Earth reverence in the city

Friends of the late Loui Pieper -- founder of Evenstar Books and ancestor to the Sacred Paths Center in St. Paul -- decided an appropriate memorial to her would be a butterfly garden in front of the Center. This was meaningful for many reasons; Loui herself had been an avid gardener and also raised butterflies in her backyard.

The garden-as-memorial is also a particularly meaningful process for Pagans. In most Pagan belief systems, death is not considered an end, but part of a continuous cycle of life, death, and rebirth that keeps the universe in balance, and is the most sacred mystery for Earth reverent people. Tending to the planting, growth, harvesting, fallowness, and re-planting of a garden is an active, collaborative ritual and reminder of not only the life it commemorates, but of our place in the cycle of regeneration that gives shape to our own lives.

It's also a heck of a lot of fun, judging by the joyous hubbub in the dirt outside of the SPC. Two of the tiny city sidewalk plots were fertilized and tilled on Coffee Cauldron night, thanks to the oversight of Nell and Neva B the master gardner and a passle of Pagans. It was definitely a multi-generational affair; there is something utterly irresistable about fresh dirt to play in, not just to the toddlers and children there, but also to a few of the middle-age fellows. Out came the tiller, the shovels, and there was a lot of excited digging and running around by some of the toddlers. Everyone got happily dirty.

The tilling of the memorial garden was also a great example of urban Paganism; Earth-reverent folks are not running off to communes or the wilderness and growing organic vegetables to find sacredness in their lives, a pattern often romanticized in some contemporary Pagan books. Well, alright, some are. But contemporary Paganism sprouted in the cities -- it has always been an urban phenomenon. Granted, it did come with a lot of the romantic frustration in back-to-the-land philosophies that permeated the social milieu of the 1960's, but today's Pagans know that the sacred Earth is not hidden under concrete -- our cityscapes are places of spirit and power as well.

In the next couple of weeks, the patches in front of the SPC (777 Raymond Ave., St. Paul) will begin to fill with flowers, butterflies, and bumblebees; a small effusion of color and green life breaking the monotony of the concrete. Loui's memory will be honored, as will the cycle of life, simply, in an everyday way -- modern Pagan style.

The smiling dirty faces and grimy clothes and shoes showed sacred work completed. An article written by a Pagan author popped into my memory featured the quip the "dirtiness is close to Goddess-ness". One of the eleven-year-olds at the Cauldron showed me how the dirt from the tilling got in through the holes of her clogs and solied her toes. "That's okay," she said, "it's a good kind of dirty."