Social Justice on the Interwebs

Apparently, I'm becoming one of those feminists who thinks the younger generation of up-and-coming feminists are really screwing the pooch.

Not because they want to dress too provocatively or do "girly" things that put them right back in traditional roles of subservience (though in the Pagan community, I still have to question the frequency with which females -- much more than males -- describe their relationships with gods in terms of bondage, slavery or servitude, and I'd really like to see an intelligent discussion of why this is, instead of a knee-jerk defensiveness that says, "If it's okay in BDSM among humans, it must therefore be completely healthy in a relationship with deity".... but I'm getting off my point, if only just).

I'm annoyed with them because they are so completely clueless about how to do effective social justice work. Nobody's educating them on the difference between heuristics that work in the context of a university classroom, and what works in the real world when you're actually having to engage with people who don't already agree with you and who might be very invested in and maybe even reliant on the current system that you're trying to challenge. On top of that, we have all these new tools now, through social networking and online media. As a culture, we're pretty terrible at using these tools for effective, respectful communication even on a normal basis to talk to friends, and we've been abysmal failures at using it for the more difficult work of social justice.

That's what had me going last night, talking to Jeff after dinner. The result when you take people who have no education or experience in what makes effective social justice work, and who haven't bothered to study or take seriously the successes of the people who came before them and figure out what works and what doesn't... and then those folks run wild on social media, where all of our vices get compounded and miscommunication is even harder to avoid and everybody is much more prone to projections and assumptions about others.... and it's no wonder that what you end up with is not social justice work at all, but LIBERAL BULLIES AND TROLLS.

Maybe I'm old-school. I obsessively studied the writings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr, both of whom sustained successful social justice campaigns in a large population for years and made substantial, lasting change for the better in their communities. Their techniques and insights are still being applied worldwide, and in other countries social media is even helping to enhance those techniques by effectively connecting people and helping them coordinate protests and sit-ins and other forms of nonviolent civil disobedience. You can see why these approaches are effective, and a recent survey of violent versus nonviolent revolutions showed that nonviolent ones were twice as likely to "stick" and make real, lasting change. Because violence provokes further violence.

And this is true online as well, where trolling and bullying behavior tends to escalate. This is basic social justice stuff, here. It quite literally doesn't matter what side you're on or what ideology you're trying to promote. If you do it through bullying and using physically or emotionally aggressive or abusive techniques, you will succeed in provoking further violence. And provoking further violence will almost always lead people to hunker down and invest further in the current system. Again, this is regardless of what your ideology is or what system you're trying to change. When people feel threatened, they cling to the familiar. Shouting at them won't change their minds, it only serves to polarize people, causing them to cling more deeply to whatever beliefs they already hold. And even if you are successful in overthrowing a system temporarily by force, the use of force on your part only serves to justify, in the minds of the people you have deposed, that you are a dangerous element who needs to be put down quickly and the previous order restored.

This is why people like Gandhi and King had two basic techniques that they always used, no matter what:

(a) In-person gatherings of nonviolent citizens participating in acts of civil disobedience by passively resisting unjust laws (which meant, very often, allowing themselves to be jailed for breaking those laws -- but not fighting back, resisting arrest or responding with violence, physical, verbal or emotional).

(b) Mutual respect. Gandhi was so well known for his adherence to the spiritual principle of mutual respect that he often ended up being friends with the police officers and prison guards who were supposed to be his oppressors. He refused to respond to their attempts to demean and dehumanize him by doing the same to them, and it worked. People who complain that of course Gandhi was able to work with the British to secure India's independence, because the British liked him so much, are totally missing the point that this was exactly the goal of the techniques Gandhi used -- a way of ensuring that nobody was the "enemy" and nobody "lost," but that a peaceful resolution could be reached that satisfied everyone.

I've used this technique myself, many times, during protests in college and afterwards. Even during times that had nothing to do with social justice but just involved people getting into fights and nearly coming to blows. More than once, I stepped between two people who were bigger and stronger than me, who had their fists clenched and were ready to starting punching, and I was able to de-escalate the situation using techniques of nonviolence and satyagraha.

But what nonviolent social justice work does not involve is mob-mentality harassment and bullying of individuals because we don't like something they did or said. And that's where I think younger feminists and social justice advocates online are really fucking up. Too often, what happens online is not mutual respect, it's not even "speaking truth to power." It's bitching about the powerful amongst ourselves, and then ganging up and harassing those whom we see as powerful out of some warped belief that people in power are not individuals (especially when they're online) but representatives of the systems that we disagree with.

