Hi Faeries, I just have to get this off my chest. I've been around Faeries for over 10 years now, and have played my role - a not insignificant one, sometimes - in Faerie culture. I got the ball rolling with the Men Dancing Naked dances in Portland, which ran for about 5 years. I've hosted and/or facilitated many heart circles, and have tried to authentically let my truth spill forth in circle. I've DJ'd dances and created ritual and cooked meals and most of all, tried to listen and be a valuable member of community. I've lent my sweat and my heart to many projects, culminating in the Vancouver Green Body Gathering (VGBG). I did all this whilst the whole time trying to keep the focus off of any personal glory - this is true. I tried not to do things with ego, but simply because I could - my hands were capable, and there was work to be done - and because my spiritual path seemed to lead me into the role of organizer. That's it - just trying to use the gifts I was given.

VGBG was resoundingly, astoundingly successful. One of the difficulties for me, in fact, was that I felt like my role as "queen registrar" got overly polished, and I spent much of the Gathering wishing people would stop making such a big deal out of my contribution - though it would never have happened without same. I appreciated the ego-strokes but, really, I just wanted so much to go back to being danzante, everyfaerie, and not Danzante the Queen Registrar. It wasn't the accolades I sought but the rewards - like brotherhood, spirituality, family, love...

Then the issues began... It's too long ago and too far away for a blow-by-blow but events happened, personal misunderstandings - I tried, over and over to be a peacemaker, and over and over I got abused for my efforts. I kept these peace-making efforts to myself (and of course the other person involved) because I wanted so much NOT to play this drama out in community, lessening harm to any other. But these personal misunderstandings got magnified into a big community schism and this character was born, Evil Danzante, this cipher that continues to show up to this day, which I guess is why I'm writing this. I've been told to my face that I am a whole plethora of terrible, evil motivations, and each time I've had to work hard, with my emotional judo, to rise above the drama.

I'm not playing the victim - elder faeries who've sat in community for years, who I respect with all my heart, who've personally been there to witness this evolve over the years have spoken with me passionately to try and reassure me that all this drama was NOT ABOUT ME. I've been to 4 different Gatherings since the big schism, and each time, I've gone with open heart, and then WHAM within the first hour, usually, I've gotten hit in the face with this Evil Danzante character again. Like introducing myself to someone with smiles and a "Hi! I'm Danzante!" and getting "Oh, I know who you are" (half sneer, hooded eyes, not kind). Or, while running around like mad trying to finish a lovely opening dinner and getting "Well Dear, you do have a history..." (with the accusation that I was intentionally trying to cook food I knew someone couldn't eat - ewwwww, small, hateful...)

So here comes Breitenbush again, and I think of going and I think to myself, "OK but you better be prepared". Then I think what kind of community IS this? Where is my commitment? I live a life of depth and, to the best of my ability, honesty, and I wonder why I should sweat and invest in this community where I have to be so concerned with protecting myself from attack. At what point do these people invest in something deeper, in themselves, in all of us. Is it my role as elder to live in an unsafe environment, but to live in the light anyway? The hopeful side of me says yes, though another side of me says my dignity demands more.

Harry Hay talked about this Brotherhood, a historical tribe to which we all belonged. We have always been the healers and the shamans and the lovers. That depressed-minority-rip-each-other-to-shreds mentality that we found - created! - in the bars was hetero-imitative. We had been driven to it by secrecy, by shame, and we needed to shed the ugly green frog skin and become Faerie Princes all, to claim our birthright as a loving, spiritual people. We didn't have to invent this, we only had to remember it!

This rang so true for me, and I was so excited to share it when I found my true love, a good man who had spent his life in stewardship of others, like the kids in the high school where he worked - particularly the queer ones! - or as in the way he took care of his family, but a man nevertheless who was rejected by this hetero-imitative gay male "community". I was so excited to share with this man a world of gay men who had risen above all that stuff, and who had reclaimed their birthright, and who would honor him for the person he was, and for a while, and occasionally, when we visit our family in Portland, who still seems to be doing well (despite seperatism there, too).

Now where is my commitment? I am committed to my local faerie community, about ten of us who are a tight-knit family, though there's a whole other side to the Vancouver community who've chosen to seperate themselves - tearing us apart, again. (Question: Why has the BB Call, with a Vancouver QR, appeared in all the Northwest radical faerie e-mail lists, EXCEPT the Vancouver one?) It's happened in Portland, it's happened in Seattle, it happens and happens and it's all the same cloth. When shall we rise above?

A friend of mine says all social movements have to self-destruct before they are rebuilt in a lasting way. I hope this isn't true for us...

When shall we remember ourselves? Where do I place my heart?