Big Updates About Tyrs Good Hand (also, website launch!)

I have so much to update on with Tyr’s Good Hand, and so this is going to be a long post, and indeed, a boast! But I hope you guys read it with some encouragement from us New York Heathens because the thing to remember that all of this has happened in under one year.

I joined this sub and asked you folks if you thought it was appropriate for a beginner to start a study group. I knew little then, and I only know a little more now, but I can say that becoming a Heathen and diving full force into building a community has been one of the most important accomplishments of my adult life. I am healthier, happier, and all around a better person thanks to this community online and in my life.

Now, nearly a year a later that study group that met for coffee in a Vermont Bookstore has become a spiritual community organization and here is what is new with us at TGH.

I launched our website today, and I’ll explain why. Basically I have recently been reaching out to local community organizers in the business, charity, and conservancy areas around my town. Today while talking to an Evangelical Christian food pantry (our towns only food pantry) about our groups December Food Drive I realized how flippantly I introduced myself as the "Organizer of Tyr’s Good Hand, the local Heathen Kindred” as if I was a Lutheran gal from the town over... To her credit the slightly built middle-aged woman in soccer mom attire didn’t so much as blink an eye at that. She just wanted to know what that meant and who we were. Explaining something as complicated (and to some, weird) as Heathenry isn’t easy and I didn’t try. I basically said we were mostly Asatru leaning Pagans and community service was important to us. How could we help? That was all she needed to hear. She didn’t ask anything else but went with me through the food pantry isles to show me the kinds of canned goods and toiletries they needed. We shook hands, she asked my name again, and I had the schedule and the community needs to report back to my tribe.

I walked out of there feeling 5 inches taller. My hammer around my neck was dirty from farm chores and sweat. It felt damn beautiful.

The rest of the updates I have I am sharing straight from our Meetup.com December Event. But worth boasting about as well. More details on that site, but this is the gist.

God Poles! We have Odin (Thanks to Tim and Jo) and I am working on the masculine god pole carving very much this month. We will have a bearded warrior to add to our god poles in the vein of Tyr, Freyr, and such. It will remain ambiguously male so we can dedicate it as the tribe needs during blot, boasts, oaths etc. Almost there and ready to be set into the good earth! Maybe even before snowily!

We are getting bees! Hives will be added to our ve, and their will be honeybees about as the horn is raised and axes are thrown next summer!

Besides the Food Pantry I have been in contact with a local woodland and farmland conservancy about the group volunteering as well as a local brewery. It seems fitting to support not just charities but local businesses, nature, wildlife, and each other. Again, neither the brewery or nature center cared we were Heathen. They were just glad for some volunteers. It felt great to get out there and ask as a Tribe.

TL;DR Doing it Right