Occasionally, the topic of religion will come up and usually I finesse by saying I’m spiritual rather than religious. Or I claim to be neo-pagan.
But
what on earth do I mean by a pagan spirituality?
Foremost,
the claim to be pagan is to place myself in opposition to Christianity and the
other major religions. What religion means to me is rules that diminish and constrict the human spirit, and Christianity means sects that have
murdered too many people for centuries.
The
problem is that a discussion of a spirituality requires having certain
believables: what happens when you die, can my goddess whip your god, can you
recite your catechism. As I thought about this I realized that a religion may
not need to have a certain shape. It may not need to be a set of beliefs you
nail together.
I like
pagan culture, the solstices and equinoxes, the natural world. I wish I could
worship Brigid and Artemis and Cernunnos in an oak grove. I have an eclectic
and even contradictory spirituality with pieces of Greek and Celtic mythology,
Shamanism and Seth-ism. I like
referencing the witchery of 70’s dykedom and saying Blessed Be. I like the old
roots of Halloween, Easter and Imbolc. I like candles and stones and folk songs and symbols and eerie music with drums. I like remembering some rituals full of
candlelight and incense from growing up, but these days I make up my own rituals
when I feel a need.
What I
also have is a certain defensiveness about all this which comes from knowing
that I am a lazy pagan since my belief system isn’t all that coherent and I don’t
always perform it. Some years I make a point of eating only seeds and nuts on
Imbolc and some years I don’t. I’m not an observant pagan.
I’ve
had experiences that raised the hair on my neck when they ripped through
the fabric of the predictable world to bring undeniable notice of something
else. Not a lot, but unforgettable.
In a
piece of coincidental serendipity, I came across an excerpt from Ronald
Dworkin’s soon-to-be-released book, Religion
Without God, in the New York Review (April
4, 2013) as I was mulling through this essay. Dworkin takes very seriously the kind of questions I only half-guessed to ask. Dworkin begins by writing: “The familiar stark divide between people of religion and without religion is too crude.” I’ve never been very
interested in the spate of books emerging from the current American religious
belligerence. Dworkin: “Scholars
devote careers to refuting what once seemed, among those who enthusiastically
buy their books, too silly to refute.”
I think my disinterest is because I know
– not very articulately, but I know – that a Christian believer’s faith will
not be shaken by some discovery that there were never stables in Bethlehem or
a tax registration called by Caesar Augustus. A godly religious faith is a culture like a vine, a vine that
roots itself in so many segments that cutting off one stem will never destroy it or even cause any damage. Discovering that Jesus never changed wine at the wedding
didn’t lose me my religion – it was discovering the reality of the Inquisition
and that the church was still making excuses for it 400 years later. It was a
matter of values. Dworkin writes about that.
I find
it important to understand the connection between spiritual insight and values
so that I don’t throw out the bathwater along with the Baby Jesus. I’m not a fan of
the word religion, it’s too
rule-ridden in my mind, but Dworkin uses it responsibly and artfully in what
I’ve read so far, and I'm looking forward to the book.
Gemstone: Prasiolite
