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Evolution of The Word: A *new* New Testament

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Last night I was standing at my kitchen counter, reading the first chapter of Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order the Books Were Written, by Marcus J. Borg.

I read the following words and made an audible, “Oh.”

“By viewing the documents of the New Testament in their historical context, we recognize that they were not written to us and for us, but to and for the ancient communities that produced them.”

I knew this already, but something in Borg’s concise language drove the point home.

I was not raised in an atmosphere of Biblical literalism. I did not grow up believing that every word of the Bible had been uttered by God, Himself. “Cultural context” came up often in the bible studies of my late teens and early 20’s, but not nearly enough in conversation with other Christians. Most often the messages of the Bible were framed in a very modern context, as though the book was some sort of how-to manual for everyday life.

I’m not sure that it was written to function in that way. Borg states,

“To try to read the New Testament without taking into account its historical context produces misunderstanding. What we read is about “their then,” not directly about “our now.”

[emphasis mine]

I find that most of the conflicts I have with the ideologies of Biblical literalists, and the religious practices built around said literalism, are rooted in this “misunderstanding” that Borg speaks of. Pulling Bible passages to prove a point, to defend a modern conservative political position, or to alienate or shame someone seem like a misuse of Scripture to me. Always has.

The Bible, when read as nothing more than a rule book, can easily become a tool of the modern-day Pharisees. And if I recall, Jesus did have a few things to say about the Pharisees.

Borg places the books of the New Testament in chronological order, starting with 1 Thessalonians and ending with 2 Peter, with the Gospels falling somewhere in the middle. Read them in this order, Borg asserts, and you begin to see a completely different picture of how early Christians came to understand the relevance of the person of Jesus. Their understanding about Jesus evolved over time. It was not revealed in the Gospels, as the current ordering of the New Testament might have you think; rather, the Gospels were the product of years of Christian oral and aural tradition.

Borg’s position is undoubtably threatening to Christians who would like to simplify Jesus into a one-dimensional symbol (i.e., Savior, Redeemer of Sins, God Incarnate, etc.). It gets even more complicated when you consider that the language popularly used to describe Jesus, himself, has its own history.

Regarding the emperor Augustus:

“…Octavian became “Augustus.” The word means “he who is to be worshipped and revered.” He was heralded not only as “Augustus,” but also as “Son of God” and “Lord.” He was called the “savior of the world” who had brought “peace on earth” by ending the vicil war that was tearing the empire apart. His birth was the beginning of the “gospel,” the “good news” (the Greek word used in the New Testament and translated into English as “good news” or “gospel”). Stories were even told about his divine conception: he was the son of the god Apollo.”

This is not news to most Pagans. The evidence of other divine-human hybrids in world mythology has been used to dismiss the uniqueness of Christianity. Jesus is just another in a long line of Sons of God(s). This is not altogether untrue.

And yet I don’t find my newfound sense of faith shaken or torn apart. I do not believe that the God who quietly called to me through a moment of service was calling me into a legalistic system of “right belief” or “right piety”. My experience of calling, although it garnered a certain amount of media attention on account of my career in music, was not a sensational one. It was a calling born of simple service to a person in need.

I think there is relevance in understanding the person of Jesus, just as I believe that Jesus points to the Divine in a very particular, important way. And Borg reminds us that to have said within the context of early Christianity that Jesus was the “Son of God” was to make a political statement about the nature of power, rulership and authoritarianism. It was an act of subversion, even as it was a statement of theology.

This is no small point.

This, for most mainline Protestants in the West, is a revolutionary way of thinking about Jesus.

Borg writes,

“The gospels, Paul’s letters, and the other New Testament writings use the language of imperial theology, but apply it to Jesus. Jesus is the “Son of God”–the emperor is not. Jesus is the “Lord”–the emperor is not. Jesus is the “Savior” who brings “peace on earth”–the emperor is not. The contrast is not just a matter of language. The contrast is also about two different visions of how the world should be. The world of the domination system is a world of political oppression, economic exploitation, and chronic violence. The alternative is a world in which everyone has enough and no one needs to be afraid. The gospel phrase for this is the “kingdom of God,” the heart, as the gospels proclaim, of Jesus’s message.”

[emphasis mine]

Thanks to this book I find myself reading Scripture with a new passion. Now I am reading to get a better sense of who these early Christians were, and to understand what motivated them to create community around this crucified man.

