Omega to Alpha, the wheel goes round

It is done.

I spent this past weekend in Atlanta again for the final weekend of my Priest~ess Procces(TM) circle and the ritual/ceremony in which we emerged as Priests and Priestesses. It was strangely anti-climatic. Don't get me wrong, the ceremony was beautiful and very powerful... the energy in that room was amazing - not only from the six of us who emerged, but from those who gathered with us to celebrate. It was simple and somewhat plain, but that is somewhat representative of our circle: none of us is particularly fancy or showy (sure, we all have our moments), and we all like to keep things as simple as possible. There is enough complexity in the processing that we all were working through that we tended to keep our ceremonies simple and to the point, but they were all powerful.

I guess that part of what I found anti-climatic was that the work was already done. We had all really took the step up and claimed our roles and accepted the power that came with them at some point in the weekends prior. The ceremony was merely a formality.

Another part - and this is my own issue with my expectations (need to control those better, at times) - was that no one chose to come and celebrate with us aside from the small, personal group that we had invited to attend the actual ceremony. We had decided that we wanted the actual ceremony itself to be somewhat private (with only 2 or 3 personal guests each), but that we would invite the Priest~ess community at large to join us for a celebratory pot-luck afterward. Personally, I had wanted the whole ceremony to be open to the community. I have attended several Emergences with Shae before, and they were very public and the community really came together to celebrate and participate. But the others in my circle weren't comfortable with that and so we decided on the private ceremony. *shrug*

But again, that is somewhat representative of our circle. While I have been a part of the Priest~ess community for a few years already as Shae went through the process, the others in my circle had little to no exposure to the rest of the community. For them, this was a very personal process. And yes, it was for me, too, but I was also looking forward to becoming an more active member of the community. So I had hoped that we would have had a big turnout from the community (which is quite large in Atlanta) and it caught me off-guard that we didn't - I guess I am a little disappointed. I still am going to be an active participant in the community, but I felt like I was really the only one who had a frame of reference for that as we went along.

Like I said, these are all my own issues, and I do not wish to detract from the magic and power of the whole thing - ceremony or circle.

While our Emergence marked the end of this circle, I really do see it as merely a beginning for me. I have already committed to the next level of this path - the High Priest~ess - that starts in August , and I will be going back to Lisa (our facilitator) in June for her facilitator training weekends. And I will be helping Shae with her circles - so I guess my apprenticeship for this is starting, too. I can very easily see the two of us working together as a team to facilitate other circles and workshops and who knows what else. That is something that I would very much like to do. It scares the hell out of me, but I definitely want it.

I am really happy to have a spiritual component back in my life. I didn't realize how much I missed it - but then, I'm not sure I ever really realized it was missing. I was raised Roman Catholic, but honestly, I never really connected with it (I may have posted about this in more detail before, so I apologize if I'm repeating myself). I connected with people through the Church - but I never felt that I connected with God. Of course, looking back from where I am now, I realize that that connection with people and community was a connection with the Divine. But it wasn't consistent, and I would say that for the greatest part of my life it was missing. And that is changing in so many ways now. And it feels GOOD.

I also want to thank everyone who has been holding space for me and supporting me on my journey. Your presence in my life has had such an impact - I am so blessed and so loved and I am truly grateful.

I guess that sums things up for now. I know there is more that needs to be written down around this whole thing, but it isn't coming right now.