| In Their Own Words | ||||
"If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl, but by all means, keep moving..."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
| Learning is Teaching is Learning | |
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When I was thirteen some people came to my summer camp to talk to us about magic and Wicca and ritual and things like that. It seemed like a fine thing to me, then, and after camp was over I went and I spent some time at their house, on their front porch. That was where they held the classes. I call them witch classes now, and they kind of were. We learned about ritual, associations and hermetics, chakras and power and energy work and all that kind of thing. We also learned a lot about ourselves. Fast forward to today. There's a certain kind of symmetry to the fact that I now live within a few miles of Rhiannon, and that porch I spent so much time on with cats crawling all over me and watching him drink black coffee so strong and thick you could stand a spoon in it. Maybe it means it's the right time for this. I like to think it means I'm the right person to be one of the ones leading us in this, but the truth is I have no idea. I have goals, both for myself as a person and for myself as a member of this community. I have goals for this community; my goal is for all of us to become the people we want to be, and have fun doing it. To manage it in such a way that we can sustain it and not have it tax us, to make who we want to be into who we are, being that person as naturally as breathing. I want us all to learn who we are so that we can keep the parts we like and change the parts we don't, and I want us all to learn a little something about each other as well. And I want us to learn how this works, so we can teach others. Because that is an important part of Courtesan School too, my girls. What we learn here, we will eventually find we are called upon to teach to others. Not before we are ready; we've already asked some of the first among us if they feel ready to take on other students under their wing, and received our answers. But we will be called upon to teach it. If not by fellow baby courtesans here in the school who need your assistance or your guidance, then by God or the Universe or symmetry when it tosses you someone who needs skills you have to teach. Everyone teaches here in due time. Everyone learns, too. We all have things we can learn from each other, we all have things we could stand to learn, regardless. Some of them we'll learn by trial and error, others we can learn from our fellows, if we are open to it. And we all of us, no matter how pathetic or tired or sad we may be feeling, do have things we can teach each other. They may not even be the things you expect. They may just be things that you find yourself going, hey, I went through that. You may have noticed that my teaching style involves, very often, telling a funny story about myself. "Look, here's this time I was a complete dumbass, and here's what I learned from it!" Another of our number, naming no names, has a more hammer-to-the-forebrain approach, and that's fine too. Your style may be more Socratic, to lead people to conclusions, or it may be you find writing long babbling lecture posts about things to be easier than having a conversation and letting it come out over the course of many meanderings. Everyone learns, here. Everyone teaches. We all stand together on this; if some of us are teaching more than others it's because we feel more confident from doing this longer, or we are more certain in ourselves. Or just more vocal! We're all in different places, and we all have things to learn and share with each other. But what you learn, you will eventually be called upon to teach in your own turn. |
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| The Importance Of Communication | |
| When we first started this comm there were five of us, so communication wasn't nearly as much of an issue. We all talked together nigh on incessantly. We chatted, we tagged, we laughed, we cried, it was better than Cats. (I lie. Nothing is better than Cats.) And then we started talking about it in public, and a bunch of you all went, hey. I could use me some of that. I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. And we were all, great! Here, do this. And this. And this. And this. And now this. There was a lot of interaction, a lot of back and forth, and a whole bunch of HEY! You do this too? I've been doing this! Here, let's not do this and do this instead, together! See, my girls. That's the point. We do this together. When we all first started this as a declared group, there were five of us. We declared, this is us. This is our mission, this is what we want to be. We worked together and asked each other questions, spoke up about our doubts, and cheered each other on. We nudged where we thought someone else needed nudging. We drove by every post if nothing else just to say, hey. How's it going. Which, you know, you can do when you're a group of five people. You can even do it when you're in a group of ten people, girls, especially when there's only maybe two to five posts per day. And we all need to do better about this, myself included. I know there are people out there who are feeling pushed out, excluded, left out. I know that none of us wants or intends this to happen. I know that most likely everyone reading this is