I am reading with the knowledge that these words were not written for me, even as they continue to transform my heart.

This one man

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I went to the Catholic cathedral in downtown Los Angeles because I wanted to buy a cross. Specifically, I wanted to buy a replica of the cross that the Pope wears. It’s kind of an unusual thing for me to do. I’m not Catholic. My grandmother is, and being raised Episcopalian, a denomination my mother lovingly called “Catholic Lite,” I’m familiar with the phenomenon of Pope-love. I’ve just never had a case of it, myself.

But then comes along Pope Francis, acting all salt-of-the-earth Christian-like, and I want to wear his cross. I want to remember him, and I like the idea that he’s out there praying for me.

I picked up the small, pewter replica, along with a prayer card for St. Francis (I’ve always loved his “Make me an instrument” prayer) and a little Pope/St. Francis reversible medal. It was a veritable Catholic shopping spree, and appropriately inexpensive.

I left the shop and headed across the courtyard to the cathedral. The building is staggeringly beautiful. It’s more modern than any other cathedral I’ve seen. The lines are unusual, as is the shape of the structure.

lorena-david - Our Lady of Angels exterior

The sign by the door said, “Welcome to your cathedral.”

That’s nice, I thought.

The interior did exactly what a cathedral is supposed to do: it inspired in me a feeling of awe and wonder. It made me feel small, but not insignificant. It felt womb-like, peaceful and quiet. There were art students scattered about sketching and taking photographs of the architecture. Their business didn’t disturb me, and I made my way to a pew in the middle of the room.

gashwin - Nave and crucifix

I sat there for a long while and was still. Then I let my eyes lift upward to the large tapestries on either side of the room. These pieces of art were tall — perhaps 12 or 15 feet high — and they stretched from the back of the sanctuary to the front. Each panel of the tapestry contained depictions of figures from Christian history. It was ecumenical, too: there were Protestants and Catholics, Saints and other Christians who’d made an impact in the history of the Church.

That’s amazing craftsmanship, I thought.

Then I realized that the figures were all facing the same direction, lined up one behind the other. They were each looking forward with expressions of sorrow, hopefulness, or a deep and visible reverence.

gashwin - Saints

I followed their gaze to its natural conclusion and realized that these people, these ordinary people like me, were all staring at the same thing: the simple, black iron crucifix standing on the floor behind the altar.

For a moment I stopped breathing.

All of this grandeur, all of this extraordinary art was there for the sole purpose of drawing my attention back to this one man. I found myself sitting there, and at the same time standing behind an untold number of Saints, all resting our sight on this one man.

I placed the Pope’s cross around my neck and tucked it into my shirt. I took a deep breath and let it out. I bowed my head and sat in silence.

 

Click on images to see original sources and authors (CC).

Awestruck

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In Swingers

I’m in Los Angeles, sitting in Swingers Diner. The air smells like onions and bacon, and before long I probably will, too. An Irish pub band is playing from the jukebox.  I’m the only customer here. I opened the joint.

After breakfast I’ll head to an Episcopal church on Hollywood Boulevard called St. Thomas. It’s only a few minutes away and they have morning prayer services. The church is Anglo-Catholic, which may be a little foreign to me. But Sunday was a travel day and I couldn’t make it to church. Morning prayer will hopefully bring a similar feeling of comfort and peace to the one I experienced in Portland.

This has been a strange couple of weeks. I’ve done a lot of explaining, profile editing, and summarizing. I don’t know if I’ve done well or poorly, because I feel like my explanations have arisen in the middle of a process.

When I run into a comment online from a Pagan that says something like,

“…now that Teo’s converted…”

I pause and think —

Is that what I’ve done? Has this been a conversion experience? That sounds so final.

Perhaps it has been a kind of conversion experience.

Except I was a Christian before I was a Pagan. This is not the kind of “coming to God” that one has without context of Christianity. This experience is not the same as a 2nd generation Wiccan realizing that they are actually a follower of Jesus. This is more complicated, more nuanced, because I already have a great deal of familiarity with Christianity. That said, all of this feels less like a falling into an old pattern than it does an attempt to uncover a new understanding.

