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How Do I Know I’m a Pagan?

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How do I know I’m a Pagan?

I mean, really. 

I had this thought after my unexpected visit to church. I also had this thought after I returned home from Beltania, the Colorado Beltane gathering I attended and presented at over my birthday weekend. It may seem strange that I would question my Pagan identity after a Pagan gathering, but that’s what happened.

Don’t get me wrong — I had fun. I mean, I erected a giant phallus after all. The festival provided a sense of community for the Pagans who attended, and it was clear that most everybody was having a great time. Joy Burton and the Living Earth Center crew worked their butts off putting this thing together, and they deserve a huge congratulations. But on a personal level, I walked away feeling like most of what I experienced — the culture of it all — was simply not my cup of tea.

Perhaps it was the Wiccan-centric nature of the gathering that made me feel a little out of place. Or maybe I just had Lonely Druid Complex. It certainly wasn’t anyone else’s fault, though. The festival did exactly what it was supposed to do. It’s become a very important part of the Colorado (and surrounding states) Pagan community, and I’m glad I went.

But when I got home I couldn’t quite remember what it felt like to be a part of ADF, or even to be a practicing Pagan. It was like I didn’t know what path I was on any more.

Photo by Trey Ratcliff

Photo by Trey Ratcliff

Then, this morning, I did ritual.

I did a full fledged, bells and whistles ritual. My shrine was fresh and new after an impulse yesterday afternoon to rearrange it, so I lit a candle and some charcoal and began.

I did my Paganism.

And that’s how I know. That’s how I know I’m a Pagan.

I know by doing.

I am through the doing.

My beliefs, opinions, ideas and thoughts move fluidly from one shape to another, never solidifying into something hard or rigid. (Who wants ideas with hard edges? I don’t.) But my practice, a practice that I’ve been developing for years, is the foundation of my Paganism.

It is informed by my mystical experiences, by my meditative inquiries, and by my upbringing. This ritual of mine is about as close to an Episcopal service as you might find from any Pagan (well… short of the drumming mid-way through). My home practice informs my perspectives about festivals, and church services, and dialogues about deity, and all the other things that cross my path.

Mine is a religious practice of relationship. Ghosti is the word used in ADF to define this ancient understanding of reciprocal relationship, and the need for relationship is real. I maintain relationship with my practice in order to maintain relationship with the Kindred — the Gods of my heart and of this place, the Spirits of the world around me, and my Ancestors. These relationships inform my other relationships, which circle back to inform my ritual…

It’s a series of cascading circles of reverence and sacredness.

Photo by Claudio Alejandro Mufarrege

Photo by Claudio Alejandro Mufarrege

I’m happy to discover after a brief dry spell that I am still very much a Pagan; still very much an ADF Druid. It turns out it wasn’t really an identity crisis, but just a moment of pause.

Should I begin to question again, I will light my fire, burn my charcoal, and see how the doing of my Paganism affects my perspective.

What about you?

Have you experienced this sense of disconnect from your path? Was there an event that made you wonder if you were still a Pagan? Where did you go from there? How did you reconcile yourself to that experience, and do you still identify as a Pagan now?

A Pagan, a Druid, and an Episcopalian walk into a Church

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20130505-092328.jpgI went to church last night.

It was the first time I’d been to church since I left the Church.

Taking in an evening mass, done up to the 9’s with incense and vestments, was something I hadn’t planned to do while visiting Eugene, Oregon, nor was it an invitation I expected to receive from my friend, Jason Pitzl-Waters. His wife attends this congregation, and yesterday just happened to be the first time he was going to venture with her. He extended the welcome to me, and I gladly joined them both.

I’m not sure I was prepared for what I experienced.

Something pagan was present at this church service (other than the Druid in the back row). The priest spoke about the liturgical calendar, and how this Sunday — today — would be a day when the church recognized a pre-Christian, Roman agricultural holiday.

A pagan holiday.

