"I intend to live forever, or die trying"---Groucho Marx

It’s that time again, my birthday.  This Saturday I will be crossing another threshold, turning another corner and along the way I (in the usual Sonya style) have found myself taking inventory.  In this past year I have been grown!  There were some times when I thought I would just “give up” or “could not take it anymore” but thank the Goddess she sent me friends who said…”You can do it!  Sonya, you are wonderful.  We love you!”  I realized this year, for a young woman who had a baby to early in life thus socially stubbing herself in the toe.  I had outgrown my awkwardness, I am not a stumbling colt anymore I have friends.  True friends, and plenty of them.

Terry Riley says “True friends walk in the door when troubles hit you; the other kind walk out.”  How right he is.  Rev. Terry Riley, Rev. Amanda Riley, Gary and Anita, Rev. Tim and Rev. Edwina Rickman, Anne Pelloth and Tom Evans, Pat Tobias and Brian Cris all stepped in the door of my life when times were really tough this year and fed me, soothed me, told me like it was, and helped me get my groove back.  I pray that when I as an elder, see someone else going through the same disappointment in life I remember this time and “reach out and extend” and open the door to their life and offer them the same.

I have acquired some new best friends.  Allison Hancock (yes a fellow Highpriestess and Clergy also) has through time and trials proven to be my best friend.  She can be a fiery woman when crossed, a strong shoulder to cry on or lean on, and the person who when you are weary helps you carry your load.  John Hancock has surprised me in ways I could not comprehend.  He handles life with a sarcastic dry humor but understands that when the “crap falls” it takes a team of people to “have your back” and he gracefully uses the power of air and his “unique peaceful” take on life to help you see things in perspective.  I need that perspective.  I crave that perspective.  Sometimes, I am just pushing and shoving and striving and running so fast that I have no idea what is really going on and when I find myself tired or weary the Hancock family is where I find myself going for “manna”.  

Pretty new in my life, but not less special nor less loyal are Cindy Mcmullin, Angela Crossen, and Michele Acred.  Cindy is relatively new to my circle and life; but I knew when I met her she was a “friend for life” it just clicked and we fit.  Now granted our personalities are equally bombastic and just as fiery but if you get two women the live in the fire quadrant together you do not get troubles you get women who love strong women.  You find that Goddesses like Cindy become not “more scarce” but more prevalent and when I needed it most she has halved my job load and elegantly increased hers J Her laugh is a “classic witch” cackle, her friends many, and her heart is as big as whale.  I am so blessed to have a woman such as this choose to share my path and her path in my lifetime.  

Angela and Michele are a couple in our Temple.  Not new to the Pagan community, but relatively new to my life.  They are hardworking, upbeat, positive, funny, inquisitive, open, and very smart.  One has the brain of a scientific engineer and the other of a creative genius.  Their marriage is one that makes people smile with happiness and understanding.  Their example of how to deal with troubles amazing; and when I see them show up (no matter what) my tension eases, a smile spreads on my face, and my eyes start to dance once again.  More people need people like this in their lives, more people should be like this…and I pray that for hanging out with them and living with them I will become more like them because they are just “great people to aspire to be like”. 

* It should be stated here that Angela Crossen freely and NOT drugged chose to be my maiden through one of the busiest and toughest times I personally have ever gone through and the Temple as a whole went through.  She hustled, she bouyed me up, she laughed, distracted me, got me back on track, and in the process of her questions I found myself loving what I do and remembering why I do it again.  I could not have ASKED for a better maiden and friend so I KNOW Isis had something to do with it.

Lastly, but not less importantly are the three quite men in my life.  Daniel Meyers, Brian Miller (my hubby), and Clifton Stallsmith (my oldest son) they are not truly quite just compared to me they seem timid!  (LMAO)  They listen, they take in details, they calmly take in every situation, and just when you think you might throw up your emotional hands and walk away because you cannot figure something out they calmly state it exactly like it is.  They are like the book of directions you forgot to read while assembling and Ikea bookshelf.  If you would have asked them first, and then taken the time to listen after they had thoroughly processed your question in their zen like state you might just learn something; but if you are like me you are too busy trying to pain the world some intense color to take the time to listen to the guru while he is thinking!  After all there is grocery shopping, and cooking, and cleaning, and classes, and rituals to plan, and decorations to assemble, and things to write.  In the meantime, they sat there took it all in and finished the project by the time you got around to it.  Yes, still waters run deep.  How great-full I am to have such men in my circle of life.

