April, Come She Will....And So Will Some Changes...

Illness has somewhat slowed down the Chapter Charter piece of the project, so if you have not gotten your chapter charter, please have some patience. We expect to get them all printed and sent by the end of this month.

We have scheduled our CUUPS Summer Solstice Ritual for the Saturday of GA, on Ft. Lauderdale Beach at 12 noon, facilitated by Ft. Lauderdale's CUUPS Chapter, MoonPath CUUPS. Our Annual Meeting will be held after the Ritual, at 3 PM, on the same site. This will be an outdoor meeting, and we have scheduled it with a break between the ritual and the meeting, so that people may go to one of the shoreline bistros and pick up lunch to bring back to the meeting. Our plans for these two events have been specifically made in the light of the security and attendance requirements for events to be held on the site of GA. We hope our having these two events offsite will not only encourage attendance by those who cannot afford to attend General Assembly, but will be a more fitting way to honor the cycle of the seasons and the beauty of our Mother Earth.

We will, however, be very actively present at the Exposition Hall at General Assembly. The CUUPS Booth will feature "A Taste Of Paganism", including mini-rituals, discussion circles, and some instruction on Pagan basics such as altars, God and Goddess, what's a ritual, etc. We hope some of you can join us there. If you know you are coming to GA and would like to help with the booth, write to me at president@cuups.org and we will get you set up. In addition, I am hoping we can have something like a Coffee CUUPS meeting one, or several, of the nights of GA. Just getting together to chat and get to know one another. I want to find out what your MUDitation was about, remember? And what does this all have to do with the Web Site Update? Well, of course, this front page is where the latest info about CUUPS at GA will be posted. So keep your eye on us in the coming months, and we'll do our best to keep you informed.

The CUUPS-Bulletin has more than doubled its circulation in the four months since we began publishing it. We are still hoping that some of you will send articles about your chapter activities or from your perspective as individual members of CUUPS that are able to be published in upcoming issues of the bulletin. Please just send your submissions to bulletin@cuups.org, and we will see how many of your articles we can share.

And, as I posted last month, I am still in the process of adding further resources to the site in the form of rituals, articles, sermons, pamphlets and the like. I would be grateful for any of your contributions in this regard. Send me an e-mail with the subject line "Web Site Resource" and attach the material in the form of a Microsoft Word document. I expect that the things you send me will be updated and on the site within a month after I receive them. Sooner if I can do so.

That concludes the April Website Update. See you next month!!

Aisling and the Web Team Gerbils...

Op-Ed

Somehow, It Seems To Be Spring....

This month, Nature takes center stage, and everyone is very aware of the cycle of life returning, of new birth, and of the somehow immanently divine impact of seedlings, baby birds, kittens and puppies, and other newnesses. And it seems somehow important to make ourselves aware that Pagans don't have a corner on the market in acknowledging the Sacredness of Life, in all its emanations, and the way we all tend to make a connection between Springtime and Divinity. Here are two rather unexpected resources which carry an amazingly Pagan perspective in rather unusual venues:

God and Nature

[Adhyaya VII--Slokas 4-14, 25 and 27. Adhyaya IX--Slokas 4.6, 8, 10 and 16-19. Adhyaya XV--Slokas 16-18.]

We shall continue in the next chapter our study of the Gita-teaching as to how to live. It will be helpful to pause here to contemplate on the Hindu interpretation of the riddle of the Universe. the great "open secret" which has baffled man ever since he began to think deeply, and which must ever remain an insoluble paradox. This involves a study of the 7th, 9th and 15th Adhyayas of the Gita. All the physical elements of nature, including the material bodies of animate beings and their sensory and mental functions, may be grouped together forming the ever-changing physical aspect of the universe. This is called Prakriti. Behind the animate is the soul that dwells within each being and animates it. Behind all again is the Supreme Being whose power it is that holds together all the changes visible in one organic existence. He dwells with-in and supports and moves everything, but exists apart from all.

The eleventh chapter of the Gita records what may be termed a miracle. Arjuna is enabled to see God as the all-embracing Universal spirit before which the pairs of opposites, of good and evil, pleasure and pain, light and darkness, and the like, disappear. This vision of the Universal was too dazzling for Arjuna to see as a whole, and even what he saw was too awful for sight to bear.

Literally, Arjuna was given the divine eye to enable him to see the trans-dichotomous Viswaroopa, which transcends the Relative and the Partial. The meaning of this is that the aspiring soul may catch a glimpse of God, the Universal Immanent Being, when by a pure and dedicated life, and by the practice of serenity and constant meditation, the Yogi succeeds in merging his self in the Universe and realizes the ultimate oneness of all existence

From the Bhagavad Gita

Hildegarde von Bingen: The Nature of Divine Spirit

I am the supreme fiery force
That kindles every spark of life
What I have breathed on will never die
I order the cycle of things in being
Hovering round it in sublime flight;
Wisdom lends it rhythmic beauty

I am divine fiery life
Blazing over the full-ripened grain
I gleam in the reflection of the waters,
I burn in the Sun and Moon and stars,
In the breeze I have secret life
Animating all things and lending them cohesion

I am life in all its abundance
For I was not released from the rock of ages
Nor did I bud from a branch
Nor spring from man's begetting:
In me is the root of life
Spirit is the root which buds in the word,
And God is rational spirit.