Tag Archive for Isaac Bonewits

An Open Letter to ADF

June 6, 2011 / / 21 comments

Note: This letter was sent to the Archdruid of ADF and shared with the Mother Grove (Board of Directors) before publication. I include their response at the end.

Isaac Bonewits’s death has been a great tragedy for me and mine. I have lost my beloved friend of almost 25 years, my ex-husband, my former High Priest, and the father of my only child, Arthur Lipp-Bonewits. I have struggled to balance immense personal grief with the heartbreaking loss to the entire Pagan community of a brilliant leader, teacher, scholar, thinker, and bard. More than either of these, I have had to prioritize being a mother, as Arthur, at far too young an age, has not only lost his father, but has gone through the difficult and often frightening ordeal of caring for him in his last months.

Throughout all of this, the kindness, compassion, respect, and support of the Pagan community, including ADF, has been one of the things that has kept me going. That I could look up from my personal sorrow and know that Isaac was being treated with dignity, honor, and love, was a sustaining force through the most acute period of grief.

Imagine, then, my shock and dismay when I learned that ADF was selling DVDs of Isaac’s memorial service. » Read more..

6th Annual Brigid Poetry Festival

February 2, 2011 / / One comment

The annual Brigid Poetry Festival is an online celebration of Imbolg/Brigid’s Day in the form of sharing poetry around the web.

This year, I am deeply inspired by Isaac’s song “There Were Three Sisters:”

There Were Three Sisters
© 1987, 2001 c.e.
words by Isaac Bonewits, music English trad. (“Henry Martin”)

There were three Sisters in our ancient land,
In our ancient land there were three.
And they did dispute which of them
Should be, should be, should be,
Greatest of all in the hearts of the free.

Oh, first spoke Danu, the Mother of All,
Her voice was as rich as the earth:
“I give them my cattle, my grain,
And mirth, and mirth, and mirth.
Freedom without joy is of little worth.”

And then spoke Macha, the Goddess of War,
Her voice was the roar of the wave:
“I give but courage, for fear will
Enslave, enslave, enslave.
Freedom’s a gift given but to the brave.”

Now third spoke Rion, the Light of the Moon,
Her voice was as vast as the sky:
“I give to their thoughts great wings
To fly, to fly, to fly.
Freedom means naught if you never ask why.”

[Repeat first verse. Instrumental break.]

But then came Bridget, the Queen of All Arts,
Her voice was a flickering flame:
“My sisters I fear your gifts miss
Their aim, their aim, their aim.
None but through me can their true freedom claim.”

“For pleasure and riches are fleeting at best,
And a warrior’s strength is quite brief.
And knowledge alone brings them naught
Save grief, save grief, save grief.
Without beauty’s fire within their belief.”

“My healers restore hope to those who despair.
My smiths forge them weapons so grand.
My bards cause all those who kneel
To stand, to stand, to stand.
The fires of Freedom are lit by my hand!”

There were four Sisters in our ancient land…

Drumming the Names

November 2, 2010 / / Comments Off on Drumming the Names

Something like twenty-five years ago, I read Always Coming Home by my favorite author, Ursula LeGuinn. The people in this future-fantasy have a rich ritual life, including a ritual for the dead called Burning the Names. Names of the dead were “burned” in a community fire and grief was released.

From that, I adapted a ritual we call Drumming the Names. After the circle is cast, we start a slow, quiet rhythm. People begin calling out the names of their beloved dead, and everyone chants the name with them, to the beat. Often, the mourner will recite many versions of a name (a full name and “Grandma,” for example), while the first name offered is repeated. So you’ll hear “Nana” chanted over and over by your group while you say “Nana Jean. Jean Lipp. Nana,” and so on.

It’s pretty frickin beautiful. From the first time we did the ritual, we felt like it was an ancient tradition; like we’d inherited it from long ago.

Although LeGuinn described her Burning ritual as starting light and building, over many hours, to the names most painful to release, my experience is the opposite. We start with the big ones, the ones most pressing on our minds and hearts. Gradually, we include more and more names; ancestors, heroes, famous people, public tragedies (the Six Million, the 9/11 victims, the Haiti victims). As the circle becomes crowded with the dead (Gerald Gardner, Gene Roddenberry, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), it often becomes joyous. The drumming picks up, people dance, and we celebrate with our dead.

(In a smaller group, it will often simply quiet and fade, and not get to that ecstatic place, and that’s wonderful too, but I do love the ecstasy.)

