Jonathan Levy was bored. His girlfriend was busy with National Novel Writing Month. He sulked. "Make friends," she said, shooing him away.

The reasonable step, he notes with a laugh, would have been to join a kickball team or volunteer crew or any one of Portland's many social organizations. Instead, he launched a new religious congregation for neo-pagan Druids.

Plenty of Druids live in Portland, Levy said, but pagans tend to stay under the radar. Some worship privately. Friends organize their own rituals within their social circles. Groups share event information on closed Facebook pages. Levy instead became passionate about creating a welcoming congregation that advertised and invited newcomers to holiday rituals. The solution: opening a local chapter of Ar nDraiocht Fein (typically called "ADF" because few can pronounce the full name).

"There was a spiritual loneliness here," he said. "It feels more complete to do this worship with a lot of other people."

In the two years that have passed, Levy has done more than make friends. He's created a family. A motley, Faerie Song-singing, homemade-wings-wearing family. Some come from conservative Christian backgrounds. Levy's parents were atheists. Some honor Celtic gods and goddesses, others Hellenic or Roman deities. One is more drawn to Wicca than Druidism but enjoys the company.

Members of the congregation have different reasons for loving the ADF, which has groves in 43 states and emphasizes fellowship, public worship and scholarly research about pagan traditions. A common thread uniting them is a feeling of acceptance.

"Coming here is like coming home," Amber Reed said recently, at a gathering to commemorate Beltane, a May Day celebration of fertility. She wore blue lipstick to the event, and a black corset cinched her waist.

"These people have become my family," added Glenn Spice, the son of a Midwestern pastor. Spice, who dressed in wide, wiry homemade wings for the Beltane ritual, has known Levy and the others less than eight months.

Back home, he'd never let his spirituality see sunlight. Here, in the rain, he helped welcome visitors so no one felt alone.

As members of the ADF group, called the Columbia Protogrove, Spice and Reed helped conduct the Beltane ritual, which the group observed this year at West Hills Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, a church tucked into the Southwest Portland forest. Their May Day celebration was a week early so as not to interfere with personal observances at home.

The group members believe that through songs and offerings they open doorways to a sacred space -- one where they can engage with their ancestors, deities and nature spirits. At the Beltane ritual, it was Reed's job to offer roses to Aengus MacOg, the Irish god of love. Her husband, David McCarley, who wore a floor-length green cape, offered perfume to the Aine, queen of the faeries. Later, Arin Hembd, in cargo shorts and blue feathered wings, led visitors through meditation: "You walk through his gates and now stand in between the worlds, a place where you can communicate with the kindreds. Now open your eyes. Here we are in-between the worlds."

After making offerings of whiskey, butter and perfume to appease other-worldly entities, the revelers ventured outside for the maypole dance. Under a steady rain, members of the protogrove sang the Faery Dance song: "Dance, dance in the warm sunlight / All my brothers dance and sing / Dance around the faery ring". Laughter abounded despite the damp, with Levy hunched in the center holding up an unsteady pole.

Back inside the church 20 minutes later, Reed joked to her guests: "It's hard to sing about warm sunlight when, well..." She gestured to the window.

"Irony is very Oregon," someone offered, and the group roared.

-- Melissa Binder

mbinder@oregonian.com

503-294-7656

@binderpdx