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Faitheist: A Lesson for Pagans in Storytelling

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By Markos Zouridakis

By Markos Zouridakis

Faitheist serves as an example to Pagans, polytheists, Witches, Druids and Heathens (I think it’s time we get our own LGBTQAI abbreve, no?) of the impact and power that storytelling can have on furthering our ideals.

Browse the bookshelf at a local metaphysical bookstore, and you will find book after book which explains the hows of our different systems. You may find a title or two that dives deeper into the why, but you will be hard pressed to find many books which unpack the personal stories of the author. We don’t do memoir very often, and I’m not sure why.

As I was reading to the end of the first chapter of Make Magic of Your Life by T. Thorn Coyle, the March BITG Book Club title (which I am enjoying very much, and which I encourage you all to start reading), I was struck with a sense of longing to know more about Thorn’s life. I was curious about what had transpired that led to these deep and expansive awarenesses.

Last week, in response to a blog comment that asked something to the effect of, “How does love permeate a hostile universe?,” Thorn quoted an old blog post of hers to illustrate her point about love’s presence:

“This week, while cleaning the old sixteen burner stove at the house of hospitality, pressing the rough green scrubber against the tough metal “I love you” rose unbidden to my thoughts. This was not some practice of connecting to the stove, this was connection to the stove. The divine presence was there.”

This.

This is what I mean. This is what I was longing for.

To be fair, I’m only in the introductory portion of Make Magic of Your Life, and I’m not criticizing Thorn or the book. I just found myself, having moved from Chris’s memoir to what I suppose you might call an empowerment guidebook, wanting to be reading Thorn’s memoir so that I could better understand her (and, in turn, so that I might better understand myself).

Stories do that for me. I think they do that for all of us.

Stories provide context that instruction does not. Parables get at meaning in ways that user manuals do not. Our stories are what make us who we are, and the telling of our stories is what affirms our interconnectedness, our sameness, our differences, and the sacredness that weaves it all together.

A good memoir (which I believe Faitheist to be) weaves the messages and teachings that are important to the author directly into the narrative. My copy of Chris’s book has a couple dozen dog-eared pages, and the statements I underlined were (I think) the meat of Chris’s message:

“[Our world needs] people of all different stripes and convictions coming together to deal with things that matter, announcing our differences without fear, enthusiastically embracing our commonalities, and intentionally seeking out points of mutuality and understanding in the face of vastly different metaphysical commitments.”

Or,

“A bit of intellectual humility and self-awareness goes a long way; a quick perusal of human history shows that when one person’s idea of “rationality” trumps basic human decency for others, we all suffer.”

Or,

“To build a strong society, my Humanistic ethics encourage me to engage. This is much more than mere atheism, which is only a statment about what I don’t believe in. After years of witnessing the ugliness that arises when rejection-based beliefs lead to the rejection of people, I now seek out ties that will bind us together.”

These are messages that our community — that every community — needs desperately to hear.

Chris could have written a book that explained how to be a Humanist, but he didn’t. And I’m glad that he didn’t. I don’t think it would have made the profound impact that it is making on our culture. His messages would have read as platitudes, and we would be missing the valuable context.

Context is key.

I would like to see a Pagan Memoir section at Isis Books or online, and I’d like to read the stories of our teachers, leaders, magick workers, priests and priestesses. I would like to know what all of this spiritual and religious work has meant in their lives. I’d like to know when they felt doubt, or when they encountered something transformative. I’d like to read their lives and not just their instructions. I think it would be revelatory, really. (I’m putting In the Center of the Fire on my reading list.)

Chris told stories, and then stepped back to allow the conversation to begin.

And that’s what I’d like to happen here.

What story in Faitheist resonated most with you? Was there any one piece of Chris’s narrative that led you to a new awareness about interfaith work? About religious pluralism?

How did Chris’s storytelling affect you, personally?

I’m Not Catholic, But I Am Concerned

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Photo by the Catholic Church England and Wales

Photo by the Catholic Church England and Wales

The first thing that sprung to mind when I learned that Pope Benedict was resigning from his station of service was a series of quips and puns.

 

WWBD? He’d quit.

Two living popes in Rome? It’s like Buffy and Faith all over again.

Well this is a good way of dodging the child abuse scandal, no?

My Catholic grandmother is in her 80’s too, but I think if she was called to be the voice of Christ she would do it to the death. Just sayin’.

 

They kept going for several minutes. It wasn’t my most sensitive, kind-hearted moment, but it was funny.

Once the fairy dust settled a bit, my husband and I began to consider the real conflict this would (or, perhaps should) create in the hearts and minds of Catholics. This situation, the leader of the Catholic church resigning his position — a position which make him the mouthpiece of the Godhead, the voice of Christ in the world — calls so many things into question for the faithful, doesn’t it?

As the title of this post says, I’m not Catholic. But what about my grandmother and my aunt? A great deal of my family is Catholic, and there will likely be readers of this blog who know and love Catholics. While it is easy to make fun of this situation, especially for those who found the current pontiff’s politics to be unsavory, I wonder if that response is really appropriate or helpful.

