Mastery Year 3: Part 2: Brigid

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

Mastery Year 2: Part 8: Post 3: Getting Back to Charlie

So, I have an answer.

To the question of what more I have to do to become a master, I mean. The key ended up being what Ollie said, about whether I'd like to see someone like me hired--and the thing is, I wouldn't, not yet. I may have made the personal transformation necessary to be one of the Six, but I'm not in a position to take responsibility for helping to run the school, because I don't really know how the school runs. I don't really have a sense yet of how I could bring my unique skills and knowledge-base--I do know I have unique skills by now!--to the school in a way that might fit in with what everyone else is doing here.

But what I don't know, I can find out.

So, first I made a list of things I want to learn this year:

• What is the operational structure of the school? Who does what?
• What are the day-to-day operations of each "department"?
• What is the school's legal and financial status?
• What happens in an emergency?
• What is the history of the school?
• Who is actually in charge of making various "mysterious" events happen?
• What is the decision-making process? How is organizational policy set?
• What classes (as opposed to workshops, etc.) could I teach, other than Charlie's?
• What areas of mastery could I teach, and how would I teach them?
• What do people other than me find useful in a master?
• What areas of school function could I direct?

Then I made a list of tasks I want to complete over the year that should teach me the things I need to know:

• Interview each member of the Masters' Group and all of the regular allies about what they do.
• Interview Greg, and one or more of the original Six, if I can find any, about the school history. Supplement with interviews of the others.
• Interview each member of the Candidates' Group, especially those getting their rings this Brigid, about their process of gaining mastery and their relationships with their masters.
• Write up class descriptions and syllabi for one or more full classes I could teach and write up any necessary preparation plans--then execute the plans.
• Interview a selection of novices about what they like and don't like about their masters and what they see as the strengths and weaknesses of the school as a whole.
• Ask various community members of all categories what they see as needing to change or improve in the school, and what they see as important to remain the same.
• Document all of the above--write a report.

I did as Sharon whether any such reports already exist, though I suspect I'd get more out of writing one than by reading it, but she said there isn't. I don't know whether to be encouraged or discouraged that apparently nobody's ever sought mastery this way before.

Anyway, I turned in all of it to Charlie, through Sharon, and now I'm waiting to hear back. I'm sitting in the Great Hall, alone, watching the weak, winter sunlight shine off the decorations of the Yule tree and off the crusted, patchy snow outside. More snow is predicted for tonight, and the Great Hall smells of snow and, faintly, of the iron of the woodstove, which overheated earlier and is cooling now, ticking slowly as it goes. And I'm thinking why was all this so difficult? Why did it take me the better part of a month to do this, even after I spoke with Ollie and developed a good idea of what I needed to do?

I could say I was distracted and preoccupied by the holidays, but really there wasn't much for me to do to make the holidays happen. I've been less preoccupied, less busy, over the past month than I normally am by daily life.

The truth is that the reason I don't know all of this stuff already is that I've been fairly passive in my engagement with the community. I've done what I've been told, I've met expectations, and that's about it. A certain passivity is not only accepted but actually encouraged in the students, I've learned, because it keeps them from asking too many questions and makes maintaining the air of mystery (which has educational value) much easier. It's not like I've been doing anything wrong. But it's time to give up passivity now, to take responsibility for making this place work--to grow up, in other words.

And I don't entirely want to.

Mastery Year 2: Part 8: Post 2: Christmas and New Years

Merry Christmas and happy New Year.


Why don't we say merry New Year? Or, really, merry anything other than Christmas? I've always wondered. Anyway, I've been merrying along at June's parents' place, and while I'm glad we went, I'm even more glad to be back.

As I think I've said, we usually go to my parents' house for holidays and other visits because it's closer--this has been especially true since we've been on campus together, and it had been bothering June. In fact, I don't think we'd both visited her parents since before we were married, though they have visited us, and June spent a good long visit a home last February.

And it's not like I dislike her family. In fact, I rather like her parents. It's just that they're not my family. I don't know them very well, and when I'm at their house I have that uncomfortable feeling that comes with being the house-guest of near-strangers. As though one might do the wrong thing, be a burden somehow, and ruin it. That's not a great way to spend Christmas.

Also, June's family is Quaker, and they don't exactly celebrate Christmas. The idea is every day is supposed to be holy, so how can there be special holy days? It's not that the family ignores the day, but it's low-key, reflecting the virtue of simplicity, I gather, and not religious. Her parents put a small, hand-made tree-like object on the kitchen table Christmas Eve, and in the morning we had a large and unusually delicious breakfast and opened "stockings."

The "stockings" were actually large paper bags, each with a name on it, into which we'd all been dropping small, fun gifts (candy, jars of specialty pickles, wind-up toys, brain teasers, weird socks) over the previous days. The tradition is that each person gets something for everyone else and nobody looks in the bags until Christmas morning. I think it started out with the adults making up stockings for the kids, and then became more general when June and her brother grew up.

Anyway, Christmas night, June's aunt came over for dinner and we ate by candle-light, but it wasn't an unusual dinner otherwise.

It was nice, Christmas with my in-laws, but it was kind of minimal.

I missed real Christmas. I missed going to church and singing Christmas carols by candle light, I missed the hustle and bustle and glare of the holiday, and I missed both the giving and the receiving of real (and sometimes expensive) Christmas presents. Yes, the giving, too. I'll get presents from my parents and my brother's family, of course, and give them, too, everything's already bought and wrapped and waiting in my room, but it's not the same thing.

And as much as I missed my family of origin, I missed my friends on campus, too.

