Conflict

       

                I’m exhausted today. I don’t mean a physical exhaustion, even though I spent four hours cleaning the playroom and putting away the boys winter clothes (finally), but an exhaustion that’s more emotional. Juggling three prison groups is going to be a lot. It is a lot. Maybe three Summer Solstice rituals have helped to make me tired, but I think it is more the bullshit that goes along with this job that pretty much took the wind out of my sails yesterday. Let me back up a bit and explain. 

                For those of you who have read previous posts on this blog, you may recall one of the Asatru inmates I’d written about, the one who has this idea about people of Northern climates having a layer of brain fat that other cultures don’t have, except for Asians, which makes them so smart as well as women of Northern backgrounds being better suited for childbirth. This particular individual, I’ll call him Harry, has been in prison before, I think in Kansas. Not that where really matters but this is not his first time in the system. In the other prison he was in, there was apparently an Asatru group called Three Raven. We’ve all heard time and again how this Kindred put him on the ‘fast track’ to obtaining the Gothi title, and on and on and on. He can yap for 45 minutes about their religious rights that the current prison he is in is taking away from them in not allowing them to meet on the in-between weeks when Cathy and I aren’t there (many of these guys are STG (security threat group) status because of their white supremacist affiliations), and how he wants the group to bring a lawsuit against the prison for it. He’ll go on and on about the Nine Nobel Virtues, Five Thews (wonderful things but he uses them wrong), his being fast tracked (that’s every five minutes), what they should be learning, what they aren’t learning, what his other prison kindred did, making oaths, and on and on. 

                It started to get to a point that you could both see and feel the tension in the room rise from the other members. At the end of May, when Ray was still with us (she’s moved out West now), one meeting got especially tense. The lead member, Terry whom I’ve mentioned before was at the time preparing to leave the group and the prison. He is still in until October, but the re-entry process requires certain classes and the other groups an inmate might be in cease. I could see how frustrated he was getting, and it was starting to get alarming. He handled it well, telling Harry how ‘he knew his heart was in the right place’ in wanting more for the group but it upset Terry greatly when Harry informed the group that I had volunteered to come in on the off Fridays so they could meet. 

                To Ray and Cathy, I mentioned it being a possibility (Henry pressured Ray one day when Cathy and I weren’t there and I think she must have told him), but that I first had to see how the women’s prison was going to be, on what days it would be, if my family could balance it, etc. But also, they weren’t ready for every week yet. The three of us agreed that they hadn’t yet earned us fighting for that for them, not to mention that we all needed to wait on Chaplain Newberry to retire and the new one to come in. She really disliked those guys and wasn’t going to give an inch on what they could or couldn’t do. That STG status is a big deal in a prison setting and no STG men, at this point, are going to be handed time alone without a volunteer. Hopefully in the future they can earn that. 

                And that’s what Harry didn’t understand. Forcing the situation with a lawsuit is not going to help anyone. Maybe if they went to court, they’d win that additional meeting. But, maybe it would bring heaps of shit down on all their heads, with the prison authorities making their lives, that are already difficult in there, even harder. I tried to talk about ‘being’ those Nine Noble Virtues, about being the men that future members of the group respect and look up to because of the honor and courage they had to be patient, to work for change in positive ways. By suing, you might win, but you also might lose big. 

                That day, Cathy put the brakes on Harry. She laid into him, respectfully, that we just don’t want to hear it anymore, that he cannot continue to take up 45 minutes of a 2 hour group with complaining about what they don’t have and how his other prison Kindred worked. His set up of teaching everything on a ‘fast track’ level will not work for this prison group. First of all, to learn everything from Runes to Blots to Myths to Deity and more in 3 months is crazy talk. And this is what he wanted to do. He wanted to create a teaching plan that would cover some of these topics in one day. Umm, where’s his brain fat layer? It’s simply not possible! No one can learn this path in 3 months, and guys in a prison can’t either. Sometimes they can’t attend. Sometimes they have to work, or take another class, or get thrown in BMU (Behavior Modification Unit) and are in solitary for a week or a month. The outline as a source of topics was great, which we told him, but the time frame needed adjusting. The entire group agreed. They commended him for his efforts, but knew they couldn’t teach or learn all those things in such a small amount of time. 

