Activities
At each Sabbat the group publishes a newsletter. The newsletter is available free in electronic form on the CoG website. A hardcopy subscription is also available for a nominal fee to cover production and mailing costs.
CoG has been active in the modern Interfaith Movement. Representatives of Covenant of the Goddess attended the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago, Illinois in 1993, Cape Town, South Africa in 1999, Barcelona, Spain in 2004. Members of the Covenant are also active in the United Religions Initiative, the North American Interfaith Network and many other interfaith groups.
CoG was involved in the campaign to have the Department of Veterans Affairs recognize the pentacle as suitable for headstone markers; see also Sgt. Patrick Stewart. On April 23, 2007, the VA added the pentacle to the list of emblems allowed in national cemeteries and on VA-issued headstones, markers, and plaques.
The group organizes and sponsors an annual festival called "Merry Meet", held in conjunction with the annual business meeting. Representatives from all the member Covens congregate and decide on relevant issues affecting the organization, and Wiccans in general. The business meeting is called the "Grand Council", and is run in a consensus format. There are also workshops, vendors and shopping. As is common with many Wiccan festivals, there are also community rituals and spiritual connections, which play a large part in the festival.
The group created and administers several religious emblem programs for youth and adults working with youth organizations such as the Boy Scouts of America and the Girl Scouts of the USA. The programs are "Over the Moon" for ages 8–11, "Hart and Crescent" for ages 12–18, and the Distinguished Youth Service Award for adults working with youth. The Boy Scouts of America have refused to recognize the programs and its members cannot wear it officially on their uniform. For further information, see Religious emblems programs (Boy Scouts of America).
Read more about this topic: Covenant Of The Goddess
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“The most remarkable aspect of the transition we are living through is not so much the passage from want to affluence as the passage from labor to leisure.... Leisure contains the future, it is the new horizon.... The prospect then is one of unremitting labor to bequeath to future generations a chance of founding a society of leisure that will overcome the demands and compulsions of productive labor so that time may be devoted to creative activities or simply to pleasure and happiness.”
—Henri Lefebvre (b. 1901)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
“Both at-home and working mothers can overmeet their mothering responsibilities. In order to justify their jobs, working mothers can overnurture, overconnect with, and overschedule their children into activities and classes. Similarly, some at-home mothers,... can make at- home mothering into a bigger deal than it is, over stimulating, overeducating, and overwhelming their children with purposeful attention.”
—Jean Marzollo (20th century)