I don't have a coherent paragraph answer to that, really. Just . . . scattered bits.
Suppose there's a part of the community that can't work within the established structures -- and suppose someone has a vision that happens to alleviate that concern. (Consider, if you're at all familiar with it, the part of the early growth of Wicca that was rooted in the development of a women's spirituality movement.)
Suppose in a different circumstance that someone's vision is speaking to the concerns and needs of a community that doesn't even exist now, but might in ten years, fifty, a thousand. Or that does exist, but can't hear the message yet. (I consider Jesus ben Miriam one of these!)
I would say that a well-structured community has space for the revelations that come in out of the dark, the insights and new ways. And that one of the risks of forming a structured system at all comes of accepting the revelations only along certain lines -- say, in a Kemetic concept, only if the insight comes from a saq. "Inspiration may come knocking, but only if it knocks at this door."
One of the risks in having established rule-systems is in having some of the rules be there and firm and not bendable even when they fail to work. Thing is, I like having an established system; I was a completely eclectic pagan for a long time, but found that . . . work in that didn't have enough spine for me to move with. If that makes sense.
There are continua of how much of the dark and how much of the light are in a particular congregation, in a particular individual for that matter. I'd say that something strongly rooted in passion and inspiration would retain the nature of the dark, even if it's organised; mind, if the passion and the inspiration was only what was needed to get there, get to the endpoint, it wouldn't. Different situations, neh?
I think a healthy tradition will have the interweavings and answerings of both parts. Yin/yang. They're essential to each other, and something which doesn't have sufficient space for either is like the right half of a body without a left; it falls over in an oozy, bad-smelling mess.
no subject
Suppose there's a part of the community that can't work within the established structures -- and suppose someone has a vision that happens to alleviate that concern. (Consider, if you're at all familiar with it, the part of the early growth of Wicca that was rooted in the development of a women's spirituality movement.)
Suppose in a different circumstance that someone's vision is speaking to the concerns and needs of a community that doesn't even exist now, but might in ten years, fifty, a thousand. Or that does exist, but can't hear the message yet. (I consider Jesus ben Miriam one of these!)
I would say that a well-structured community has space for the revelations that come in out of the dark, the insights and new ways. And that one of the risks of forming a structured system at all comes of accepting the revelations only along certain lines -- say, in a Kemetic concept, only if the insight comes from a saq. "Inspiration may come knocking, but only if it knocks at this door."
One of the risks in having established rule-systems is in having some of the rules be there and firm and not bendable even when they fail to work. Thing is, I like having an established system; I was a completely eclectic pagan for a long time, but found that . . . work in that didn't have enough spine for me to move with. If that makes sense.
There are continua of how much of the dark and how much of the light are in a particular congregation, in a particular individual for that matter. I'd say that something strongly rooted in passion and inspiration would retain the nature of the dark, even if it's organised; mind, if the passion and the inspiration was only what was needed to get there, get to the endpoint, it wouldn't. Different situations, neh?
I think a healthy tradition will have the interweavings and answerings of both parts. Yin/yang. They're essential to each other, and something which doesn't have sufficient space for either is like the right half of a body without a left; it falls over in an oozy, bad-smelling mess.