Three more Shemsu and a word on RPD

This past weekend we hosted an RPD Intensive at Tawy House. For those of my readers who aren't familiar with the acronym, RPD stands for Rite of Parent Divination, and is one of the major rites of passage of the Kemetic Orthodox Faith as well as its first one, unless you count the rootnaming of children born into the religion. Since we are modern practitioners of an ancient religion, we do not have the same indigenous, contemporary context of its original devotees, who lived in one single country with our gods as the majority gods and the worship of our gods as a public institution. As a result, we do not inherit the gods of our towns or professions or spouses or cities, and "finding our place" in the religion is somewhat more difficult.

There are two ways to approach this. One could pick and choose one's own favorite gods, and in fact, many devotees of our gods do this quite successfully. For myself I have come to the conclusion over many years of practice that choosing the gods you worship is a wonderful freedom that comes with a high price. This price seems to be that the relationship then becomes dominated by the human individual and not the god(s) in question. When it's all about what I want and what I like and what I am willing to do or say or be, the other person in the relationship with me is going to be limited to only being part of the relationship in the ways that I permit.

I wasn't prepared to tell my gods how to interact with me, mostly because my experience of Them has suggested that if anybody in this arrangement is doing the choosing and directing...it's not me.

So, way back when I was first teaching, and we were all worshipping whatever gods spoke to us personally and the ones we chose, I realized this was going to be an issue going forward if we were really going to break the modern philosophy and try to think like the people whose gods we were trying to honor. While they were certainly individuals, they also had a serious sense of place in the larger whole of the society. They didn't think they had a "right" to anything. They knew that the order and place of the universe -- which they respected so very much they even called it a goddess -- would make sure that they were provided for, if only they found their place and acted in it with all sincerity to the best of their ability.

Finding that place, or Ma'at, as they would've known it in Kemet, was a central part of existence for them. Once found it would help with all aspects of life. Finding it, however, required an enormous commitment of time, and love, and above all trust in the gods and Ma'at Herself.

I wondered how we could echo this commitment, this trust. And I went to shrine and prayed for many days, asking Ma'at how we could have the personal relationship with the gods that the ancients did, how we could trust Them to bring us to a place where we had this relationship with the gods like they wrote in the ancient texts, calling them Mother and Father and talking about how the gods would be benevolent to Their children when certain things were done.

One day, a very quiet but firm voice said "if you want Parents, then you have to let them give birth to you. You don't give birth to yourself in physical life, do you? Why would it be any different in your spiritual life?" The revelation was followed by a great deal of divination and research. Over time it would become the basis of the philosophy for the RPD, in which we learn which of the gods created us, personally and directly, and after which we begin to learn the dance of trust that is the basis of all good relationships.

It works for us, and has worked for us, for more than a decade. Hundreds of people have found meaning in it; most recently, this past weekend, three more went through the process and came out the other side satisfied. I don't pretend to believe that it would be the best idea for everyone, and we've never suggested anyone outside our religious community would need, or even necessarily want, to go through such a rite of passage. But it's important to us, perhaps more important than anything else we do save live our lives and pray, and so this RPD weekend was a big deal.

I have a lot more to say on this subject, I suspect. But for today I've gotten too long-winded and I'll stop, with a congratulations (nekhtet!) to Huyitw, Sekhmetbitu, and Tahotepirty. Love to you all and may your new adventure in trust be very exciting.

Yet more Namings, and news from Tawy

More Namings happened in March, at a ceremony simulcast in IRC. On 28 March we welcomed Hetesibastmut, Sekherdjehuty and Minwywesir to the ranks of Shemsu.

The rest of the last two months have almost entirely been taken up in dealing with paperwork concerning the tax exempt status of the property on which Tawy House in Joliet stands. Last April we learned that the property had accidentally been entered into the tax rolls as a for-profit corporation by the title company at the sale back in 2003. As we'd never received a tax bill, and had never expected to receive a tax bill since we are a recognized 501(c)(3) in the US, imagine our surprise to be told we owed five years in back property taxes! Hijinks with lawyers ensued.

Most recently the state has been attempting to work with us rather than against us, which is a good thing considering that the city and the county have both already approved amendments to the tax rolls to fix the error, and we're simply waiting on the final notice from the state to go ahead. For a time the counsel actually suggested she did not believe we were "a real religion," prompting at least a hundred members of the faith to send in detailed and very heartfelt testimonials indicating what value the Kemetic Orthodox faith and the Tawy House temple had to their religious lives, and our legal team prepared almost 20 years of documented proof including all of the proof that the Internal Revenue Service had used to issue our original 501(c)(3). It was rather surprising to be challenged on this by the very entity that was the first entity to recognize us as a church back in 1994, but, thank Netjer, we seem to be working out the communication errors. After tomorrow I will have a full report on where we stand in this long, expensive and frustrating process. Now I know why so many minority religions don't even bother to try for legal recognition...

This weekend, we're hosting a special intensive weekend for new Remetj who wish to go through the Rite of Parent Divination. Yes, that means that on Saturday we'll have some new RPDs to celebrate. Watch the private mailing list, members, for more details on that. Supposedly the weather is going to cooperate and it will be one of our first real spring weekends. The flowers are coming up in the yard, though the high winds last week damaged one of the evergreens and I'll have to go out there with the hacksaw to remove the dangling branches. The neighborhood is starting to show signs of spring with some outdoor parties and all the children playing in the lot between us and the Catholic church. Schedule for the rest of year 16 will also be released soon, and I'm hoping we'll see more of you out at Tawy this year. Not to mention Wep Ronpet coming up in August!

More things to do for the lawyer, so I had best get to them. Love.

Some updates

Updating this and other websites is ongoing now that I've completed some offline work. "Real life first" sometimes means that this blog goes quiet.

There is a quick way to find out what I'm doing, though, if I don't post here. You can find out small things from the official Twitter feed (listed under Twitter name "nisut"). Since I haven't been able to figure out how to find other people there, I suppose you will have to find me.

Things are good in Illinois. More news soon and love to all of you.