Now that I have written this list I find that what amazes me the most is that I have such wonderful, talented, smart, creative, inspirational, amazing people IN my life.  Not observing my life, or reading about my life, but participating in my life (though I do like it when they read about my life also). No, better than that CONSCIOUSLY choosing to participate in my life, and with me!  There I said it, I cannot truly comprehend how people such as this have chosen to honor me with not only the gift of their time, but with their friendship and love but they have.  Then I have no idea what Isis sees in me either or Osiris but hey I run with it; I would be a fool not to celebrate the Gods and the great people who choose to love me. So thank you all of you for the specialness you lend to me and my life I would not be who I am without you...you make life vibrant, rich, and berry berry abundant!

So this year, when I turn twenty five (wink wink, nod, nod, you get the picture) I am going to celebrate the wonderful gift of people that the Gods have brought into my life.  I have always admired people that had lots of wonderful people as friends.  I have surrounded myself all my life with pictures and quotes from people who inspired me but those were magazine pictures and handwritten quotes that I jotted down from books. I look up, I see the truth.  I need no magazine cutouts.  I need no handwritten copies from books.  My friends are the real thing.  They are the kind of people I want to be, inspire me to be better, and show me that anything at all can happen.  Now if that isn’t a magical birthday gift I have no idea what is!

So Happy Birthday Sonya Miller!  You lost ONE best friend many years ago on your birthday but you gained MANY more and there is no greater rich person than he or she that has surrounded themselves with TRUE friends.

Thank you all for reading me ANOTHER year and for participating in my life also...for I do not write for myself alone...I write to commune and communicate with others!   Next year, I am aiming for a book!

We are all Brothers of the Sun and Daughers of the Moon!

In my neck of the woods, in my circle of friends who are Pagan that are scattered across the United States the hottest “topic” of debate was usually the role of males in Paganism.  It would make women irritable, because they felt they were defending Goddess and had come to the religion in the first place so that they could be more “empowered”.  Me, and my girlfriends felt that in the “real” workplace/political world we were “not listened too” and treated as “less than” and that if you really wanted to insult a man you called him “a girl" (or vaginistic type words a few months ago I saw this used by advertisers on a billboard to get men to buy a sportscar).  My male friends, however, would argue that the world had changed to the point where they could hardly get jobs and that the world we described was not”real” or “had leveled out” leaving them competing against minorities for everything; they did not feel that they should have that same “bias” in their religious choices.  So there was a gridlock…since the Highpriestess is what runs covens (unless you are involved in an organization that still venerates male over female) and since Goddess books there are aplenty and God books few my male Pagan friends felt they got the short end of the stick.

For years, when I was younger I would think," If you all feel this way then why come to this religion if you resent women running it?  Go somewhere else, any other religion will let you run everything if you are male and not even let females become ministers!"  However, the wheel turned and  I started to hear with spirit filled ears, and listen with a spirit filled heart and realize that maybe just maybe they (my male friends and even my young son) had a few valid points.  So, when I returned to Memphis once again I started to listen and the same points came up.  Males saw all the women rituals that excluded them, the Goddess retreats and felt that they had nothing equivalent.  They were being asked to participate and be “better” men than most of society but were not being treated “fairly”.  When questions of rites of passage for men came up they were told they were “not important” and that “why should they need them?”.  Some leaders of the organizations went as far as to say that the “separation of the two sexes” was silly anyway, and that it promoted more problems than solutions.  Yet, everywhere I listened I heard them hurt and hungry for something more and  “just for them” they wanted to also leave behind a legacy of "new Pagan men".

As a woman I understand the need for “just for me”.  I read Virginia Wolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” while in college and firmly decided from that point on in life I would make a space and time for just me because it was important.  Goddess devotional books, and companion readers emphasize over and over again how important it is for women who give so liberally to husbands, parents, children, and their bosses to make a space and time for themselves.  So women started forming little groups, or girl nights out, or pampering sessions, by now I have not met a woman my age who does not have a “just me” hobby, activity, or time that helps her get back in touch with her inner Goddess.  This is wonderful, it is liberating, it is empowering, it was not heard of in my Mamaw’s day and time unless you were rich!

But what about men who take care of their children, wives, bosses, friends, and families?  The numbers are growing on how many men raise children alone and how are young men going to learn how to be comfortable and not defensive being a "man" (and no that is not a bad word) if they do not have role models, and mentors, and become more open minded?  What if you do not think the perfect time to spend with men is in a Budweiser commercial at the Drag races? I know this is an extreme example but here in the south it is quite common…what if you like to read poetry, and play music, and paint, or just meditate and contemplate the universe?  Where do we encourage this in our modern day society?  Why is it okay for the woman to get in touch with her inner maiden with “hello kitty” houseshoes but the man cannot get in touch with his inner “rogue” playing video games or buying star wars collectibles? 