In the real world, this kind of behavior has failed over and over again to accomplish any real, lasting change towards social justice. It's about as effective as a group of people drinking beer and riling each other up in the local pub before grabbing pitchforks and torches and marching off to mob the gates of the local rich man's castle. That is pretty much the definition of violent rebellion, rather than nonviolent revolution, and it violates both of the fundamental techniques that made Gandhi and King so successful.

The internet affords us so many opportunities to speak out and have our voices heard. Yes, there are still gatekeepers and large-scale aggregators who determine what gets promoted and what doesn't -- the irony is that most of those choices are being made behind-the-scenes by computer algorithms now, which tend to favor what is already popular, helping to reinforce the disparity between celebrity and non-celebrity and leaving some people feeling ignored or oppressed without really even being able to pinpoint why or who is doing the oppressing. Everybody is struggling to figure out how to effectively use this technology to both promote communication and community involvement and carve out safe, personal spaces online for themselves.

We have to stop thinking of online space as just one big empty public square where we have the right to go up to anyone in any medium and knock them around because we're angry at them for what they represent. I am not comfortable with online campaigns of harassment and bullying -- even in the name of liberal causes -- because we already know those techniques don't work. I am really against them when they're directed at individuals, but I think they can be problematic even when directed against corporations. Why? Because even a corporation's Facebook page or Twitter feed is maintained by somebody, an individual, and I will bet you any amount of money that the individual on the receiving end of harassing messages and emails is not directly responsible for the injustice that their company is perpetrating. Now, they might be a jerk anyway, they might really believe in what their company is doing and justify it.... but one thing's for sure: you don't know who they are, but you do know that their livelihood is dependent upon the company that you're attacking and barraging with hate-mail. Which means they are much more likely to respond by hunkering down and defending the company all the more resolutely in the face of violence. Which means you just lost a potential ally.

Gandhi and King understood that every place of interface between the oppressive system and the people being oppressed was an opportunity to make an ally. The police officers who beat you and imprisoned you could be won over through mutual respect even in the face of brutality -- and now you have an ally and you're making headway. The individual waitresses who serve the coffee at the whites-only café might not have a horse in the segregation race -- so you sit there breaking the law by not being white, but you treat them with respect and understanding, and now you have an ally. Now the people who have feet on the ground, who are actually the people most directly involved in enacting and enforcing the injustices, can see that you're actually not the enemy, you're a good person trying to do the right thing, just like they are. Winning over the people on the frontlines of an oppressive system is the first step to dismantling that system. This works, and we know it works.

What doesn't work is sending anonymous or pseudonymous hate-mail to figureheads. What doesn't work is showing up at someone's house to throw rocks through their windows -- even if those rocks have "social justice" and "peace" written on them. And when you organize an online campaign to bombard an individual with hate-mail or spam their Facebook walls or Twitter feeds with trollish rants... you are effectively throwing rocks through that person's window. And they have every right to make their profile private and/or block you. Just like they would have the right to call the police because you're throwing rocks at their house, even if you were doing it "for a good cause."

Civil disobedience is about breaking the laws that matter, not breaking whatever laws you feel like because your anger has overruled your better judgement. Don't break laws -- or basic guidelines of respectful engagement -- just because you're angry and want to hurt someone, break them because the laws themselves are unjust. And respect the consequences of breaking laws or violating civil rules of social engagement when you do it. Don't turn around and whine about how unfair it is that everyone doesn't have the right to go around throwing rocks at whomever they want. Do you really want to live in a world where everybody feels justified throwing rocks at each other whenever they get angry? Is that the precedent you want to set, knowing full well that there are people out there with way bigger rocks than you?

I'm not the only one who feels this way. Maybe we can start having a conversation about how to engage in effective social justice work online at some point. I'm trying to be patient.


~
ETA: I think maybe one of the key insights here is that, as feminists have long pointed out, "the personal is the political." And so, as a corollary, you can't expect to make the world a better place unless you yourself become a better person. If you allow your desire to remake the world to become an end that justifies harmful or violent means... you're no better than the people you're trying to fight. ("And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?")

Spoons

Jeff and I started our Imbolc detox diet yesterday, which is just my luck since I was awake at 3 AM last night and couldn't fall back asleep for several hours. (Got some more Sherlock Holmes reading done, though.) Normally on a day following that, I'd rely heavily on something with caffeine in it... but I guess now I'm going to have to make due with watered-down green tea.

Can I just say... I really dislike when people talk about not having "spoons." The phrase originally came from an essay in which a woman was explaining to her friend (while they were having lunch together in a diner) what it was like to have Lupus, and she used the limited number of spoons on the table as a metaphor for how she had to manage her very limited energy resources just to get through a normal day. In the context of that story, it was a really good illustration of how hard it is to live with a largely "invisible" disease.

