The Unseen Labor of Sacred Gatherings

Ever wondered what goes into keeping the spiritual hearth of our communities burning bright? As your guide through the often unseen efforts that sustain our coven and temple gatherings, we unravel the tapestry of commitment and the small but mighty acts that create a ripple of unity. We celebrate every gesture, from preparing sacred spaces to the aroma of freshly brewed coffee that wakes us to the joy of togetherness. This episode is an homage to those who pour their time, energy, and even finances into the soul of our spiritual homes – because every single contribution is a thread in the vibrant fabric of our collective spiritual practice.

Join us on a journey where we dissect the emotional and social ties bound within the responsibilities of church service. It's a candid look into the balancing act between volunteering and the often-overlooked monetary support needed to keep our sacred spaces thriving. You'll hear personal stories and practical insights into organizing events—think Thanksgiving, except with more rituals and less turkey. Whether you lead, follow, or simply show up with a helping hand, this conversation is a testament to the power of shared service and the enduring spirit of our spiritual kinship.

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:18

Music. Welcome to Peg and Coffee Talk. If you enjoy our content, please consider donating and following our socials. Now here are your hosts Lady Alba and Lord Knight.

Speaker 2 0:31

So, lord Knight, let's talk about supporting your coven, your grove, your temple, whatever you call it. Whatever you call it, yeah.

Speaker 3 0:42

Well, you get certain things from your coven your temple grove, whatever. We got to pick one word. I am not going to say that twelve times, no. So what does a person receive being a member of a group?

Speaker 2 0:58

I mean right off the bat, you are being given a place in which to worship First and foremost. Yes, you are being given a place, a location to come together to practice and to recognize your faith, and that is no small feat.

Speaker 3 1:14

No.

Speaker 2 1:15

So, whether it be someone else's home, whether it just be organizers that make it possible to use a public park or facility, I mean it's still. There's a lot that goes into that. So there's that component. With that, you should obviously feel that this is a safe, welcoming environment. You should never be concerned for your safety or the safety of others. I've never heard of a witch church that didn't offer some form of spiritual counsel.

Speaker 3 1:50

Education, training.

Speaker 2 1:52

And services to the community. Right Weddings feral house blessings hospice care wickening. I mean not hospice care, but hospice visits, visits, all of the things that you would expect any other church to do.

Speaker 3 2:12

And that just doesn't happen, out of no way.

Speaker 2 2:15

No, there's often an effort to assist those with a need. There is. I'm trying to think of what else is like standard across the board. You know this is silly, but like a calendar the events, the consistency of the goings on and knowing that you can depend on them. Right, Right, you don't show up and the doors are closed. That would be ridiculous.

Speaker 3 2:42

Well, again I have heard of that, people complaining about showing up for ritual and the doors be shut going. Hey, we're not going to do ritual tonight.

Speaker 2 2:49

Not on my watch, but okie dokie I mean I do want people to understand every full moon, every Sabbath. Every Aspott.

Speaker 3 3:00

Circle is being cast, ritual is being performed. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of time and effort.

Speaker 2 3:07

So what does it mean to be in support of the church?

Speaker 3 3:11

Well, it means showing up. Yeah, it means doing what's needed when you show up.

Speaker 2 3:17

It's showing up and, in our case, it's participating. It's participating more so than we normally think of people doing when there's a congregation Right and, to be honest, right mainly that's because, well, when you show up to the average church function, there's 50 plus people there.

Speaker 2 3:40

When you show up to the average Wiccan function, there might be a dozen people there, maybe, maybe, so there is a greater need for people to be hands on to help. Help could come in the form of setting up ritual space, helping with chairs, moving minor pieces of furniture washing dishes washing dishes, sweeping, vacuuming it could be helping with food.

Speaker 3 4:13

There's a number of there is something that does happen in Temple every so often where we'll have guests or something, and we will assign a first degree to yeah, to basically make them comfortable.

Speaker 2 4:26

It's like you're almost a buddy system, right Like this person's, brand new. They might not know what's going on. They may have questions.