This is not my crisis of faith, admittedly, but it is a crisis of faith for others. As I consider what it means to be a servant to my community, and a believer in interfaith dialogue to boot, what is the best response to a situation such as this?

Humanism, perhaps? Is the best interfaith response to a religious crisis one that does not acknowledge at all the religious implications, but rather seeks to focus on the struggle of the individual?

I’m reminded of Chris Stedman, the author of this month’s Bishop In The Grove Book Club book, Faitheist. He is not a religious man, but he has dialogue with the religious. In my personal conversations with him I’ve found him to be incredibly compassionate and caring. As a humanist Chaplain, I wonder what it would be like for him to be approached by someone in a religious crisis. What would Chris Stedman do? (#WWCSD)

This puts into context why reading this book is valuable at this time. I’ve often wondered if the religious (i.e. theists of all sorts) can learn something from their non-religious counterparts. Could we take a lesson from them on how to reach out to one another on a purely human level? Does the humanist movement provide the religious with a reminder that our religiosity doesn’t always encourage us to be better humans to one another? And if we find that it doesn’t, does that mean that we should re-evaluate our religion?

I don’t know the answers to these questions.

There are many atheists in the Pagan world. Some of them write brilliantly about their perspectives. At times these voices sound most reasonable and compassionate, such as in the case of John Halstead or B.T. Newberg. Halstead is always rooting things back into his ordinary life, filled as it is with ordinary, sometimes very difficult challenges, and Newberg’s writing inspires me to think more deeply about how I’m rooted in the world (and how the world is rooted in me). This current crisis in the Catholic Church doesn’t belong to either of them, but I wonder how they might respond to it as humanists.

And I wonder how you might respond.

Do you find yourself responding with humor to this situation? With compassion?

Is your perspective about this transition — a historic one, for certain — colored by your own religious beliefs and practices? Is there any way for you to hold space for those who value the institution of the Catholic Church, or is that an unacceptable proposition for you?

What’s your take?

Pagans Among Wild Geese

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I had plans to attend the Wild Goose Festival this weekend. I was supposed to leave today, but then the money got tight.

Carl McColman at the first Wild Goose Festival, June 2011

As I wrote about in my last post I made the decision to forgo my studies at Marylhurst for at least a term or two, in part for financial reasons. In light of that kind of penny-pinching adjustment to plans, I decided to save my plane ticket to Portland for a future trip.

I would not have been the only Druid in attendance. Allison Leigh Lilly is going to be there, and I had a feeling we would have found many opportunities to speak about the pagan side of the conversation. I would also have been traveling with a good friend from Denver, who walks the line between Pagan and Christian quite gracefully.

But the gathering was decidedly Christian. There’s really no getting around that.

What was appealing to me about the Wild Goose Festival was the emphasis placed on social justice and ecological responsibility. Today on the Wild Goose Patheos blog there was an announcement of a number of free e-books, one called, A New Evangelical Manifesto: A Kingdom Vision for the Common Good. According to the post:

“Written by authors, theologians, and instructors affiliated with the The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good (NEP), A New Evangelical Manifesto discusses many “hot button” issues such as human trafficking, healthcare, race, abortion, nuclear weapons, war, global poverty, Christianity, the church, and theology.”

Can I just tell you how happy I am to hear that my gayness is not one of their hot button issues?

Seriously though — I find that the inclusion of human trafficking, nuclear weapons, global poverty and war in a list of Christian concerns to be quite refreshing. (I’m uncertain of what these authors will have to say about abortion; if they’re more likely to frame the topic as one related to the body of a woman or to the personhood of a fetus. No telling.)

I mention the book only to illustrate the way in which the Wild Goose Festival was appealing to me. I anticipated that I would encounter some real differences of opinion, belief and practice with most in attendance, but I wanted to be there simply to witness a group of religious people engage sincerely in discussions of progressive politics. I was hoping to be witness to Christians taking more stock in the eradication of global poverty than the eradication of homosexuality.

In my subjective opinion, ending poverty trumps keeping marriage straight.

I’ve known a number of Christians whose politics were borderline-radical, leaning quite far to the left. They were working to create safer work environments for trans-people, they were challenging systemic abuse of power in the prison system, they were calling on citizens to be more aware of how their buying habits affect the local economy and the environment.

They are still doing these things to this day.

There’s a quality of conviction that I see from many of my Progressive Christian friends that I deeply respect. For them, their faith is very much rooted in bringing equality and justice to the world. That’s how they understand the call of Jesus.

For them, their Christianity isn’t rooted in an obsession with blood atonement, or a strict adherence to rigid dogma. (We would be wrong to paint all Christians in this light.) Theirs is a more complicated faith, and one very much rooted in their engagement with the world.

Progressive Christian and Pagan communities have very different identities, and very different positions in relationship to mainstream culture. That said, I think it is useful for us to make note that these conversations are taking place at Wild Goose.

There may still be the presence of a Christian voice which is alienating, and we may have fundamental, irreconcilable differences with the predominant theology. But there may also be a conviction and passion for a better world (i.e. one without war, one without poverty, one that is clean and safe for our children) that we can get behind.