I wanted to know what Andy got for Christmas and to listen to his touching, almost childlike, theological soliloquies. I wanted to hear Ollie preach, which I still haven't done. I wanted to go tracking with Rick or run into Charlie unexpectedly, him no doubt barefoot and sarcastic in the snow. I wanted to sit in the Great Hall alone or nearly so and watch the afternoon sunlight glint off the silver embroidery on the ivory ribbons on the tree, and off the gold embroidery on the tangerine-colored ribbons, and the glass balls, orange, red, and yellow, like fruit, and the fantastic flock of blown-glass birds perched on the branches among strings of beads and popped corn and the little white LED lights, unlit, now quiescent, but reflective still. I wanted to go home.

I think June is a bit miffed at me for not liking being at her family home as much as she does. She takes it as a rejection of herself and her family, and it isn't that at all. She knows it's irrational, but she can't help it. And neither can I.

Tonight is New Years Eve, and a bit more traditional. We'll stay up and toast in the New Year with Champagne, maybe after watching a movie. Not a big deal, but similar to what my parents usually do. They'll be a party on campus tonight, and I wish I could attend, but the ache is a little easier, the day less emotional.

June found me a few minutes ago, looking morose, I suppose.

"Missing campus?" she asked me.

I made a non-committal, morose noise.

"You don't like coming out here to the real world, do you?" she asked.

I turned to look at her.

"Mine is the real world," I said. "It's this one that isn't."

"I know," she told me. "And that's a difference between us."

Mastery Year 2: Part 7: Post 5: Instructions from June

No, I haven't found out what's bothering June.

She seems to be over it, at least for now. She's relaxed and friendly around me again, so that's good, but I'm fairly sure that whatever it is will erupt again unless it's dealt with--it's lot like I don't know there was an underlying issue driving that argument.

I asked Allen about it, when I happened to see him, but he just said "couples counseling costs extra," so I suppose he didn't want to be bothered. I talked to Ollie about it, and he had some interesting things to say, but nothing that ultimately proved helpful. I even said something to Eddie, who said "do I look like a man who knows anything about marriage?"

"What does how you look have to do with it?" I asked.

"I am way too cute to be monogamous," he replied. And then he went on for some length about how much progress Elmo, his dog, has made. This is the supposedly untrainable Elmo, and apparently he's doing very well, now. He has basic obedience down solid, knows a few tricks, and as his confidence grows his fear-aggression has backed off dramatically.

"I even have an idea for what kind of therapy task he can do," Eddie said, excitedly. "Elmo has a lot of energy. He needs to run every day, and he's not shy about asking to go. I'm thinking he can be a jogging partner for someone with depression, you know, the kind where you just want to stay in bed all day? Now I just need to find the right person to match him with."

All that's very good and all, but it doesn't help me with my wife. I kind of feel like I'm walking on egg-shells, not that I'm worried she's going to attack me, I'm just thinking about what random thing might trigger whatever it is next.

Finally, I talked to my therapist. Remember that I have a therapist? It's part of the program here, all candidates need to do at least one year of individual therapy, and while I had my doubts at first--I was pretty sure I don't need therapy--I've come to like it. I get to talk about whatever I want for fifty minutes a week, without worrying about whether I'm being boring or sounding stupid or something, and sometimes our talks help me sort things out. My therapist is a man about ten years older than I am who graduated from the school but didn't come back for his ring. So he knows all about the school, and we get along.

But he didn't help me much with this thing with June, except to ask, quite perceptively, whether I was concerned about my issue or hers. Keep the focus on yourself, as they said in the few Al-Anon meetings I went to as a novice.

So I went to bed last night, puzzling about all of this, and then June came in. She turned on the lights, undressed and then put on her pajamas (an unfortunate side effect of winter--it's too cold to sleep naked, now), went back out to the bathroom to fill a cup with drinking water in case we got thirsty at night, turned off the light, and crawled into bed. She wrapped her fuzzy feet around by bare toes.

"Word out on the street is," she said, "you've been asking everyone and their brother's lover's cousin why I'm mad and what to do about it."

"Yes, I suppose so." Dang, foiled by the rumor mill. I wonder who talked?

"So how come you didn't talk to me?"

Mastery Year 2: Part 7: Post 3: Instructions from Ollie

I went running with Ollie this morning after breakfast. It's that time of year, now, when running before breakfast would mean starting in the dark. The leaves are off the trees and some mornings the grass is frozen and the puddles in the roads on campus are white with ice. But it wasn't that cold today, and though the day dawned cloudy, the sky turned brilliant blue and gold later on.

We ran without speaking much, but afterwards, as we were stretching in the Green Room, I told him about my conversation with Charlie and my new assignment to list what I need to learn and do before I earn my green ring.

"I don't understand," I said. "I have no idea what I have to do, why should I? I've never been a master."

"I haven't either," Ollie pointed out.

"Yeah, but you're getting your ring this Brigid. You're further along in the process."

"Ok, try this; why do you think this coming year should be your last? Are you eager to be gone?"

"No," I said. "I want my ring because I want to stay. It just feels like it's getting to be time."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do. This is not the first feeling like this you've had. How does it feel? Where does the feeling come from? Think! Reflect!"

He had a point. I've been learning how to answer such questions for years, now.

"I'm different that I was when I started the process. I'm on the other side of something, now. And I'm getting restless with what I'm doing, so maybe it's time to do something else. Also, my workshops are well-attended, I get good reviews, and I offer workshops in subjects nobody else does--I have something unique to give, now. And Steve Bees is making progress. I'm able to help him. I feel like I fit in better with the masters than with the students, so maybe I'm close to being one of them."

"Ok, so, why aren't you getting your green ring with me at Brigid?"

