I have GOT to share this!
This comes from Dagnonet Dewr, Vice President of Pagan Pride Project.
Patricia Mccollum is a Wiccan pastor who works with corrctional
facilities in California.

Read and enjoy.

blessings,
Miles

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Hi all,

I just wanted to share an incredible experience I got to have yesterday which is a direct result of some of our religious freedom work. Yesterday I facilitated a first Maypole Dance for sixty- something Pagan female inmates in a state prison here in California.
This is the second Maypole I've done in a correctional facility, and I'm pretty sure that this is history in the making. The approval of the ritual was a direct result of religious freedom work I've been doing in prisons, and the fact that the VA approved our Pentacle, which has in a significant way increased the legitimacy of Wicca in the eyes of government officials.

To facilitate the ritual, I brought in a 20 foot, 4 inch diameter Maypole and around 3,000 feet of various colored ribbons, and 12 dozen flowers of every color and type. The women spent several hours making Beltane decorations and adorning themselves with ribbons and flowers in their hair in the prison's chapel and then we moved outside to raise the Maypole. A number of women cried as
others helped them put flowers in their hair and a large number of them shared that they had not seen a flower, let alone been able to have one in their hair, for many years. In fact, a number of the women in the ritual had not seen or touched a flower in close to 20 years. I just can't imagine being so removed from any type of beauty. Overall, it was a very moving and emotional experience to be a part
of the process to say the least, and I feel blessed to have been there.

The women raised the pole on the main yard in the prison, surrounded by a sea of curious onlookers, made up of both inmates and staff. What made our event even more compelling, was that the prison scheduled our ritual to follow a Mega Revival by Bill Glass Ministries, a Christian organization, who had actually brought in a large group of Evangelicals on Harley's to convert inmates in an unbelievable chrome and candy-apple lacquer extravaganza. Prior to our ritual and dance, there were some snide remarks from correctional officers and jeers from a number of the Christian inmates as we created sacred space and raised our Maypole, but when the dance was finally over an incredible and exhausting two hours later, all of the spectators watching from the sidelines were in total awe and silence.

After the dance, comments from staff and inmates changed from jeers and negative comments to things like, "Wow, that was one of the most sacred things I've ever seen," and "This is nothing like what everyone said it would be, it's beautiful and very spiritual." One guard even shared that he used to dance the Maypole when he was a kid 50 years before, but had totally forgotten about it.

Many inmates later came over to ask about our beliefs and practices and a number of them asked to be included in our regular services in the future, but the most significant thing for me, was the two correctional officers who carried our ribbon laced Maypole back out of the prison. When they asked if it was okay to touch it, Malendia Mccree from Davis, California, who was helping me facilitate the ritual, told them that in our traditions, it was an honor to carry the pole for the community. The officers picked up the pole with great reverence, and later told other staff who asked as they negotiated the pole through various electronic doors and security check points what they were doing, that they were privileged to have the honor of helping our community. They even went so far as to offer
to drive our Maypole to another prison where we were supposed to have
a second ritual the next day.

When the dance was over, Malendia and I met with the inmates back inside the chapel where we had a discussion about what their experience of the Maypole was. Numerous women expressed that when they first started the dance, they tried to keep in their own little clicks and gangs, but when they did that, the pole would get pulled too much to the side where one group or another congregated. So in the course of the dance, they learned that each participant had to work together equally to make it work. And they also expressed that as the ribbons became shorter and the participants became more tight knit, they found that they had to make eye contact and often change their plans in order to allow someone else to pass. In the end, they expressed that they thought it was a lesson about what they as inmates needed to do to be able to reintegrate into society, be able
to learn to share equally with others and work together with their community rather than against it. They also saw the weaving of the many colored ribbons in many different patterns as a message that "Diversity is Sacred," and "That it was the many different and unique dances of everyone involved that brought beauty into the world." Just so you can get a sense of how significant these statements are in a prison, our dance was made up of every ethnic group and women of every sexual orientation, and the norm in prison is for each of these groups to be in gangs that oppose and battle with one another.
In the end, several women walked to the center of our circle, and offered to make peace with others who they had differences with, and everyone joined in a pledge to work together toward a sustainable community that honored all of their differences.

Doing this ritual really brought home to me how much of a difference all of us who work so hard to bring about positive changes and fight discrimination are really making. Because of us, our veterans are being acknowledged for their service, people are beginning to stop losing their children just because they are Pagan, and most importantly, our ideals and principals are being starting to be seriously considered as we are gradually being invited to the table to contribute to the society we live in.

Blessings to all,
Patrick McCollum