                This ‘fast tracking’ thing – these are my thoughts on it: It did nothing for Harry to be fast tracked. It did nothing and it shows. He might know all these things, but its surface knowledge. He has hardly lived all these things to the core. My gut also tells me that this Three Raven Kindred fast tracked him because they saw a certain kind of potential in him, the kind that can very easily manipulate others, and very easily form a gang using the Asatru path as its core. Harry is a white supremacist, he wants the group to be Folkish (that means that every one that attends should be white and of a Northern background) instead of Universal, he is dangerous as a leader and Cathy and I will not tolerate it, and fortunately we have the new Chaplain behind us 100%.  

                When the group ended that day, he apologized to us. We accepted it, while at the same time commending him for his efforts in wanting to help the group grow (but internally knowing that it wasn’t going to grow in the direction he wants it to). 

                Here’s where it starts to get really interesting. 

                The next week, I had an experience one night that I’ve never had before. I’ve never had an irate Goddess storm into my bedroom and demand my attention. It was 1:30 in the morning, I was reading a book in bed, and suddenly Freya was all over my head demanding that I bring Her in to the Asatru group. “I want in, and you are going to bring me in.”

                I told Her the group wasn’t ready to learn Seidth (that’s the Norse version of Trance work). She didn’t care. She said, “You and I have worked together before. You don’t need to teach them Seidth and you know it.”

                Every excuse I threw at Her, She threw back at me with a bitch slap on it. Finally, heart racing, I got out of bed and emailed Cathy what was going on. Here’s a snippet of that message…

                So, its 1:30 in the morning and I had to get up out of bed to send this email to you. There is no way I'm going to be allowed to go to sleep if I don't email you now, as the suggestion I wait until the morning didn't go over very well. :) My heart is racing and there is no way I can even attempt to sleep thru this, never mind the fact that Freya is not a Goddess I like to aggravate.

I think it's Her that's been hanging out in my house tonight and after I turned off the TV and settled into bed to read, She told me a few things. I hope by now you know I'm not nuts. I don't think I've ever had something like this happen before, but.... She wants into the Asatru circle. She wants to talk to them. I told her they are in no way, shape or form ready for me to teach them Seidth. She doesn't care. She said it need not be Seidth and that She and I have done it before without Seidth. She made me feel like it was imperative that Terry be present, as well as Harry. But most of all Terry. I think with him possibly leaving, She is giving me this 'urgent' feeling (hence the racing heart). I told her that … I needed to tell you this message... so I am.

                It was decided that the following week they were getting a visit from Freya. I was sick to my stomach all that week. Never before had I done Seidth or Trance Prophesy under such conditions. I was nervous about what was going to be said, if they would understand that it was not me, or that they’d even believe it. I prepared Cathy in how Seidth is done, wrote up a script for the group (In Trance Prophesy, that I work with now more than Seidth, it’s a bit of a different process but I wanted to do this one closer to Seidth as it is their path) and spent the week internally preparing. 

                When the day came, I was ready. Still nervous but ready. The Wiccan group met in the morning, but as we were waiting on the Asatru to come down to the Chapel, something went down inside the prison somewhere and the facility officers ‘closed the hill’. That means there’s a problem and they have everyone counted and accounted for. We heard that there was a fight, someone was possibly stabbed and was at the Infirmary. Then they couldn’t find someone apparently because the count was restarted and they were pulling people out of their jobs and having them go back to their dorms. 

                So, no group, and no Seidth. And I felt crazy. 

                Cathy and I talked about maybe it was more of Freya seeing if I would listen to Her. I didn’t really have a choice but to listen, and maybe that was the case but internally I just felt like a loon. 

                Time went on and we went back to the prison two weeks later.  The new Chaplain, Ernie, who is a gem of a guy, stopped me on my way in and asked if he could talk to me for a minute. Apparently, he had some seven or eight guys looking to form an Odinist group, and as far as he knew, Odinism fell under the Asatru category. Now, I know that there are some on the outside who claim Odinism and Asatru as two different things, and still others who say it’s interchangeable, but in the prison system, Asatru and Odinism are under the same umbrella. 

                I asked Ernie if it was Harry who had come to him. It was. “Oh, so you know him!?” he said. 