I get that people want to rush to define what’s happening with me, but I’m hesitant to do so. This urgency to label my experience as “conversion” is being directed at me from the Christians, too. There’s this mild (and sometimes not-so-mild) rejoicing going on, as though they’ve won one back for the team. I suppose that when I say things like, “I’m feeling drawn back to the Church” that can be interpreted on a very simple, surface level; i.e. I’m going to be a Christian again. It gets complicated when you start to tease out what kind of Christian I might be. There is not just one way, even in the church of the One Way. Each Christian sect has its own framework, its own subtleties of language and theology, its own rituals. And within each denomination are people with their own personal biases, and they bring those biases to every Facebook or HuffPost comment thread.

I shut comments down on my blog, as well as on the Wild Hunt post about my Disruptive and Inconvenient Realization in order to maintain a little autonomy as I process through all of this. Blogging has been a communal event for me for a while now. The dialogues on this blog and others have taught me about who Pagans and polytheists are, how they think, and what lights a fire under them. But in terms of my personal evolutionary process I’m finding that the feedback coming from the internet — be the commenter a Christian or Pagan — necessarily gets a little big wrong about my intentions, my perspective, and my use of words. It makes me wonder how much of the identity-forming that’s taken place since I first found Paganism online and started blogging about it has been authentic, and how much of it has been an engagement with the projections that others place on me.

This is the kind of stuff I think about while I’m waiting for my eggs.

As important as it is for me to write through my experiences with this reawakening to God in Christ, it feels equally important for me to refrain from subjecting my spiritual life to an internet-wide workshopping session. It will happen to a certain degree; it already is. And that’s to be expected. But I need to remember that what I’m doing here in this discernment process is not about anybody else but me…

…and God.

Truth be told, I feel compelled to use these words — God, Christ, Jesus — and I feel somehow as though my life is being and has always been drawn into close connection to the Beings which stand behind those words, but I don’t know what that means exactly or how to explain it. It would be foolish of me to state with certainty that,

“Now I know what God is,”

or

“THIS is what Jesus wants for me,”

or

“Jesus is my best friend.”

It’s a little hazier than that, I have to trust that that’s ok.

But I do keep having these less-hazy moments when something small, or humble, or slightly broken about myself or another person will bring me into an immediate awareness of God’s presence in the world. In that moment I feel completely connected to everyone around me and fully alive in this body.

The best word to describe the feeling?

Awestruck.

The Unexpected Immediacy of God

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Dear Sara,

Thank you for your response. It’s delightful to read about your personal experiences with all of this. You offer a soothing, yet invigorating perspective.

ashleyrosex_ Close Cross

You asked,

“What is contradictory for you personally between Christianity and Paganism…theologically, emotionally?  Does opening the door to Christianity automatically mean shutting the door to Paganism, and if so, why?

Discussing Christian theology feels, at this point, a kind of misplacement of focus. What seems to be happening to me is an emotional and perhaps even metaphysical pull towards Jesus, God and the Gospel. It’s confusing, because I’m so used to parsing out Christianity intellectually. That’s what I did the first time around. I dug in with my head, first, and then listened to my heart.

But this feels so different. It feels as though the heart is leading, and that the heart is also being led.

I can say that I feel the immediacy of God in a new way now, and I’m using language to describe that feeling of immediacy which feels rather foreign to me. I’m saying things like, “I guess God wasn’t done with me,” or “I’m feeling called back to the Church,” or “But I was already claimed by God.” These are not the kinds of things I ever said before as a Christian. These are, in fact, the kinds of statements that would make me a little squeamish when I heard other people say them. But when I say these things now I feel like I’m speaking about something that is actually happening in my life, rather than some abstract concept or idea. It feels as real and ordinary as if I were to say, “I haven’t showered yet this morning,” or “I need to put some socks on because my feet are cold.”

This doesn’t feel like zealotry, either. I feel no compulsion to start “saving” people. Not. at. all. This immediacy feels incredibly personal, and reminds me in some ways of how I’ve heard hard polytheists speak about their Gods. And they used to wig me out a little, too, when they did that. But I don’t have any beef with them now. I actually feel like I understand them in a better way, because I’m having the sense that God is working in my life somehow just as they understand their Gods to be working in theirs.

