Why? Because of the apathy I've come face to face with.
When I volunteered for this position, I was aware that it wasn't going to be particularly easy. Someone asked me if I was prepared to herd cats - I laughed. But it really is like herding cats. Getting others to participate has been my biggest challenge, without a doubt.
My organization has just under 30 members, 3 of which have joined in the last week. Our Yule event is tomorrow, but only 12 people will be attending. Out of those, only 9 are full members, and one is a junior member. It's not an event with a huge commitment, just a dinner and sumbel at a public restaurant. But most of the people who couldn't make it "couldn't get it off work", despite knowing about it three months in advance. It's a long drive for most of us, but there were offers to carpool and nobody asked for gas money. Others cited financial reasons, which is certainly understandable. But I'm having a hard time financially, too - to afford the gas and beer money I had to sell books because we had an unexpected drop in income. Why couldn't these people carpool and spend $10 on a bowl of soup and a beer? Or even forgo the beer and food altogether for a simple glass of water?
But for the majority of the people who can't make it (and several people didn't even respond to the invitation), I believe that work commitments or finances is not the issue here. The root of the problem is apathy. Why drive an hour to meet face to face when you can just chat on Facebook? Why make the effort to get out there if you can just sit at home and read one of dozens of blogs about Asatru? Why not just wait until there's an event near you?
I'll tell you why: because if you don't get out here and get involved, there will never be an event near you.
Asatru is a tiny religion, compared to Christianity or Islam, or even Wicca. We have no public churches, no billion dollar foundations or religious colleges exclusively for heathens. Several of the largest Asatru organizations in America have either collapsed or become known as cesspools of racism. Our media coverage almost entirely consists of racists and gangs. Anyone who bothers to study Asatru in depth soon realizes that these people are a small yet vocal minority, but I wonder how many potential heathens are turned away because of this reputation, if they ever find out about us at all. Online communities outnumber offline ones, and as much as I love and value the internet as a resource, this is not a good thing for heathenry.
My point is that, you and me, the Chiefs and Steerswomen, the Gothis and Gythias, the online scholars and podcast hosts and blog authors - we are the future of heathenry. Our community is so small, that all of us have the potential to become influential within this small sphere. This is an incredible time to live in, because we have this amazing opportunity to change and mold heathenry however we like. Our community is small, but I do believe that it is growing. And yet, I still face this brick wall of apathy. It is our biggest obstacle. When I talk to other heathens, they lament that they can't find community, that they can't find a kindred or a tribe, but strangely they're not willing to go out and build the community they so fervently claim to seek. They hem and haw and make excuses - it's so far, I'm poor, I'm not a leader, I don't know enough about Asatru. They sigh and cry about how hard it is to be a solitary heathen.
But when their leaders ask them to support heathen businesses, to donate to their fundraisers, to attend events, they do nothing.
Maybe it has to do with the overculture. We live in a society that breeds followers and encourages people to stay home, watch Netflix, don't go protest, your vote doesn't matter, don't bother participating in local elections or shopping at small businesses or buying local.
Fuck that.
That's not a heathen worldview. We should be passionate, we should be active, we should be creative and productive and industrious! We should form more statewide organizations, more kindreds, we should build our churches. We should build our communities. We should write books and make art and make podcasts and blogs and host pubmots and we should show up at Pagan Pride. We should use the internet as a tool to find each other, to meet each other face to face, to learn about Asatru and to research our ancestors and to build a large and vibrant and diverse community. Our kindreds should be visible and active in the greater communities. We should make a difference.
There aren't that many of us. Nobody else is going to build your community for you. We have to do it ourselves.
Fuck apathy.
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