Speaker 4 4:31

Right.

Speaker 2 4:31

Yeah, please take care of them. I think one that's funny because I've seen it happen so many times for us at different functions. Somebody has to be a parking attendant. You know it's silly, right, it seems like such a silly thing but more often than not because again we're having circle at someone's home Nobody's ready for 10 cars to be in their drive yes, somebody has to volunteer to get there a little bit early and say you know what, I will help with cars and parking and getting people. And sometimes I've actually seen where you end up valing other people's cars. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 5:14

You'll take them to the grocery store up the road, let them park there and then you go back. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 5:19

Or whatever it might be, or just getting the car as packed as tightly as possible. So many different things, more so than anything that is the most valuable. The other is just the offer right Asking what can? I do. How can I have being vocal about stepping up and saying I'm here, put me to work, right? Thank you, money money always that I mean any church anywhere, any time and again Most of us who are 501 C3 block the donations are tax exempt.

Speaker 2 5:56

Yes, and they go 100% to the church and, in our case, right, nobody's on salary, nobody, and we all have jobs. We all have, yeah, we are all here as volunteers. So money that people spend Goes to everything from consumable goods like toilet paper and paper, towels and coffee and to candles and oil Insants good grief. We use a lot of stuff in the course of a year of rituals.

Speaker 3 6:29

I mean keeping it with salt alone mm-hmm decorations for holidays.

Speaker 2 6:34

Activity is any time ritual has an additional component above and beyond those norms, then those funds are used for that purpose mm-hmm and Sometimes those funds are used to help someone else in the immediate community that needs help. I Will never forget being a neophyte. This was so funny and Lord men, our founder, we were all sat down. I mean we were like yeah, like this was serious. And Lord night and Oswin were there and Lord men is on speakerphone and he lit into us. We had a very large group at the time.

Speaker 2 7:28

We had a lot of students and we had a lot of first degrees and I I guess people were not pulling their weight because man, lord men was like, if Lord night needs a new pair of underwear, you better damn well by your breeze to bear of underwear and we were trying Not to laugh because of course that was pretty funny.

Speaker 2 7:52

But you know, his point was made clear that that Lord night and Oswin couldn't Possibly do all the work and they couldn't do everything themselves. And I will never forget when the call ended and we were all Properly, you know, chastised, the first thing you did was look at everyone in the room and go, do not buy me underwear. It was, it was pretty memorable, but yeah, no, but, but his point was absolutely there. I mean, we sometimes volunteering means Helping out seasonally on the grounds of the church, raking leaves. You know, gosh, you, I remember in years past you had some trees we had to help take down on the property. You know things of that nature. There's always something, there's always some project. If you are lucky enough to have ritual regularly outside, who, boy, does that circle need maintenance?

Speaker 3 8:54

Yes, it does.

Speaker 2 8:55

Holy crap. Oh, people take that for granted.

Speaker 3 9:00

It is not going to seasonally miraculously, just just digging your fire pit out For the 15th time, because them things do fill up, you have to shovel them out rocks and in landscaping and and pathways.

Speaker 2 9:20

look, I've been to countless rituals held outside and Many, many people choose to go outside barefoot. Hey, that's discretionary, but you bet your ass. Somebody had to go outside and walk all the grounds to make sure there's nothing sharp, there's no glass, there's no debris, there's nothing anyone could get cut on and then you're.

Speaker 3 9:46

Then if anybody in your temple has any special needs elders stuff like that and there and you're having, you have to make pathways for them.

Speaker 2 9:55

Yes, it's a lot.

Speaker 3 9:57

It's a lot of stuff, and I mean just sitting down and having the meeting about security. Mm-hmm, is enough to drive some people up the wall. Hmm collectively.

