Every day I visit a few blogs that I would find it hard to live without, and numerous times during the week I venture out and try to give encouragement to other bloggers I’m not so familiar with but who’ve joined in on one of the blogging carnivals I participate in.
Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by the fact that the majority of the bloggers in all of my carnivals are devoutly christian women. Not “casual” christians, but very VERY devout women. There’s a full range of them; from the sweet graceful women who thank God for little things and turn to Him in times of need, to the ones who have biblical quotes about how filthy and sinful we are in their blog’s headers and even ticking, counting tolls of how many souls have gone to Hell just in the time I’ve had their blog page loaded. Their commenters are mostly christian also, ranging from a simple “I’m praying for you” to saying that this week’s shooting at Virginia Tech happened because God is persecuting us all for being so sinful; that the shooter’s hand was actually God’s hand striking down the children at Virginia Tech, rather than the concious choice of one man to carry out something so heinous.
Sometimes it’s intimidating, because there are some things I’d like to join in on but I really feel like I’m not Christian enough. Like tonight, I found two memes about being thankful: Thankful Thursdays and One Thousand Gifts. I’ve been wanting to start putting things that I’m thankful for every day onto my blog and have been looking for a way to do it that wouldn’t bore my readers to death. (I don’t have many, but would like to keep the ones I have!) Looking around those two beautiful blogs and seeing all of the quoted Scripture, the general feel of the blog… I just get the feeling that they wouldn’t want me around. Because I’m not Christian enough.
I had a friend once who believed that all people were Christians; it’s just that some were what she called “Pre-Christian”. Christian in their hearts but not yet saved. It was a sweet sentiment. Whenever I see someone online blaming pagans for all of the world’s ills and just generally going down that “pagan/Wiccan=evil satanist” path (which is a misnomer; Wiccans don’t believe in Hell or the Devil so they cannot therefore be satanists), I think back to my old friend and her attitude of loving everyone and just seeing all people as God’s children. It makes me feel a little better.
You see, I do consider myself to be a pagan. I completely embrace the Wiccan crede, “an if it harm noone, do as thou wilt”. I have a Wiccan name (Raven), and my husband and I were married in a Wiccan ceremony by a High Priestess. However, I also consider myself to be Christian. My husband and I call it “Chriccan”, this multi-religious place that we find ourselves in. If hard-pressed or challenged though, I just say I’m Wiccan and deal with the recoil and judgement. It’s a lot quicker than trying to explain that I believe in God, I believe in the Ten Commandments, I believe God is all around us and in us and through us and every living thing, and that if you were to sum up the Ten Commandments into one sentence it would be the Wiccan crede… and then at the end have the person recoil and judge me because I mentioned the word Wiccan. I’ve had people literally step off of my front porch and make the sign of the cross, looking at me as if they expected me to turn green and instantly grow warts, just because I said “I’m Wiccan”.
I’ve delved into many different religions, even going so far as to take a Buddhism & Hinduism class in college, and what I’ve come to find is that at the base of all religions, one basic truth stands out: as long as you are causing no one harm, live your life to the fullest, thankful that God (Allah, Buddha, whatever name you choose to call God) has given you this gift of life. Taken at first glance that seems superficial, but if you think about all of the ways that one could cause “harm” to another, there are a myriad of them. Physical, emotional, mental, financial, relational, spiritual - the list goes on. Don’t take it at first glance; think deeply about it. The simple sentence of “an if it harm noone, do as thou wilt” goes as deep as you’re willing to take it; if you can knock down the walls within yourself and confront the dark places lurking in your heart. All of the Ten Commandments spelled out, each of them, say basically that: don’t do harm to another.
For me, spirituality and a relationship with God can’t be found in a book. It can’t be found by listening to one man’s interpretation, no matter how fancy or simple the podium is that he’s standing at. All of the different interpretations of the Bible by the different branches of Christianity, by the different “leaders” of Christianity, even by the writers of the Bible themselves - they just confuse the issue, muddy it up. There are contradictions within the Bible itself, between the different authors of the different “books”. Look at Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans - get them together and they’d literally argue about hundreds of “meanings” of what other Men wrote in the Bible. Pope John Paul said that homosexuality was a sin, yet Pope Benedict is considering saying it’s okay. It used to be that women couldn’t be Priests or ministers “because God said so” (where in the Ten Commandments is that?), yet now you’ll find female ministers, reverends, preachers and priests everywhere. (I know a lifelong lesbian in Florida who is in a long-term relationship with another woman and who is also a nun. Yes, a real-life, title-given-by-the-church [knowing she is lesbian] nun. Twenty, even ten years ago she was shunned by her Catholic church, now they give her the title of Nun. How is that? If something is Truth, then it cannot simply change because a different Man has taken up the robes of the faith and declared it to be different. What God meant is what God meant. The Catholics used to excommunicate women who were divorced, even if they did it out of the safety of themselves and their family due to abuse; yet now they embrace divorcees. Why is it that a prior “Truth” is suddenly okay? The only answer I can find is that somewhere along the line, a Man made up these rules, and somewhere further along the line, another Man revoked them. God himself, I believe, would have nothing to say on the subject. A mother’s job is to raise up and protect her children. If that means leaving an abusive husband, so be it. She is protecting God’s children (which includes herself!) from the free will of a Man who chooses to do Harm.
By this time I’ve probably chased away half of my readers; I hope that’s not the case.
It’s just that when I see these devoutly -and sometimes radically- Christian blogs, I feel like an outsider. I delight in seeing these women expressing their faith, I love watching them glow with it. It is beautiful. But I constantly find myself over on that line of “fringe”, for many different things (such as homeschooling, or homebirthing, or even breastfeeding), and my spirituality is one of them. It’s a lonely place to be, sometimes.
I guess for now I’ll just do a sideblog whenever the urge to be thankful for something hits me, and know in my heart that God *knows* me. All of my quirks, my faults, my weaknesses, and even my multi-religious belief that we’re all praying to the same God no matter what name we give him, and at the core of it all He just wants us to be the best people that we can be. I might be unable to express my spirituality properly in words, but I feel it in my heart; and if it’s there, then He feels it, too. I know he understands me; and after all, that’s all that matters.
What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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