A Priestess of Hecate Passes--In Memory of Tara (Meg) Webster

“There are some who bring a light so great to the world that even after they have gone, the light remains.” A borrowed sentiment from a condolence card, but so fitting for this priestess of Hecate, the torch-bearer. Her light was so pure and great that I had been touched and changed in sharing parts of life in which we by chance had crossed paths and found ourselves working together. I was not sure if I should go to her memorial, for I was a mere acquaintance through mutual friends and I had felt so remiss and pathetic in my failure to somehow form a deeper bond with her. I had always hoped that I could someday tell her how she had unknowingly touched my life… in all those little moments in waiting for dance instructions or for rituals to start… or smiles across a line of dancers encouraging me on… or a knowing look in context of a ritual… a way she had of being present and so genuine that one felt recognized for themselves—all parts inclusive and accepted. Over and over our lives crossed and re-crossed. I knew just a facet of a complex woman. I knew from covenmates and friends, and friends of friends, so many more facets of her. In retrospect I realize that I needed to know who she was and that I was not alone in my sadness and loss. She was no more and I didn’t know what to do with that information which I had set aside since the recent news of her passing.

I was a half-hour late for a four and a half hour memorial. I followed familiar smells of incense up to the third floor library of an Oakland Masonic hall. I had changed my clothes a few times and laid out a few more sets of clothes before I settled on my outfit that day. I was caught in a frustrated Barbie loop for some time, it seemed. It was so uncharacteristic of me to fuss or dress as I had chosen to that day. I wore a very stylish designer black pantsuit usually reserved for academic conferences and formal graduations. I knew more than half of the crowd would be Pagans. I feared I would look like a weirdo relative, a minister, a realtor or facility staff. Still, it seemed imperative to dress according to certain standards of presentation regardless of the distinctly foreign feel and motivation of such an act. When I arrived, I was relieved to see quite a few others in the room dressed in suits and ties or quite elegantly… others who don’t normally dress like that. Then there were bikers in leathers, business casual coworkers from Kaiser, dancers in elegantly comfortable sparkly dresses, Pagans in rich and colorful outfits, and a sizable portion of people dressed in no particular fashion… as if they had walked in off the street and were waiting in a doctor’s waiting room.

The first few hours of the memorial service was story sharing. The room was open for anyone to share their story of Tara. We sat in a big circle. Many of us shared the gift that Tara had left with us—how she changed our life and our being. Some shared songs and poems. Joi, her primary death midwife, led us in a Grateful Dead tune—Ripple. Not so many people knew Tara had been a Deadhead… or that her given name was Mary Margaret. In the final difficult months while Joi stayed with Tara, she described her discovery of the woman she knew as Tara; answering phone calls from people calling to talk to Mary and Meg and Tara, helping Tara to prepare for the various visitors, unable to convince her that pajamas and comfy clothes were acceptable on all occasion for those dying of brain cancer when Tara insisted that standards of attire must be maintained, and Tara’s last outdoor experience of transcendent glee belted into a swing seat with her big brother pushing her. There we all were. People mourning the passing of Mary and Meg and Tara and the duo of Tara and Sam—her husband. Those things are no more as we have known them. After sharing, part of the ceremony was the dissolution of Sam and Tara’s earthly bond of marriage. At this point, a man whom Sam and Tara had joined in marriage to his wife began to wail inconsolably. We had all lost so much. Not just a person, but a place—a hole in the web of life was torn.

I was so happy to learn more of Tara—to see all facets illuminated in one room—us all standing there, sharing, singing, laughing, crying and stunned. One of the biggest surprises was so many people who came and spoke of the same things I did; how they hadn’t made it to her bedside to see her before she died, how they had not gotten as far as they had dreamed in developing a friendship with her, and how she had so profoundly touched their lives. I no longer had any doubt that I belonged there. As it had been with Tara in life--I had a sense of belonging and acceptance. I learned that her presence, her being full of acceptance for others, was a conscious choice, a path of hers in life—that it was her work. She loved being a psychotherapist and she gave and gave and gave of herself generously, spontaneously and genuinely. I learned that she was the consummate girly-girl loving makeup and fine clothes. I no longer was confused or concerned for what I had chose to wear or why. Obviously this is what Tara would have liked to have seen me in and felt to be fitting. I no longer felt angry or sad that she had died so young when I heard of her distaste and alarm for the physical signs of aging. She died young and beautiful. As mourners shared, “She stepped out like a dancer,” “She left a beautiful corpse,” and they talked of how they lovingly bathed and oiled her body and how she lie in state donning her tiara.

The ritual was really brought together by the act of a close friend, a Unitarian minister—one of the first Pagan identified UU seminary students whom Tara had encouraged and worked with. She stood up and read us a poem which reiterated and wove together all the stories; we all felt heard and as one in our experience at that point. The culmination of the ritual for me was the final chant to Hecate. We all drew in and chanted two woven songs—only one of which I chose to stay with… "Hekate, Keeper of the Crossroads. Hekate, Holder of the Flame. Hekate, Wisdom of the Darkness. Guide our way. Guide our way." In this chant, all of what had been added to our ritual ‘stew’ of energy was cooked up and offered to Tara in the best way we knew how. She was truly everywhere in all of us and nowhere anymore. We used song and dance and heart to meet her spirit; to both let it go and welcome it into ourselves and our lives wherever it chooses to enter.