"No one's suggesting I should," I said.

"I just did. Boom, magic spell, you're getting your ring this year. What's your reaction?"

"No!"

"Why?"

"I--"

"Daniel!"

"I don't feel ready. I feel scared thinking about it. I worry that there's something missing, something I don't know about, yet."

"Well, there you go."

"Yes, here I am. Here I am not knowing what I need to do to get my green ring."

"Exactly. Rephrase that. What's the one thing you don't know yet about being a master?"

"How to make another master."

"Now, why was that so hard?"

"It wasn't, but that leaves me back where I started, in need of information only the masters can give me."

"I'm not so sure," said Ollie. "You're a part of this community, you know what it needs in terms of leadership. Would you hire yourself right now? If not, why not?"

I thought about this. It's an odd paradox that as self-conscious as I am most of the time, I'm still not very good at thinking about myself from the outside. How would I rate a prospective school employee with skills such as mine? I was tempted to tell Ollie I'd get back to him, but that's what I'd told Charlie, and I was ostensibly having this conversation with Ollie in order to come with an answer I could get back to Charlie with. I stared at my sock, mid-hurdler's stretch, for a while trying to put off coming up with something.

"What about you?" I asked. Yes, I was stalling. "How did you know you're ready?"

Ollie laughed at me and released the stretch he'd been holding.

"I'm different," he said. "My real reason for coming back was to become a better therapist, to integrate love into my professional practice in a way that isn't exactly encouraged in secular training--and isn't limited to Biblical framing, either. I know when I'm loving and when I'm not, so I know I'e met my goal. My clients say I'm helping them. Allen says he's taught me what he can, so that means it's time to move on. But you, you want to teach here. That's a whole other kettle of wax."

Yes, he said kettle of wax.

"You don't?"

"Come on, I'm a Baptist preacher. There's no way there's a place among the Six for me."

"How do you expect to get your ring, then?" I asked. Remember, to become a master, you have to pass a job interview. You won't be hired if there isn't an opening, which obviously there usually isn't, but you have to be, in principle, qualified to teach here. So if Ollie was sure he couldn't,...?

"That's what I have to figure out between now and Brigid."

"I need to know more about how this community works," I decided. "How it actually runs. I need to identify one or more areas of mastery where I can accept mastery candidates and outline a basic teaching approach--not that I won't have to alter my plans every single time! I need to develop teaching plans for one or more of the required courses. I need to get a sense of what my role in non-academic areas might be." Hearing myself talk this way, about actually being a master, made my insides go all fluttery. "And I need to talk to the other members of the candidates groups and with the novices who know me to find out if anybody thinks I'm missing something in terms of skill or character."

"Sounds like you've got it," said Ollie, clapped me on the shoulder, and went into the Great Hall and up the stairs, on his way to shower. He left me standing in the Green room by myself.

Mastery Year 2: Part 5: Post 3: Priesthood?

"What is a priest?" asked Apple Blossom at breakfast.

For some reason, the entire candidate's group, except Veery, and Oak, had ending up sitting at the same table with Apple, a single yearling, and she had been using the opportunity to pick our brains. Halfway through the meal, Nel excused herself because she had spotted someone she'd been meaning to talk with, and switched tables with Greg, but Apple continued prompting discussion.

"A priest is a male priestess," said Ebony, and took a big bite of eggs. She was just giving Apple a hard time.

"A priest/ess," Apple amended, making a motion with her hand to indicate the slash. "What is a priest/ess? What is it you're all trying to do?"

"I'm trying to be a good person," said Olli.

"That's not what I mean," said Apple. She has learned how to be persistent. "I'm asking in the abstract."

"That depends on whom you ask," said Greg, and we all looked at him because he had not spoken earlier. "What?" he asked, "is this a candidate's-only interview?"

"Not formally," I assured him.

"I'm asking you, anyway," said Apple. "You and them. What's a priest? ess?"

"No," said Greg, thoughtfully. "I didn't mean it's a matter of opinion, I mean that different systems have different kinds of priests, especially if you include clerics and ministers and monks and shamans in the category. Which I suppose we do, here."

"There's a difference between a priest and a minister, though," interjected Olli, "and between a priest and a monk. Christianity has all three, and they are distinct."

"Granted," said Greg.

"But what is it?" persisted Apple. "What's the larger category?"

"Well, I'm a minister," said Ollie. "That means I serve the people, but I don't have any special power, not like a Catholic priest."

"That's like a rabbi," commented Ebony, who was raised Jewish. "They're, like, religious experts, not religious authorities."

"I think most of us are ministers, then," said Steve, looking around. "We all serve."

"Raven and I are witches," Ebony corrected him. "We do have special powers."

"But not authority," said Raven.

"No, not authority, unless we have a leadership position in our own coven," Ebony agreed.

"But aside from Kit's teaching coven, we're both solitaries," added Raven.

"And yet you are also both priestesses, yes?" Greg pointed out. "If a priest has special authority, in what sense are you priestesses as solitaries?"

"We stand as intersessionaries between humanity and the, the Everything," explained Raven. As an animist, she doesn't exactly have a god concept. She frowned.

"Ministers do that, too," said Steve, "but we're not priests."

"I didn't know you're a minister," said Ollie.

"I'm a Quaker. We're all ministers."

"I think I'm a priest and a minister," suggested Eddie. "My priesthood is between me and the Goddess. My ministry is to animals and the humans who need them."

"What about you, Daniel?" asked Apple. I had been characteristically quiet.

