“Whistling up the wind.” I think they mean doing something else in the wind which will have rather messy results. Also, where did these ancient pagans get the idea of paper airplanes and heavier than air flight? From the Earth Mother? Grace Slick? And, finally, as all “faith traditions” (Ugh! Hate that term.) are invited, I might just have to take it in. Ain’t never seen a pagan iconostasis whistling up the wind and flying paper airplanes before. These clowns present a need for a word to replace “insane” as it does not seem enough for this situation. UltraMultraInsane, perhaps.

A Breath of Appalachian Spring: A Ritual in Celebration of the Spring Equinox, in the parish hall of the Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls in Biltmore Village.

Satan must be laughing.

I wonder how many Institutionalist-Enablers have willfully decided to stay and remain in TEc members of the Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls in Biltmore Village.

Satan must be laughing.

To be fair, it’s the hall and not the actual church building itself they’re using.

Probably under fair use and equality legislation and all the rest of it, they have to permit this?

Though yeah, probably no great sense of protest either.

I thought “whistling up the wind” happened about six hours after a bean rich chilli feed.

OH MY GOSH! I was a member of All Souls Parish briefly in the mid 80s (before it became the cathedral)and I am stunned by this. I experienced All Souls to be the epitome of a “Frozen Chosen” parish. I guess it has thawed a bit since then.

Surely you would change your tune if you heard the gorgeous polyphonic setting of “Whistle While You Work” that is used for that part of the ceremony.

And as the sun sets, and the prayers on airplanes are sent aloft, a lone cantor in the distance will intone “Paper Moon” in the original Greek.

No church is required to let any other organization, Christian or not, have use of its facilities.

Sounds pretty much like every Executive Council meeting to me…

Bill2,
“I thought “whistling up the wind” happened about six hours after a bean rich chilli feed.” This is North Carolina. Whistling up the wind means whistling Dixie into the wind. From wiccan-pedia.

PS – I understand this liturgy is being piloted in Chane’s place this weekend too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq1U8E0F-F4&feature=related

“Also, where did these ancient pagans get the idea of paper airplanes and heavier than air flight?” Just to jog a bit off-topic, what we call paper airplanes may have been around a good bit before the discovery of aerodynamics. (Although the oldest reference of which I know is in “The Headless Horseman” where Ichabod Crane is tormented by his students’ tossing of “paper partridges”.)

Witches? I thought TEO made them bishops, not burned them.

Sorry. Couldn’t help myself. God made me that way.

In the name of respect for Diversity. s/o

TEO 3000? More like TEO 2020 at the rate it is collapsing.

I see that in my country we had one of them Spring Equinox thingies too, but I don’t know if aeroplanes (paper or otherwise) were involved. Not having a local Episcopalian church hall to rent, they had to make do with very old-fashioned primitive conditions dating all the way back to realpagans:

http://www.newgrange.com/news37.htm

“Spring officially begins today, the day of the vernal equinox, when the rising sun penetrates the passage of cairn T at Loughcrew, illuminating the backstone. The vernal equinox, like its autumnal counterpart, is not fixed on any certain date, although almost by definition it comes around at yearly intervals. This year, it will occur at 5.32pm today.

Aligned with the equinoxes is cairn T, the interior of which is illuminated by a shaft of sunlight, exposing elaborate engravings on the stone inside at dawn on the equinox days. As the days become longer and we bid farewell to winter, cairn T at Loughcrew, also known as Sliabh na Callighe meaning the hill of the witch, located at the northernmost point of Co Meath near the village of Oldcastle, will welcome the sunrise of the spring equinox.

From today until Monday, members of the public willing to battle early morning starts will be able to to see the sun light up the ancient tomb between 6.15am and 7.30am. Clare Tuffy, manager of the Brú na Bóinne visitor centre, said: “It’s great because it’s such a high hill, there’s a sense of pilgrimage climbing it, knowing that people were also climbing here 5,000 years ago”. Just as the December solstice at Newgrange heralds the beginning of the slow death of winter, the March equinox brings with it the promise of the coming summer, Ms Tuffy said.

Loughcrew is one of four Neolithic complexes in Ireland, all dating from the late Stone Age. The extensive hilltop cemetery spans three relatively flat summits and consists of the remains of about 30 passage graves constructed from 3,000BC to 2,000BC and used well into the Iron Age.”

“As the days become longer and we bid farewell to winter, cairn T at Loughcrew, also known as Sliabh na Callighe meaning the hill of the witch, located at the northernmost point of Co Meath near the village of Oldcastle …”

Been there, climbed it — although not for an event such as this; it’s not all that far from the Tighe farm whence my grandfather set off for America in 1890.

Spring is sprung,
The grass is riz,
I wonder where the ‘Piscopalians is:
Dancing with hairy legged wiccans,
if its any of your biz.

hope the Melnyks got their invite….

Who knew where things would wind up once we started blessing the hounds?

No doubt they also had libations, feasting and exercises of the bodily physical natural sort, each according to their individual orientation and its particular proclivities, propensities and preferences (homo, hetero and/or bi) hopefully after and outside of the public ceremonies.

Does anyone know if Alcee Hastings belongs to either or both of these groups? If not, he should join them. They all share a mutual interest, skill and delight in making things up as they go along.

Hate to break it to ya, Chris, but Dr. Mabuse has gone where you dare not go with this story…where even angels fear to tread.

