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Caught Up in the Flow: What I Believe

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Flow

This is less a journal of my proclamations as it is a record of my process.

I am figuring it out as I go.

If you think you’ve already got it figured out, my writing may likely rub you the wrong way.

Over the past several days I’ve been in the midst of what my husband identified as a “post-modern dilemma.” Everything is up in the air, it seems. Nothing feels grounded, or imbued with clear and certain purpose. Relevance is fuzzy. I find myself looking at the sea of ideas before me and thinking, “But what’s the point? What of all this is actually meaningful?”

My husband, who listens patiently as my heart-rate and pitch climb in tandem, suggested that I work a little to hash out my beliefs. My own beliefs.

Not the architecture of the system I’m operating in. Not the beliefs of most ADF Druids, or the beliefs of hard and soft polytheists, monists, superhero-devotees or chaos magicians.

Mine.

When I recently told a new acquaintance, who has been active in the Pagan community for a long time, that Pagans were a “people of practice, more so than a people of belief,” she said,

“Are you kidding me? Really? Pagans concerned with practice? That’s not been my experience.”

Perhaps we’re not what I think we are.

I don’t talk about belief much. I dodge the questions, sometimes. My mother asked me what I believed during a conversation about me being a Pagan, and I tried to give her a general overview of the things that Pagans believe.

It was a total cop-out.

I think most of us avoid talking about belief. When we do talk about it, we run the risk of being barked at, being told we’re wrong, being alienated, or being scolded. Beliefs, Ian Corrigan once told me, are just opinions. I’m not sure I agree with him. Beliefs feel more intimate than opinions. Beliefs nudge up against the places where we’re most vulnerable.

So what do I believe?

I’m going to give it a go at explaining it here. I’ll write without stopping for three minutes and see what happens.

Ready…

Go.

 ____________

I believe that we’re all connected. I believe that the human heart is king, and that the focus on the divine over the human is a mistake. I believe it’s backwards to establish a religion that’s based on the gods first, because we are human, and the act of being human is all we have to reference. We cannot be certain about much of anything, and to build a religious practice around the things that we are least certain about seems foolish, and fearful in a way.

I believe that it’s easier to be dogmatic than to be honest about the things you don’t know. I believe that there are people in every religious tradition who want to assert that they know what the gods want, and that a lot of hard polytheists are the ones doing that now. I believe that the hard polytheists who are railing against the soft and fluffy Pagans are sounding a lot like the monotheists that many of them detest so much.

I believe that I’m Pagan, but sometimes I think that I’m more of a lowercase “p” pagan; that my religious life is a construct, an artifice, a choice.

I believe that if we all were more aware that what we’re doing in our religious life is a choice, we might be a little less inclined to lash out at one another when we realize they’ve made a different choice than we have.

I believe that every idea we have about the divine is a choice. I believe that hard polytheism is a choice, as is soft polytheism and all the other -isms. I believe that it’s right to acknowledge that because your religious life is a choice, there is a possibility that your views are not completely accurate.

I believe that accuracy is not the most important component of a religious life.

I believe that authenticity is more important than accuracy.

I believe that if your tradition is not fostering something authentic in you, you should leave. Or stay, if you feel that staying and working to represent yourself is authentic.

I believe that the seed of wisdom is in all of us, and if there was anything that was like the God that I knew as a child, it is this. It may not be sentient, and it may not be the creator of the universe, but there is something in my heart that is like the thing in your heart, and if this thing could be awakened in us, we might recognize it in each other.

I believe that everything we do in our life should foster the awakening of that seed of fire in our hearts.

Everything.

 ____________

Ok. That was more like 7 minutes.

My first question, which seems a little funny to me, is:

What does that make me?

Somehow I’m conditioned to be something, and I’m not sure that’s the point.

I am expression.

I am caught up in the flow.

That’s what I am.

And, sustaining that — being the expression of this long list of things I believe — seems like the truest task ever set before me.

Know Me By My Pagan Name

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My real name is not Teo Bishop.

I have another name, one that I do not use to author this site, or a number of other social pages I manage. My given name is a fine name, and I use it for different things. I keep my given name separate from the world of Teo Bishop.