"I don't know," I told her, slowly. "I don't think of myself as a priest. I don't know that Charlie is a priest. I guess I'm becoming whatever it is he is." A man who has married the land? Is not that a kind of intersessionary? But it doesn't do to speak of such things, and I didn't know the word for it anyway.

And Rick said nothing at all.

Mastery Year 2: First Interlude

Hi, all, Daniel-of 2018, here.

I don't have much to say. It was curious writing last week's post on the birth of Steve and Sarah's child, since so my of my reaction to those events had to do with my awareness of not being a father yet. The idea of being on deck, that Steve was the first of us to have a child but that the rest of us would follow. And now, of course, I do have a child, so writing that post just really reminded me of how much my life has changed.

I never had that feeling about the men I went to high school with, or about the men I went to grad school with--that sense of there being an us, a kind of generation or cohort, going through milestones together. I'm not sure why. I mean, I know how, I know the mechanics of the cohesion and its absence. My high school buddies and I drifted apart as we started separate careers and partnered up--I'm still friends with most of them, but barely. I see them on Facebook. We don't talk much except to say how we should talk more. And my grad school friends were never close (except, obviously, June), and most of them were married, or otherwise in committed partnerships, when we met. So there wasn't this before-and-after feeling.

Ollie, Steve, and I were single together. Now we all have families. Andy and Eddie and Rick were part of our group, too, and still are, but haven't taken the plunge. Eddie is still in love with every woman he meets, Andy does not seem to date, and Rick...is still Rick. But the sense of brotherhood holds.

What I don't know if why moving on from adolescence broke up my adolescent social group, or why I never developed that sense of brotherhood with my friends in grad school, even the ones who were single with me.

I don't mean to make it sound like I'm not friends with women. You know I am friends with women. It's not even that I'm closer to my male friends. Maybe it's that I identify with men more. Or something. I've never had this sense of camaraderie in the face of milestones with the women.

How did I get on this topic?

I have only one "programming note," as it were. Steve's wife's name is Sarah, and she's going to become an important "character" this year, which presents a problem because, of course, Sarah the farm manager also remains a character. We never gave them separate nick-names or anything like that. Usually it was clear from context which was which, and if someone wasn't sure they could ask. But you can't ask, or at least I'd be a pretty sorry writer if I made you post comments to the blog in order to find out who I'm talking about. If I were writing all of this as pure fiction, I wouldn't run into this mess because I could give everybody unique, un-mix-up-able names, like you're supposed to do in fiction, but the fact of the matter is, in the real world you end up with a repetition of names.

So I'm just going to have to use last names more often than we actually did. Sarah Grimm was the farm manager and Sarah Kelly is Steve's wife. They get along fairly well, incidentally.

-best, D

Mastery Year 2: Part 1: Post 5: Birth

Note; since I skipped last week, you get two poss this week.-D.

When you get used to a place, anything out of the ordinary, out of place, you notice.

That's why, when someone opened the main door of my dorm and ran down the hallway in the middle of the night, I was awake-and anxious--even before I heard Steve Bees cry "HOLY SHIT!!"

He has the room next to mine this year.

His voice woke June and we both got up, put on pants, and poked our heads out the door. Steve's room light was on and spilling out the half-open door into the hallway. We could hear him moving around in there frantically. Other heads started poking out doors.

"Steve? Are you ok?" I asked. No answer.
"He probably got 'the call,'" suggested June. "His wife's in labor."
"Yes, but who ran down the hall?"

The hall door opened again and Cuppa Joe hurried in, fully dressed. Cuppa Joe, you may recall, is the husband of Security Joe, the now-retired campus security chief. Steve emerged from his room, also fully dressed and carrying a full knapsack, followed by Security Joe in pajamas and a red robe, who must have been the hall-runner.

"Hey, there, Dad," Cuppa Joe greeted Steve. "You ready?"
"What?"
"I'm your driver."
"I'm driving."
"No, friends don't let friends drive anxious at three AM. Gimme the keys."
"What? No."
"Come on, you want your wife to be all alone in the back seat? I'm already dressed. Gimme the keys."
"Oh, alright."

Steve handed over the keys and took off down the hall without acknowledging the small crowd that had collected around his door. Cuppa Joe followed, after a goodbye kiss from his mate.

"Call me," Security Joe said, and patted the other Joe's chest, fondly. They look odd, next to each other, and not because they're both men. It's because Security Joe is so little, not only short but petite, under a layer of aging, working-class muscle. His personality isn't little. Even half-asleep and in a bathrobe, Joe looks like an old cop from central casting, so you don't see his size until he stands next to another man and you realize he's eight to ten inches shorter than you'd expect. Cuppa Joe is as tall as I am, so the effect is even more startling. Plus, I don't usually see masters kiss.

Joe leaned in the doorway watching his receding mate, wearing an odd, almost nostalgic expression. Some of the assembled went back to bed, but Ollie, Eddie, June and I, and True, Nutmeg, and two yearlings, Mason and Jay, formed a cluster around Joe and the doorway.

"Well, that does it for sleep for us," said Eddie, quite brightly, speaking for all of us.
"There's no reason for you to stay up," said Joe. "They'll probably sleep at the hospital. She's not very far along, and first labors usually take a long time."
"Why did you come down?" asked Nutmeg. "Steve has a phone."
"He gave his phone to me at night so extraneous calls wouldn't wake the rest of you up. He wasn't sure 'vibrate' would wake him. I'm used to being on call, so I volunteered."
"And Coffee Joe volunteered as driver?"
"Yeah. When we had Rob, he drove about ninety miles an hour until I threatened to write him a speeding ticket myself in between contractions. We figured we'd lessen temptation for Steve."
"I imagine all new fathers are like that," said Ollie. "You're nervous and you want to be useful."

