2 posts tagged “faith”

(Cross-posted on my LJ)

I read an LJ post on a comm called nonfluffypagans about whether it was elitist of a specific group of Native Americans wanting nothing about their religion to be taught or discussed with those who are not tribal members.

I personally agree with the first commenter, who said, "A religion belongs to those who believe and practice it. They make the rules."

(Completely off-topic, I also agree with the later commenter who said, about Paganism, "...you've got a religion that regards cakes, beer and sex as a GOOD THING, if not actively sacred. The benefits should be so obvious that evangelism risks attracting the wrong sort of people."  But I digress.)

Part of why I've been so neglectful of my Vox, which is where I began chronicling the religious aspects of my life (besides having a new full-time job, as well as a houseful of kids home for summer vacation and plenty of critters to clean up after), is that my personal beliefs and practices are undergoing something of a metamorphosis.  I'm not entirely sure that my personal religion can be termed Wicca anymore, although there are certainly more similarities than differences.  However, it's not something I am at all compelled to share, or even really interested in discussing, with others. 

An online friend recently blogged something that suits me very well:

If you're a grown-up walking around with unexamined and unchallenged personal beliefs about the nature of the world, life, our relationships with one another (particularly politics, ethics and religion) and with other living things, if you haven't stopped to check and challenge those beliefs as hard as you can and don't have a basis for why you hold them, then you're doing yourself and those you love a major disservice, and I for one can't trust you.

One of the things that I appreciate most about the best of Pagan faiths is that they don't teach that you should rely upon faith; they teach that you should forever question what you learn, what you experience, what you are told, and what you believe.  There is no exclusively sacred text that all Pagans uphold as the word of the gods; there is nothing written in stone to become the focus for fundamentalists who forbid questioning and curiosity.  There is no One True Way.

When I first began learning about Wicca in my teens, I made the same mistake that many seekers do -- I didn't question a lot of things, and readily accepted that things are done a certain way for a good (yet unexplained) reason, or due to tradition (which should be continued unquestioned).  But my own inherent curiosity (my mother says my first complete sentence was, "What's the difference between this and that?") prompted me to start questioning.  This did not make me entirely popular with the local Pagans I knew at the time...or any Pagans, since.

Then again, popularity has never been one of my goals.  *cheeky grin*  And while there are some practices in my personal faith that have remained unchanged for many years, it's because those particular practices make sense (at least to me) and they work (at least for me).  If there's an unofficial "commandment" of Pagan faiths, it's probably the notion that "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Asking the question "why" can be a very touchy situation.  I can't even begin to count the number of times that someone has reacted defensively or angrily when I've asked them "why" -- because they misinterpreted my asking as questioning or doubting their beliefs or judgment, rather than my simple curiosity to discover the reasons behind something.  (And yes, my tone of voice or the particular phrasing I used in my questioning may have made a difference, as I've never won any awards for tact, either.)  It gets real old, real fast, to constantly have to preface your curious inquiries with, "I don't want to start an argument or make you feel uncomfortable, I just want to understand the reasons for this statement/opinion."  When it gets to the point that I feel I should just have a badge made up with an Official Disclaimer, I start becoming incredibly selective about who I'll ask "why" regarding anything!  (Even if that means bringing an interesting conversation to a screeching halt, because I simply have no interest in pussy-footing around someone's prickliness or stumbling into someone's drama-o-rama fest.)

But asking the question "why" is important and necessary, too.  If you can't question the "why" of something inside your own head or heart, you are basically being stupid on purpose -- and that's not something you should ever do without a damned good reason.  I'm not one to promote stupidity for any reason, but there are a few issues I consciously choose to remain ignorant or uninformed regarding, because I do have very good reasons to do so.  However, none of these issues involve religious faith or beliefs.

Although I've spent most of my life being "TMI Girl," a few months ago I came to the conclusion that my personal religious beliefs and practices weren't things I wanted to share any longer.  Not because I'm not proud of them, or because I don't feel they can stand up to scrutiny -- just the opposite, actually.  As I said, they make sense to me and they work for me.  But I just don't feel it's my job to "spread the good word," or justify what I believe, or even try to explain it to anyone who isn't an emotionally intimate and trusted friend.  I'll continue to question myself and my beliefs, and you can question anything you like -- including me and my beliefs.  But that doesn't mean I have to answer any and all questions put to me, if I don't care to.

