Portland Boys

August Eve

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Some people spend weeks preparing elaborate rituals to celebrate the sabbats, complete with memorized scripts, special clothes and props. I am not one of those people. As with my summer solstice "ritual", I didn't really know I was celebrating August first until I was up to my eyeballs in it. It turned out exactly perfect, though. It always does.

The first day of August is the date often given for Lughhnasadh or Lammas, the cross quarter day marking the end of summer and the first harvest. On that morning I posted a John Payne poem on Facebook, one of his series of month poems that I love so much because they seem to just perfectly reflect the way I feel about a given season. "And the sun blazing in the blue o'erhead, "Would God that it were night!" is apt to say And "Would the summer-heats were oversped!""

As I've told you, summer is a strung out, crazy time for me, and posting that poem was about all I could put together in terms of "celebrating" the festival. I can hardly get it together to clean the bathroom after a day of work and play, let alone plan or execute an extra celebration. And anyway, I was getting ready to go to a Timbers's game that weekend.

Portland boys, we are here – Whoa, Whoa
Portland boys, we are here – Whoa, Whoa
Portland boys, we are here
Steal your women, drink your beer!
Whoa, Whoa, Whoa

Timbers Joey! I'm leaning over the railing just out of frame to the right.

The Portland Timbers are the city's Major League Soccer team and are kind of a big deal around here. Years ago, when the Timbers were a little known, minor league team, a group of fans formed themselves into a supporters group that came to be known as the Timbers Army. Wikipedia claims it all started with 8 guys in 2001, but today the Army claims eight SECTIONS of the soccer stadium. Timbers tshirts, jerseys, hats, bumper stickers and other swag are de rigur for a certain type of Portlander and the waiting list for Timbers Army season tickets makes them coveted status markers in this town. The games themselves include loud and constant chanting, scarf waving, drums and trumpets, and other hooligan-esque characteristics of soccer supporters around the world.  

Burn, destroy, wreck and kill – Whoa, Whoa
Burn, destroy, wreck and kill – Whoa, Whoa
Burn, destroy, wreck and kill
Portland Timbers bloody will!
Whoa, Whoa, Whoa

I personally am not much of a sports fan so have not really followed this aspect of my city's culture over the last few years, but lately I've been more and more aware of the Timbers situation. My dad got a job working at the stadium a couple years ago, and lately I have made a number of friends who are Timbers Army fanatics. I have been thinking of trying to go to a game but without connections you have to pay through the nose for a seat not in the Army. What's the point of that? Finally, though, one of my friends got me a ticket for a game.

August Eve is the time in the wheel of the year when we celebrate All that is Manly and Good in the World. It is a time for competition and feats of physicality that show off strength, daring and skill. It is a time for celebrating the "bright, positive, masculine principle". I have been surrounded by young boys this summer at my work and see first hand how deeply ingrained being loud and physical, shooting and clashing is in them. In our feminist influenced culture of child rearing, we tend to want boys to be quieter, gentler and more in control of their bodies but without letting them experience their physicality, they will never be in control of it. And male physical power and testosterone driven competition are necessary elements in this world. Fatherlove and warrior power do not solve all problems, but we have enough problems in this world that we need all the tools in our toolbox. Including those brought by little boys who build forts, pretend sticks are guns and punch each other when they are frustrated.

Timbers Army! I'm visible on the lower left.

An afternoon in the Timbers Army is a full sensory immersion in the world of All That is Manly and Good in the World. Yes, there are many women in the Timbers Army, but the whole thing is so testosterone driven as to be essentially male in essence. The day was one of the hottest days of the summer so far, and the Army section is on the north, very sunny, part of the stadium. After a trek to get to the field, we proceeded to chant and cheer for two hours straight. It was a good game in a terrible season and the Portland Boys came back from behind to a draw. A highlight was the goal that tied the game up in the second half, complete with dark green smoke bombs and a crowd gone completely batty. I'm a tourist in the Army, here for the atmosphere and the fun, not the game or the players, but I couldn't help but being on the edge of my seat (er, leaning over the railing.. no one sits in the Army) when the play moved closer to the goal and the ball went zipping back and forth. Those men are strong and fast and skilled, Manly and Good. 