He and I made eye contact. I think we both had a sense of being the ones on deck, now.

"Not all fathers," pointed out Joe. "I was a little too busy to pace the hospital waiting room at the time."
"Do you miss it?" asked June. I suppose she meant whatever shred of femininity Joe had once had. It's not the sort of question you're supposed to ask in general, and Joe in particular is notably private. He gave her a look but elected to answer anyway.
"Sometimes," he admitted. "But not enough."
And he bid us goodnight with a courteous little nod and returned upstairs.

"It's strange, Steve having to go away to have his baby," said Nutmeg. "Like there ought to be some special School way of doing it. There is for everything else."
"I expect we'll do a welcoming ritual or a naming ceremony for the child afterwards," Eddie assured her.
"It seems...cold," said True."She ought to come here, or they should both stay home. "You wouldn't have a bunch of doctors and nurses and equipment around at the beginning of a pregnancy, why have them at the end? Birth is a sacred, natural process."
There were nods of agreement all around. This is one of the ideas that pretty much everyone around here learns to take for granted.
"You know what's also natural?" said Ollie, who doesn't like to take anything for granted. "Uterine rupture."

And on that rather depressing note, we turned out the light in Steve's room, shut his door, and went back to bed.

So, it seems as though my work as Steve's teacher is going to be delayed. The plan is for him to stay with his wife at home for some weeks, and then they'll decide whether to move the family to campus or if Steve should go back to splitting his time, as Ollie does. Either way, I don't think Steve will be back here until after Ostar.

We did talk that night, after class, about what my responsibilities will be. Charlie will be Steve's master, not Greg, and Charlie will delegate most of the day-to-day responsibility to me, though I'll work under his close supervision and with his direction and support. Partly I'll be repeating what Charlie taught me, just as I repeated what I learned in grad school to Charlie last year--though Charlie says it probably won't be necessary to push Steve so much into the science. He's not, temperamentally speaking, a naturalist. Rather, the point will be get him into the habit of close observation and awareness. And the point will be to teach me how to be somebody's master, though why I'm getting this intervention and no one else, to my knowledge, is, is beyond me. Maybe they think I need extra training, or something? I've never claimed to really know what I'm doing.

But it's obvious to me that all of this is about some kind of spiritual practice. For some reason, Greg and Charlie decided that neither the Christ nor the Buddha is Steve's best "way in" right now, which is why the meditation teacher tossed Quaker Steve over to Charlie for healing. And being a naturalist is a spiritual practice for Charlie. But is it for me? Ostensibly it must be, because Charlie was my spirit master and I graduated, but if so, I don't know what my spirituality consists of. Going outside doesn't feel especially religious to me. I don't have all kinds of fancy ideas about energy and animism, or whatever else, supporting the practice. Does Charlie? I don't know. But aren't I supposed to at least understand a topic before I teach it? Don't I have to have something to give it away?

Although I suppose there is something else that gets given when the person giving didn't have it before: birth.

Mastery Year 2: Part 1: Post 3: Yes

"So, are you a master, or a candidate?" asked Caryn at breakfast, of June. Caryn is one of the new yearlings. She knows novices don't wear brown, but not much else.
"Neither," said June, and took a bite of a bagel.

We don't normally have bagels here, but one of the second-years has an off-campus job at a bagel place in town brought in a large quantity of day-olds. Caryn, the yearling, looked at my wife in confusion.

"What are you?"
"What do I look like?"
"If this is a trick question, I don't get it."
"I win."
"June, be nice," I said. She smiled at me, briefly.

"I'm an ally. I've graduated, and now I've come back to help, just not as a candidate."

Come back to help and to live with your husband, I thought, while I piled pieces of a spinach omelette on a bagel. She doesn't have to help, Coffee Joe doesn't, particularly, she could just live with me, but that's her. She's as involved as any candidate is.

"Why do you do that?" asked Cristin, another yearling. "Masters, too, you get such a kick out of not giving us straight answers."
"We do give straight answers," I said. "The problem is your questions are crooked."
"We're brain-washing you, is what we're doing," said June with a straight face.
"I can't tell if you're joking," Caryn said.
"If she's not smiling, she's joking," I said.
"Also, when I am smiling," added June.
"Here's a hint," offered Ollie, "I think you need to know is not whether she's joking, but whether she's lying."

Afterwards, on our way out of the Dining Hall, June took my arm and leaned against my shoulder for a moment as we walked. I looked down at her and saw that she was smiling.

"You like messing with yearlings, don't you?" I said.
"I like messing with everybody," she answered. "But yearlings, they all seem so muddled and so clueless."
"As I recall, I didn't just seem muddled and clueless, I was muddled and clueless."
"I wasn't entirely joking about the brain-washing," she admitted.
"I know."
"It's not brain-washing, but it is...brain adjustment?"
"It's transformation. They agree to it and they ask for it, for the crooked questions they ask to be straightened by straight answers."
"From other students."
"Sometimes, yes."
"You did it for me."
"Yes," I acknowledged.
"And you let others do it for me."
"Yes."
"And I gave you such a hard time for it."
"Yes."
"I love you, Daniel. Did you know that?"
"Yes."

Mastery Year 1: Part 7: Post 8: Christmas

I'd been planning to go home for Christmas, as I have every year except my first year as a novice--I stayed on campus then mostly because my brother and his wife went on a cruise over the holiday, so my parents decided to delay the family celebration until they got back. But the thing is that June can't really take the time off to go to her family, has no special attachment to mine yet, and wants to stay on campus because she's a yearling and has things to do here, anyway.