A bunch of years ago—maybe 1994?—around there anyway, Isaac and I were invited up to the Center for Symbolic Studies for Samhain. Real Magic did a concert, and then Isaac and I led the ritual, which included the Drumming of the Names.

It seemed like there were two hundred people jammed into the room. The drumming became ecstatic. The names floated and danced around us; it was like a wave of noise and rhythm and memory and music. I remember we stood at the altar, holding hands, kind of witnessing it, and I turned to Isaac and I said “Someday they’ll drum our names.”

And so we did. On Saturday, we drummed Isaac’s name.

Blessed be.

Philip Emmons Isaac Bonewits, October 1, 1949 – August 12, 2010

August 13, 2010 / / 12 comments

Isaac sits with the Shining Ones and eats from Dagda’s Cauldron. The mortal world is a poorer place without him.

There will never be another Isaac. Those of us who knew him well could easily think of him as just Isaac: Character, goofball, ladies man, punster, life of the party, pain in the neck, singer, priest, friend and ex-husband (in my case). But Isaac was so much more than that.

The press release gives you an inkling of his importance to the world. One of my favorite memorial posts comes from The Wild Hunt:

[The] vision of the ADF, written by Bonewits nearly thirty years ago, captures what was so vibrant and vital about him. The audacity of expecting excellence and success from himself, his coreligionists, and his peers.

“Audacity of expecting excellence”—O, yes, that’s Isaac.

I cannot begin to say how much I loved and love Isaac. As a husband, he drove me crazy. I don’t regret ending our marriage, and I know he was very happy with Phaedra, whom he married in 2004. He loved her very much and I am so happy he had that. Still, Isaac and I were married for ten years (1988–1998), and I’d qualify nine of those years as happy ones; only at the end did things break down, and our unhappiness was short-lived; we quickly became good friends.

Isaac was a wonderful, loving, proud father. He had a perverse sense of what made a good lullaby. Certainly, the baby slept better for him than for me, despite being sung to sleep with “The Internationale.” As Arthur grew, Isaac always treated him as an intelligent being and spoke to him with a rich vocabulary even when he was a toddler. In the end, it was Arthur caring for Isaac. I am proud of my son, and I know that Isaac was and is as well.

He was an extraordinary High Priest in the Craft, as well as a Druid. He had a unique ability to move energy. When he called the Gods, They came. I was already a High Priestess of the Craft, albeit a young one, when we began dating in 1986, but I consider that only half my training was done. The rest I learned from him. He was a gifted teacher, exploring the nuances of every aspect of ritual and worship. Elements of Ritual could not exist without Isaac’s influence.

What Isaac loved the most was serving the Pagan community. He loved a good fight, he loved to get down and argue, to make trouble, to stir the pot. And he did it, always, on behalf of the community. He did it to make the world better, and more Pagan, and to serve the Gods. His love of the Gods was always at the forefront of who he was. His service to the community, to the Gods, and to his work as a priest was in every decision he ever made.

In the end, I look at Isaac, and I look at someone who was fundamentally good. He was not without his flaws, but he was without moral blemish. Isaac was honest, kind, charitable, generous, forgiving to a fault, open to new ideas, tolerant, attentive, amiable, and selfless. I assure you, I have thought over every one of those adjectives carefully, and every one applies to almost every moment of Isaac’s life. I could list negatives if I wanted to, but none of them are moral failings. I believe, truly, that the Gods will look upon this man and embrace him as one of their own.

It was a privilege, Isaac. I hope we get to do it again.

Someone sent me a message today…

August 10, 2010 / / 5 comments

on Facebook, asking when Isaac Bonewits died.

Isaac is still alive, thankyouverymuch. He is dying, and we are giving love and care to the extent possible, and the family is gathering, and there is a lot of sorrow in my heart. We are doing what we can to prepare for the end. Phaedra and Arthur are exhausted and yet…I am so proud of my son, who is so good and kind to his father, even when he’s losing patience and his temper with this terrible situation.

And I got that message asking when he died.

I’m sorry if I’m not as kind and good as some people might be, but immediately after answering, I unfriended that person. I think people should pretty much stand up and applaud me for not also cursing her out.

Please continue to send light and peace and love to Isaac, Arthur, and Phae. Please pray that his siblings, who are on the road right now, arrive in time to say their final goodbyes.

 
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