We are green, we are white – Whoa, Whoa
We are green, we are white – Whoa, Whoa
We are green, we are white
We are bloody dynamite!
Whoa, Whoa, Whoa

The evening ended, as all good evenings do, with a party and a trek. After playing some bar basketball and drinking some more cheap beer my friend and I set off back across town. The day had topped out at 95 degrees, the first day to get so hot all summer, and evening was coming on. It was still warm, but lovely as we wove our way through downtown towards the river. We splashed through Salmon Street Springs, lingered on the Hawthorne Bridge and stopped at a food cart for late night poutine and people watching. By the time we got home, we were sweaty, beat up and physically and emotionally exhausted. Just as you should be at the end of a good festival, right? 

In the week since my Timbers Army Experience I have been enjoying noticing the subtle turning of the season into autumn. The days are getting shorter, the sun is lower in the sky and more leaves are tinged gold or russet. The harvest is in full swing with markets full of berries and tomatoes. And the Timbers fight on, maybe they'll win a game or two before the end of the season. Even if they don't, though, they will have fought the good fight and that's what All that is Manly and Good in the World is really all about. 

We’ll sing for you Timbers
‘Til you finish the fight
There’s a party in Portland
No one’s sleeping tonight

How did you celebrate the August festival? How are you celebrating the masculine principle in your life and the world around you? Have you ever been a rabid supporter of a sports team or known people who were? How are you celebrating the first harvest in your life? 

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August Eve 2011: An August Journey

August Eve 2010: August Eve, The Subtle Turning

August Eve 2009: August Eve In the Woods!

Courage, Bullying and Ramadan

The Old Father's Moon

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Eid Mubarak! The holy month of Ramadan is closing and the Muslim world is celebrating Eid ul Fitr, a massive celebration of family and festivities. People all over the world have been buying new clothes and even new furniture, preparing huge meals and readying gifts for family and neighbors. They will spend anywhere from one to five days visiting family, hosting feasts and distributing gifts to celebrate the end of the holy month of fasting. I get the feeling it's kind of like Christmas as far as a party season is concerned.

Over this last month I have been collecting and sharing stories about the different kinds of people in the world who are Muslim. I have read about the Muslim people of Senegal, Indonesia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Detroit, Los Angeles and many many others. I have read about their food customs (and eaten a number of delicious date concoctions - check out My Halal Kitchen's Dates and Cream), their daily life during Ramadan and their special religious ceremonies during the month. As I read, I kept in mind the charge I set myself at the beginning of the month, to be mindful of God-in-People. A query I asked "Do I speak to and answer “that of God” in everyone?"

One of the things I came to realize as I read these stories is that we as a species can be quite awful to each other. We are very bad at realizing and respecting that of God in each other. I learned a lot of stories about people being oppressed, persecuted and outright killed because of their cultural affiliation. I read about the Uiygar people who's lands were invaded by the Han Chinese in the early 20th century and have been oppressed religious and ethnic minorities ever since. Recent years have seen resistance violence in their Central Asian capitol which has resulted in harsh bans on practicing their Muslim faith. I read about the Kurdish people who, after World War I, had their ancestral lands split between Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Their cultural identity has been actively suppressed by the Turkish government and the government of Saddam Hussain in Iraq. Their language has been outlawed, political organizing harshly crushed and even entire male populations of villages killed. I read about the Mughal invasion of northern India, where the new Muslim rulers felt justified in destroying Hindu religious sites because they were heathen, and modern laws and attitudes in Europe and America that make being a Muslim difficult and dangerous. Of course, stories of oppressors and oppressed are not limited to the Muslim world, but it was a theme that came up again and again.

The pastor at my Quaker meeting gave a sermon about bullpuckey, as he called it, the other week. He was specifically talking about bullpucky about Jesus and how Quakers stand in a unique place to see through, and speak up against bullpucky because of our belief in silent worship, personal connection with the divine and speaking truth to power. In worship, I thought a lot about a faith and values based anti-bullying program I heard about recently where the main focus is on helping bystanders to bullying find the courage to speak up. The thing that connects the bullpucky my pastor was talking about and the bullpucky of bullying is power, and writ large the bullpucky of those in power leads to the kind of oppression I see in my study of Muslim cultures. Whether oppressing or being oppressed, misuse of power, cultural bullying and disrespect of human life and dignity is a big pile of bullpucky.