                Yeah, I know him. 

                We talked with the Chaplain between the two groups and informed him all about Harry, what had happened at the last meeting, and all the previous meetings he’d attended. We also let him know that Harry nor any of the other guys he’s riled up have ever been turned away from the Asatru group. He was simply asked to stop taking up the group’s time with complaining and to come up with a slower teaching schedule that the whole group could agree upon. We also all agreed that neither Cathy nor I were going to volunteer any additional time for this Odinist group, because we already volunteer time. And they can’t meet without a volunteer. 

                Sorry Harry and friends. 

                We were ready that day to try the Seidth again, but the group turnout was very small, mostly consisting of new guys. The Seidth was pointless. There was no Harry in attendance and no Terry either. Instead, I led them on a pathworking to Hella’s gates, just to get an idea of the journey itself. It was nice; they all seemed to get something out of it, but there was one guy, one of the regulars, who told me that he’d never experienced anything like that before. It struck me and reminded me of where most of these guys are at on their paths.

                Not doing the Seidth again that day made me feel even more like it was all in my head with Freya, but at the same time this new knowledge of Henry getting a bunch of guys to leave the Asatru group and to try to start an Odinist group (that would of course be racially motivated and in which he could run the way he wants to) made me think, “OK…. Maybe Freya was freaking out about that. Maybe I’m not crazy!”

                Then, my lack of insanity was reinforced by this piece of information given to me by Chaplain Ernie yesterday….

 

            “I understand that these inmates face major problems with the outside Wiccan sponsors.”

                I guess it is a major problem when a white supremacist can’t form a racist gang hidden behind the Norse Gods. At least for the white supremacist it is. I guess it’s a major problem that we have told him, and the rest of that group has told him and his cronies that it is up to the Gods who comes to circle. No one is turned away because of color or culture. The Gods call whom they choose to the circle. I guess it’s a major problem that he can’t take control and fast track other racists to use this religion as a way to spread their hate and stupidity. 

                I love how this man in Alabama is willing to speak for a person he has never met and knows little to nothing about. I’m not exactly sure where or under what rock Harry found him because after an extensive Google search last night, I cannot find this ministry anywhere on the web. I found one article by this Father Wolfgang Wester as well as his pretty much blank Facebook page, but other than that, nothing. How one has the ‘largest American Pagan Prison Ministry’ and holds no web presence is beyond me. He is taking the word of a repeat felon about two women who volunteer their time to the spiritual needs of multiple groups and facilities, and while neither of us are Asatru (and Cathy is not Wiccan, but a ‘Druidic leaning Pagan with Voudon tendencies’) we give all we can them. And while I may be Wiccan, this man does not know that I belonged to a Kindred for a number of years. While Kindreds can vary as much as Wiccan covens can, I have a decent grasp on this and from the looks of it I have more knowledge about Asatru, its myths, lore and Deities than many of these guys do. I can always stand to learn more, and I’m open to that. But it irks me to be accused of creating a problem for these guys. 

                Then I talk myself down. This Alabama man has no pull at this prison. Cathy and I are doing the best we can. Harry can try all he wants to start his own Odinist group, but he’s not going to get one until he gets out of prison because he already has a group. It’s called Asatru and it meets every other Friday at 12:50 PM. It’s his choice not to attend. I hope, for my sake, he decides to never come back. 

                During the day that it took me to write this, I’ve done a house cleansing as well as a cleansing for myself. I feel a lot better. To think that there would be no kinks in all this is pretty foolish I guess, but I didn’t expect this one. 

Lastly, the thing I’m really left with is the inner conflict about this racial thing. Beyond Harry, I know for a fact that there are men in that group who are affiliated with the Aryan Brotherhood. They don’t bring those views to this particular group, but I know they are there. Am I doing the wrong thing by volunteering my time to them? I love and respect the Norse Gods and worked with them closely for a bunch of years. What do they think of me being involved with this group? Asatru does not fulfill me personally. It does not give me that rush or that spark that my Wiccan practice does. And while that’s OK, I have to wonder… should I be doing this?

I really don’t know. 

Hey, Freya… I could use a message on this one. You know, that loud and clear way you delivered the other message. Thanks!