me, molly, and the moon

Saturday, September 02, 2006

perils of pagan parenting

I performed Molly's little naming ceremony tonight. It was simple and sweet, and I'm overwhelmingly glad I did it. I started with a "Heidi's mom ritual": light every single candle in the house. We used to do this as a way of just grooving out with each other. When I was young, we'd pop on an album or CD and sing and talk. She'd braid my hair. When I was a young adult, we'd light the candles & then get high. Then we'd do the music thing, and once my hair grew back after my Sinead O'Connor phase, she'd braid my hair and we'd giggle, then get the munchies and raid the kitchen.

So. We lit all the candles as well as some nice incense, and I stripped us both down- skyclad's the only way to fly. I read the prayers I'd prepared. The full text is here, if you're curious. When I got to the part where I officially give her her name, I scooped her up into my arms, got emotional and reverent, and she peed all over me. At the exact instant I said her name. So I giggled and told her she'd baptized Mommy. We finished, with me tearing up reading her the Charge of the Goddess- I get weepy when it's been a while since I read it, plus, reading it to my daughter the first time was beautiful. Then I got her diapered, got me dressed, and opened the door and noticed I had filled the room with tons of smoke from the incense & candles. I swooped her away to the porch, turning on fans as we went. She never got a cough or anything, but I feel like a dolt. Bad witchy mommy.

So now she's had her name officially spoken in circle, to a suitably female deity(-ies) and I'm all ready to priss her up in a pink dress tomorrow and take her to the Church of Men, Manliness, and All Things Masculine , also known as Prophets with Penises*, for her secondary, for-Papaw naming/blessing/thing.

*I sincerely don't mean to be a bitch to members of the LDS church, or any other Christians for that matter-but you gotta know it's a weirdo experience for a feminist pagan. Likewise, I'm sure you think I'm a nutjob and possibly wish I'd shave my legs.

5 comments:

Gwen said...

Sounds like a wonderful ceremony. Molly is lucky to have such a Mommy to pee on. :)

P.S. Congrats on the perfect post!!

Heidi said...

Awww, thanks Gwen. I consider a pee shower from such a sweet baby girl an honor:)

Alas, the perfect post thing didn't quite work. Deb nominated two, so mine doesn't count, although since someone thought to mention me at all, I'm thrilled:)

Heidi said...

Deb, it is crazy how much we do have in common- cool:)

Actually, Shane's parents started going to the LDS church later in his life, so he wasn't raised Mormon. He's very anti-organized religion, and has yet to even go to my UU Congregation with me. He will once in a great while participate in a Wiccan ritual, and we had a handfasting at our wedding:)

Stephanie said...

This was very beautiful. I haven't done a naming ceremony for my son yet; I haven't found a name that speaks to me. How did you come to the name for your daughter?

Heidi said...

Eden, I just used her real name for the ceremony. (I don't use a "magickal name" for ritual work anymore myself either. I just really like my regular old name.) We named her Molly after an art professor who we both loved in college who is a dear friend. Shane is my husband's name but we spelled it Shayne for Molly's middle name because of a poem I stumbled across in a book. Shayne in Yiddish means "beautiful." The poem is very small at the bottom of my blog page:) Thanks for asking!