over a year, and was carrying on a post divorce affair with a female scouter had nothing to do with it I am sure (NOT)). I immediately made a phone call to the Scoutmaster of my old troop at Temple B’Nai Israel (with whom I was already quite close). My sons, myself, and any other boys from 313 would be accepted there, Jewish or not.
In the meantime, on a Pagan forum on GENie, I met Qadisha. She lived in Santa Cruz CA, and was very interested in the idea of a Pagan IC. She said that this is what she always wanted, and had been looking for someone to build this dream with all her life. We fell in love over the internet. After breaking up with Doreen (she decided to go back to her husband) I flew out to California to meet Qadisha. I spent one week in March out there, and met the Redwoods. That was it. A month latter, I flew Qadisha and daughter Amanda to Chicago, and together we packed up the stuff I hadn’t been able to sell, and drove across country, and moved in to her condo in Santa Cruz. I the back of my mind I was thinking: “I’ll get the twins to move out here — if I can get them out for one visit — to see the ocean, the big trees, the boardwalk — they’ll be hooked — they’ll never go back to Kankakee.”
It was May of 1992.
Now this turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made in my life. My first response on deciding that Qadisha and I needed to be together was that I should wait to move out to CA until the twins turned 18. We even broke up over this for a while. But I was horny and the next Pan Pagan Festival was months away. Also, I sincerely thought I could get them out for a visit (well as I write this it is 2003 and they have yet to cross the Sierras). I still feel to this day that I betrayed the boys — I should have waited, or at least, tried to get them to come with me.
Back to Santa Cruz: 10 days after I moved in Qadisha, I moved out. I became a roommate to Robin and Dean Thompson, friends (and coveners) to Qadisha who lived a few blocks away. Q didn’t mention that she was a struggling single mother on welfare (as far as I knew, she was a successful writer/videographer). HUD would not take kindly to her “harboring a man” — so I moved in with the Thompsons. Nice people — wonderful folks — and Pagan. I found in Robin a close and nurturing friend, and both of them were willing to lend a sympathetic ear in the hot tub. This was to be a short lived relationship though. In September, Dean and Robin sold their home and moved to France for an Unix consulting job Dean had taken. I temporarily moved back in with Qadisha, and then found a room in Ben Lommond with a member of a Pagan discussion group I had started to attend.
Ben Lommand is a wonderful little town, either :15 or :45 (depending on the time of day) from Santa Cruz. It’s in the Santa Cruz mountains, and is surrounded by Redwoods, and situated between two Redwood State Parks. The day before Samhain 1992 I moved back into Qadisha’s condo. For awhile anyway.
On the first weekend of November we traveled to “Valley of Fire State Park” in Nevada, about an hour from Las Vegas. This was the first (and last) GEnie Pagan gathering — about 100 friends from the GEnie Pagan group from all over the country came together. The highlight of this weekend was the handfasting of “Gandalf (as I was known then) and Qadisha.” On November 7, I moved back to Xavier’s place in Ben Lommond. Qadisha, beloved wife #2, had forgotten that she had made a pact with the Goddess when she first moved into her condo, that “no MAN would ever live there.”
I never moved back with her again. Our relationship was like a roller coaster. We were “married” on the weekends (which I spent with her mostly), and separated the rest of the time. We tried building a video production house together. I invested what was left of my inheritance in “VideoMagic.” But, between her unwillingness to tape weddings (the “bread and butter” of that industry) and her now acute migraines (the scope of which qualified her for permanent SSI disability), we didn’t do much business. It was a money sinkhole. I survived by managing a Radio Shack store in Scotts Valley CA (between Santa Cruz and Ben Lommond) and later, managing a Take Out Taxi franchise in Soquel.
Our only real success together was “Circle of Fire and Friends” which Q and I ran for several years, holding Sabbat rituals on the beach at Twin Lakes (or sometimes at Seabright). We also held a yearly Mabon campout at Pinnacles National Park. Attendance at these circles ran high — from 50 to 75 on average. I was hoping we might develop the kinds of relationships needed to create an IC out of this. I was hoping….
Q and I decided, on a trip to Renn Faire one weekend, that we were “poly.” That meant that Dennis (Q’s pre-Sybok boy friend) would get to come down from Eugene occasionally and visit (and vice-versa, I could baby sit Amanda at the condo whenever Q decided to go visit Dennis in Eugene). Being “poly” also meant that Q might run into someone suitable to me (and acceptable to her). Oddly, it didn’t mean that I could find someone on my own.
I was during this period (circa 1995) that I first met Adam. I was introduced to him by Joy Williams, who was attempting to establish a nest of the Church of All Worlds (CAW) CAW was loosely based upon SiaSL and named for Michael’s Church in the novel.
Adam (Adam Walks Between Worlds, AKA Duane Rostoker) was the “Official Bard” of CAW, having been ordained into that position by CAW Primate Oberon Zell Ravenheart (previously known as Tim Zell, and later Otter Zell). Adam and I had much in common. We were raised Jewish (as was Oberon for that matter). We had similar backgrounds in magick and in education. We were also huge fans of Simon & Garfunkle. The one and only year that Adam attended Circle of Fire and Friends annual Mabon Campout, we spent the first few hours he was there (up unto about two in the morning) singing Simon & Garfunkle songs, and he knew them all. One difference: he had served in Vietnam (and was disabled because of it) and I was the one and only person from Kankakee County to obtain a consientous objector deferment from my local draft board.
Generally speaking, whenever Adam was in the Santa Cruz area he spent the night with Qadisha and me. He was a greatful, generous and thougtful house guest. Probably the most productive time that I spent with Adam was just after St. Patricks day, circa 199?. He was MCing the annual “Bring Back the Snakes” Bardic at the Boulder Creek Brewery. After wards he and I made our way to the nearby Big Basin Redwoods State Park, where we shared a six back of Guiness and a few bowls of some very fine locally grown “pipe weed.” Our conversation drifted back to one he and I had shared many times before, how CAW just wasn’t anything like the CAW in SiaSL, and what could be done about it. It was there within the Redwood forest, that he and I conceived of what today is known as the Order of the Mithril Star. It was to be everything that CAW was not. A place where real people bonded in polyfidelety. Where a nest was a true family Where we shared water freely and with devotion.
The following winter, I believe, just before Imbolc, Adams part in our little revolution would be rewarded. Not. A court was convened at CAWs headquarters near Ukiah CA. Adam was tried for rape, sexual misconduct, sexual coersion and other false charges. A group of women cam forward and accuse Adam of all sorts of things I know he wasn’t capable of. Oberon presided over this kangaroo court – this Salem witch trial. Adam was defrocked and so he resigned from his post as offical bard.
It was a few months later that Adam moved down to the Los Angeles area. A knock came to the door at the house he was staying at. Adam answered the door, and the person at the door fired both barrels of a sawed off double barreled shotgun at very close range. Adam was no more. To this day the murder has not been solved. The weapon was never found, nor was the perpetrator. He just dispeared without a trace. Some of us speculate that the perp may not have been a human. Some of the people of CAW are very adept at magick, particular of the black variety. The perp may have been a golum, created and programed to this one specific deed and then vanish.
Order of the Mithril Star grew and evolved, and eventually morphed into the Reformed Druids of Gaia. You can read about that on their website.
(To be continued . . .)
