Revive Us Again

If there's one thing I miss about being Christian, scarily enough, it's the revival.

I went to a church full of old people.  It wasn't exactly the high-energy "Amen!" shouting, gospel-singing, being-slain-in-the-spirit kind of congregation most people think of when the word "Baptist" comes to mind.  Everything at our church moved slowly, except the Reverend, who was deep into the fire and brimstone of his calling, yelling at us from the pulpit and, no doubt, waking people from perfectly good naps.

Even our choir was pretty boring.  Fans of Eddie Izzard will know what I'm talking about when I say they were the "Hall...leh...luh...jah...joy...ful...ly...we...lark...a...bout" kind of group. 

"We will now sing Hymn #427, 'Oh God, What On Earth is My Hairdo All About?"

(I love those "rejected hymns" lists that circulate now and then.  My personal favorites are "This Cross Was Built Ram Tough," "Jesus Christ, Look at This Place," and "Mary Mary (Why You Buggin?)")

But once a year, for a week, all of that changed.  They brought in traveling gospel groups, there were special programs for the young people, special sermons, dinners, ice cream socials...the only thing we were lacking was a tent.  It was the one week of the year when religion became exciting, when Jesus became more than just a reason to eat stale crackers and drink grape juice in church.  He became a tangible presence, and a joyful one. 

People came away from revival feeling, well, revived.  Their faith was renewed, their prayers enlivened, at least for a while.  It was difficult for everybody to sustain that kind of energy, especially given the average age of the congregation was about 75, but for a while we all became the kind of Christians we knew we could be. 

Everyone, regardless of creed, needs a revival now and then.  Even something as beautiful and ever-changing as spirituality can become routine after a while.  When your prayers start to bore you, trust me, they're already boring the hell out of the gods--and that's when it's time to stage a revival of your own.

How do Pagans do that?  Ideally, that would be the purpose of festivals.  We become Maenads for a weekend, leaving behind our civilized lives to go dance around bonfires in the woods.  Festivals intensify the Pagan experience--for three or four days existence becomes a round of continuous ritual, celebration, and fellowship.  We can forget our regular lives for a while and soak up chant and drumbeat and the heady amazement of being surrounded by a hundred or more people who look at the world in a similar, if not identical, way.  Our needs become simple, our sense of time synchs up with nature.  We rise when we feel like it, eat when we're hungry, sit and meditate whenever the need strikes.  We spend long hours staring up at the stars.

Ideally.

My own history with festivals has been...dreadful, to be honest.  I've had some great ones, and I've had some horrifically awful ones that have left scars.  My experience has been that the bigger the festival, the more likely it is to end badly for me.  Certainly the level of drunken debauchery rises with the population, and therefore the level of spirituality, and safety, lowers dramatically.  There is a lot more to do and see and a tremendous variety of people to meet at larger festivals, but you pay for it in security--and, if you're a little agoraphobic like I am and crowds make you deeply nervous, you may have a hard time opening up and reaching out to the community.

My advice is, if you're interested in the festival experience, try out a smaller one first, if you can find one.  Like everything else in America, the smaller festivals have been absorbed into the larger megafestivals.  A gathering of any magnitude, especially one involving camping, food, and security measures, is a massive undertaking and requires a lot of money and a lot of personnel to bring off smoothly.  Many of the smaller gatherings in Texas have vanished in the last ten years, but I've been lucky enough to find a couple that cater to my need for safety--they're exclusive to women, and they're held on land I know quite well, with decent bathroom facilities and a minimum of hazards. 

As for larger festivals, my advice is, DON'T GO ALONE.  Go with several people you trust to make sure you stay safe, and establish a home base where you can always return to find warmth, comfort, and people to talk to.  Be sure that the friends who go with you are friends who will be there for you in an emergency (not just a physical emergency; the big rituals and meditations can be overwhelming in a strange place, and the energy can trip you out pretty heavily if you don't stay grounded) and not disappear to shag in the underbrush and forget you exist.  Overprepare.  Take too much of everything--food, warm clothes, blankets.  Drink lots and lots of water, especially if you drink alcohol.  Ground, ground, ground.

And for the love of Goddess, wear sunscreen.

I think the important thing about a revival of spirit is that it involves a break with the norm; you must shake up your routine, get out of your rut.  Think back over your history and remember times when you have felt the touch of Deity--how can you recreate that situation, or one like it?  Oftentimes such moments come out of nowhere, when we least expect them, but if you know that you tend to have magnificent spiritual experiences at the beach, chances are, going to the beach would be conducive to having another.  Don't assign any expectations; the more you work yourself up with anxiety over whether or not you'll get a telegram from God, the less likely it is to happen.  Relax, and let it come. 

If you're part of a coven or other circle, how could your group stage a Pagan revival?  Perhaps you could have a week of special activities--dinners, rituals, movie nights, discussions, trance journeys.  Each member could lead a different evening's activity.  You could do the same on your own.  Stage a mini-retreat, preferably somewhere away from home, but even your own living room will do if you turn off the phone and computer. 

So I'll pose a question to you, oh readers:  how do you revive your spirituality when it's flagging?  What experiences have you had that have renewed and awakened you, whether planned or spontaneous?  Feel free to blog about it if you have your own space, or say something in comments here. 

Comments

[Matt Stone]

Wow, Ive never seen a Baptist church like that. They're a bit different down our way. Interesting post.

[s1ren]

I have two preferred ways of sparking up the Divine fire when I'm feeling stagnant:

1. I take a long, hot bath with candles, herbs in the tub, incense, wine, and loud but trance-y music. I sort of baptise myself in the water, and I sing along with the music. I almost always come out of it revived.