It used to be the standard of polite society that politics, sex, and religion were Just Not Discussed for the most part.  Somewhere along the way, that changed...and now it seems that everyone, everywhere in America, finds it acceptable -- or even admirable -- to be "TMI Girl/Guy" about not only those topics, but any topic.  It's as though "good taste" not only became unfashionable, but thought of as rather archaic and ridiculous.  But that's not how I view it...so I think I'll take a stab at reinstating good taste, in at least my little corner of the world, at least in my little religious beliefs.

I started this blog about 7 months ago, and soon thereafter decided to focus it mainly on spirituality (since I have an LJ for silly memes/quizzes, and a regular blog for everything else).  Possibly part of why I went a little crazy here on the Wiccan topics in recent months was a vague uncertainty as to exactly what I believe -- in the sense that I've been practicing Wicca for at least 12 years, and I'm extremely knowledgeable and experienced in most aspects of it, but wanted to define more precisely what it all means to me, to clarify various aspects of it for myself.  In many ways, I feel an abject lack of identification with, or sense of "belonging" to, any particular Wiccan group or tradition.  Over the years, I've occasionally questioned whether I'm actually Wiccan...but have largely chosen to stick with that label as a "default setting" -- because I feel even less identification with any other type of Pagan group that I've heard of, or researched.  Although my personal deities are from the Norse pantheon, I don't feel a connection with Ásatrú or the other Northern European Pagan trads -- and I definitely don't like the idea of using any language that I don't understand in religious rites.  (Sometimes I think I'd be Discordian if I took my faith less seriously than I do!)

Belonging is rather a big deal to me.  For much of my life, I've felt that I didn't belong, in one way or another...so when I do feel a sense of belonging, I tend to be fiercely loyal and protective toward whatever (or whomever) engenders that feeling in me (when it's a person, I tend to be so loyal and devoted that -- as my beloved Geoffrey says -- I'm a "pit bull of love").  The most sense of belonging I've ever had in my religion/faith was within the CUEW, but that's not so much a tradition as a set of guidelines and doctrines; the CUEW doesn't have a litany of rituals or other specific outlines to follow (not that I'd follow them exactly, anyway, but it's nice to have a framework to personalize from).

In any case, I've given a fair amount of thought over the years (since before my Priestess initiation in April 1997, actually) to developing my own specific Pagan tradition -- one that, while adapting many Wiccan themes and some of the mythos, wouldn't/couldn't be defined as a Wiccan tradition because of certain divergent ideas/beliefs.  I actually had a collection of rituals, prayers/meditations, and other writings key to my personal tradition on the harddrive of my very first computer (a Tandy 386), which -- as luck (fate?) would have it -- slagged down and left the data completely inaccessible before I had printed or saved it on disk.  I've never been interested in figuring out if there was some kind of "reason" that happened -- I prefer to be practical and consider it a lesson in backing up data, and nothing more.

(I just lost a couple of really good paragraphs quite stupidly.  Don't trust that "Recover" button, people -- at least, not without copying & pasting what you've got in front of you to Notepad first.  Just don't.  And gee, the "Recover" button put me right back at the spot where I was talking about backing up data?  I really hate it when it seems the gods are laughing at me.)

Anyway, some of the stuff I lost to the "Recover" button had to do with not being interested in teaching or publishing my personal practices.  I learned many years ago that I'm not a good teacher or effective leader...although I do a fair imitation of a decent mentor.  *grin*  And my understanding is that a tradition (in the Wiccan/Pagan sense of the term) isn't actually a tradition until it's been studied and practiced by someone who learned from the originator (and some even add "and passed it on to yet another person").  So I wouldn't be developing a tradition, just a set of personal practices and ideology.  It would simply be something that would have, thoroughly and deeply, a "rightness" and sense of "belonging" for me personally.

There was more, but my brain has reached the point where I'm too tired and run-down to be decently coherent.  Maybe later this weekend...