I say this because you get a group of women together and more often than not you will hear references to men…just being more immature than women.  That men, waste money on toys and don’t seem to care about childrearing like we do.  It is like we women, force men into a role that they themselves might not want to be pushed into.  If women do not like to be “cookie cuttered” then why is it okay for us to force “traditional” roles on men?  I realize that in my marriage, I have to stop and re-acquaint myself with my gentle father- husband all the time because I have pre-conceived stereotypes that were fed to me by my parents and society that told me Brian has to be XYZ.  However, he is not those things.  To add to this, I have a compassionate soft spoken artistic twenty year old son who has expressed himself through clothing and words since he could articulate his mind.  His ambiguity when it comes to sexual roles worried me at first, only to find me expanding and realizing that sexual roles are just that ”costumes” and that one size does not fit all.

Did you know that I do not hear my baby Cayden cry in the middle of the night?  My husband does, and no he does not wake me up to take care of him he gets up cuddles and swaddles his son and rocks him back to sleep.  Did you know that he has taken Cayden to the doctor alone more than me because if he does this I have time to color my hair and do my nails?  He does that so I have ME time.  Now, you can say that means I am a “less than mom” and he is a “better than dad” but I will argue with you we are doing what works for us as people and as a family unit.  We have gotten to the point where doing what we are, is more important than what others think.  My husband really has longed for a Pagan Men’s retreat for a long time now.  Last year, he finally got a “fathering ritual” at the age of forty. He has two other children from a previous marriage, one twenty one the other twenty two and he has been a practicing pagan and a Highpriest for at least twenty years. That is took him that long to get this rite of passage I found dumbfounding and sad.

This weekend, he and my oldest son are going to a Pagan Men’s retreat called Brothers of the Sun < http://templeofthesacredgift.org/bots/info.html>  our church , Temple of the Sacred Gift-ATC is co-sponsoring it with the only Pagan’s we knew in the area that celebrated the Male aspect of Paganism as much as the Female aspect, Southern Delta Church of Wicca-ATC.  Rev. Terry Michael Riley has since 1993 been a legal ordained minister of the Pagan community with a Church.  He fought for the rights of Pagans and it was documented in the March for Ft. God video < http://www.amazon.com/March-Robin-Anderson-Cuhulain-Terry/dp/B00023DEH6/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1313519927&sr=1-2 >.  He is a pioneer and courageous in ways I can only hope to become and yet for several years now in the woods he has continued to have a small men’s mysteries retreat.

Two years ago, when I met Rev. Terry Riley he told me he had a manuscript lying around that he had not gotten published but rejected everywhere he turned, and that he was ready to give up on since no one seemed interested.  I asked him the topic, and he told me men’s mysteries and the relationship of Men to the God and the Goddess energies.  I could not believe that he had such an important book tucked away and that no one wanted to publish it!  So I asked him to look at it and edit it and I would study on how to get it published, I knew in my bones it was important and like everyone I know I love helping people.  I formed a self publishing company (Heka House), took my income tax refund and published the book named aptly BROTHERS OF THE SUN: THE PAGAN MEN”S MYSTERIES (hey it is a great book you should read it and purchase it for every male pagan you know!).  We (Terry, Brian and I) felt the book was integral to the future of Paganism and addressed a common complaint that was never addressed and always ignored.  I have never been prouder than to help assist a person publish something I feel was important.  I have never felt more amazed to realize that with helping fund a Men’s Pagan retreat in a nice facility that we are starting a rock solid tradition we can leave behind to future generations.

If we, the women, do not back our men then who will?  Is the consort not just as important as the Goddess?  You bet he is!  I pray that this Brother of the Sun retreat will help heal some of the wounds caused in this community by not treating our the male energy as "equal to" not "greater than" the female energy.  I pray that it starts a legacy that teaches and instructs our men on how to be better at being themselves.  I hope that it helps each of them find a part of themselves they forgot about, that they make new friends and come home exhausted yet refreshed.  Do I believe I finally listened to the universe?  You bet you I did!  Will I ever truly understand what the men in the Pagan community are expressing…maybe not, but I am taking a baby step in the right direction.  That is all I know how to do, and I pray my Brothers give me a break and know I wish them the best! But if you are a male Pagan, and all you do is complain about the differences and do nothing to support a local festival and movement to help your own, then do not complain...hush up.  You cannot complain about the President of the United States if you do not vote!

How do you all feel about the men learning how to be more comfortable being themselves and finding themselves?  How pivotal do you feel this is to men and future men in our Pagan communities?