I use my given name in my professional life. This is, perhaps, an area where I find the most use for this duality.

You see, my given name is also somewhat of a brand, as strange as that may sound. It isn’t a “Coke” or a “Pepsi”, in terms of it’s size or net worth. It’s more a “Local Soda” brand, or a “Niche Independent Toothpaste” brand. It’s modest in the big picture, but big enough for several people to have given it their support. The brand is something in which others have a vested interest.

Now, my given name is more than just a brand. I also have personal attachment to it. It is the name that connects me to my family, to my parents. It was the name I used to introduce myself to my husband almost 6 years ago. It’s the name on my phone bill, and on my drivers license. It’s the name at the top of my voters ballot. It’s the first name I think to use when I reach out my hand during an introduction.

That is, until recently.

I’ve been attending a Unitarian Universalist church lately, both for their Pagan fellowship gatherings (CUUPS) and for their Sunday services. The latter has introduced an interesting challenge: what name do I offer when the mostly online persona that I use in my exploration of Druidry, Paganism and other esoteric studies is met with real, flesh and blood, non-Pagan identifying people? Can a text-based Teo Bishop be born — be made incarnate — in the physical world?

 

Which Me Am I? 

 

We have an investment in our individual names, and we all invest in the names of others. Names are reputations. Names are storefront signs. Names are the products we buy, the authors we read, the music we love. Names clue us into something deeper about a person, a thing, a place.

This is what to expect from me, say our names.

Names are symbols for something invisible, something experiential; and in this way, names are brands.

What is the James Madison brand? What about the Oprah Winfrey brand — that’s a little easier to wrap your mind around, what with her brand being just about everywhere. What about the T. Thorn Coyle brand, or the Starhawk brand? I trust that the notion of what “Starhawk” represents to others has crossed the mind of the actual person who is Starhawk (who was, by the way, born as Miriam Simos, according to the Wiki-oracle).

Names, like all words, are symbols that represent something else. And now, I’m trying to use two symbols to represent the same person. Something about this feels uncomfortable to me. I feel fragmented and bit disingenuous, but still uncertain if these two symbols can ever be reconciled.

Don’t Point Fingers, Now…

I was afraid to post about this subject, not because I thought I might be “outed”, but because I was afraid of the self-righteousness of my Neo-Pagan brothers and sisters, or other readers of this blog. I was afraid (and this fear may, in fact, play out in the comment section) that someone would call me out on being a coward, or being deceitful or untrustworthy. I know that I don’t invest much in a blog, a Facebook page or any other given profile that shows a blurry photo, or a sunset snapshot, or a cartoon instead of a person’s actual face. And yet…I chose the zoom-out shot, and a Green Man photo before that.

I’ve had to face my own hypocrisy on other occasions, too.

In the post, “And You, Who Would Deny My Name,” by Pantheos columnist, Eric Scott, Eric wrote about a time when he was faced with the choice of being honest about his faith and belief in Thor. The post concluded with him denying his beliefs when challenged by an authority figure, and when I read this I got so mad. What was the message here? Don’t be honest? Don’t be who you are? Being closeted is ok? I’ve never believed that. I almost posted a comment that said as much.

I mean…Teo Bishop almost posted a comment…

Magical Usernames

I’ve often wondered how many “magical names” are truly that — magical — or if they’re more like aliases; masks we wear to keep other Pagans from knowing who we are in our business suits, and to keep our fellow Suits from knowing about our Paganism.

There are, I’m sure, people whose magical monikers were whispered to them by the Gods. I’m just sayin’ – it’s worth examining why we feel the need to create separate identities in order for us to express our spirituality. Is it fear motivating us, or are we moved to change our names my something mystical? Something sacred?

Whatever the answer, I’m still faced with this experience of fragmentation.

Does this situation strike a chord with you? Have you built up identities online that allow you to explore your spirituality in “safety”, but have found that doing so has led to unsustainable compartmentalization?

I would love to hear about your experiences in the comment section. And if you found this post to be engaging, why not expand the conversation?!  Share it on Facebook, Twitter, and the social network that’s all the rage — Google+!