Why I Moved

I'm sure you are wondering why I would move from the kind, warm, and tropical climate of Florida to the intensely cold and windy climate of Salem, MA. Well, to make a long story short: I ran across the Gathering's website and I decided to call Pastor Phil up and find out what a church does in "Witch Town". After assuring me that he was, in no way, partaking in any witch burning, he invited me to visit for the weekend.

I went up to visit the weekend before Halloween and I got to see and partake in, to some degree, all of the activities they had going on. They had a huge stage in the street with Christian bands playing, they gave away gallons of free hot cocoa, and they had a hot dog stand. They also had something called a Confessional Booth out of a book called Blue Like Jazz. Some of the people from a local house church called Sinners and Saints dressed up in monk robes and walked around smoking pipes and burning incense. When someone wanted to enter the booth (or the Vault -the church building in the picture above- which used to be a bank 200 years ago) for confession they would sit them down and begin confessing the sins of the Christian Church all the way from the Crusades to abortion clinic bombers. They would then ask if their participant had been harmed by the church in any way and would then ask the individual's forgiveness for the offense.

They also had a dream interpretation booth. Basically it's like (but not exactly) what the psychologist Freud did by interpreting symbols in dreams, and what Daniel did for Neb. There's a school in New Hampshire called Streams that trains interns in that sort of thing and they send a team down for Halloween every year to do dream interpretations for tourists coming to the "witch city" for the psychic fairs. I saw people line up for hours, in the wet and cold, to hear the gospel in this manner and I knew I just had to come back.

People are drawn to this church because, though they do not compromise their beliefs in any way, they comfortably love everyone, from the atheist to the Witch. I decided I wanted to learn from these people and from Phil, the Pastor, and be involved in whatever way I could. I came home and told everyone that after I turned 18 in January I would move to Salem. Seven days after I turned 18 I packed up my stuff and my dad and I drove to MA.

So, to everyone at home: I promise I won't turn into to a witch. And if any Neo-Pagans are reading this: I'm not a witch hunter.