How perfect, I thought.

(God… are you behind this?)

There was a god in that place last night. It wasn’t the only one – I think they’re wrong about that. But there was a god, nonetheless.

I stood and sat at the appropriate moments during the service, and I recognized in an intimate way the rhythm of the ritual. This was an Episcopal church, after all, and the Episcopal church was my home for so many years. I felt relevance, harmony, but a certain dissonance, too. It was neither all good nor all bad, and I’m not sure why I thought it would be either of those things. That was not the Church I knew. Being a Christian was always mixed and complicated.

I held back from full engagement with the liturgy, because full engagement felt disingenuous. I didn’t feel comfortable reciting the creed, nor did I say the Lord’s Prayer. I felt detached during the hymns, hype-aware that the messages were designed to tear down animism and build up hierarchical monotheism. The sermon was engaging and inspiring, but it was followed by kneeling and submitting to a dogma that I don’t believe in.

And yet, when I heard a small child sing along to one of the mantra-like songs after the Eucharist, I almost cried.

I was that child.

And what am I now?

That question lingered long after the service, and into this morning. I sit here in this little cafe, compelled to write again on the blog that I put on hiatus, because I was reminded last night that the inner world is complicated and worth unpacking. This blog is the venue in which I seek to answer that question again and again, and it’s time to return to that dialogue.

The short answer is this:

I am all of the things I have ever been. I continue to be them, in one way or another. Nothing is ever fully released from the heart. It’s all there, tattoo-like. Those old parts of you call out and say, We’re still here: your memories; your long, lost hopes; your visions of truth; your doubts — all of it. All here, still intact, inked into the inner flesh.

My Christianity gave me my first introduction to reverence, mystery, humility and community. It encouraged me to recognize that there was nothing in the world that was not touched by the divine. It inspired me to care deeper, to give generously, and to seek out new, creative ways to serve others.

I bring all of those attributes with me to my work with the Solitary Druid Fellowship. Were it not for the Church, and for those many people who were inspired by Jesus to serve others in love, I wouldn’t be writing liturgies for Pagans.

(Chew on that one for a minute.)

I walk the path of a modern Druid, but one whose ethics were first informed by bells-and-whistles Christianity. I can never not be this person.

And I’m ok with that.

I think I’m going to go back this morning, just to see if I might talk with the priest for a moment — one religious man to another. They’re going to have bagpipes today, and they plan to process around the church in a big circle (clockwise, no doubt), and bless the seeds and livestock.

It may just be the most pagan service I will ever attend.

Genderqueer is to Trans as Polytheist is to Pagan

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genderqueerMy kid is transitioning, but he’s not trans. He’s genderqueer. He doesn’t mind being called “trans,” because it’s accurate, but he identifies as something different.

For some, this is a brain breaker. I don’t blame them or vilify them for that. One has to be flexible with definitions in order to approach these (seemingly) subtle, nuanced uses of identity language, and we aren’t often taught how to be flexible in this way. One also has to be completely willing to respect another person’s authority and sovereignty over their own self-identification.

This is where it gets really tricky for some of us.

In response to my last post, When Pagan Discourse Becomes Reality TV, Daniel Grey, author of the blog Sage and Starshine, wrote the following comment. When I read it, something in my brain opened up. Daniel draws a great comparison between the plight of a genderqueer person and that of a polytheist distancing themselves from “Pagan”:

Teo, I admit that I didn’t give this story much more than a passing glance when it first broke. I don’t know Star, nor do I read her blog, so when I heard that she no longer identified as Pagan I couldn’t see how that was possibly my business. The negative reactions I’ve seen – confusion, hurt, betrayal, even anger – have left me feeling sorely uncomfortable. My stomach’s been in a twist today as I’ve read my Twitter feed and skimmed a few blog responses, and I think I’ve finally pinned down what’s been bothering me.

