Tag: community

Sacred Paths Center in Crisis – Broke, Closure Imminent

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From The SPC website: http://sacredpathscenter.com/  :

Sacred Paths Center, the Spiritual/Pagan Center, open to all, first of its kind in the United States, is broke.

“What, AGAIN?”

Yes.

“Now why?”

Simple: lack of YOUR support. This message will reach thousands and thousands, but how many of you will care enough to do anything?

A physical banner has been put in the ground here, proclaiming this area as sacred to us; SPC is that banner. “Pagan Community”, “Paganistan”…it seems they are just words. There are thousands of us here in the Twin Cities metro, and among us all, we can’t give $3000 a month to keep that banner standing open. What does that say—really say—about “Pagan Community”? Less than a dollar each, and yet… Continue reading →

Deeply Rooted – Pagan Land, a Do-ocracy Intentional Community

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I approached the Deeply Rooted organizational booth at the Pagan Spirit Gathering to find the story of the Pagan land community located between Medford and Wausau, Wisconsin.

Who should I ask about Deeply Rooted?      The reply…

“Talk to Wade, he is the founder. He has had the truest intention of anyone that I have ever met, without any ulterior motives. He wants a strong, supportive, interactive web of community. A network that is strong, and diverse, and of many spiritual paths. He has promoted the idea that just because you may not like someone, does not mean you shouldn’t have their back, if it is for the greater good of a community.”

How did Deeply Rooted come about?

Wade (after much humble disclaiming) ;

My great-great grandparents bought numerous plots of land just in the north of Wisconsin in the 1890’s. Horrible farmland, that failed and was down to 160 acres by the 1920’s. My great uncles held it and it was going into foreclosure. They sought family help and my parents were able to step in and buy the land. A portion was to be my eventual inheritance, and I got them to deed 40 acres over to me, and the balance was put in a state forest restoration program. I donated the forty acres I had to Deeply Rooted, a 501C3-R religious organization. We have all the IRS bells and whistles attached. We applied in 1999 and it took a year and a half. We officially incorporated in the February of 2000. That class is for a church or other religious organization. Continue reading →

Crystal Blanton – National Guest at Sacred Harvest Festival – Interview

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Author Crystal Blanton

I had the opportunity to interview Crystal Blanton about her appearance as featured guest at this years Sacred Harvest Festival presented by Harmony Tribe, inc.  Blanton’s first book, Bridging the Gap, was published in 2010 with Megalithic/ Immanion Press. Her new work, ” Shades of Faith; Minority Voices in Paganism”  is forthcoming. Included at bottom is the content of her main workshop offerings at Sacred Harvest Festival.

What do you hope to offer our community at SHF?

The scope of the work that I do is centered around group dynamics and learning how to navigate some of these dynamics in our community. To help with promoting healthier spiritual experiences for people. I take a lot of that material from being a counselor in my day life.  I take the skill I use in my everyday job and bring them over to our spiritual community. Many spiritual communities have already done this, it is just we haven’t gotten to that place yet in the Pagan community.  I will bring a lot of tools and skills around how to navigate certain group dynamics, how to create more communicative communities, how to navigate conflict and disruptions that can happen in any community dynamic. We’ll cover how to learn and pass on these concepts and tools after the workshops. To create a general sense of optimism in adding these tools that can help to enhance our community at large. That is what I hope to bring to the festival. Continue reading →

Upper Midwest Pagan Alliance Cleans Up! – Editorial

The highway cleanup on Interstate 35E, sponsored by the Upper Midwest Pagan Alliance (UMPA),  took place Saturday June 4th. The cleanup had been delayed by the storms that swept through the Twin Cities the weekend of May 21st. A cheerful group of seven met,  and after going over safety and procedure concerns, hit the road by 11am.  It was a beautiful summer day!

UMPA sign view headed South on 35E

We split into two teams and also had vehicle support with water, bars, and sandwiches nearby. With no adjacent fast food, the pickings were light with the exception of a few with a taste for “Ice House’ beer making frequent deposits!  By about 2pm the ending overpass was in sight, and it had heated up a bit.  On cue a generous breeze made the remaining cleanup feel much easier. This was the first spring cleanup of this site near Hugo, MN., after the move from Coon Rapids. With three on a side, we had just enough volunteers to cover it in one pass. The site could easily accommodate seventeen volunteers (8 per side,  4 teams working to the middle, and support people) and make the service a less demanding two-hour task. The site feels very rural and we always find something naturally beautiful or interesting along the way.

Continue reading →

Pagans in Prison – Editorial

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Click for large image!

We have had an explosion of incarceration in the United States in the last 30 years.  Minority races, the poor, and least educated continue to be way over represented as inmates statistically. Addiction, and our society’s inability to cope with the plague it represents, contributes to arrests and recidivism, and drug offenses fuel incarceration rates. Young males dominate the populations of our prisons, while female rates explode proportionately but in smaller overall numbers. One in 28 US kids has a parent in prison, and that tells much of the story of where the males are that might be a role model.

The religious civil rights of Pagans, or any inmate, are now well established in law. Whether the implementation of that law takes place seems to depend on individual states, institutions, and the staff and chaplains who work within them. Officials and inmates can work together to find reasonable accommodation to individual spiritual practice, and equity of accommodation among the many spiritual paths in prison, or we can all bear the cost of resolving these issues through the courts.

Inmates pay for their crimes through the loss of their freedom. To expect them to lose the rights our Constitution considers basic human rights is more for our satisfaction and as ‘punishment’ for those who may have caused us pain or harm.

Continue reading →