But most of the time when I see people using it, they just mean they're tired. Having to manage your time and energy is just something you have to do, no matter who you are. We all have to choose our priorities, and we all have to decide where our boundaries are and how long we're going to stay in a difficult, challenging or confrontational situation before we need to step back and regroup in our own space. This might be especially true for introverts, and I think it's really true for the time we spend online, since we can feel like we're alone even when we're interacting with people. So yeah, you can get tired, or realize you have other shit you need to do. You can even get blindsided by an emotionally-charged conversation in which you end up getting attacked for events that happened (and even some things that didn't happen) nearly two years ago and which, as far as you remember, were resolved pretty amicably at the time but now you find out someone has been nursing anger about it for years. But guess what? You still don't have Lupus.

I don't like how eager some people are to identify themselves as victims. This is one reason why I was never comfortable with calling myself a "witch," because I don't resonate with the archetype of the persecuted, misunderstood harlot-or-hag living on the edge of the village. I can show solidarity with people who are marginalized and work for social justice and inclusivity and equality... but I don't need to place myself in the position of being a victim. I feel like it's dishonest to identify as someone who is persecuted when I'm actually very privileged in many ways (and I felt that way back when I was working the night shift as a waitress in a shitty diner and living below the poverty line.... so yeah, if I'd ever had legitimate cause to identify with the marginalized it would have been then). And I don't feel comfortable using language that suggests my introvertedness or my need to manage my time and energy effectively is the same thing as having a debilitating disease. It'd be like me getting a bad head cold and saying, "Gosh, I feel like I have AIDS." Nope.

But I could even understand if it's just become easy shorthand for talking about time and energy management. What really bothers me is when it becomes an excuse to avoid dealing with the consequences of your actions. The original story is all about the careful planning that is demanded by having something like Lupus, how you can't take anything for granted but have to constantly think ahead about how you choices right now are going to affect your energy levels later on, and you have to make trade-offs that are worth making instead of squandering your energy and time on things that aren't really important.

But what I see happening sometimes instead is that someone will provoke a confrontation, and then use a "lack of spoons" as an excuse to disengage, to shut down conversation if anyone disagrees with them or challenges them. They'll flounce in, drop a drama-bomb and then play the victim if anybody dares to question that kind of behavior. They'll refuse to engage with anyone asking for something more substantial than their angrily defiant declaration that "I HAVE FEELS and it's your fault!"

You're out of spoons? Really? You certainly seemed to have plenty when you wrote that diatribe riddled with accusations and personal attacks.

Maybe you would have more spoons if you stopped chucking them at people like ninja throwing stars.

Nature Worship, Polytheism and the "Point" of Paganism

Sophia shared a link to Stifyn Emrys's post, "There's Far More to Paganism Than Worshipping Gods and Goddesses," in which Emrys responds to that post by P. Sufenas Virius Lupus on "bringing back the gods" that I linked to the other day but haven't had a chance to go back and read. If Emrys is being fair in his characterization of the main thrust of Lupus's argument, then I'm actually a bit concerned. I used to think of Lupus as a thoughtful, respectful writer — one of those reconstructionist polytheists (in company with folks like Erynn Rowan Laurie and some others) who can be intelligent and nuanced in their own theology and practice without feeling the need to tear down others or erect straw men to legitimize their own views.

Emrys's main point is that Paganism is (and I would add, always has been) much more complex than worship of "the old gods." This is so obvious, and to claim otherwise would be so contrary to historical fact — and we're talking recent history, here — that I find it disconcerting that someone like Lupus who supposedly takes his history very seriously could make a claim to the contrary. It seems that the claim that modern Paganism's "point" is to "bring back the gods" is a fabrication almost on par with the claim that it represents an unbroken lineage of the ancient Matriarchy, or that the Burning Times killed millions of women who were secretly priestesses of the Goddess. It just simply isn't true that this is the "point" of Paganism, and no serious scholar of modern Paganism as a New Religious Movement would ever make such a claim. Hell, my thesis on the influences of modern Paganism's development over the past fifty years — which I wrote not even ten years ago — examined polytheism as only one of many different theological strands, and not even the most influential one. Back when I was doing this research, there wasn't even such a thing as "hard polytheism" in the popular mindset of the average self-identifying Pagan. If anyone had tried to make the claim that modern Paganism's "point" was polytheism, you could easily have pointed to several different statistical studies and surveys of the actual beliefs and practices of people calling themselves Pagan/Neopagan that clearly showed this just wasn't the case.