“TEO 3000? More like TEO 2020 at the rate it is collapsing.”

From the point of view of the diocese of N. Michigan, that is still about 12 years behind the times.

Now the Irish stuff is cool! I’d love to be at New grange for the Winter solstice. But I wonder how these witches (one wag described them as a group of very large women in colorful clothes….) would feel if they knew how many of the Euro-pagan revivalists are tied into the whole Aryan supremacy thing?

And Sparky? Warn us first? Another keyboard almost bought the farm!

Ahhhhh, Relevancy – thy name is TEC!

Such open and welcoming people!

They will welcome you to hell!

janjan, I doubt they are very authentically Irish. There used to be a group where I live that advertised themselves as ‘Cymric pagans’. They used some welsh words in their adverts to describe their rites. I contacted them one day to see if any of them spoke Welsh or knew of any Welsh study groups. The leader hemmed and hawed but wound up admitting that none of them knew any Welsh and that had essentially made it all up.

Things may have changed but most Welsh Speakers I’ve known were either Methodist or atheist and rather dogmatic whichever they were. Most Gaelic speakers I’ve known were either RC or atheist and also rather strident. There may be pagan speakers of either language, but I’ve never met them.

C’est beaucoup plus facile d’apprendre l’air éxotique que d’être éxotique.

Ah, Dr Tighe, I had no idea you were a Meath man – ancestry from the Royal County!

(I will now refrain from all the jokes about midlanders and boggers in respect)

Matthew, I tend to agree with you. Living with 5,000 or more years old antiquities down the road means that the local people are much less likely to take up with revived ‘earth religions’, it’s always the foreigners who come with a romantic notion of prehistory who tend to do that.

I very much doubt any of the local farmers was out prancing around this dolmen on Friday:

http://www.megalithicireland.com/Gaulstown%20Dolmen.htm

The sad part of this story is that the folks at Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls in Biltmore Village think we are being nasty for making weird comments about their openness to different lifestyles.

Tighe, 1890, what a newcomer!!!! That prompts me to tell a story of Remarkable Coincidence of Little Consequence. About a year ago I was at a reception after an Evensong service. I heard a man behind me introduce himself to another as William Tighe. I then introduced myself and indeed, it was our own Good Doctor of MCJ fame. Since none of us post pictures of ourselves and few use real names, what are the chances of standing ANYwhere on the face of the earth and being next to a member of this prestigious group?

I wonder if the Roman Catholic Womyn Priests will be there. This seems right up their alley.

Those Biltmore folks are setting themselves up to be sued. “Mother” is a heteronormative term and, as such, is bound to be hurtful to TEO’s constituents.

My grandfather Tighe came from Ryefields at Wood’s Crossroads in the parish of Muintirconnaught; my grandmother (whom he met and married in America) from Cloonloo, co. Sligo.

My mother’s ancestors came from Ireland, too, but much earlier.

“…what are the chances of standing ANYwhere on the face of the earth and being next to a member of this prestigious group?”

Obviously, we need to have a convention some day.

Janjan,

Quite some time ago, I read about happenings in pre-WWI Germany regarding the “back to nature” folks. They easily morphed into the “Ein Volk, Ein Land, Ein Fuhrer” crowd without missing a beat.

We do need to have a convention! I’ve never met any of y’all in person.

At least the Irish thingy is of historical significance. Cool. As to Asheville, NC, there are quite a number of hippie types up there on the mountain, and All Souls has been a center for weird stuff for quite some time. A fair number of the believers have left the Episcopalians for various Anglican places in the area, although there are a few parishes still hanging onto the old faith by a thread. Good luck to them, but I don’t think it will last much longer.

No church is required to let any other organization, Christian or not, have use of its facilities.

True, and I noticed this remark because I had meant to say something similar. However, if a congregation vacates its facilities, there could be a Historical Landmark Designation from the state or municipality — egged on by nostalgic types with no money of their own — coming down the pike to prevent its demolition … and thoroughly discourage its sale. Then the owner might be begging Wiccans to take it off his hands.

“Mother Grove “isn’t a wiccan group, though some of us are wiccans,” she said.”

ROFLMAO!!!!

“Cross Burnings isn’t a Klan group, though some of us are Klansmen.”

At the present rate of decline – 2% – The Episcopal Church will have one member in the year 2737. Since the rate is actually increasing at about half a percent a decade, a membership of 1 occurs ca. 2215 if the rate of increase in the rate of decline doesn’t itself increase.

The point being, Christopher, there will be no Episcopal Church in 3000.

Sure there will, FW Ken. I’m pretty sure the interest on the endowment will be able to keep the last Presiding Bishop on life support indefinitely. Provided of course we don’t wind up with the Canadian version of socialized medicine.

Or how about: “Catholics for a Free Choice isn’t a Planned Parenthood group, though some of us are PP employees.”

Matthew, that would, I suppose, on how much they spend on lawsuits against the departing Christians and how many vacations… I mean… retreats in luxury hotels they take along the way.

You lace curtain Irish are so hard to take. That said, I have no problem understanding you at all, at all.

[...] Just up the road in Asheville it seems the Episcopalians are welcoming witches onto their property to celebrate the Spring equinox together. The original news story is here and Midwest Conservative Journal waxes eloquent here. [...]

[...] March 26, 2010 by John from Midwest Conservative Journal: [...]