And it occurred to me about a week ago that I'm married. That means that when when I'm with my wife in the place where we live, I AM home with my family. We count.

So we stayed here, together.

I've only spent Christmas on campus once before, when I was a yearling. Then, I was self-conscious about being one of the only Christians who stayed on campus and I expected the day to feel lonely and strange. I was pleasantly surprised when some secret someone--probably the masters' group--arranged for the handful of us to receive simple but thoughtful presents.

This year...I'm not sure if I am a Christian anymore. June isn't, either. It's not that I've stopped believing in Christ, it's that there are so many other things I now believe in also. I wasn't sure if I was comfortable identifying myself as a Christian celebrating Christmas on campus if it meant somebody else was going to go out of their way for me.

I brought up the matter with June and she said "Why shouldn't other people go out of their way for you? People like you, Daniel. Why would you deny them the opportunity to act like it?"

God, I love this woman.

And so, we all got up Christmas morning--there were ten of us, the majority of the school's Christians (including Ollie) being off-campus for the holiday--and discovered little gift-bags with our names on them under the tree. Each gift was perfect and well-thought-out, just as they were my first year. The yearlings among us marveled, since we in the know hadn't told them the gifts would appear, and couldn't figure out who had done it. I knew--my guess that the masters were responsible was borne out when Allen asked me, on Yule morning, what June would like for Christmas, as he'd heard she'd be celebrating it on campus. He ended up not going with my suggestion--her gift bag contained a Goddess-centered chaplet, an ironic but perfect gift for her--but his question tipped their hand. No matter. I did not tell the others what I knew.

Afterwards, June and I joined Andy for breakfast, and then Eddie and Ebony, who do not celebrate Christmas, joined us. Ebony asked to see Andy's gift--yes, she said "see," and only June showed any surprise at her choice of verb--so he passed it over.

"Is this a Bible?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered.
"I thought you already had one?"
"I have several. But this one is mine."
"And the others aren't?"
"They are...but my name is on this one. On the front fly leaf, near the top."

She touched the appropriate area, as though she could feel the letters. Maybe she can. I didn't ask. I did look over her shoulder and there was Andy's name in large, wobbly letters-- a clumsy version of his handwriting.

"Ok,..." prompted Ebony.

"Ok, so I didn't write that today."
"When did you write it?"
"Seven years ago. The man who baptized me gave me that Bible when I was Saved. I lost it two weeks later--I think I left it in the bed at a shelter. They don't let you come back during the day, and that night, it was gone. Now, here it is!"

We all gaped.

"Where did it come from?" I asked. I imagined the thing had turned up in a thrift store and that one of the masters--with the uncanny good luck they had--had spotted it and noticed Andy's name. But I didn't know for sure, and obviously Andy didn't know either.
"From God, presumably," he answered, anyway. Of course, he did.

"Do you remember, that year," I asked, "you were so excited to get presents, you said it meant other people cared about the Baby Jesus."

"Yes."

"Do you still think that way?" I asked. "Is that how you think about Christmas presents?"
"Sort of," he said. "I was so mixed up, then. I was right about Jesus, but I thought...I felt so alone, even here. I'm not."

"I always thought Christians were supposed to disdain presents," put in Eddie. "Materialism and Santa Claus. Tis the reason for the season, and all that."
"Oh, presents don't have to be materialistic," Andy replied. "This one, for example--I could get a Bible, it's not about this object, it's about how it feels to get this object--or those objects," he indicated my gift, a new write-in-the-rain notebook and a pair of thin but warm gloves so I can write outdoors when it's cold, "I am reminded of miracles. You are reminded that you are known and loved. How it feels to receive these things--it's how it feels to receive the reality of God."

"You sound so wise when you say that,"said Eddie, "but I don't believe the God you're talking about exists."
"That's ok," said Andy, "He exists whether you believe in Him or not."

"But it does matter whether we believe, doesn't it?" said June, stirring her cocoa. "I mean, different people say all different things about God, and we have to figure out who's right. If we guess wrong...I mean, I personally know people who think everybody at this table is headed for Hell, one way or another."

"I don't guess," said Andy. "I know."
"So do I," said Eddie. "And I know different than you."
"Maybe you can both be right?" suggested Ebony.
"They can both be right in some ways, but not others," I said. "Whether multiculturalism is a valid option is itself a matter of disagreement." I wished Ollie were here. He could sort this out. Or Allen.
"It's not like we can't sort this out without Ollie or Allen," June said, and I stared at her open-mouthed. "We all have brains that work."

"That's just it," said Ebony, "we all have brains, so there must be something we can do to figure it out, or else there's just no justice."
"How do you mean?" That was Andy.
"No offense, but staying out of Hell can't just come down to trusting the word of a passionate and insistent human being."
"Jesus is a human being."
"That's not what I mean. You say you know what the truth is. So, I'm supposed to just take your word for it? I have to be able to figure it out for myself, or else--say you're right, but only the people who happen to agree with you go to Heaven? Then who gets Saved is arbitrary."

"Calvinists would say it is arbitrary," said June. I have know idea whether she's right. I don't know anything about Calvinists.
"Some would say we do have that process, and it's called reason, but that my reason's on the blink because I've been disobedient so long I've forgotten that I'm being deliberately disobedient." This was Eddie. "I've been a very bad girl." His voice was heavy with irony.
"That's preposterous," said June. "If you can't tell the difference between a decision to rebel and your actual identity, then you're back to not having a process to discern the truth."
"But people do say that, though."
"People are wrong."

"But you're not a girl," said Andy, who had apparently missed the note of irony. "I don't know why God made you this way, but He did, and God does not make mistakes."
"That's just what a disobedient person like you would say," asserted Eddie. Andy frowned and bit his lip, confused.