feeling a) pushed out or excluded from something right now and b) horrified/ashamed/uncomfortable that they might be doing the pushing or excluding. Which is fine. I knew this reaction was going to happen when I started typing this, and I wish I could figure out a way to say it and be both blunt and not inflict this on everyone, but there isn't one. We all need to be aware. We don't need to put forth massive amounts of time and effort into this, girls, but remember, we're all trying the same experiment here. We're trying to become better. And a part of becoming better is reaching out, building connections, building relationships. Courtesans thrived on relationships; it was their bread and butter, literally. It put the food onto their table. Even if the person with whom they had a relationship, sexual or no, had no money to give them, a kind or praising word to the right person at the right time could mean the difference between a small flat above a series of middle-class shops or a villa in the country all to herself. No one expects that any of us knows someone who can give out villas (but if you do, share!!) but sometimes a word here or there at the right time, even from someone you don't know very well or to someone you know hardly at all outside of here, it can mean the difference between a shit day and a wonderful day. It really can. We all have wisdom to share. We all have the sum total of our life experiences, memory warehouses in which we can rummage until we find a spare bit of junk that we tucked away in the box marked I'll never use this again and then, presto. Someone needs that bit of junk. Well, there you go. But we won't know which bit of junk turns into whose bit of treasure unless we talk to each other, my loves. And we need to do that. We are all in need of support, here, and the best way to build your support network is to reach out and support others in turn, and pay attention when you are reached out to. If we all reach out to each other and hold hands, grip tightly, we can fall backwards as much as we want and even all at once and we won't fall down. (Seriously, picture this sometime, it's true.) Momma Courtesan's gonna come off her pedestal, now, and be frank (Hi, Frank, can I be Earnest?). I want you to go back, and I want you to read this entry, all of it. Don't worry, it won't take that long. And then I want you to consider it. Think about whether or not what I've been saying here is true. Think about if it's true for you. And then, maybe, if it is, do it. But if it isn't... then don't. Because I'm a little worried, here, and I don't know if I should be or not, and it's certainly too early to tell. But I didn't set out to be Momma Courtesan here, or make a Cult of Jag, or anything else like that. I'm doing this journey same as all'a'y'all. And that part of, we all have wisdom to share, I just said up there? That's true. It's always been true. Hell, half the time, no, over half the time I have no idea if what I'm doing is right or not, it's just what seems right to me. And what's true for me may not be true for you. In fact, don't follow any one person of us. Courtesans didn't actually have a school, for all that we're calling it courtesan school (because, really, doesn't that sound better than The self-improvement club?) and calling ourselves baby courtesans. They learned from the world around them what worked and what didn't. They didn't have strict and formal teachers. They didn't have leaders. They didn't follow any one person. They shared wisdom with each other, yes; there are some diaries of Mogador who was good friends with another courtesan, La Reine Pomare, and she talks about the things she learned from her friend. And that's fine. That's what we should be doing here. But we do not follow any one leader. Out of the five of us who started, three of us feel capable of preparing new baby courtesans to be a part of the community. So you might say that we are the core or the heart of the group, in that respect. We been doin this for a while, girlies, just look at us shake our walkers at you. As everyone in this merry bunch goes on, grows, become more stable, we (that is to say, the three of us aforementioned) feel it is fair to ask the rest of you to do the same. That kind of leadership seems to work, or at least, it's worked well enough in the past, yes? We knew what we had done and that it led us to a good place, so we led you through there. And now that you've been there, know what you've done, if you feel ready for it then when the community is ready for it, it will be time for you to prepare others to join us. See, once again, what you have learned you will be called upon to teach. Or, as applies to this discussion, when you know where you're going, you will be called upon to lead. We're all struggling. A lot of us are disheartened right now about one thing or another, a lot of us are feeling threatened or alone. But we can do this. We have areas that we need to work on as a group, and I know some of us have already noted some of these problem areas and begun trying some solutions. We are still just starting out; we have weeks and months, hopefully years of work and building fellowship ahead of us. The chatroom is a phenomenal start, the community is a good central place to cluster around as well. Tag on people's posts, even if it's just to offer virtual hugs or chocolate. Virtual chocolate has no calories and is always welcome. |