So it begins.
That sounds suitably dramatic, doesn't it? But something kind of dramatic is beginning, my last year here as a student. And this time there's so asterisk attached to that awareness, no possibility of coming back as a different kind of student, there's just no more student to be for me. Allen would say true masters are always students, and I'm sure he's right, but the question is student of what?
Schools are very odd communities in that if you do everything right, they make you leave.
But I knew that going in. I didn't expect this year not to come. Now I want to stay, and the only way to do that is to become one of the Six--which I probably won't get to do, but failing that, I'll at least be an ally. How did I get here, me, that awkward 19-year-old with no plans?
Anyway.
The day wasn't just about me. New students coming in, senior students graduating, some new green rings earned...it's pretty much the same ceremony every time, and what makes for comforting, ritualistic continuity makes pretty boring description, over and over again. The only thing that really changes year to year is individual experience of the event--fitting for Groundhog Day, I suppose. The big difference for me between now and my first Brigid on campus is that what was then new, exciting, and fresh is now familiar, traditional, and full of accumulated meaning.
But let me describe it again, as I haven't done so in years.
June and I had nothing specific to do earlier in the day, so we just wandered around, greeting students returning to campus. There were thirteen new yearlings (about half as many as last year--because we don't accept student loans, the recession* seems to have impacted enrollment) arriving and wandering around campus with their guides for the day, and we spoke to some of them.
We did not see any of the candidates about to receive their rings. I do not think they were kidnapped for any Ordeal--surely that trick can only work once, and anyway I really hope mastery candidates don't go through an ordeal, once was enough. But they must be doing something. I could ask, but I think I'll leave that mystery until I go through it.
It had snowed a few days earlier, inches of wet, white fluff, much of which melted and then froze, leaving irregular patches of white ice on the fields and black ice crusted in the dirt and gravel of the campus driveways. The air was cold and damp, and thick, snow-filled clouds kept the day dark and nearly monochrome. When the day grew darker yet, and the clouds glowed a dull pink for a while in the west. That's when we knew it was time to go in and take our seats.
The Chapel was about 40 degrees, F. when we got in, which is about the best a single wood stove in such a big room, plus heat migrating upwards from the Ordeal rooms in the basement, can do when the temperature outside is around 20. The metal folding chairs were too cold to touch bare-handed. June and I were well-prepared, though, in long-johns and two layers of school uniforms and our big, brown, wool cloaks, and we weren't uncomfortable. We actually put our hoods down, so we wouldn't get too warm. The room, lit warmly and faintly by candled in holders along the walls and in stands at the ends of each row of chairs, smelled of beeswax, wet wool, and snow, as it always does on Brigid.
We sat with Steve and Sarah and the baby on one side and Eddie on the other. A new yearling had the end seat, quite on purpose, though the yearling didn't know it. We all chatted quietly, waiting, until the repeated Ding! of a small bell we could not see silenced us.
We turned in our seats to watch the masters process in, the Six, the non-teaching masters, and a few allies who wear the ring whose role I've never been clear on. They walked in slow, measured steps, their hoods pulled up, each carrying an unlit candle. This year, Charlie led them. They take that duty in turns, two years per stint.
As the bell continued to ring, Ding! Ding! Ding! Their column divided in two, passing around the audience in our chairs, to either side of us. Abruptly, the bell stopped and they stopped, one at the end of each row, and turned to face us. The student in each end-seat lit the candle of the master facing them, and the procession, and the bell, continued until they had mounted the stage, set their sixteen candles in stands on the stage, and then sat there, on the stage, in their own folding chairs, their hoods now lowered.
Charlie stood at the lecturn, said some opening words, and introduced the new yearlings--he had them stand up, say their names, where they were from, and which of four animals or plants they most identified with. That seemed like an ice-breaker exercise, but actually someone out of sight was writing down their responses and using the plants or animals the new students picked to assign them to dorms. That introduction, that hidden ritual, made them part of us, and ensured an overlap, even if of only a few minutes, between the incoming newbies and the outgoing graduates.
Then Charlie said the ritual words to summon the first of the graduating students to come out and kneel, then stand and remove the black cloak that symbolizes the novitiate--the rest of us wear brown. Each graduate spoke a few words at the lectern, then exited the stage, receiving a diploma on the way. When they all had crossed the stage, they processed away out of the room in a group.
Then Jasmine, Nel, Rick, Ollie, and Oak each received their green ring from their master. Charlie went first, giving Rick is ring, with the ritualized words, always the same, used for the first candidate to receive a ring each year--the others are allowed to improvise. But Rick, being Rick, improvised anyway, and hugged Charlie, but to the latter's obvious surprise. Neither of them are known at affectionate types, and a ripple of appreciative "ohh"s spread through the audience, those of us who know them both and know Rick's story.
Then Allen and Karen gave rings to their students, then Kit went--she had two, Nel and Oak. She usually has more than anyone else because Kit, more than anyone else, embodies why most of came here--she's a gorgeous, red-headed witch-woman, Lady of dance and music and magic.
Then Charlie said a few more words, and the masters, old and newly-made, all processed out to the ringing of the bells and we got up and milled about at the back of the room, talking to the yearlings and eating nuts and raisins and dilly-beans and whatever else from long buffet tables. The graduates--but not the new masters--joined us, and then we all went back to our dorms (the janitorial group stays behind to extinguish the candles and clean up), where we saved the new students from incipient hypothermia (most hadn't known to wear long underwear) and then fed them chocolate and alcohol and snow cream and maple snow candy.
The snow had started to fall during the ceremony, and fell thick and comforting and silent around as as we walked back, so we had an easy time setting out pans to collect the stuff and make candy.
*Remember, this was 2009
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