And see, this is where it gets challenging to parse things out intellectually. I’m feeling a pull to God, a comfort in the Gospel, a challenge from the example of Jesus (all of this in a very short period of time, mind you), while at the same time feeling a deep understanding and appreciation for my polytheist friends in their experience of deity. Certain Christian doctrine and thought would seem to make that impossible or completely incompatible, but not for me.

When I’ve been in church, wrapped up in the movement of the liturgy, or when I’m considering the conciseness of the Nicene Creed and Christian cosmology (at least, the one that’s painted for me in the Episcopal service), I at once recognize that this is complete and incomplete; it is all of what is necessary to inform and enrich my own human experience, and yet it is not anywhere near complete enough to incapsulate all of what is about humanity, or life on Earth, or the Universe, or God.

To try to illustrate what I mean, I’d like to refer to a post I read on Nadia Bolz-Webber’s blog a couple days ago. The post consists of her a sermon from this last Sunday on the Gospel story in Luke about the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14). She illustrates the way in which Jesus flips the whole notion of righteousness on it’s head (which I’m down with). But then at the end of it she concludes the sermon by presenting a somewhat traditional understanding of Jesus as God made flesh/Redeemer/Savior to the sinners. Read it. You’ll see where it happens.

At that point I think: but if Jesus fucks with the paradigm of righteousness, saying that your virtue doesn’t earn you anything in the eyes of God (nor does your humility), isn’t asserting with certainty who Jesus is, or what his role is in relationship to the Human Condition yet another exercise in the righteousness that Jesus was defusing in the parable? Doesn’t defining the mystery destroy it? In the moment that Jesus is presented as the champion of Christianity rather than the One Who Comes to Mindfuck, through Love, the Christian paradigm seems smaller than Jesus, himself. Do you see what I mean?

A part of me would like for all of this to be simple: believe that Jesus is the son of God (or don’t), and believe that that means a very specific thing with very specific consequences and very specific edicts attached to it, and you’ll know how to live your life. But that part of me is minuscule when compared to the sense of God’s immediacy in my life at this moment. And the divine seems to care nothing about what I believe! My ability (or inability) to parse all of this out doesn’t make a difference. I still feel an awareness of God working in my life somehow.

And maybe that’s Grace. Maybe the message isn’t that “It doesn’t matter what you do, Jesus has washed your sin away,” but rather “It doesn’t matter what you do, you are swept up in the current of the Spirit… It is always already working in your life… You do not have to deserve it, or earn it, or justify yourself in the eyes of the divine… you are always already in a state of being loved.”

So I don’t know how to answer your question just yet. I don’t feel like I’m closing the door to Paganism, although I’m sure most Pagans would have a hard time believing that having read what I just wrote. But I feel like my Paganism is informing my reawakening to Christ, just as my time spent in the Church in my early 20’s informed my constant desire to subject all of my experiences in the Pagan community to a close exegesis of their function, meaning and relevance. I was always somewhat of a Christian when I was exploring Paganism, just as I am still somewhat of a Pagan as I respond to what feels like a call to return to the Church.

Sent with love from the inbetween,

Teo

Who’s Going to Be My Pagan Jesus?

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Pagan Jesus

I started reading a book yesterday called Contemplative Practices in Action: Spirituality, Meditation, and Health. It’s an academic volume which seeks to demonstrate that contemplative practices have positive affects on the lives of those who engage in them. It’s of personal interest to me for a number of reasons.

First, I would like to see an emergence of a contemplative stream of Pagan practice. I would like to see Pagans, through the lenses of their traditions, build and develop contemplative practices that are both true to their community identity, but also examples of how the Pagan ethea is relevant in the modern world. To some whose tradition already incorporates contemplative-style activities in their group work this shouldn’t seem like much of a stretch. But I’m not sure if they’re identifying what they’re doing as “contemplative practice.”

But aside from my conviction that the modern Pagan movement needs more contemplatives, I was drawn to this book because I feel a need to enrich my own contemplative practice. My writing in recent days has been centered around my own inquiries and doubts, but the current running underneath all of it is a desire to have a deeper and more fulfilling contemplative life.