What can we do about this cultural bullying, this disrespect for humanity? Paul Coughlin, the founder of the anti-bullying program The Protectors, says that the most powerful player in the theater of bullying is the bystander. Bullies do what they do because no one stands up to them, no one points out their disrespectful behavior, no one has the courage to say "stop!". A study quoted by Paul Coughlin's group says that 58% of bullying incidents end within just a few seconds of a bystander speaking up for the victim. Whether his numbers are true or not, and whether this study can be scaled up to culture wide bullying, I don't know. I do know, however, that we must do everything we can to shed light on oppression, bullying and bullpucky everywhere.

The Father's Moon energies ask us to think about how we can be mature adults as we interact with our community to make it a better place. How can we keep our community safe, how can we encourage community members to be better people? How can our own resources and gifts be used for the greater good? There are so many things going wrong with our communities that it is easy to get overwhelmed. It is easy to ignore the bullpucky, easy to let the bullies set the agenda. Courage is required to be a good father, and courage is required to use the Father's moon energies to speak up for those who need a champion. I'm not saying I'm any good at any of this, but I'm saying I feel a new call to be mindful of it.

The 10th Anniversary of 9/11 is coming up in the next week and I worry that with heightened emotions there will be extra bullpucky about Muslims, about war and about our cultural bullying. I wonder what I can do to be a courageous bystander.

What did you learn about Islam and Muslim people this Ramadan? I'd love to hear your stories or thoughts. Have you ever found the courage to stand up against bullying, oppression or other forms of bullpucky? What's your favorite recipe using dates? Eid Mubarak!

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This post is not for the Full Father's moon and it is not for the New Nesting Moon, it is for the old Father's Moon. Here are links to other Ramadan posts, which is the main theme of this post. Use the tag for "Father's Moon" to see other New and Full Father's Moon posts from years past.

Ramadan 2010: Ramadan and End of Ramadan

Ramadan 2011: Blessed Ramadan and Ramadan Postings 2011

Photos by Carmen Alonso Suarez, DMahendra, DVIDSHUB and zz77. Please check out their photos on Flickr.

Fathering, Missions and the Father's Moon

Full Father's Moon

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JUNIPERO'S mode of life in his mission never varied He rose with the dawn He seemed to require little sleep The greater portion of the night he passed in prayer.

At sunrise he said mass and afterwards distributed breakfast to his neophytes This task he always refused to delegate to others. His Indians were well-fed and well-cared for. He found time to cut out all the shirts and petticoats needed in the missions and all the little garments worn by the children. During stated hours in the mornings and afternoons he instructed the Indians in the doctrines and observances of the church. In the intervals he taught the women to sew and superintended the labors of the men, tucking up his shabby friar's frock to work himself, the better to show his pupils and to stimulate them to habits of industry by the force of his example. He was always kind to the neophytes although he did not hesitate to punish them whenever he deemed punishment necessary. He refused to overlook, even in the newest converts, the slightest lapse from the strict code of morals he insisted upon, nor would he pardon the least carelessness or neglect in church attendance or observances.

In spite of this severity the neophytes were devoted to him. They saw that he exacted from them no duty which he did not exact from himself with far greater rigor, that the punishments he inflicted upon his own delicate body surpassed severity anything to which they were subjected. An intuition which belongs alike to children and savages taught them that in Junipero they had not teacher only, but a friend, a brother, and champion.

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I'm late in posting my full Father's Moon post because I was on vacation for a week in Southern California, visiting family. My sister and I traveled together and had a great time. We went to the Santa Monica Pier, swam in the ocean at Corona del Mar, visited the Natural History Museum and ate as much ethnic food as we could pack into our five days (I believe the final count was 9 restaurants representing 6 cuisines).