Speaker 2 10:09

I think the best way to view this is you know, if you live alone and you were to Say you know what, I'm gonna clean my house this Sunday and you, depending on how big your home is right, you might get started at eight or nine o'clock in the morning and it might take you by yourself all day to clean that house, but if the three other people showed up, you're cutting that work down significantly. Yes, you know, because of the, the sheer volume of manpower. Right same thing. It is the exact same logic inside of any religious institution. It Does not take care of itself and I think people take that for granted when it's a bigger facility and they go.

Speaker 2 10:59

Okay, I dropped my couple of dollars into the, you know the offering bowl on Sunday, and yeah, I mean when there's hundreds of you and multiple services, it adds up. You know it's easy to come up with a million when you have a million people say it yeah, but, and you know, yes, you can pay for the gardener, you can pay for the landscape, you can pay for repairs. We don't have that luxury. We're doing it all ourselves and Even because we have had this conversation again so many times, even if you are disabled, if you are any kind of Just physical disadvantage right, right you still are valuable.

Speaker 2 11:45

Still, I don't care what it is, and we've had so many people over the years go. I can't, physically, I can't help. Yes, you can. We will sit you in a chair, we will make you comfortable and we will find a task that you can participate in, because there's always something, even if it's just licking stamps on an envelope, like there's always something. Because who wants that taste in their mouth? It's gross.

Speaker 3 12:11

Well, how many people have we just said they're going? Hey, candlesticks need to be clinked.

Speaker 2 12:17

Yeah, there's silver that needs to be polished. There's. Sometimes it is like we need to send out summonses for an upcoming event. Some things are so silly that others don't even think of it. It could be as simple as I wrote a ritual, or I wrote a lecture series, and you know what? I just need somebody to proofread it. Yep, find my mistakes, help me make it better, you know look at my lack of punctuation.

Speaker 2 12:46

Yes, there's always something, so never be afraid to ask and please, yeah, don't ever sit there and go. I can't, I can't. Yes, you can, there's something, there's always gonna be something and then some of these that now Let me.

Speaker 3 13:00

Let me say that some of these tasks is actually your best bet to sit there and talk to elders. Oh yeah, Washing dishes with Lord man was always an adventure.

Speaker 2 13:12

You know what? It's funny. You say that, though, because that, right, there is something that I've actually seen a lot in my craft Upbringing that ends up being a big part of how you give back to the church. We go help the elders. Yeah, we go offer Services to the elders in the community who cannot do it themselves. I remember painting the Lord men's kitchen. Lord men was not actively the church any longer, no, but he is still our founding elder and he needed help. So we went and helped.

Speaker 3 13:48

Well, I mean Lady Santana.

Speaker 2 13:50

Yeah.

Speaker 3 13:50

I know we went out there in the middle of the rain Holy moly.

Speaker 2 13:54

Yeah, we used to go to Lady Santana's house and help with like an annual spring Cleaning and to get her planting. Oh my god. Yeah, there was one year we were out there, it was raining, it was cold, we were all covered in mud, we were gross. It was so bad that, men and women alike, none of us wanted to go inside to use her bathroom because we were filthy. And we went. We will be god damned if we're gonna track all of this into her house. And then what negate all the work we've done? Because we're just leaving her more work by right, you know, leaving a streak of pig pen through the house. So no, we were all paying in the bushes and I remember that I had a silence affection that day.

Speaker 2 14:46

Yeah, yeah, you were, yeah, you were. You were hurting. At the end of the day, in my first degree snark, I made a very off-handed comment and I said next year we should make t-shirts. That's it. I survived Lady Santana's house and. I thought, literally I thought somebody at Ravenwood was gonna like you know.

Speaker 4 15:07

Smack me sideways for having said it.

Speaker 2 15:10

I thought I was being cute, but yeah there's. I think the things to know is, yes, always ask, always try to volunteer when you can. If you have children who are able-bodied, for the love of God, volunteer them. We will always take an extra pair of hands, you know.

Speaker 3 15:31

Youth, when you're young and you're strong and easy to recover.

Speaker 2 15:35

Exactly, we will always feed them. And don't assume I think that's the big thing is don't assume where you can be the most help. You know, if you show up at your high priestess's house with the expectation of mopping her floors, well, that's lovely and your heart's in the right place, but maybe she doesn't need you to mop her floors because they got mopped yesterday. She may need something else. So always communicate. That's the big thing.

