Most years the Marin
Interfaith Street Chaplaincy presents an interfaith religious service on
Thanksgiving Eve. These events include
music and singing, poetry and drumming, stories and prayers. Some of the speakers come from the homeless
population and some are religious leaders.
I’ve participated in many of these services as a representative of the
Pagan paths. (Technically, I’m Witchen,
but I try to present the broadest and most diverse faces of Paganisms.)
In the past I’ve chosen to highlight Demeter, for several
reasons. One is that many Americans are
familiar with the Greek and Roman myths; often they’ve heard of about
Persephone’s descent into Hades and subsequent reunion with her mother Demeter
in the Spring.
I also find that short talks that end with a song tend to be
more memorable, leaving people with a song in their head. The song called “Demeter’s Song” contains
words, such as “the lover’s smile and the worker’s arm,” that are relevant to
contemporary life. People can relate to
them. They are not obscure or
other-worldly. The song is not laden with appeals to a divine entity; rather,
it’s sung in the first person and tells who she is, sort of like a brief
introduction in a conversational group.
So I briefly tell how the land became barren during the time
of Demeter’s grief and search for her missing daughter, and how the hens begin
to lay, the orchards to bear fruit, and the people’s hunger is then assuaged
when mother and daughter are reunited and Demeter again assures abundance. I conclude with a duet with my partner Corby
of “Demeter’s Song.”[1]
At the time in the service where offerings are proffered and
the collection plates are passed, people pile gifts of new sleeping bags and
packages of socks at the base of a harvest-bedecked altar.
Afterwards we gather in another room for casual conversation
and refreshments. During this
after-gathering both homeless people and other religious leaders have told me
how much they’ve appreciated this talk and song about Demeter. For, although the service is broadly
welcoming of all forms of religious expression, the fact of the matter is that,
like society at large, it’s overwhelmingly Abrahamic in manifestation. This year, in fact, there wasn’t even a rabbi
or an imam there. Except for a Buddhist
and myself, all speakers came from one or another Christian denomination. So it’s really great for me to learn how my
offering was perceived.
This year’s service came shortly after the terrorist attacks
in Paris. The discord around the world,
especially in the Middle East, seems to be expanding. Only the completely oblivious can remain
unaware of these unfortunate developments.
This situation has been on my mind, and I’m sure it’s been on the minds
of those at this event.
I was ready to rehearse our harmonies on “Demeter’s Song”
again this year, but another song kept nagging me. Another song about another goddess in another
time and place. I pondered the notion of
speaking of something so unfamiliar and remote.
Then I decided to go for it.
I spoke about a goddess named Inanna, who showed herself to
the people of the Fertile Crescent thousands of years ago, about 4000 Before
the Common Era.[2] I talked about how the people of her homeland
in Mesopotamia (literally, “[land] between rivers,” the Tigris and the
Euphrates), now considered to comprise modern day Iraq, Syria, and Kuwait, live
in such distress.
I told of Enki’s gift to Inanna of the 10,000 Me, all the gifts of civilization
(music, medicine, agriculture, writing, mathematics, weaving, pottery-making,
et al.). I spoke of her journey to visit
her sister Erishkigal in her underworld realm of heat and dust, and how she
divested herself of her possessions at each of the seven levels or portals,
beginning with her shigurra crown, then her bejeweled breastplate, until she
arrived before Erishkigal naked. I said
that some consider Salome’s dance of the seven veils to have been a reenactment
of Inanna’s descent, but that I was not prepared to argue the merits of that
contention; I wanted to emplace her and give them something to think about.
Then I invited them to join me in a spell, a spell to
reawaken the spirit of Inanna and all the wonderful gifts she represents – joy
and abundance, beauty and prosperity, peace and creativity. Like the Christian prayers for peace and
healing of those gathered, we would do a “working” using our voices in
song. I said that if they were
uncomfortable at the thought of performing a spell, they could view what we
were about to do as simply a sing-along.
The song I used is a call-and-response in which every line
is sung and then repeated by everyone; in other words, each line is sung twice. They didn’t need to remember anything; all
they had to do was to sing back the lines as I sang them.
I explained that the words and images are from those ancient
times when Inanna was worshipped, translated from the original cuneiform into
modern English by the late Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer, and thence turned
into a song. They are not the words of
romantic fantasy.
I asked them to think of the plight of the peoples of the
Middle East and to envision them enjoying the gifts of Inanna and the pleasures
of life -- safe homes, plenty to eat and drink, dancing. With our song we would work towards
reawakening these qualities among the people of her homeland. And so we sang:
Barge of Heaven[3]
Your
crescent shaped barge of heaven,
So
well belayed, so well belayed.
Full
of loveliness like the new moon.
Your
fertile fields well watered
The
hillock lands well watered too.
At
your mighty rising
The
vines rise up and the fields rise up,
And the
desert blooms in green
Just
like a living garden.
In
the heat of the sun you are shade,
A
well of water in a dry dry land.
Swelling
fruits to feed the hungry,
Sweet
cream to quench our thirst.
Pour
it out for me.
Pour
it out for me.
Everything
you send me I will drink.
I had called for us to sing this through three times. At the first round, some of the congregants’
responses were tentative. Responses grew
more convincing during the second repetition, until when we arrived at the
third repetition, my words and their responses were full-throated and powerful.
I concluded with the words, “By all the power of three times
three, as we do will, so mote it be!”
This year at the after-gathering I was a bit
apprehensive. I wasn’t sure if I’d
pushed too hard against the prevailing mindset.
The feedback I got, however, reassured me that what we Pagans can bring
to the common table of interfaith resonates and carries meaning. Annie, the wife of the street chaplain who
organizes this event, said, “You rocked!”
May the welcome reception I received for this spell-working
encourage others who represent a public face of Paganism to make our presence
known in a constructive way.
This was my Thanksgiving spell.
[1] Corby and I also sing this song as a form of grace
before family holiday meals in our complex multi-religious and atheist families.
[2] You have to say “Before the Common Era” because most
people think of BC (instead of BCE) as “before Christ.” However, it’s more accurate, at least in a
broad inter-religious context, to use BCE.
[3] Words adapted from Sumerian
text (tr. Thorkild Jacobsen, Diane Wolkstein, and Samuel Noah Kramer) Music by Starhawk, arranged by Lunacy.