Community and Temples

Sannion at the house of vines had an interesting article today, talking about Community and Temples. Which I think is well worth the time to read, so go ahead and read the article.

I would love to see more temples. I do believe that they are important. Imagine if modern day new York was like that. Where if you went to little Italy, you saw shrines to Jupiter, Juno, Vesta and Mars. Go to the Greek part of town and see shrines to Zeus, Hera, Athena, Dionysus and the others. Go to the Irish neighborhoods and one could see the same thing: shrines to nuada, Dagda, Brighid and so on. The same thing could be seen in all the other neighborhoods with having shrines to their own gods; while sometimes visiting the others.

That being said, while I do think they are important, the foundation must be strong. Temples are buildings. If the foundation is weak it collapses, this also goes for the community. We have seen time and time again that a community centers for paganism has been closed. why? The community. Without the community it was just a building. There has to be the community there to support a building, not a building to support a community. This goes all religions. A good example is that during the time when the British were oppressing the Irish, Catholic priests would perform Mass in the glens. They didn't need the churches because they had the community. This is just the same as the Dionysus example that Sannion uses.

One of the things that I love about the Polytheist traditions is that community aspect. I am a solitary currently, not by choice but because their is no one near where I live for that. The festivals and the rituals for the gods is a beautiful thing. They bring us together to celebrate together. This could be just your household or it could be the whole town like in Ancient Athens. This is not the celebrations like pantheacon which happened recently. I mean the public festivals, such as Lughnasad or Greater Dionysia.

Why is it that I think that these rituals are important? because they help bring together community. We don't need temples to do rituals. There is a cliche that must be said, "Rome wasn't built in a day". This is very true here. I want to see temples, but they were not built in a single day. neither was any ancient city. The ancients had to worry about finances just like we do. So we should not expect temples and religious buildings to just sprout up out of the ground. This is not about "if you build it they will come". For one must build your local community before you can proceede to do anything else.

We must start small, look into perhaps using a local Park and gathering there. Communities start off small. I don't want to remain a solitary, so I will seek out others. If there is a number of you, instead of buying a building. Rent space at somewhere local. If our community is not stable, then a temple does us no good. What good is a temple if people can't gather together for a festival or a ritual under the open sky.

So, the foundations of the temple must be strong. I want that vision of new York to be true, and be true for any major city. But we must start small. Growth will come. but we need to make sure that the foundation of a temple is strong, let the local community take root and the building won't fall down. This is the most important thing. We must have a community that is strong before we can start thinking of centers or temples.