I’m genderqueer – I’m not sure if you knew that, Teo, especially since we started conversing after I adopted my male monicker for most of my online Pagan life. I feel comfortable as a Daniel, but that’s not the only label that fits me. I still go by my birth name irl; I still use female pronouns with many folks; I have actually become more comfortable presenting as femme and have experienced less gender dysphoria since embracing the “Daniel” part of me. However, I still have dysphoria. I’m still not cis. And at a certain point, all I can do is shrug my shoulders and say, “I don’t know what a woman is exactly, only that I’m not that.”

But what is a woman? What is the definition of a woman? We know it’s not biologic, or physical, or genetic. We know it’s not just being socialized as a girl. There are as many definitions of “woman” as there are individual who identify as such – and there are plenty of definitions that include people like me. I have the body. I have the upbringing. I pass as woman. But I’m not.

When we’re talking about people – especially the squishy, wibbly-wobbly bits like gender, or religion – then this is how definitions work. There’s a polyvalent logic which says that gender is not binary, that religion doesn’t have to be black or white. Things are complicated and paradoxical and incredibly, ultimately personal. Just because someone similar to myself embraces the label “woman” with open arms and finds that label wonderfully affirming doesn’t negate my own experiences of not-woman-ness. Just because I do call myself Pagan and consider the term very open and loose (and not at all equivalent to “just Wicca”) doesn’t mean that I don’t respect folks who have declined the label for their own use.

What bothers me most about the fact there’s even a controversy around Star’s statements is that whether or not one agrees with her definition of Pagan is, in my opinion, completely irrelevant. Part of the core of my social justice philosophy is that people deserve to have their personal agency respected and protected. It doesn’t matter if I disagree with what they do with that agency (until they start interfering with someone else’s agency) – what matters is that it’s theirs. We have the right to protect our own sovereignty and have that respected. And if someone doesn’t respect that… well, that’s really, really problematic.

These questions that Daniel asks — what is a woman? what is the definition of a woman? — have come up in Pagan circles over the past several years. They make some people very uncomfortable. Substitute “Pagan” for “woman,” and you’re looking at the conversations that have been spreading across the Pagan blogosphere all week.

With my kid, I have no problem accepting genderqueer. It’s how he identifies, and I love him. I also recognize that his decision is an invitation into dialogue. His self-identification calls me into a place of contemplation about my own identity, about the presumptions we all make about gender, and about our cultural rigidity around labels.

He does that all through a very natural and organic act of self-identification, and I enter into that contemplative place because it feels like the compassionate thing to do.

I wonder –

What is it that makes people uncomfortable about this flexibility of definition, either around gender or religion? What is it that leads us to want to firm up our identities, or to hold court around the identities of others? If we find ourself getting defensive, is it because we feel personally threatened by another’s fluidity, or is it because we recognize that this other in our midst is threatening the societal structures and institutions we’ve come to accept as the “norm”?

How can Pagans think about/approach/relate to these polytheists who don’t identify as Pagan? Can we, as I do with my kid, who I love completely, choose to see their act of self-identification as an invitation into deeper contemplation, or will we feel threatened?

Keep Paganism Weird

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Ever been to Austin? If you have, you’ll recognize the title of this post, Keep Paganism Weird, as a variation of the city’s popular catch phrase. Plastered on buildings and bumper stickers is a reminder that Austin has a history of wild, weird culture, and that it’s important that the young’ins continue the cultural tradition into the future.

On my last night in South San Francisco, we were visited at our hotel by the fabulous, beautifully painted, perfectly pickled one, Titania Humperpickle. She is one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

Witness her loveliness:

Sister Titania (pronounced with a soft “i,” as in tits, and a soft “a,” as in tah-tahs) identifies as a Pagan (it’s a big enough umbrella for her), but the Order isn’t rooted in one religious tradition. Anyone with a calling to slap on some heels, get painted, dress up in nun attire in order to do service work — any kind of service work, mind you — can become a Sister (after a long vetting process, of course).

