Rev. Crystal's Full Moon Blessings

There are so many exciting and fun things from Pantheacon this year that I will probably break it up into several posts so that I have a chance to really process all the moments and things that happened.  I had a blast!  Let me first start with saying that and that I met some incredible people and got valuable feedback this year on my presentations and book.  Although it is always scary to write, present and put yourself out there in the public eye; it is a great experience to know that what I am doing can support others in some small ways.  That is the reason that I have always wanted to do this, not because I want the name or recognition (although recognition is nice), it is because I want to be able to support our community in learning what we need to continue to create healthy and productive dynamics with others.  I have been that person coming into the Pagan community and was taken advantage of and hurt.  I have seen others hurt and have hurt others without realizing the ramifications of my actions.  For all of those reasons, I am honored to be able to do this work and write about it for others.

I arrived at the Con on Friday about 12 and we checked in with little lines and got to our rooms to settle in.  After a small hotel room assignment mix up, we were on our way and I was excited to finally be at the event that I look forward to all year long.  My first seminar was at the 3:30 time slot and I thought that it would be a small crowd since people are just arriving and some are still working at that time.  To my surprise, the room was packed!  Thank goodness my husband, friends and other awesome people helped to put out more chairs and support the process.  I was so surprised by the amount of people that I became a little flushed and overwhelmed.  LOL!

The workshop (circle restore; Restorative practices in covens and circles) went very well and it seemed that people were interested, engaged and could relate to the issues at hand within the community.  This was exciting for me since it was validated to confirm that the lack of conflict resolution methods and training in our community has led to such hurtful situations all around.  Everyone participated and I got some great feedback.  I sold some books and it felt as if there was a nice buzz around the types of concepts we could extend into our community.

For the first time, I got to meet Peter Dybing (National First Officer of Covenant of the Goddess) in the workshop.  Peter reached out to me a couple of months ago after buying my book and has been such as awesome supporter for me since then.  He attended the workshop and was able to give me some constructive feedback to support making it even better.  (Thanks Peter!)

It was wonderful to have my friends and Jon there at the workshop to support me.  I felt great about the experience, even though I was so nervous I was sweating.  :)

After the workshop, I got to hang out with everyone, shop in the vendor area, eat dinner with the hubbie and go to the Pomba Gira (I waited all year for this).  We dressed up and went dancing for an hour.  My husband had such a great experience in the Pomba that I spent a lot of time trying to keep him on this side of the plane instead of being ridden all the way by the Umbanda Gods for the first time.  He loved it and I loved seeing him so engaged in the spiritual aspect of himself.  Pcon has a way of doing that for people.

After Pomba, we went to the room, hung out and spent some quality time nursing our feet after almost 2 hours of dancing.  I loved every minute of it.

That was the first day of a wonderful 4 day weekend experience.  More to come.