In fact, the most recent general survey of Pagan practice and belief that came out in June 2012 (barely six motnhs ago) shows that more than 87% of self-identifying Pagans said "reverence for nature" was the most important element of Paganism, whereas only 10% chose "worship of the gods." And even though 56% of the Pagans surveyed identified as polytheist, when asked if worship of the gods was a fundamental aspect of Paganism, less than half of them said yes. Now I don't think this particular survey was necessarily all that scientific or carefully controlled.... but those numbers certainly seem to confirm my own impression of the breakdown.

So what the hell is Lupus talking about? I need to go back and actually read his post for myself. It might be that Emrys is exaggerating Lupus's claims (though from the brief skim I did the other day, I don't think he is).

What's the "point"?

Lupus opens by stating outright:

I feel the need to state once again that one of the "points" of modern Paganism is to bring back the gods. [...] their reality as actual beings with independence, volition, and power was disregarded, downplayed, or demonized in many cases.

So he does say "one of the 'points' of modern Paganism," and not the point... and he also puts the word "point" in scare quotes, though I'm not sure exactly what he's trying to communicate by doing that. I get nervous when I see a lot of furry writing, with scare quotes scattered throughout a text when it's not obvious that the person is either quoting someone else or trying to be deliberately ironic/sarcastic. I'm not sure how a "point" differs from a point.

He goes on:

What I am noticing more and more recently, however, is that modern Paganism is being purposefully defined so as to not include the gods. In recent weeks alone: Jonathan Korman has defined "the pagan sensibility" as not necessarily needing to include the gods; John Halstead has discussed the four centers of modern Paganism, but has portrayed the deity-centric forms of Paganism as inherently creedal; and here at Patheos' Pagan Portal, Yvonne Aburrow has defined "theology" as "reasoning about the Divine" rather than "reasoning about the gods," which is not remotely the same thing (on which more will be said in a moment). [emphasis added]

I've already noted why I think his qualms with Aburrow's definition of theology are somewhat silly ("biology is the study of life" vs. "biology is the study of lives), but I'll be interested to see what more he has to say on this. As for Korman's and Halstead's posts, I've read both of them, and they are both clearly working towards a definition of Paganism that is inclusive and nuanced, rather than a single, monolithic statement about a community that is inherently diverse and complex. Considering that all evidence suggests that not all Pagans see (hard) polytheism as essential to the community-identity of modern Paganism, I would say that the attempts of these two to come up with a description of the community is more accurate than Lupus's so far. Even Lupus seems to be contradicting himself — didn't he just say polytheism was only one of the "points"? It might have seemed at first that he was saying there are multiple aspects of Paganism that modern Pagans share more or less in common — and that holding to any or several of these aspects might be enough to identify oneself as Pagan. But now it seems pretty obvious that what he's actually saying is that "worship of the gods" is necessary but not sufficient to being Pagan. Most people who call themselves Pagan would disagree with him on this.

He says:

For a long time now, I've been hearing modern Paganism characterized as a "nature religion" or an "earth-based religion." [...] I suspect a huge reason that it is characterized that way—especially to non-Pagans—is because of fear of being thought foolish or "primitive" for recognizing the gods. [emphasis added]

What? No.

Considering the amount of shaming "tree-huggers" and "dirt-worshippers" receive from mainstream society for being foolish, sentimental, overly-romantic, and yes, "primitive" and "anti-progress" and even "anti-human".... I find it hard to believe that Pagans are just lying to everyone about their reverence for nature because it's easier than admitting you're a polytheist. That has certainly never been the case in my experience.

Lupus then recounts an incident when he was at a university in Ireland (attending as a student? he doesn't say), when he requested the use of the campus chapel for an important ritual. The chaplaincy council rejected his request, recommending that he hold the ritual outside because that would be "more appropriate." Lupus points out that not only would this be inappropriate because of the weather of late autumn, but that there were no examples of outdoor rituals in the history of the tradition he was reconstructing, but many examples of indoor temples and ritual spaces. He concludes:

Unfortunately, my preferences and information in this regard were considered irrelevant, because the chaplaincy council knew what was best and most appropriate for "my sort" of people. [original emphasis]

This sounds like a story of obvious prejudice and disrespect, but I'm not sure what it has to do with whether or not Pagans in general should or shouldn't be "earth-centered." I have attended several indoor group rituals hosted by Pagan or Druid groups that were explicitly "earth-centered," either because outdoor space was not available or because weather made outdoor ritual impractical. Lupus seems to be making the argument that because he encountered mainstream ignorance which hindered his religious freedom, that therefore somehow earth-centered Pagans are to blame. He says:

This is one instance in which public perception of modern Pagan identity and religiosity interfered with actual practice. The idea of Pagans as "nature worshippers" fits in perfectly with the Christian conception (and, as in my case, misconception) of ancient polytheists as unsophisticated bumpkins with no place in civilized society, and therefore no business doing their rituals indoors.