I sat on the floor in the presence of a white-faced, platform-shoed nun, totally in awe. She brought with her a vial of Holy Glitter, which is glitter mixed with — I kid you not — the ashes of former Sisters, the ashes of some of the Order’s most cherished relics, and a few other delightfully magical things. She made a little bindi-esque dot of glitter on our foreheads as a sisterly blessings (see photo below). She told stories of the Order’s origin, of the stuggles of LGBT people over the years, and of the inspiring work being done by Sisters across the globe.

By the time she left, we were all grinning ear to ear. It was really wonderful.

The Sisters embody a kind of theatricality that I find completely refreshing. They take their work seriously, and they are intentional about their presentation (the white-face, itself, has a story), but they also bring with them a kind of whimsy that, honestly, you don’t see in every corner of the gay community.

Personally, I think we gays need to embrace the radically expressive elements of our community. We don’t all need need to be Martha Steward devotees in order to be gay. Gay can be more mismatched and fabulous than that. Gay can be weird, and sometimes it should be.

When I wrote the piece Pagan Is The New Gay, I looked at parallels in the how Pagans and LGBT’s (i.e The Alphabet People) struggle over their titles and categories. Perhaps there’s cause to search out parallels again.

The Sisters keep it weird. They challenge social norms, and they force us to reexamine what we assume about gender, about service, and about how presentation of persona is something that, to a greater or lesser degree, we all do. They are radical, and by being radical they make possible the space for something extraordinary to occur.

They are a shimmering ritual on heels.

Her heels are green and powerful, I promise.

Can we take cue from the Sisters in the Pagan community? Do we (do you? do I?) permit ourselves to be extravagant, weird, or over the top in our presentation, or would doing so feel like too big a risk?

LGBT people have worked so hard over the past ten, twenty years to be accepted by the mainstream culture, and in the process many have forgotten that it was a drag queen that threw the first brick at Stonewall. Is a similar thing happening with modern Pagans? Are we pulling back from the weird?

This morning I head to Denver’s Pagan Pride festival, and I have no sense of how weird or how tame it will be. I’ll be sure to report next week. But in the meantime, I ask you:

Do you want to keep Paganism weird?

[After you post your comment & share this post, visit the new BITG feature, Letters. Then, check out the BITG post written last year about another Sister of Perpetual Indulgence, The Day The Heathens Built A Chapel.]

Semi-famous Pagan Blogger / Semi-famous Recording Artist

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The internet runs on an interesting mixture of transparency and secrecy. Some of us tell all, and others build identities behind which to hide.

Some of us do a little of both.

I began writing under the name Teo Bishop in 2009 in order to provide me with the safe space to explore my evolving religious identity. My given name was wrapped up in other things, like this:

And this:

And even this:

 

Before I was a blogger named Teo Bishop, I was an artist named Matt Morris.

I’ve been doing music since I was a little kid, been a pro since I was a teenager, and up until the last year or two, I’ve done little else. Music has been my mainstay, my bread and butter, my life-long career.

But then I discover through writing this blog, and through all of the work I’ve done in dialogue about matters of religion, faith, and practice, that there are many means for being expressive outside of music. My non-musical work fulfills me in ways that the business of music never has. I love writing for Patheos and HuffPost Religion, and I’m developing new ideas about how I might be able to contribute to the betterment of the Pagan Community at large, and my religious community of ADF in particular.

I also love to write songs. When my blog goes quiet for a few weeks, that’s usually what I’m doing. My Indiegogo Campaign, which closed this last week, was an attempt to reintroduce and re-prioritize music in my life, and while it may not have succeeded in raising the funds, it was certainly successful in reminding me how important a role music plays in my life.

At some point, we must all come out. We must all be honest about how we’ve compartmentalized to excess, how we’ve created new masks — either out of fear or in an attempt to approximate privacy in a increasingly non-private society. We must recognize when it is time to integrate all of our disparate parts (T. Thorn Coyle might say that it is always time to integrate).