I’ve never been to a Pagan festival that was infused with this kind of conviction for social, political or ecological change. (Admittedly, I’ve not been to many Pagan festivals.)

Have you?

I’d like to know if you’ve had an experience at a Pagan gathering that was infused with the kind of conviction I’m describing above. Was there a time when you heard a speaker at a festival who lit a fire in you to take better care of the world, of your community, of your tribe? If so, please share that experience.

Do you think that modern Pagans — especially the young’ins — have it in us to be agents of change in society?

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!

More On Christian-Pagan Relations

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Pagans hate generalizations made about Pagans (he writes with a smirk).

That’s one generalization I feel confident in making.

In my last post I made some bold statements about the unwillingness of Pagans to accept the existence of the Christian god, knowing full well that those statements were not completely accurate (or, perhaps even close to accurate). I did so in order to get the conversation started, and I recognize that there are better ways to initiate dialogue. Many of my readers let me know as much. I’m grateful to those of you who spoke up, and I thank you for your willingness to call “bullshit.”

What I also failed to mention was that my post was informed by the current controversy around Dominionism, and its corresponding backlash from the Pagan community. If you aren’t already familiar with what’s got the Witches, Druids, and Asatru abuzz throughout the blogosphere, click here, here or here for some backstory.

All of my literary shortcomings aside, there were some interesting ideas written in response to my post, and I’d like to unpack a few of them now and gauge whether you are in agreement with them or not. Let’s see if if we can keep the dialogue going, shall we?

“It is impossible for an unreasonable person to be a reasonable person.”

Themon, an OBOD Bard and regular contributor to the comments at Bishop In The Grove, made this statement, saying that there is no way to have interfaith dialogue with an unreasonable person.

I asked my 16 year old step-kid if this was a true statement during a mind-breaking batch of geometry homework.

“Um… if it’s a given that the person is unreasonable, then yes — that’s true,” the wunderkind said with one lifted eyebrow and a shrug. Silly stepdads and their philosophical questions.

I wonder what we might consider to be “reasonable” when it comes to theology and religion. Some would argue that the whole subject is a bunch of hooey. Others, like the Dominionists, might argue that only their particular viewpoint is reasonable, and if you don’t believe them just ask their god… he’ll totally back them up.

Themon goes on to write,

“I think the only real prerequisite to interfaith dialogue is mutual respect. It’s reasonable to ask to be treated with respect. It’s reasonable for them to want to be treated with respect.”

This seems fair to me.

Mrs. B. Confesses

Mrs. B., the beloved blogger at Confessions of a Pagan Soccer Mom chimed in with a statement about the way that she perceives Deity:

“I work under the idea that all Gods are one God and that s/he comes to everyone in the guise that is best for that person at any given moment.  I can say that my Catholic husband feels much the same way.”

Fascinating idea, really. So relational. I find the though of divinity this fluid and accommodating, this concerned with where I am at the moment of contact, to be very comforting.

Mrs. B. isn’t the only one who’s struck a theological balance in an interfaith marriage.

Literata writes about her Catholic husband,

“My spouse’s way of understanding polytheism is to think of different deities as different metaphors for what is fundamentally the same thing. It’s rather like the idea of aspects – “All goddesses are one goddess,” in Dion Fortune’s words.”

I know that many Pagans hold a different view; that each God or Goddess possesses his or her own individual consciousness. To some, the idea of “aspects” betrays something true about the individuality of the Gods. Personally, I lean more in this direction, but I also am attracted to the idea of one god with many faces.

Perhaps somewhere in between these two polarities exists some common ground between Pagans and Christians.

Or…

“There is no midway point in beliefs between paganism and Christianity.”

Perhaps the strongest tone found in any of the comments came from Kenneth, an active contributor to the conversations at various Patheos blogs. If what he says is true, I’m not sure where that leaves me – a person who feels compelled to find a thread of continuity between the tradition of my youth (Episcopal Christianity) and the tradition that resonates with me now (Neo-Pagan Druidry).

Kenneth continues,

“We will not create a good space for dialogue by looking for commonality of beliefs. What we can do is to try to respect the depth and authenticity of each other’s beliefs.”

I appreciate this statement. Ultimately, I think that’s what I’m striving for in the dialogue created on this blog. I would like to see more Christians voicing in about the way that their perspective of Deity informs the conversations they have with Pagans. I’d like to hear how a polytheist conceives of “spiritual unity,” or if that phrase is too ambiguous or not resonant in any way. I’d like to hear from folks outside of these two categories, too. I’m interested — fascinated, really — by the spiritual experiences of human beings, and I’m seeking to synthesize what I learn from you with what I feel in my heart, in my head, in my body.

The intention I’ve set for Bishop In The Grove, a blog initially started to chart my course through the ADF Dedicant Path, is to create a space for dialogue. We each bring our unique voice to the conversation, and we are all both teacher and student for one another.

 

If any of these ideas have inspired you, or if you’d like to weigh in on what I’ve written here, please do so in the comment section. If you’d like to help me broaden the discussion even further, you can share this post on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or by e-mailing it to a friend.