2. When I'm feeling stuck and hopeless, and nothing is getting me out of my rut or my blahs, I clean my altar. I take everything off of it, dusting each piece and arranging it around me in a circle, shake out the cloth, and re-cleanse everything as I put it back. It's like re-booting my altar - and it re-boots me, too.

[R]

For those near them a wonderful place for festivals is Four Quarters (http://www.4qf.org/) in Artemis, PA. I think they really have it right.

[Ariadne]

I like to get out of the house, out into nature, and be by myself, or with my priest. We have friends in New Hampshire, and that place just calls to us. We go look at land, parcels of 100+ acres, and get lost "investigating the land." We truly love it. It's beautiful, serene... quiet.

[Michele]

Whenever I need revival I turn to the trees...I live very close to our amazing park system here in Northeastern Ohio and within 10 minutes of pulling out of my driveway I can be deep within our beautiful woods. There is one particular area that I call my sacred spot, it is off the hiking trails, a deep "V" of a ravine, where a mystical creek winds it's way through the park, full of fairy trees and loaded with spirits. As soon as I park my car along side the road and enter into this bower I immediately feel I am within a sacred space and by the time I hike back to my sacred spot, all mundane trivial pursuits have dropped away and I am filled with sacred grace. Along the path to my spot is an ancient tree that has a curious knarl that looks incredibly like the profile of an old crone and everytime, on my way in, I stop and greet her, caress her cheek and ask her permission to enter. She always greets me, sometimes she chides me for not coming more often, most times she's just happy that I've come. Then I go to the sacred Yoni place and just sit and visit, think, review, renew, cry (yes, that creek has been fed by LOTS of my tears) yet I always feel better when I leave, always feel resolved, feel renewed, revived! I always feel as if I have just left the lap of my Mother after having an intense Mother to daughter talk, and She's made everything all better, even when She's made me face those things about myself that I'd rather not own up to. Going to this sacred spot is where I cannot get away from myself, where I am forced to look myself in the eye, in complete, blunt, honesty and find the compassion and energy I need to remind myself to keep journeying on this path as the woman I am meant to be...

[Athena Grey]

I revive my connection to Goddess and God by going on a retreat from city life. The last time I did this, I spent a week in a cottage on the banks of a creek, and spent most of the week outdoors, re-awakening my connection to nature and re-attuning my senses.

[Sara]

Great post, lady! PSG revived me in a few ways, for sure. I think festivals do have the potential for revival-quality experiences. You betcha.

Of course, I'm also jonesin' personally for Pagan Revival of the evangelical variety - with some shoutin' and some hallelujah, praise the Land!s - maybe some kickass sermons set to drumming, some ecstatic dancing, maybe even a little gettin' of the Spirit. :) Pagan-style.

It's a dream. Get me a Pagani gospel choir and tear out on the circuit. A tent and a silver suit jacket. I'd be on fire. Woo! ;) LOL.

My coven out West rather looks to Samhain as our revival season - for me it's a little bit of homecoming too since I don't live there - I fly out and we have four days of festivities. I'm looking forward to it this year the way I look forward to a glass of water in July in Tucson. Hallelujah.

-S

[don]

Reading the comments here, I think its important to distinguish between revival for the self and "a revival" which may be for the self; and is also about community, communication, weaving webs with other people we might not have met otherwise, being able to relax and be "out of the broom closet" even if for a brief time.

I've been very fortunate in that I've been able to attend some of Reclaiming's Witchcamps I'm not going to say that they've all been easy and relaxing -- but they have revived my spirit and forced me to grow in ways I didn't know that I could. And yes, there's drumming and dancing and all that juicy, sexy stuff. There's also hard spiritual work and an expectation that each person is part of a community for the week and will do their share of work around meals and whatever else is needed.

The only other place that has come close to achieving the same level of trust has been the Falconridge Folk Festival. Again, its a community for a few days, there are a *lot* of volunteers, and there are expectations. There's also drumming, music, dancing far into the night, old friends, new friends, and a sense of coming home. Of course, there's also a truly amazing and well-organized security team.

We Pagani (I like that term), seem to sometimes think that just because we expect people to behave the way we'd like them to behave that we don't have to worry about it. I think we sometimes also worry about "harshing someone's mellow" or not letting them "do their thing". Let's remember that Pagans are people, too; if you find one or two really good new friends at a festival or gathering, you're doing better than average.
There will also be a lot of people you don't care about one way or the other, and a few that you'll cross the street to avoid. For all the great experiences I've had at the places I mentioned, there are people I met there that I just don't care to know -- and a few that have made it clear that they don't want to know me. That's the way the world is, no matter how spiritual your path. The trick is to figure out how to let it go, remember that it isn't necessarily about you, and get on with your own work.

[Chris Boydston]

I think my revivals come in the way of music. There are musicians who have recorded who are witches/Pagans or sing songs related to environmental spirituality, mythology, or Paganism that I enjoy - and it does charge me up enough to be more conscious of my path.

[Morninghawk Apollo]

I have been to a few festivals and agree that the larger the festival, the less community and spirituality there is. We used to go to Heartland, which is held each year outside of Kansas City. We stopped because after we had kids, we no longer felt comfortable going. It was more of a drunken drumming party with some good people.

We really like Sacred Harvest Festival outside of Albert Lea, MN. It is small (about 400 people) and extremely family-friendly. I've experienced the most intense large-group rituals ever there. I highly recommend going there for a Pagan-style revival.