We all were instructed to take something of hers—many of her possessions had been laid out on altars throughout the room. After the ceremony, I had to rush off to make sure a friend got to work on time. I had forgotten to take something. I was sad about that. I recalled looking at a garish bright green frog marionett-like figure with a goofy painted-on floral bikini and long lizard like toe-nails painted sparkly red. My attention would return to the frog over an over… that is the freakiest thing, why can’t I get my attention off of it? I bet that is important to someone. I bet someone wants that frog and will need to have it as a memento of Tara. I wanted the frog, but I had an unexplained ambivalence to actually taking anything of hers from the tables. It seemed too much like a swapmeet to me and I could not bring myself to join in despite the stern command of Joi, the officiant. I feared for negotiations or depriving someone of their most prized sentimental memento of Tara. Upon leaving, we realized all the clocks in the Masonic hall had been incorrect—some slow, some fast. We had a chance to stop for a Chinese meal; neither one of was quite functioning well and we had both missed a meal to come to the memorial. We fed ourselves and I got him home in time for work that night. Before I departed from my friend’s house, he pulled something from his backpack and set it upon an altar in his living room. The bikini-clad frog dangled its segmented wooden legs over the edge displaying those surreal and bizarre toenails. I laughed aloud and told him of my fixation on that frog. He offered it to me, but I declined. Maybe someday, but for now I’m content to visit the frog at his house. I’m charmed enough that it followed me out of the hall.

Thank you Tara—once again—for the gift of your attention and presence. Your life was well-lived and fruitful. Priestess of the torch-bearer, guide to the thresholds, may you walk in beauty as you rejoin the infinite and may your light dance in our hearts always.

Hecate

Cousin of Artemis, standing at the crossroads.
Your black dog howls and my hair stands on end.

I find myself lost and scared and I need a guide in you. A guide through the dark, through the death, through myself... what stands between me and who I want to become.


A night owl in flight.
What is me and what can I cast off?

A wild mare in fright.
What is love and what is dross?

In nature there is no loss.


Walk with me, beside me, in front of me, behind me, over me, under me, walk within me as protectress and guide. Your virgin sister stands scared and faltering on a path. Meet me in the dark. Meet me in my heart. Your titaness strength and resolve as my own.

Addiction

Addiction is a perpetual shell game that runs day and night in my life. Just outside the back stage door, a carnie of indeterminate age and gender swirls walnut shells in mesmerizing patterns on a cardboard box podium. Each time the motion stops I lift another shell thinking I will find it there. No. Addiction appears and reappears where one least wants to look… where it will be hardest to root out… where it will always seem to cost so dearly to walk away from. The longer I don't see and the more I nurture and appease the unconscious in preference to objective reality, the deeper the roots will grow for a seed planted in fertile ground. Withdrawal, at times, seems the very sickness one seeks to escape.

Letter to Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Dear Archbishop Tutu,

I am a volunteer Chaplain in California, U.S.A. I am writing because I read your book, No Future Without Justice, and I want to express my deepest gratitude for what you have shared of yourself and your experience.

I work with people in our state’s prison system. As you may know, the U.S. correctional system imprisons more of its citizens than any other on this planet. My state, California, has one of the largest, per capita, correctional populations and worst prison systems. With our extremely high recidivism rate, our correctional system is clearly not ‘correcting’ anything, or anyone. In fact, it is the primary contributor to a systemic de-humanization of large segments of our population.

I am not Christian, so I do not have the support or equivalent consideration within correctional institutions—in fact, clergy representatives and inmates of many non-Christian religions and beliefs routinely have their most basic personal, civil and constitutional rights violated as a matter of course and in keeping with both published and unspoken state correctional department policies. Myself and others persist because one’s personal spiritual practice is often the only refuge and peace in the face of such hopelessness as prison. I am human and those I work with in prison are humans as well. Each person has a heart where there resides Divine Love and connection to all creation. This I know and this I work from. This Love is the property of no single religion or belief, but the foundation of all.

On good days I am thankful that our country has some semblance of freedom of expression and activism… that I have not been jailed, tortured, or killed for my work and my beliefs. On bad days, I see the bare offensive truths for those stuck in the system, as well as the misguided forces that administer it… foster kids tossed from home to home until they join their mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers in prison… our state’s flawed and corrupted correctional system… a complete and inhumane failure to address serious drug addiction and mental health issues that continue to feed the system. On bad days, I feel hopeless against a large profitable enterprise at work and I worry for my safety—not at the hands of prison inmates, but with prison staff and correctional officers. It is God, Goddess, Love, Truth—the recognition of one’s essential humanity and worth—that keeps me determined and consistently at work in any positive way I can realize. The pain of the work is at times emotionally intolerable, but not doing something about this growing American population is too frightening of a prospect for me to be at peace with.

Your book gave me hope, strength and useful tools to go forth in my work. I don’t imagine someone such as yourself has the time to read these letters and continue to hear the stories of each and every person world-wide. Nonetheless, I absolutely know you have the heart to extend to each person out there working for restorative justice and recovery of humanity in the world, for you have done so in your writing and sharing of your life. I extend my heart to you and your work in gratitude and purpose. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Malendia Maccree

Before

It used to be different back before all my friends got famous or impossible… or both. There were many whom I shared journeys with. Our paths departed first in the woods and again and again in community politics and affiliations. The paths parted and split and parted and split until I was out here alone, but together within myself. Even those of us alone, must learn and reflect in humanity so I go into the world to learn what I can. My teachers and guides commend me and shower recognition upon me—setting me to a most powerful and trusted position over and over again. From that place, reflection and light are too bent to serve. I am no longer in the world. The world of beauty and disappointment. The world where most all is relative and transient. The world where I am. It is great to do a big thing and tell no one. I am happiest to know the truth within my heart and live from there. That which we do—the action and energy that we influence in the universe is Truth. It speaks for itself.