"I still wish Ollie were here," I said. "Or Allen."
"Allen would ask why you wish he were here," June pointed out.
"Not if he was here," I answered. "Because then I wouldn't be wishing he was here. Because he'd be here."

"I think you're all missing the point," said Andy. We all looked at him. It's unlike him to criticize anyone, even mildly, unless something is very important to him. "You're all missing the point. It sounds like you're trying to justify not being Christian, for one thing, which is weird. But you're looking for some rational way to know if you're right about God? The only thing I know about God for sure is that humans can't figure Him out not completely. And the only thing I know for sure about humans is that we screw things up. We fail. At pretty much everything. That's the whole point of Christianity, the whole point of Christmas--we don't have to feel like failures anymore because Jesus came to meet us halfway. We don't have to be perfect. We don't have to be better than we are. He came to lift us up. Trying to figure out who is right about God--nobody's right, because we're human. God loves us anyway. That's the whole point."

"You don't sound like any other preacher I've heard," said June.
"I do the best I can," said Andy.

Mastery Year 1: Part 7: Post 2: Leaves without Leaving

I'm really not sure what I'm supposed to be doing this winter.

On the one hand, there's an argument to be made for staying on campus all the way through. June has to stay, because she's a yearling, and because she's graduating at Brigid, and I don't want to leave without her, and I still have my poetry writing assignment. But, on the other hand, I'm sure I could arrange something for poetry the same way as I arranged to go home for a while when I had the sleeping outside assignment. Most of the other candidates have left campus, and staying costs a hundred dollars a week in room and board that I'd like to not have to pay. June is busy finishing up some final assignments and actually has very little time for me. My family misses me.

I'm trying not to think about what Charlie would want me to do. He isn't in charge of my life, and I've got to learn how to think and act like a grown-up with respect to my studies here. What do I want to do? What would be good to do?

Ollie has left campus to go rejoin Willa, Andy is living above his bicycle shop and only comes in a day or so a week to visit, Eddie and Ebony are both here, but busily working at something, so I hardly ever see them, and both will leave campus right before Thanksgiving and stay gone until Yule. Rick is here, and staying through, but he's spending most of his time living outside--he eats our food, he's not hunting and gathering, but we don't see him. I feel very much left behind.

The Dining Hall and Chapel Hall are both closed down for the season. The Mansion is a bustle of activity at breakfast and certain other times, but mostly it's quiet. It's not yet cold enough yet to have the wood stove on all the time, so people aren't clustering in the Great Hall the way they will later in the winter, and there are great blocks of time when just nobody is about.

In one of these blocks, this afternoon, I found myself with nothing to do and no one to do it with, so I wandered outside and up to the barns and sheds, on the working end of campus where hardly anyone who does not have business there ever goes. Joy's oldest horse, the grey one with spots, looked up from his hay and regarded me as I passed.

I ended up out near the cider house and the slaughter house and the smoke house, buildings enclosed in a tight, tall fence to keep the coyotes and bears from investigating too closely. The have the various compost piles in there, too, to take advantage of the fence, and nearby I found a massive pile of autumn leaves.

We leave the campus leaves where they fall, for the most part, but our neighbors don't want to do the same, so Charlie has a deal with them where we collect their leaves and bring them on campus for mulch. Teams from the farming and landscaping crews go down the road with the horse cart and bring the loads up here, load after load...it takes a long time. I think they're about done, now, most of the leaves are down, the crescendo of autumn color fallen now to a whisper, and in any case no new loads were coming in today. The crews must have been busy doing something else. There was a big mountain of leaves sitting there, by itself, just outside of the fence, left to wait until it could dry out enough to be crushed into compostable mulch.

I looked at that mountain for a bit and then I crawled into the pile, wrapped myself up in my cloaks and hoods and cowls for warmth, and fell asleep amid the fragrant leaves. I woke up, hours later, alerted by the first dimming of daylight and cooling of evening to the fact that it was almost dinner-time. And I was wholly and completely happy.

Which, I think, answers my question. 

Mastery Year 1: Part 6: Post 3: Andy's Ministry

It’s curious, of the whole candidates’ group, all of us returned either this year or last year. There are no third-year candidates. Of course, a lot of people do finish their candidacies in only a year or two, but three and four-year candidacies aren’t uncommon. I could end up having one—I already know that I’m not earning my green ring this year, and I wouldn’t want to. And the two who earned their rings this past Brigid, Yves and Wren, were both third-years. 

But the Brigid before that, no one came back to start a candidacy. And Yves and Wren were the only two who came back before then. So, no third or fourth years, now.

All this must seem pretty dry and random. Like, who cares, right? And it’s almost that. I mean, I was just thinking about things the other day and it popped into my head—huh, no third-years. But we’re a very small group, we candidates, and small groups are prone to weird fluctuations according to chance. That’s one of the things I learned in grad school. The laws of probability, the type of reasoning that flows from them, it’s a way of thinking as unusual, as magical, as any kind of mysticism. Maybe more so, because the magic, for all its power, hides in plain sight.

Half the magic and mysticism here is, in fact, scientific reason. Charlie has scientific training, as do both Allen and Joy, in slightly different ways. Logic, quite specifically, was the teaching my friend, Jim received here, and reason was a big part of Ollie’s training as a novice. And of course, Charlie sent me off to grad school and a degree in environmental science quite deliberately.

And then there is Andy.