Speaker 2 16:09

You know, Keep that open dialogue of what is needed and how can I be of service. Oh, we've even had fun things where you know somebody's like, hey, I've got an extra freezer right.

Speaker 2 16:20

Like a game for, and so for big feasts we will house meat for feasts at their home, because it's just easier and they get the room. Things like that are great. There's always a contribution and if you really stop and think about the kinds of things you might offer to a family friend, do you know what I mean. Like it's sort of the same, like that helps you to kind of come up with. Okay, these are the things that I can contribute or do or offer. Where it gets rough, I think, is there's different expectations at different groups.

Speaker 3 16:59

Right.

Service and Responsibilities in Church

Speaker 2 17:00

Traditional groups. I will be the first to say this man, Our expectations are intense and I had a really hard time when I first took up the mantle as priestess, because I didn't see the same level of dedication from others as what I put in when I was where they were Right, and so that and I know you've been there too yeah, it can be very, very frustrating, but you have to be flexible, because there's some groups you show up two days before a major event, like a salwan or an initiation man. There's people scrubbing the toilets. There are people changing the bed linens. There's people every task, every job you can think of. There's people helping to clean every inch of that person's home.

Speaker 3 17:56

Yep.

Speaker 2 17:57

Some folks have a problem with that. Some people have a really big issue with this idea of, I don't know, that kind of servitude. Maybe, I'm not sure what it is.

Speaker 3 18:11

I'm not sure what it is.

Speaker 2 18:12

It's that.

Speaker 3 18:13

I think people want to think that they feel like they're indentured in doing so.

Speaker 2 18:19

I yeah, I mean, I don't know. I've never seen it that way, I've never gone. I'm too good to scrub a toilet. If you need me to scrub the toilet, I will scrub the toilet. It's fine, I don't care, just give me notice.

Speaker 4 18:31

So I can wear something shimmy, that's all yeah.

Speaker 2 18:35

But I also think part of what happens is there's a little bit of Okay, we hold the temple in very high regard, right, we hold all aspects of it in very high regard, so things that we might let slide in our normal day-to-day lives we're not gonna let slide at the church for an event. So, yeah, it is unacceptable for there to be dust. It is unacceptable for the bathroom to not be clean.

Speaker 2 19:09

It's unacceptable for there to be a pile of dishes, but people also live in that home. Yeah, there tends to be this bit of kickback where people are like, well, you know, I didn't wash my own dishes, why am I gonna wash yours? Kind of thing.

Speaker 3 19:25

Right.

Speaker 2 19:26

And then again.

Speaker 3 19:27

there's a little and there are little unsettled cleaning someone else's house unless you're used to it and it just, I don't know it always got on my nerves really truly.

Speaker 2 19:39

It bothered me, the people kind of. And then and then this is another one, because this happens a lot as people elevate in degrees, sometimes they get a little too big for their britches and they start to think that they are no longer required to help with those same things Like, oh, that's a first degree's job or that's a neophyte's job. That shit's gotta be nipped in the bud real fucking fast, because I'm gonna tell you right now, as a third degree, there is no task. I'm gonna give you a neophyte that I wouldn't do or haven't done already Repeatedly, because we're not gonna do that, we're not, we're not shoveling pig shit, you know.

Speaker 3 20:24

We're not asking anybody to do anything that I'm not gonna do myself, right.

Speaker 2 20:28

Right, it's the difference between is your priest and your priestess, and potentially a few other people, gonna be up until midnight the night before running themselves ragged, or are you gonna make it so that the people officiating can actually be somewhat rested and and ready to go yeah, Because there's been plenty of times where, immediately after a ritual, I'm just like okay.

Speaker 3 20:53

I'm done.

Speaker 2 20:54

I need a nappy now and everybody else is like getting ready for feast and I'm just sitting in a chair like zoned out, and they're like what's the matter? I'm like, I'm exhausted. I have been going for three days to make this possible. Enjoy.