While my situation may look rather extreme — my relative fame in the music world necessitating a new name, a new series of URL’s and social network profiles in order to grow in my religious practice — I don’t think I’m the only one who has gone to such measures in order to explore the subtleties and complexities of their identity. We’re living in a rather strange time; one in which many, if not all of us are negotiating our identities for public consumption. Every status update is a mini-press release; every tweet a soundbite. Some of us apply a kind of close-scrutiny about what messages we broadcast to the world in a way that was once reserved only for major public figures and celebrities.

It’s all very bizarre, when you take a moment to think about it.

But my coming out is not simply an act of confession about another online identity. I’m choosing transparency at this time because I believe doing so may be the only way I can move forward in both my music and my writing. I was never two people — I was always, only one. There’s no sense in pretending otherwise. My nom de plum has become my legal name, and my given name a stage name, but the person beneath has remained throughout the process.

Teo Bishop has always been Matt Morris, and Matt Morris has always been Teo Bishop.

I offer this up to you, my loyal, inquisitive, insightful readership. I share these heretofore hidden parts of myself, trusting that you’ll likely google up a good bit more (it’s all there on the interwebs, after all). I trust that the act of being honest with you is worth whatever risk comes with it.

And I leave you with the song I’m perhaps most proud of, Eternity; a song which affirms that I am — we are — all of the identities that have ever been, that are ever being, and that ever will be. From the song:

“I’m telling you / with sincerity / that what you do / and what you be / is go’n follow you / like it follow me / and be with you for / eternity.”

 

One Little Pagan on the Huffington Post

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I remember when I first came out as gay, I wanted to read other gay writers. I wanted to listen to gay music, and wear gay t-shirts, and stitch a gay patch to my high school backpack. Gay was the thing to be, as far as I was concerned, and “gay bling” was hot currency.

Along with my proclivity for rainbows came the opinion that the lack of this dearth of gay pride was a clear indication that there was gay bigotry afoot. Certainly, if they weren’t shouting slogans at the front of the Chorus Line, they were holding up “God Hates Fags” signs with the other Christianists.

This was a simple, reductive way of viewing the world, and one that provided me with a sense of both victimhood, and superiority.

That’s a dangerous mix, right there.

I was reminded of that experience a few weeks back when I was scrolling through the HuffPost Religion page, looking for something remotely Pagan. Compared to WitchVox, this place was a barren desert. Search “Pagan” on the site, and you come up with a few references to New Gingrich, some pieces on Stonehenge and Beltane, and a piece on how Easter eggs have pagan roots.

I’m not hating on any of those posts, but there was a part of me that wanted something more.

In my time on Patheos, I’ve witnessed some amazing writing, reporting, and community dialogue taking place on the Pagan Channel blogs. On my blog alone, started as it was to be a place for me to process my own work through ADF’s Dedicant Path, I’ve seen vibrant, respectful, meaningful dialogue taking place. We don’t post here so that our ideas win out; we post here to initiate or further along the conversation. We post here to be understood, or to ask questions, or to raise a point that seems missing from the conversation. By and large, this has been a respectful, insightful process.

I’m happy to see that HuffPost is beginning to open up the doors for more inclusion of Pagan and polytheist expressions of religion. They published the post, Pagan Books: 27 Essential Texts about Paganism For Your Bookshelf. From the piece:

Recently HuffPost Religion put a call out to our community about books on Paganism that every Pagan and those interested in the varied strands of Paganism should read.

The result is this great list of 27 books that range from introductory to scholarly in nature and cover the entire gamut of Pagan religions — Witchcraft, Wicca, Shamanism, Asatru, Druidism, Egyptian and Hellenic.

These books grapple with issues of sexuality, tell personal stories of faith, and provide information on the various Pagan religious rites. HuffPost Religion hopes that this list will be equally valuable for those who identify as Pagans, as well as those who are interested in Paganism, both academically and as a spiritual pursuit.