One of the highlights of the trip for me was our visit to Mission San Gabriel, the fourth of 21 Spanish Missions built in the 18th century in south and Central California. The missions in Alta California, as the area was called in late 1700s, were begun by Father Junipero Serra. Serra was born in Majorca in 1713 and studied theology and philosophy as a priest and lecturer at the University in Majorca. When he was 36 years old he left his home to work as a missionary in Mexico where he worked both among the Indians and in Mexico City for almost 20 years. In 1768 he was appointed the Father Presidente of the Missions in Baja California and in 1770 founded the Mission San Diego in what is today a city that bears that same name. He founded missions all along the California coast for the rest of his life, working to convert Indians and turn the land around the missions into productive farms.

Mission San Gabriel, 9 miles east of downtown Los Angeles (the original Mexican settlement of Los Angeles was an secular outgrowth of the mission), is as stunningly beautiful as any of the other missions. It's exterior walls are a warm and lovely golden sand color and its interior a series of shady gardens and cool, dark buildings. It is reknown for its campanario, a wall with six bells in it and its elegant capped buttresses and tall narrow windows showing the influence Spanish Moors had even half a world away. Inside the church are 18th century paintings by a Native American artist of the stations of the cross, wooden statues carved in Mexico and a copper babtismal that has seen more than 25,000 baptisms. Mission San Gabriel is also the final resting place of over 6,000 Native Americans, and is the eipicenter of the cultural destruction of the Tongva/Gabrielino Indians. Even today the Tongva people are fighting for federal recognition, for respectful treatment of their cultural artifacts and preservation of their traditional lands.

Father Junipero Serra was a perfect incarnation of the energies of the Father's Moon and so my mixed emotions about him are quite fitting. He was a loving but stern figure, very conscious of the need to train his followers, both Spanish and Native. He was very much a man of his era and had no notion of the multiculturalism and relativism that are hallmarks of our own time. He believe in right and wrong, good and evil, heaven and hell, and he knew the correct path to take to become the right kind of person. Annette Hinshaw notes that humans tend to resent fathering, even as we realize that it is important to our own growth. She also reminds us that the role of the father requires commanding respect, not necessarily love or even affection.

As I've traveled this summer I've gotten to see a number of my friends and family members as they act as fathers. One of my friends is the gentlest, most loving father I've ever met and genuinely dotes on his daughters. He has a hard time being a disciplinarian and his 6 year old knows it. Another friend seems overwhelmed by economic hardships and, though I know he loves his kids, seems less able to love and laugh with them. My cousins I was staying with in L.A. are Mormon and the father of that family seems so balanced and comfortable in his role as a father. I wonder how much his religion's traditional views on fatherhood actually give him clear role models and standards to live up to in his fathering. He works full time but comes home to his family full of laughter, encouragement and the ability to be the disciplinary backbone of the household. I love getting to watch my friends grow into this so very difficult role. They are good men and they are growing good kids through their fathering.


I think that Father Junipero Serra thought he was doing the right thing and that he can serve as both a model and warning to us as we navigate the treacherous pathways of manifesting the Father's Moon energies. He worked alongside his flock but was confident in his role as a leader. He delighted in giving them gifts but knew they had to do their own work as well. As my sister and I were leaving the Mission we passed the large bronze statue of Fra Serra and stopped for a moment. "He thought he was doing the right thing," my sister said. "I hope history judges me for my intentions," I said. From his own point of view, Father Serra really was just trying to be a good father.

What do you think makes a good father? When have you experienced excellent fathering, whether from your biological parent or someone else? Have you ever been to a California Mission? What historical figures do you think are excellent father figures? How is your summer going?

The quoted story is from Junipero Serra; A Man and His Work by A.H. Fitch. Click on the link there to access the google books version, or check out another online version here. Old Father's Journey by Beulah Karney is another story about Junipero Serra, told from a more modern, but still favoriable, point of view. Steven W. Hackel's article at Common-Place.org is much more critical, and a very interesting read.

For more pictures from my trip to Mission San Gabriel, check my flickr page.

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Full Father's Moon 2009: The Aftermark of Almost Too Much Love
This is one of my favorite posts... check it out and read an awesome Robert Frost poem.