Andy, the one-time bicycle thief, the recovering heroin addict, the born-again devotee of Jesus Christ. He’s not so entertaining as he was when he first arrived here, blithering with chronic hypothermia and religious fire, but he remains the real deal, dedicated to tripartite monotheism in a proudly polytheistic enclave, and happily oblivious to any kind of thought that moves in a straight line.

I dropped in at his bicycle shop the other day. He doesn’t own it yet—his credit is not yet repaired to the point where he can get the loans a business owner is likely to need—but the owner has essentially retired. In most ways that matter, it is Andy’s shop. And you can tell.

When you come in, there is the normal bike shop smell of rubber and grease, but also something else—the scent of coffee and, sometimes, baked goods. Andy’s set up a sort of bar where people can come in and sit and chat and drink coffee as long as they like, while he works and chats back, or rings up customers. The coffee’s free, though there’s a donation jar marked COFFEE FUND on the counter. Sometimes there’s fruit, or chocolate, or doughnuts, or baked goods on the counter, also free.

The rack of cycling magazines doubles as a library—you can read as long as you like, without buying, and stuck in among the cycling mags are copies of National Geographic, the Christian Science Monitor, and The Watchtower. There’s always a couple of people hanging out, and Andy asks them for a hand, or delivers random lessons in bicycle maintenance, when he gets the urge.

There are bulletin boards all along the back wall, some for community notices, some for cycling-specific messages, some for photographs of customers having adventures on their bicycles. The boards are all framed by rows of Christian bumper-stickers, and Christian rock often spouts from an old boom-box in a corner. He’s still only here part-time, since he’s mostly on campus. Two shop assistants make up the difference. But the place comes alive when he enters it.

This shop is Andy’s ministry, as he puts it. He’s set up a place for people to chat for the express purpose of getting to know his customers and providing a space for them to reveal any problems they might have, which he then solves, if he can. He teaches courses in bicycle repair, often to various underprivileged groups and sometimes for free. He rents out the warehouse space to AA and NA meetings. He organizes races, small concerts, and guess-the-number-of-jelly beans raffles to raise money for various, mostly local causes. There is a second donation jar labeled “Buy a Kid a Bike,” and he periodically uses its contents to give free bikes to people in need—often children, but sometimes adults. He never draws attention to the program, though, and never identifies the recipients of the bikes.

All of the service he offers is practical. Despite the literature and the bumper stickers and the music, he never talks about Jesus with his “parishioners,” unless they bring Him up. Even then, his religious talk is minimal. He offers a friendly ear, information, money, and free bicycles to anyone who needs it.

“No preaching?” I asked, teasing him a little.

“Did Jesus preach to the lepers,” he responded, “or did He heal them?”

Mastery Year 1: Part 5: Post 2: Deep Dive

Allen organizes his day around swimming, as far as I can tell.

I don't know what he does when he's at home (I could ask Ollie, but haven't), but when he's here...at least in the summer, his hair is often wet.

He comes in by bike on Tuesday morning. He doesn't have to attend breakfast on Tuesday, because the rule is you have to go to breakfast if you spent the night before, and in the winter he often comes in only at the end, just in time to hear announcements. If he's running late, he'll still be wearing his cycling clothes, carrying his helmet. But in the summer, if Ollie and I go for a run in the morning, we'll often see him coming in when we come back to the Mansion to shower before breakfast--that's around seven. I don't know if he's trying to beat the heat of the day, or if he just likes getting up before dawn, as he must do summer and winter, to maintain that schedule.

Usually, he'll have Alexis with him, if she's not in camp. A lot of the Sprouts spend most of the summer on campus, whether they're in camp or not (Charlie used to have a pile. This year he has only Julius, because Janus and James are still toddlers and the others aged out of Sproutdom). When I was a novice, Allen would come in with Julie and David behind him on their own bikes and Alexis in a carrier. Now Alexis has her own bike and follows her father alone. David is in college. Julie is working a summer job. The carrier isn't even on Allen's bike, anymore. Instead, he has pannier bags.

Anyway, at lunch, Allen disappears from campus again. I see him coming in to eat just before classes are due to start, his black hair wet, his shirt--always a professional-looking short-sleeved button-down, never a t-shirt--damp from being put on just after he got out of the lake. This year I've gone with him a few times. It's just a short bike-ride away. The cool water feels good. I splash around a bit, swim a few laps along the shore. Allen disappears. From the minute he steps in the lake, he spends as much time under water as he can, hyperventilating before he submerges so he can stay down even longer. He surfaces like a seal, to breathe, when he has to.

He stays the week on campus, but I still see him bike in before breakfast, because he goes for a swim first thing, while the air is still chilly. But he doesn't feel the cold.

Every day, it's his ritual. He even goes when it's raining. "Why wouldn't I swim when it's raining?" he asks. "I'm going to get wet, anyway." And he has a point.

I once asked him why he likes swimming so much.

"Why does anybody like anything?" he answered, and I waited for him to give me a real answer. We were eating lunch, just after he'd gotten back. He does look happier, more energized and more relaxed, after he has come from the water. "I feel calmer under there," he said. "I feel at home."

"Water is the emotional element," said Kit, who was eating with us. "You are a psychologist."

"I'm not sure I feel at home in emotions, though," he said. "That's why I'm a psychologist."

"Nobody is totally at home in water," she replied. "We can't breathe in it. To stay fully immersed, we have to bring some air down with us." Metaphysically, as you may know, water is associated with emotions, air with the intellect.

"Intellectually, I agree with you," said Allen. "I am a psychologist--I study emotions intellectually. I have snorkled and SCUBA-dived, and I like both. But what I like best is going down, just me, and exhaling to make myself less buoyant, and just exist down there, wholly of the water, not breathing. I like to get away from air, when I can."