I've always said that if we want to sustain ourselves as a Pagan/Numenist community, we need to sustain the individuated corporeal beings that make up our community. The future of the Pagan/Numenist community is with our children.
One of my favorite things about Numenism is our holidays. While we only have 2 official holidays, we have more reasons for celebrations and more unofficial but related to our beliefs holidays than everyone else and ours are better, if you take full advantage of them. You get out of Numenism what you put into Numenism.
We always begin our celebrations with: "Hear ye! Hear ye! All those who have gathered here for the noble and glorious purpose of celebration and fellowship..."
Celebration and Fellowship.
We've never focused much on candle colors and direction, or degree and titles. Almost from the beginning, even before we knew that little study group would become Numenists, we focused on celebration and fellowship. This is what sustains us, even when celebrants wander off to investigate other things and it seems as if Numenism is unraveling to nothingness. Eventually, the wanderers return.
Eventually.
Back in the 60's and 70's, when the hippies and rock festivals and so many flavors of Paganism flowered, so many of our Celebrants left that only half a dozen of us remained to tend the hearth and keep working towards the goals and visions of our founders. And in the late 70's, so many of them returned to Numenism, and embraced the changes we'd quietly made, clung to the foundations that were proving sturdy. And they aged and died, and left us once again small in numbers, just a person here or a small family there. The children born to us in the 70's and 80's grew up and wanted to explore their world and other beliefs. Many of those children are still exploring, but there are signs that they are ready to start returning, and our numbers may swell again.
I think it's because they are having children themselves, and they remember their childhoods, their Numenist childhoods, and want the same thing for their children - the celebrations, the fellowship, the community.
Maybe Numenism is a cyclic belief: we grow up in it, move out into the wider world, discover that what we grew up with is solid and worthy, and then come back. Some of us. If it's like last time, perhaps most of us will return.
And those who stayed, as priests, as ministers, as elders, we're here. Not waiting, exactly, because that's such a passive thing. We continue with our research and studies and celebrations.
Next month is Founder's Day, and I have no doubts in my mind that people I haven't seen, haven't spoken with in years will come to Celebrate, to tell the ropes and to read the beads, to share stories and re-connect. And some of them, some of them will wonder why they wandered away and will stay.
Maybe the words I've written in these diaries will bring one or two interested people. And maybe they'll decide Numenism is for them.
Numenism is structured to be a supportive community. People can be solo Numenists, but much of the appeal of Numeinism is the connections it builds between people, the community it builds, the fellowship. And that's hard to get as a solo.
And perhaps, that's part of why it's so hard to grow Numenism, when it's just one person here that's interested and another over there, miles and states apart.
The internet helps maintain connections already made, but it's hard to establish new connections and keep them going. The average time for people to maintain an online friendship seems to be 2 or 3 years unless they also have physical, face-to-face connections as well. I haven't seen any studies on this, so I don't know how true this is, but asking around, and from my own experiences, this seems to be true. The people I've met in person, even if I first met them online, are the people I've been friends with a long time - some going back more than 10 years now. Those I don't meet tend to drift away over time and we lose touch.
When our children return, they'll return with far better internet skills than we old folk possess. They can use those skills to maintain the ties and connections we older people have floundered to maintain. When life pulls us apart, corporations relocate us, finances dictate where we live, the internet will help keep them together as a community. They won't lose the fellowship when the urge to explore hits. With twitter and FB and google+ and other social networking tools, fellowship will be as layered as our beliefs are.