For an academic text rich with footnotes and references, I was surprised at how quickly I started in on this book. The second chapter, Similarity in Diversity? Four Shared Functions of Integrative Contemplative Practice Systems spelled out a few ideas that immediately made me think about ADF and my Dedicant Path studies (which, truth be told, have all but been ignored over the past long while). The author, Doug Oman, looks at a variety of systems, including The Eight-Point Program of Passage Meditation, Centering Prayer, and Mantra Repetition and outlines four elements or themes present in most of them. A practice system, he asserts, could be considered an integrated contemplative practice if it contains these four common elements:

1. Set-aside time–time that is set aside regularly, usually daily, for a disciplined activity or exercise that has a comparatively powerful effect on training attention.

2. Virtues and character strengths–qualities of character and behavior, such as compassion, forgiveness or fearlessness. … Typically, the recommended qualities involve subsets of six cross-culturally prevalent classes of virtues recently identified by positive psychologists–wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.

3. Practices for centering/stabilizing that are usable through the day–such as during occasions of stress, anxiety, or unstructured time.

4. Spiritual models–attending to the individuals whose behavior reflects desired spiritual qualities–provide a unique resource for spiritual growth. … Attending to spiritual models’ words and actions can motivate sustained practice, and guide or inspire implementation of other spiritual practices. (Oman 8)

(emphasis mine)

This last one, spiritual models, caught my attention.

We don’t have those, I though. Or, at least, I’m not sure there is one particular spiritual model set forth by my tradition to look to for inspiration or guidance. In fact, I’m sure that there isn’t.

I posed these questions on Facebook:

Are Pagan traditions offering the kind of “spiritual modeling” that you might find in, say, Buddhism or Christianity? Do we have spiritual figures — either from history or from myth (or in the fuzzy place in the middle) — that we regularly look to for examples of how to act in the world? If so, who are these folk?

Who do *you* look to for “spiritual modeling”?

The responses were interesting.

Some look to figures like Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, or Hypatia. Others see Crowley and Doreen Valiente as figures to look to (both in a historical and in a magickal sense). MLK was mentioned as was Malcolm X, the current Archdruid of ADF, and the heroes of Celtic legend.

Michael York asked, taking us to an archetypally pagan place, “Is not our ultimate spiritual model nature herself?”

All of these things were relevant to the people who offered them, but as I sit with these ideas now I realize that — for me — I need my #4 to be connected more closely to my #2: I need a spiritual model that demonstrates the virtues and character strengths that are meaningful to me.

In my time as Pagan, I’m not sure I’ve found that model.

As a Christian, Jesus was that model for me. While I was always a little uncomfortable by some of the language that accompanied the act of “following Jesus,” especially anything that ascribed to the person of Jesus attributes that seemed little more than projections of the follower, himself, I was still influenced by the example of this man. He was something concrete to look to, even if his life was represented in an incomplete and biased fashion. It was a point of reference, and that was valuable. He wasn’t important because of the “saved soul” factor; he was important because he made it easier for me, personally, to connect my actions to a system of values.

Some people who responded to my questions don’t look to anyone other than themselves. They are their own example; their own spiritual model.

While I respect everyone’s right to develop their religious and spiritual life as they see fit, I don’t think I can serve as my own best example. I need something to look to that is outside of myself, even if in the form of a character in a story or myth, in order to help me better understand the nuances of my own humanity.

The question is, who’s going to by my Pagan Jesus?

 

A Pagan’s Christmas Message

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I’m in Nashville, home of the Christian Contemporary Music Industry, home of LifeWay Christian Stores, and home of the Southern Baptist Convention. This week, in a kind of radical re-immersion into Christian culture, I’m going to spread the message about Jesus to Jesus-people, and I’m doing so in the most subversively effective way imaginable: through catchy melodies and rhyming lyrics.

Caroling. This Pagan is going to sing Christmas carols to Christians.

I’m going to sing songs about the Virgin Birth, the upbringing of a Messiah, and the ascension of their Lord and Savior into the cloudy realms of Heaven (which is really a theme more suitable for Easter, but which often shows up in the more Jesus-y Christmas songs). I’m also going to sing about snow, which wasn’t a part of the original Jesus birth-narrative, but which is pretty, and white, and threatening to fall at any given moment from the cloudy, Tennessee skies.

Why am I doing this?

Don’t think I haven’t asked myself that question a few times.

I feel like this is my karma; I am called to engage with what feels uncomfortable or unreconcilable, both in the world and within myself, so that I might find ways to bring those disparate parts into a state of peaceful balance.

It’s kinda my thing.