Many of you contributed to this list on Facebook, under the organization of David Dashifen Kees. I’m grateful for your contributions, and the time and effort David put into this task. The list, I’m sure you’ll agree, is far from conclusive. The idea that 27 books would ever cover the “entire gamut” of “Pagan religions” is likely inspiring more than one spark across the Interwebs, but come on — it’s a start, no? For many looking at this list of books, the idea that there was anything to Paganism outside of Wicca (the Buffy kind) will be somewhat of a shocker.

The inclusion of more representations of Paganism on HuffPost is a step in the right direction, I think. The gay teenager in me, the one who scrolls through sites in search of Pagan Pride, is calmed for the moment. But if that teenager is ever going to grow into maturity, it may be time to become a little more proactive in the conversation, myself. If one notices that there is something missing in the world, that might just mean that they are the person to create it.

So, I submitted a post to them. And, they accepted. It’s called, “How Do We Talk About Paganism?“

Do you feel like it might be possible for us to have the same quality of dialogue on HuffPost that we have on Bishop In The Grove? Do you think that this opening could provide Pagans and polytheists a chance to be better understood? I wonder what you think about this kind of representation of Paganism on mainstream sites.

You Say Tomato, I Say Druid.

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First image that came up when I googled, "Druid."

Ever since I took the name, Teo Bishop, and made it my own — both in a religious sense and through the proper legal channels — I’ve had cause to explain what it is that I do on this blog. My writing, as well as my deepening engagement with my own spiritual work, are both major influences on my decision to undergo this transition.

Identity is interesting, and something that often goes undiscussed. What we are, how we identify, is often more experienced than it is questioned. That is, this seems to be true for many people I know.

Then there are people like me, my queer compatriots, and my Pagan brethren who appear to always be in a rich, complicated, and often conflict-laden dialogue about what it means to be us; always debating which words are right to use, and which are out-of-bounds. In fact, it was my little inquiry into identity with publicly not-Pagan, totally world-adventurer, Drew Jacob, back in May of last year which led to his firestorm-post, Why I’m Not Pagan, and my followup piece, Pagan is the New Gay. The whole back-and-forth put my lil’Druid blog on the map.

When I started writing Bishop In The Grove, my intention was to have this blog be a place for me to document my studies through a training program offered through the American Druid fellowship, Ár nDraiocht Féin (ADF). This was going to be my Dedicant Journal, a series of writings that charted my progress on the Dedicant Path. But, it wasn’t long before my focus shifted, and questions of identity began to surface.

How was I to reconcile the Christianity of my youth with this burgeoning practice of polytheistic Druidry? What, exactly, did it mean to be a “Druid?” How could I avoid falling into the trap of allowing this new religious expression to become a kind of role-play? How was I to remain authentic, both to myself and to my community? (Dig through the Post Archive and you’ll find evidence of all of this….and more.)

The conclusion I’ve reached, which is still very much an idea to be examined, is that my spiritual and religious life is intended to be more of a dialogue than a single state of being. Any religious moniker I take, be it Christian (as it was for two decades), Druid, Neopagan, or Pagan, it is most important to me that this title is representative of an ecosystem of practice as well as serving as an introduction to a discussion on belief. The latter may not be paramount, but it is important to me. Practice also means more than how I approach my home shrine; it also extends to the way I navigate my internal world, the world of ideas and emotions, and which methods and approaches I use to engage with my thoughts and inquiries.

Druid, then, is not simply a title which connects me to ancient Celts, or to other Indo-European peoples; it is a word that is representative of a very modern, very immediate, and very personal religious expression which is influenced by a variety of modern, and possibly ancient religious technologies, some Irish, others American, and some completely unique to me; and at the same time, the word points to a practice of deliberate and persistent inquiry, introspection, and contemplation.

This resonates with me personally, and so this is how I intend to use the term.