Speaker 3 21:10

Enjoy this and again. This is all for them not.

Speaker 2 21:15

If you have ever hosted Thanksgiving for a large family and you have done it yourself, then you know how we feel and you know exactly what we're talking about, because that's what it's like. Except Thanksgiving happens for us at least eight times a year. It's a lot. It's a lot.

Speaker 3 21:38

It's a lot Like it's wild and I mean Well, like, one of the things we've been doing is we for our grand feast. We've been catering it to try to take that pressure off people to cook.

Speaker 2 21:50

And we've been very fortunate because Lord Knight's niece is a professional caterer, so we at the church has started paying her to cater feast. It's been phenomenal. But at the same token it doesn't mean there's still not plenty of other stuff to do, and part of what helps, I think, is also the designation, like if you can get somebody to agree to doing something and to being very consistent about it, it just makes it easier.

Speaker 3 22:19

It's always easier to get the incense when your herbalist is sitting right there beside you. You go hey, I need some. We need some more full moon incense.

Speaker 2 22:28

I even mean silly things, like if you have a space that needs to be rearranged prior to ritual right. A lot of us do not have again the luxury of like a dedicated room just for ritual space. So maybe you have a few pieces of furniture that have to be moved out.

Speaker 3 22:46

We used to have to do that at our place all the time.

Speaker 2 22:49

If you can get two able-bodied individuals to agree for a year that every single ritual they will show up 15 minutes ahead of time to move that furniture, that's huge. And you don't have to think about it, nope. And then next year somebody else can offer to do. You know, it's things like that. That consistency is such such a huge thing. So in this year we said, we said what supplies do we need? And I realized we were spending an awful lot of money in wine.

Speaker 3 23:28

Yes.

Coven Contributions and Coffee

Speaker 2 23:28

Now me personally. I'm not a big wine drinker, so a lot of what was happening is we were having bottles that were being opened for ritual and then going, bad, yeah, by the time another ritual would happen. So I said, if everybody brings a four pack of those little mini bottles, I have holy shit, I have wine for at least a year right now.

Speaker 2 23:55

And now we ain't got to think about the house and I don't have to think about it and they're brilliant because it's one little mini bottle. We crack it open, we pour it in the chalice, we bless it. We are good to go till the next time, but it's great.

Speaker 3 24:06

And it drives me Well. I never thought of the little bottles ahead of time. No, it's not funny.

Speaker 2 24:13

It's, trust me. I felt like an idiot too. I was like, oh my God, this is the way to go. But it's such a silly little thing that you know, if you know you're at the grocery store. It's like seven bucks for one of those four packs. Pick one up.

Speaker 3 24:25

Pick up a bottle I do not know how many times right before a couple of days before rituals. I'll get a text and which is hey, do I need to go out and buy some?

Speaker 2 24:34

for cakes. Cakes is always a big one, so yeah, you just eat you. But you have to kind of meet people where they are, but also realize that that coven instead is not operating off of magic alone. It would be nice, but it's not.

Speaker 3 24:53

And no, and unfortunately for us to have a dedicated place. We need funds.

Speaker 2 25:02

Yeah, funds or donations. Donations yeah just and you know, and, and hey, if you know that you have a priest or a priestess that is not as likely to be forthcoming when they need assistance, then just volunteer a little extra. That's really all you can do, because there are those of us who will be very stubborn.

Speaker 4 25:23

Yeah, I can do it, I can do it, I'll be fine, I can do it every time I can do anything no no, we can't, I can't, that's what they told me.

Speaker 2 25:33

So, yeah, just you know, offer up a little extra. Oh, you know what else you can do? What? Because we always need it, because I've never known a temple that didn't bring coffee, coffee, yeah.

Speaker 4 26:15

Just hold my hand as we pass by a sea of blazing fires and so it is the end of our day. So walk with me till morning breaks. And so it is the end of our day. So walk with me till morning breaks.