I’m hoping to create harmony even while experiencing internal dissonance. This is a radical approach to reconciling my personal conflicts, I know.

It would be easier for me to dismiss Christianity altogether, as some of my fellow Pagans have done, and in the process negate all it teaches about compassion, forgiveness, and kindness, focussing on instead on the faults of its adherents and the limitations of its theology.

It would be easier to proclaim that my current expression of Paganism is superior to my former experience of being Christian. Anyone can claim superiority, and many do. I could say–quoting some new, scholarly, archeological tome–that mine is a more historically accurate, perhaps even culturally relevant religion. Mine is older, rooted deeper in the sacred dirt of human history, and therefore I have greater insight into the inner workings of the spiritual world.

But, I’m not taking the easy route. Instead, I’m going to have a hand at being a Pagan who helps Christians be Christian.

I’m kind of obsessed with interfaith dialogue, and the thing I’m discovering is that the real challenge in it is not what happens when you are in conversation with others; it’s what happens when you are in conversation with yourself.

Can you hold up your current beliefs and practices against seemingly contrary ideas without feeling threatened, or broken, or like you made some mistake in becoming who you’ve become? Can you sing about Jesus to people who believe something different about him than you do and still remember who you are?

These are the question I’m asking myself as I’m rehearsing songs about Little Baby Jesus in a manger.

Before we can have any kind of meaningful dialogue with another person, we must first spend time reflecting on our own ideas and beliefs. For me, a convert of sorts, this act of reflection can feel quite conflicted. The term I used to describe the process in my post, On Converting a Christian to Paganism, was inner-interfaith, and I think there may be no better two words to explain what’s going on with me right now.

But rather than letting this dialogue only take place in my head (or on this blog), I’m bringing it out into the open. I’m allowing my inner conflicts to become incarnate in the world, and I’m doing so in a way that forces me to be a little kinder to them. Perhaps, too, I’m working through a new understanding of the Christian narrative and what it offers Christians and Pagans alike.

We forget about the Divine, about our sense of wonder, mystery and magic, and through that act of forgetting we experience an absence of the Sacred. It was always there: immanent, ever-present, ever-willing to be known and experienced. But we forget, and when we do we feel alone.

Transcendence, then, means less that the God of these Christmas carols is distant from His creation, and more that the very idea of “distance from the Divine” is illusory. With that in mind, Christmas, and my singing of Jesus songs to small crowds of Christians, becomes an affirmation of a value that Pagans can and do affirm; that in the moments when we’ve forgotten that the world is holy, that our lives are sacred, and that the Great Mystery is woven into the fabric of all things, it still is.

It is, it always was, and it always will blessedly be.

So I say, “Ho, Ho, Ho! Merry Christmas, Jesus folk. The Sacred is as close to you as it is to me. Call on it, and welcome it into your hearts. Let it come to you through the melody of your favorite Christmas song, and inspire you to be a kinder, gentler, more compassionate human being.”

Then, when the singing is done, I’ll return to my little hotel room, light my candle, close my eyes and experience the sanctity of my own breath. I will worship in the Temple of the Gods, which is this body: this house of Spirit.

On Converting a Christian to Paganism

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I’m a convert to Paganism.

I was born into a Christian tradition, and spent most of the first 25 years of my life identifying as a Christian. I’ve written of this before, but the subject keeps coming up for me. There’s something about how we arrive at our tradition that seems worth reflecting on, especially for a convert.

We hear much about conversion to Christianity, and I understand what that looks like. As I explained it to my husband, becoming a Christian involves accepting a certain set of beliefs about Divinity, specifically related to the God of Israel, Jesus -his humanity and his divinity- and about the role of the Divine in the course of human history. It also involves a certain engagement with Christian scripture, and a whole series of adjustments to whatever worldview you had before. For true conversion to take place, every part of you needs to change, or evolve (depending on your perspective). Your entire being needs to be made open to the development of a “relationship with God.”

But what does it mean for a Christian to convert to Paganism?

At first, this question seems problematic simply because Paganism is not a unified religion. There is no one form of Paganism; no core belief system. And, as anyone who’s paying attention will tell you, most Pagans aren’t fond of having their religious identities, with all of the diverse expressions and cultural lineages associated with them, roped into one, overarching religious title.