But would you say that I have, what a friend recently called, “a Druid’s perspective?”

In an interfaith setting, where individuals are often called to speak as ambassadors for their religious or spiritual traditions, how does my definition hold up? Patheos is an interfaith blogging website, and my blog is the lone Druid’s Grove on their servers, but what I’m talking about is real, person-to-person, interfaith work.

How does the description I’ve offered of Druid resonate with you? Does it make sense? If you use the word to describe yourself, does it feel accurate to your experience? If you reject the word altogether, could you explain why?

Second, could you imagine a situation in which a modern Druid is acting as a representative for the wider community of Druids within an interfaith setting? How would you feel about there being an “Ambassador of Druidry” to other faith traditions?

What is the Point of Your Religion?

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Last week I asked, “Where does compassion belong among Pagans and Polytheists?” Beneath this first question there is another, more relevant question; one that has been nagging at me for several days:

What is the point of your religion?

I think this is a valuable inquiry, and no one has asked me this just yet. Yesterday I enrolled at Marylhurst University, the first step in a course of study that I hope will one day lead to a Masters of Divinity. I trust that during that course of work someone would be inclined to ask this question.

Why do we do what we do? What does our tradition provide us in the way of making the world we live in, the communities we build, the people that we care for, better? More importantly, how does it inform our capacity to love, our ability to experience joy, or, for that matter, our willingness to stand with the full spectrum of human experience? Is our religion pacifying us, or challenging us to go deeper?

Many people responded to my post about compassion with the statement that they, too, felt this subject had been missing from conversations in their community, which leads me to wonder what people are talking about. I think about the Christians I’ve known, and the Christian communities that I’ve been a part of, and I remember countless times when the conversation would move toward a closer examination of the meaning of compassion, the power of our intentions, the relationship between our choices and the well-being of those around us. These conversations, as I remember them, were not laden with guilt, judgement or biblical references, and they had a kind of immediacy that I was electrifying to me. Our religion was, for us, a call to full presence in the world; being a Christian was a call to accountability to the world I was living in.

And now here I am, a Pagan, no longer a part of Christian community, still searching for that same sense of immediacy, that same urgent need to be present to the world and accountable to something larger than myself.

I can only conclude from all of this that there is some undercurrent of morality, or ethics, or a need for “right action” that is pulling at me, and that it matters little whether or not I call myself a Christian, a Pagan, or a Druid. There is something human about this quest. I heard the Dalai Lama on the radio today, and he said that first and foremost he was a human being. He said that, and I think that if someone who is as revered as him can recognize the value in placing ones humanity first and their cultural and religious framework second, then perhaps I should be willing to do so as well.

I feel like there has to be a greater purpose to our religious traditions than providing us with a sense of security, comfort, and personal or cultural validation. We get trapped in our identities, and we build walls around ourselves. I think we want clarity around whether we are Pagan, Polytheist, Christian, or some other such invention, in order to better insulate ourselves from one another. We want to be right, we fear being vulnerable, and we use our religions to protect ourselves.

But what if our religions encouraged us to reach outward, to seek commonalities, to see less distinction between human beings? What if our religions began with the premise that we were all connected, and that we were all worthy of respect, compassion, and love, and that we were each capable of providing those things to one another? What if there was a way to approach this kind of universality without any need to squabble about whose deity is best, who’s laws are true, and who’s cosmology is most relevant?

I wonder what that religion would look like.

My hope is that through the dialogue on this blog, and hopefully during my course of study at Marylhurst, that we might take a closer look at our human experiences, and in the process of doing so uncover something universal within our singularity; that we might dig into our own sacred subjectivity, and throw aside our need to be right. There is no reward in having all the answers; there is only value in learning how to ask better questions.

So with that, I begin.

What is the point of your religion? What tools does it provide to you? Does it equip you for defense or for outreach? Does it lead you to question, or does it encourage you to rest in your knowing?

