NMR ISSUE 43

Antilion Fly, Abalone & Grouse
Astrological Forecast 43
Chant for the Goddess
Colm and the Unicorn
Dark Passages
Editorial 43
Esoteric Symbology of the Tarot
Evolution
Healing for Mild Depression
In the Fire
Meditation
Meditation is the Key
Midsummer's Eve
Mouse
Namaste Part I
Pathworking
Ravel Magick
The $ Word
The Deserted Castle
Working with Your Shadow, II

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Pagan Parenting: The S Word

By Amanda Cummings

As Beltane approaches, life is buzzing all around us—flowers blooming, birds singing, leaves beautiful and green. It just has a feeling of great to be alive! Beltane is a great celebration isn't it? It is a celebration of the life force and? Sex! There I said it. As Pagans, we celebrate sex as part of life. So how do we explain it to our children?

Beltane is one of my children's favorite celebrations. It includes flower wreaths, flowing dresses, picnics in the park with lots of friends, dancing the Maypole, and lots more. As my children get older I have the opportunity to explain some of the sexual symbology such as the Maypole and the scarf chase in the ritual. In the scarf chase, the High Priest chases the High Priestess, trying to catch her with his silk scarf. When he catches her, he gets to kiss her! Sex to my kids is just too gross to discuss (right now, anyway), but some of these symbols can be explained in terms of love, and it still communicates the idea in a way children can listen. The High Priest is the God and the High Priestess is the Goddess in the scarf chase. At Beltane they flirt and chase and finally fall together in love, and from their love, the whole world blooms and grows. That is the kind of energy they give to us, and want us to give to each other. The earth embraces the base of the pole just as our ribbons embrace the rest of the pole as we weave the Maypole dance. It is a joyful dance and it makes us happy. These are ideas that any child, no matter how young, can understand.

Sex is such a touchy subject in this culture. And of course you must never discuss it with children. What lunacy! When we were little, my mother did a radical thing with us. She explained the mechanics of sex (tab A into slot B) to us when we were six.

She told us about birth control when we were about ten. Then she told us how great sex was when we were about fifteen or sixteen—like we weren't beginning to catch on by then! When I was growing up, this was unheard of, both socially and religiously. What surprises me is that, even in this age of liberal and enlightened communication, we as parents still play the culturally mandated roles when it comes to sex.

We act as if sex is dirty and shameful. Whenever we are not direct with our children, when we fidget and are evasive, when we euphemistically refer to the act, or down there, we make our children feel uncomfortable. This has consistently surprised me with Pagans, since sex is part of our religion. We have a reverence and respect for the power involved in sex. We are in awe of sex as an expression of the life force. Let's face it, for most of the animal and plant kingdom, sex is the driving force behind life. Reproduction and propagation are the be-all and end-all for them. Our gift, as human beings, is that we experience sex as pleasure, and not just reproduction. Sex is something we do for ourselves and others.

We moralize about sex. The current culture imposes arbitrary judgments about sex, and we, though Pagan, buy into those judgments—all the shoulds and shouldn'ts we attach to a basic part of life. For all we may be enlightened Pagan parents, watch how we react. We may claim to be tolerant of other life styles, but if one of our five-year-old sons kisses another five-year-old boy, isn't our first reaction to grab our kid and apologize to the other child's parents? It is a reflex, not a reasoned response. After all, what kind of harm could be done by a genuine expression of affection? Have you noticed that guys who sleep around are still studs, but girls who do the same thing are tramps? Do we reinforce those double standards to our children?

Here we have a celebration of life as expressed in sex, and many of us are too uncomfortable to discuss it with our own children—not just how not to get pregnant, but the glories of it, the wonder, the incredible sensation of it! We spend so much time, as a culture, up to our eyeballs in sexuality. We market it, we use it to market other things, we try to control it for our own ends. Yet at the same time, we try to tell our children that it is scary and dirty and shameful and a plethora of other negative things because we don't want our kids doing it! The plain, simple truth is sex is beautiful, creative, pleasurable, and powerful. We have sex because we as human beings need to. We need the touch, the intimacy, the exhilaration of it. People throughout history have risked everything for sex—reputation, health, even their lives. How can we as Pagan parents not explain and prepare our children for this experience. We spend more time preparing them to drive a car than we do preparing them for sex. Our children need to know? SEX IS GREAT!

How do we communicate this very basic idea? First, by talking about it. When your kids study family life at school, do you discuss it at home? Do you ask what they talked about? Because, let's face it, the thrill of sex never makes it into the classroom. They get the mechanics and the don't get pregnant bit; but nobody ever says it is just about the greatest feeling you will ever experience. Tell stories about yourself. I remember when I had to take these classes. Do they still show that one movie to just the girls? Odds are they do. Then you can commiserate together! This also lets your child know that you are willing and able to discuss the subject, and that you are aware the school's approach is, shall we say, limited. Schools make sex sound so? Icky! Controlling sexuality is a means of controlling people. Making children feel bad about what they are thinking, feeling and experiencing is a controlling thing, but it is not very educational. And definitely not celebratory!

We Pagans celebrate the damndest things—death, birth, and sex. But it is all part of life, and we acknowledge it as such. Sex is a driving force in our lives. It is creativity at its most basic, and power that is touchable. And the whole world is bursting with this energy! How can we not celebrate when everything else in the world around us is? Take your children out and gather flowers, or if you are truly urban, go buy some at a roadside stand or florist. Go on a walk, have a picnic. Wrap yourselves in nature's love and sexuality, and be beautiful!

Blessed Be!