Full Father's Moon 2010: Robin Hood

Fourth of July

The Fourth of July is a Father's Moon holiday if there ever was one. I've recently found myself describing the energies of this time of year as the hot, dry, aggressive, shooting, yang energies of All That is Manly and Good in the World. If that doesn't describe this quintessential American holiday then I just don't know what does.

• Reasons I'm proud to be an American: The Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, the transcontinental railroad and the Eisenhower interstate system, jumbo jets and the Gemini Moon missions. We are a people who rise to a challenge and are proud of our successes.

These masculine energies (I almost prefer "yang" to "masculine" because it allows the concept to be separate from maleness. Humans of any sex or gender encompass both yin and yang energies in their beings) have gotten a bad rap in the recent years, but they are essential to meeting our true potential as an individual or a society. These are the energies that instigate building, planting, and harvesting. These energies incite young adults to strike out on their own and communities to revolt against unjust rulers. They are the impetus for contests and challenges of all kinds as well as the acts of culling and decision making. In fact, most of the things we Americans have to be most proud of are born out of masculine, yang, Father Moon energies.

• Reasons I'm proud to be an American: Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and all the black, white, young and old people who used non violent resistence to break the back of opressive segregation in our country.

The American Fourth of July holiday celebrates all these energies as we Americans express them so essentially. Our country was born out of a belief that we can live life on our own terms as individuals and as communities. Our Founding Fathers were wise men who worked hard to craft governing documents by culling and winnowing words and ideas until only the most important were left in. Despite the repercussions that we can see so clearly from this side of history, the expansion of our territory across the continent was driven by people who were willing to take chances to be free from oppression and the constriction of "society." The great American fortunes were built by men who took chances and built companies, factories and industries to harness the great natural resources of our land. As the pioneers saw it grass is just grass, but a cattle ranch or a farm is money in the bank and a chance to live in freedom.

• Reasons I'm proud to be an American: The native people of this land who, despite centuries of explicit attempts to annhilate them, are still here, still living and still succeeding in adding their voice to our American story.

Last summer I wrote that the Father Moon energies might just be the root of all the evil our culture has wrecked upon this earth. Expanding, conquering and controlling energies are behind environmental degradation, oppression of minority groups and massive scale war that have marked this era in our history. Our American history is so full of tales of Father Moon energies that they are, of course, equally full of the tragic consequences of these energies unchecked. The anti-war, minority rights and environmental awareness movements of the last 30 years have all been directly and explicitly working against these tendencies in our culture.

• Reasons I'm proud to be an American: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B Anthony, the people of Wyoming, and all the women and men who worked tirelessly and peacefully to assert the right of women to vote in this country's elections.

We should be sure though, in our work at bringing balance to our lives and to the world that we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. We need the penetrating and constricting action of the Father’s Moon energy to form the formless potential of the Mother’s Moon energy into something useful. You can argue the environmental impact of dams and irrigation projects but those projects have allowed vast areas of this country to support much larger populations than the virgin land could support. The same is true of the industrialization of the Northeastern United States and the diking of rivers in the Midwest. A field, even a beautiful one full of grasses and flowers can not support the same amount of people or cattle as one plowed and planted with grain. These are the Father’s Moon energies at work.

• Reasons I'm proud to be an American: Irving Berlin, I.M. Pei, Carlos Santana, Bob Hope, John Audubon and all of the other immigrants who have crossed oceans or deserts to come to this country and lend their talents to our ever changing society.

So let us celebrate these fiery and explosive, constricting and controlling, penetrating and culling forces of All That Is Manly and Good In the World. Let’s do it now, at the height of the sun’s power in the heat of the summer. Let’s celebrate our ability to create fireworks and sky scrapers, to plow fields and teach children. Let’s make some noise and be a little dangerous. Sometimes it is just necessary.

• Reasons I'm proud to be an American: levels of wealth, health and freedom of conscience unprecedented in history which allow us to pursue even greater levels of just wealth, universal health and freedoms of all kinds for all people. Happy 4th of July!

Photos by one of my best good Flickr friends graygoosie. Thanks to her for letting me use them. Go see what she's up to this summer by clicking on the photos!