I look forward to hearing your insights, your experiences, and your perspective!

Questioning Paganism… Again.

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I’m not sure why I’m a Pagan. I type those words, and I know I’m taking a risk by making this admission, but it’s what’s going through my head.

My Paganism, as well as my Druidry, is feeling more like subject matter for this blog rather than a way of living my life. Being Pagan doesn’t feel very immediate to me. It feels like a construct. It’s a bit like drag; like something I’m putting on, or that I’m trying to assume. I wrote about being a convert. Perhaps this feeling is an extension of that process of conversion. But I’m still not clear on what I’m converting to.

The Pagan Community feels more like an idea to me than anything else. There are Pagan gatherings which I attend from time to time, and groups to which I’ve paid membership dues. But for the most part, the Community lives in the ether, and I’m not exactly certain that I fit into it, or what exactly I should call myself. The labels come with baggage.

I never felt comfortable calling myself a Christian, either. I always told people that I was an Episcopalian. Somehow, identifying with my denomination was easier for me to explain. For me, being a Christian wasn’t as much about what I believed; it was about what I did. I think my Christianity was very Pagan in that way.

By being an Episcopalian, I was liturgical, rational — as much as any “person of faith” can be — and unwilling to accept fundamentalism. I sought out a balance of intellect and emotion, listened for the subtle, soft voice of the Spirit, and opened my awareness to the unexpected ways in which God might be present in the world. That’s what being an Episcopalian was for me, and so, by extension, that’s how I was a Christian.

But there were squabbles within the Christian community about which denomination was getting it right. Christians are constantly arguing amongst themselves about what is the best or most correct way to be a Christian (similar to the arguments between Revivalist and Reconstuctionist Druids on who is actually a Druid, or the talk about which Witch among us is a genuine Witch). Episcopalians were often viewed as too liberal, or sometimes too formal. Some Christians viewed them as too affluent, and too white. Gays had a home in the pews and behind the altar, and for many Christians that was a sure sign that Episcopalians weren’t actually Christian.

It was a hot mess.

My present conundrum is partly rooted in questions of identity, but also in experience. Christmas left me feeling confused. I opened myself up to certain aspects of it, and now I’m wondering what it was that inspired me to leave.

Do I think Christianity has it all right? No. Is God a man? No. But neither is God a woman. God is a metaphor. I’m not sure my Christian or Pagan brothers and sisters think of it that way. I reject the doctrine of original sin (as did many of the Christians I knew back in the day), and I understand how the religion has historically been a breeding ground for greed, power mongering and institutional corruption. But even still, there are discussions happening among more progressive, less institutional, “Emergent” factions of the Christian community — discussions about greed, power mongering and institutional corruption — that have an immediacy and potency that I’m not hearing in other places.

I guess what I’m wonder is — What does being a Pagan get you. Personal freedom? The ability to put together your own tradition? Or, perhaps the chance to structure your life around an ancient tradition? In a way, Christianity offered that to me, too. So how is Paganism different?

I feel hesitant to post about this because I’m concerned with what kind of response I’ll get. I feel like Pagans want to read about proud Pagans, or Pagans who are firm in their identity, and that those of us who are engaged in a discernment process should just get with the program already. There is a streak of militant activism among some of the Pagans I’ve read online, and I’ve been reticent to subject myself to their criticisms.

But, this is where I am. I’m not sure that the direction of this blog can be anything but an honest exploration and examination of my perspective. I’m not an ideologue. I’m not here to push a Pagan agenda. I’m here to unpack my perspective. I’m here to engage in respectful dialogue.

The truth is, being alive right now — being a modern, Western, American human being — is very confusing. It would be simple to say that all one needs to do is firm up their religious identity — be a better Pagan, Witch, Druid, Asatru, or Christian — and then everything would be easier. But I don’t think it works that way. Identity and religious expression are much more complicated than a single word would imply.

Am I alone in this experience?

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+!