And yet, a Christian can become a Pagan, and in the process of doing so experience the inevitable inner-interfaith dialogue between what they believed before and what they believe now, or at least what they are moving toward believing. Those beliefs, old and new, must be in conversation with each other inside of the convert in order for that person to truly become what they’re becoming.

I’ve heard about the ills of Christianity — I’ve spoken about them, myself. I’ve heard reasons why the patriarchy is broken, why the “Big 3” are monopolizing most of the religious landscape in this country and around the world, and why Pagans would do good to let go of the damaging perspectives and social structures that they believe to be the direct product of a Christian worldview.

Those things are all arguable, but not really interesting to me right now. Conversion is more than just letting go of the beliefs you’ve had before. It has to be more than that. After all, being a Pagan is more than just not being a Christian.

What I want to know is – How does a Christian become a Pagan, and how do Pagans help Christian converts through that process?

With conversion to Christianity, the convert must engage in a process of developing a relationship with their God, with Jesus and with (in some sects) the Holy Spirit. The relationship is key. It’s where it all begins, and – as the belief goes – it’s where it all ends, too.

What, then, with Pagans? Are we not to develop relationships with our Gods and Goddesses, too? That seems like a natural parallel. But, how do we do that, exactly? What do we reference to teach us about how our Gods and Goddesses are working in the world — TODAY.

Christians have the Bible. It’s a useful tool in starting the conversation about how their God engaged with humanity in the past, and it can springboard Christians into an exposition of how their God is interacting with humanity in the present. There are inconsistencies in the text, yes, but it’s a starting point.

Why don’t Pagans have these kind of stories?

From what I’ve learned, there is literary fiction, poetry, historical record, and ample text on ritual practices. That’s what Pagans are working with. But, we don’t have a book, a volume, a testament which says — “This is what (insert god or goddess) said to me about the nature of reality, the place of humankind in the larger scheme of things, the will of the Divine. This is an account of my God/Goddess interacting with humanity. These words are holy, because they come from the Being whom I worship.”

There are the old myths, and these myths do much to inform our knowledge of ancient cultures; cultures which have been replaced many times over with new cultures, and new myths. They allow the Reconstructionists in our midst to have a go at forming something that resembles the “Old Ways.” But what do these old myths tell us about those Gods and Goddess as they exist in the world today?

This is what it boils down to for me. These very old Gods and Goddesses must be working in the world — this world — if they’re worth building a religion around. They have to be real in order to be deserving of altars, shrines, devotees. They have to be doing something in this place, otherwise they’re just characters in old stories, no different from Captain Ahab, Don Quixote, or Robin Hood.

Clearly, having been enculturated into Christianity, I have a need for finding some immediate relationship with the Divine, and perhaps Pagans reading this will tell me that this sort of relationship is unnecessary, or distinctly Christian. If that’s case, perhaps I’m not cut out to be a Pagan after all.

But, for the moment, I’d like to ask my fellow Pagans — especially those who, like me, didn’t start out as Pagans — the following question:

If the Gods and Goddesses are real and present in the world, where do we turn to hear their voices? Do they speak, as does the God of the Christians? If so, are we listening?

I’ve yet to find a Pagan perspective being voiced in books or blogs that speaks to these questions of conversion from Christianity to Paganism. If you have, please share them with me in the comment section, and share any insights you’d like to offer. It would be nice to know that I’m not alone in feeling this way.

Then, feel free to share this post with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, or your network of choice.

Rules Of Reverence: The Sacred And The Silly

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My grandma says in Spanish, “¡Jesus!” whenever someone sneezes. Its the cutest thing. The “-soos” part of the word is always pitched just a little bit higher than the “heh-“.

“Heh-soos!”

I love it.

My husband and I were over for dinner recently, and after a sneeze and a ‘soos, I said jokingly, and in English:

“Jesus!”

She laughed a little, and then got a scolding expression on her face.

“Mateo…”

It was funny, though. Saying “Jesus” after a sneeze is funny. Who does that? I don’t think my grandma ever realized that she was saying the first name of the deity she’d been praying to all her life after each sneeze. Not until, that is, I said the word in English.

“JESUS!”

The irreverence was titillating, even for my 80 year old, Catholic grandmother.

What Are The Rules Of Reverence?

