Reflections on my faith, part 2....
May. 31st, 2011 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poltr1There was a lot more I could have put into my previous post. But I wanted to stay on the topic and question at hand.
How did I get involved with paganism? (I use a lower-case p because I view paganism as an umbrella-term encompassing many earth-based belief systems; it's not a belief system in and of itself.) In 1987, the brother of a former friend of mine was speaking in hushed tones about something called "The Craft". He didn't elaborate, but I know I felt fear around what he was saying. Fast forward to 1993. I was dating a Wiccan (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amazon_42). One day, the topic of faith came up in conversation. She then took me to Anything Under The Moon, a local pagan store. She borrowed a tape from their library, we went home, and she had me sit down and watch. Most of what I "knew" was based on misconception. I have since become part of the local and regional pagan communities.
Who is Patt Huttsell? She is the mother of one of my friends here in Dayton. We met last fall when she and her husband flew in from Utah to help her daughter and son-in-law move to a new house. The only topic on which we seem to butt heads is religion. Here is an example of one of our skirmishes, from her Facebook page, dated May 25, 2011.
Patt: "I am a Christian and proud of it and I DEMAND my civil liberties be respected and that my choice be honored and that all of you that are NOT Christian get out of my space. If you choose to believe in something or someone or nothing else so be it, but I am not going to be Politically Correct anymore. You have trampled my faith long enough FELLOW CHRISTIANS ARISE"
Me: "I am a Witch. I want the same for myself and my kind."
Patt: "So be it but not at the expense of mine or anyone else's"
(Gad, speaking those 4 words is so empowering.)
How do I perceive God? I believe there are both masculine and feminine aspects of Deity. The early Catholics -- the oldest of old boys' networks -- dispensed with the feminine aspect of Deity altogether and made their God masculine, just like them. I believe that what we humans have come to call God is a collective of spirits -- past, present, and future. And there is part of that "divine spark" within me. That part was never taught to me in CCD classes.
I should mention my first wedding, in 1999, tomariasmom. She is also Wiccan, but is a solitary. We had the marriage ceremony at a Unitarian church -- the same one I belong to now. We even wrote the script of the ceremony. My best man, and still one of my best and closest friends, is a Sikh. Two of my Jewish friends met at the reception and conspired to do the Hora for us. That's the dance where the bridge and groom are seated in chairs, lifted, and carried around the room aloft. And we all did the Time Warp together. Sadly, she and I grew part soon after my daughter was born. She moved out in the fall of 2006 and divorced me soon after.
In a future post, I want to post something that another good friend of mine wrote back in 1993 about his and his family's experiences with Pat Robertson and his 700 Club. I need to get his permission to repost it, and make any necessary edits.
I also want to mention that I like the woodcut on this page: http://www.executedtoday.com/2011/02/14/1554-david-van-der-leyen-and-levina-ghyselius-anabaptist-martyrs/. It's an engraving from Jan Luiken's Martyrs Mirror, and it depicts someone being burned at the stake while their inquisitor is poking them with a forked stick. I don't believe *anyone* should be killed solely because of their faith. (Although I'll admit that Fred Phelps and his minions from the Westboro Baptist Church are pushing that boundary.) I often compare the Burning Times to the Holocaust. if I had lived in Europe at the time of WW II, I too would have been sent to the concentration camps and their gas chambers, because I'm a member of at least one of the groups that Hitler tried to exterminate. This is why the phrase "NEVER AGAIN" holds special significance and resonance with me.
Oh yeah. On my car is a single bumper sticker with two pentacles -- 5-pointed stars inside a circle -- and the words "Religious freedom means ANY religion".
I am blessed to have such a wealth of religious diversity among my circle of friends.
How did I get involved with paganism? (I use a lower-case p because I view paganism as an umbrella-term encompassing many earth-based belief systems; it's not a belief system in and of itself.) In 1987, the brother of a former friend of mine was speaking in hushed tones about something called "The Craft". He didn't elaborate, but I know I felt fear around what he was saying. Fast forward to 1993. I was dating a Wiccan (
amazon_42). One day, the topic of faith came up in conversation. She then took me to Anything Under The Moon, a local pagan store. She borrowed a tape from their library, we went home, and she had me sit down and watch. Most of what I "knew" was based on misconception. I have since become part of the local and regional pagan communities.Who is Patt Huttsell? She is the mother of one of my friends here in Dayton. We met last fall when she and her husband flew in from Utah to help her daughter and son-in-law move to a new house. The only topic on which we seem to butt heads is religion. Here is an example of one of our skirmishes, from her Facebook page, dated May 25, 2011.
Patt: "I am a Christian and proud of it and I DEMAND my civil liberties be respected and that my choice be honored and that all of you that are NOT Christian get out of my space. If you choose to believe in something or someone or nothing else so be it, but I am not going to be Politically Correct anymore. You have trampled my faith long enough FELLOW CHRISTIANS ARISE"
Me: "I am a Witch. I want the same for myself and my kind."
Patt: "So be it but not at the expense of mine or anyone else's"
(Gad, speaking those 4 words is so empowering.)
How do I perceive God? I believe there are both masculine and feminine aspects of Deity. The early Catholics -- the oldest of old boys' networks -- dispensed with the feminine aspect of Deity altogether and made their God masculine, just like them. I believe that what we humans have come to call God is a collective of spirits -- past, present, and future. And there is part of that "divine spark" within me. That part was never taught to me in CCD classes.
I should mention my first wedding, in 1999, to
mariasmom. She is also Wiccan, but is a solitary. We had the marriage ceremony at a Unitarian church -- the same one I belong to now. We even wrote the script of the ceremony. My best man, and still one of my best and closest friends, is a Sikh. Two of my Jewish friends met at the reception and conspired to do the Hora for us. That's the dance where the bridge and groom are seated in chairs, lifted, and carried around the room aloft. And we all did the Time Warp together. Sadly, she and I grew part soon after my daughter was born. She moved out in the fall of 2006 and divorced me soon after.In a future post, I want to post something that another good friend of mine wrote back in 1993 about his and his family's experiences with Pat Robertson and his 700 Club. I need to get his permission to repost it, and make any necessary edits.
I also want to mention that I like the woodcut on this page: http://www.executedtoday.com/2011/02/14/1554-david-van-der-leyen-and-levina-ghyselius-anabaptist-martyrs/. It's an engraving from Jan Luiken's Martyrs Mirror, and it depicts someone being burned at the stake while their inquisitor is poking them with a forked stick. I don't believe *anyone* should be killed solely because of their faith. (Although I'll admit that Fred Phelps and his minions from the Westboro Baptist Church are pushing that boundary.) I often compare the Burning Times to the Holocaust. if I had lived in Europe at the time of WW II, I too would have been sent to the concentration camps and their gas chambers, because I'm a member of at least one of the groups that Hitler tried to exterminate. This is why the phrase "NEVER AGAIN" holds special significance and resonance with me.
Oh yeah. On my car is a single bumper sticker with two pentacles -- 5-pointed stars inside a circle -- and the words "Religious freedom means ANY religion".
I am blessed to have such a wealth of religious diversity among my circle of friends.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-05-31 02:45 pm (UTC)So be it but not at the expense of mine or anyone else's
Yes, because Christians are so persecuted. :-P
no subject
Date: 2011-05-31 04:28 pm (UTC)