In exploring the idea of using Gods for our own purposes, I wrote that we need to respect the Gods we worship. We need be weary of commodifying them; turning them into an essential oil, or a hair product. They aren’t designed to meet our needs. That isn’t how it works. They, like us, may have areas of expertise. But who wants to be treated like they’re just a resource, and little more? I know I don’t, and I wouldn’t imagine a Divine Being would either.

I received a number of insightful comments to this post which reminded me of the importance of humor and mirth in ritual. Stodgy religion? Bo-ring. Its important for a community of people (i.e. Pagans) who actively engage with the world as thought it is a magical place, populated by unseen, mythical, fanciful creatures, to keep it light. Don’t take yourself so seriously, prancing around in your serape or cloak. Its a little laugh-worthy, what we do, remember.

[An admission: I’m a kilt-wearing, cloak owning, Renaissance festival attending Pagan, myself. I’m all about the dress-up, and I know the difference between a role-play game and religion. I’m just sayin’ – we’ve got to keep things in context.]

But how, then, are we to find an acceptable standard of reverence? What does it mean to be a reverent, devout, polytheist Pagan?

Sometimes I Miss My Dogma

Beware the oncoming Pagan blasphemy: There’s something to be said for dogmatic structures. They’re kind of useful in holding a group of people to a standard. Dogma ain’t always a bad thing.

Unless it is, or course. The universe is expansive in ways we can’t even fathom, and our little attempts at packaging it up and labeling it always fall short. Our dogma, right as we may think it, is always, from another perspective, wrong. Its also used to subjugate, alienate, judge, and suppress countless forms of natural, healthy, human expression.

But even when its wrong, it has a purpose.

Rules Are Made To Be Broken

What I loved about being surrounded by dogma was that I had the option – the inner freedom – to resist it. If I decided, on my own accord, that the dogma was bunk, I could make that known. Sure, that might alienate me from those who accepted it blindly. But at least it was something for me to engage with. I could argue with it, one way or the other.

Now, as I float down this amorphous Pagan river, I have nothing concrete to argue with. No dogma? No dogma to resist. This is, for many Pagans, a point of pride. We’re proud that we aren’t subject to an oppressive, dogmatic monolith. We’re free, right?

But rules will eventually form. They do so organically. Even in an open Wiccan circle there are a whole set of unspoken rules of how to act, how not to act, and those rules are enforced explicitly or implicitly. Either way, they’re there. And its natural for them to be there. That’s what happens when people form community. They form rules of engagement; standards of practice, and systems of shared belief.

Rules matter for something. I don’t accept that in order to be Pagan, to walk a Druid path (for myself), or to take part in any other tradition that we must throw all sense of structure to the wind.

The question is, how do we find a balance between our desire for personal freedom and the legitimate need to have a standard measurement in our community?

Say It In Spanish

“Jesus”, for my adorable grandma, means something different in Spanish, post-sneeze, than it does when she’s saying the word in her rosary. The context and the usage determine what is appropriate and what isn’t. While she has a sneaky sense of humor, and she did appreciate my irreverent act, she was also made a little uncomfortable by it. It came a bit too close to what is, for her, a very sacred idea. I respect that, and after the joke had been made a few times, I dropped it.

Her example, though, is useful for the modern Pagan, seeking to find balance between reverence and irreverence. What does it mean to be a devout Pagan? Know yourself. Know what those lines are for you. Understand the topography of your own inner spiritual world, and hold true to that. Then, when an irreverent joke is lobbed your way, you can see where it lands and you’ll have perspective as to how much damage it could actually do.

Mirth, humor, playfulness – these things all work to counter-balance our sense of reverence and serious religious expression. They give light to another side of that expression; a crucial side. They’re the bird call and the puppy bark. They are the millions of ways that the Sacred intersects with the Ordinary, imbuing it with magic. Reverence is remembering that both sides serve a purpose; they serve one another. The Ordinary and the Sacred are kin.

Call A God, Then Grab A Tissue

So next time you sneeze, say “¡Heh-soos!,” or, “Ganesha!” Then, laugh a little and remind yourself that even the most devout, sincere religious person looks a little silly in their garb and getup. The silliness is a sacred part of the process. Be silly. Be reverent. Then…

“HEH-SOOS!”

Bless you…

If you found this silly post to be entertaining or insightful, please tweet it or Facebook share it with your friends. As always, your comments are welcome here. I’d love to know how you balance the sacred and the silly!