Here, he identifies the view of Pagans as "unsophisticated bumpkins with no place in civilized society" as a "misconception" when it's applied to him, but seems to be suggesting that he thinks it's a perfectly reasonable view of others who self-identify as "nature worshippers." Rather than arguing against such a prejudiced view as fundamentally ignorant no matter who it's applied to, he seems primarily upset that it was applied to him when it shouldn't have been.

I should point out that, just as I've attended indoor rituals during cold weather, I have also attended outdoor rituals (usually private or small group rituals) despite the weather being somewhat unpleasant. I also spent five or six hours this past weekend hiking around in near-freezing temperatures. I do not think that my willingness to go outside in various kinds of weather, or my ability to appreciate and celebrate the natural world in all kinds of conditions, makes me an "unsophisticated bumpkin." Nimue recently pointed out in a blog post, in fact, that our ability to go out in bad weather and then come back in and get dry and warm again is a mark of our civilized lifestyle — and I am not particularly inclined to balk at a civilized lifestyle that let's me go out to experience the outdoors in all sorts of conditions without risking life and limb. Huzzah for hiking boots and warm coats.

Moving on...

As Star Foster said many months back, polytheism is one of the few things that modern Paganism can be said to "own" almost exclusively; but, for too many, it seems like the funny old lamp inherited from our great-grandparents that we hide in the basement when the guests come over.

There go the scare quotes again. Maybe talking about Pagans "owning" polytheism makes it seem less ridiculous than actually staking your entire argument on the immature sense of ownership (sans scare quotes). The idea that certain groups can own (or "own") particular philosophical or theological concepts is itself deeply problematic. But instead of talking about that, let's just get snippy and sarcastic in the next paragraph...

Lupus then goes on to argue semantics, but at least he admits it. Turns out, he has nothing more intelligent to say about language usage than before, other than falling into the usual trap of thinking that some foreign term that he read in a book is therefore inherently more complex than a familiar English word:

As I've indicated already, polytheists are not monotheists, but, I would argue, neither are they monists. This is why I no longer use the phrase "the Divine" in talking about modern Paganism or polytheism. This may be more a question of semantics in many people's minds, and if that's the case that's fine. Still, the phrase "the Divine" does not, for me, describe the reality of the gods as I have come to know them, nor does it usefully and accurately translate the element theos in a term like "theology." Ancient Greek used theos as singular and plural (both "god" and "gods"), as masculine and feminine (both "god/s" and "goddess/es"), and as a noun or as an adjective (both "god" and "godly"), so one can choose whatever option fits the purpose when using this term.

For fun, let's look up the etymology of the word "divine":

From Latin divinus "of a god," from divus "a god," related to deus "god, deity" (see Zeus), from Greek, from PIE *dewos- "god" (cf. Latin deus "god," Old Persian daiva- "demon, evil god," Old Church Slavonic deivai, Sanskrit deva-), from root *dyeu- "to gleam, to shine;" also the root of words for "sky" and "day"

Oh noooooosss! It looks like the modern English word "divine" traces back to the ancient Greek! ::headdesk::

Anyway, then Lupus spends some time talking somewhat confusedly about how theos implies a complexity of language that is unique to polytheism, and is not reflected in monotheism or monism. So far as I can understand what he's trying to say, he is simply wrong about this because he is unfamiliar with the many different theological approaches to monotheism. As a great example, he ends this particular ramble by gleefully dangling the tantalizing possibility that polytheism might even be able to conceive of the gods as "verbs" — which means that he must at least be completely unfamiliar with the book God is a Verb, by David Cooper, which explores that very concept in a monotheistic context. ::headdesk again::

He continues:

Pagan or polytheist practice that emphasizes cultus presupposes a definite being with volition and consciousness on the other end of the interaction. (Cultus, for the present purpose, is active and deliberate interaction with divine beings.) Thus, when I hear Pagans being described or self-defining as "nature worshippers," I wonder how interaction can take place at all. "Nature" doesn't care if you make offerings, hold festivals, or sing its praises and dance and feast with your friends. Dancing at Lughnasadh will not avert global warming; singing a hymn won't stop an earthquake; pouring a libation won't prevent it from raining. The best way to "honor" nature is to do things like recycle, not drive, reduce one's carbon footprint, and so forth. [emphasis added]

Again, what?

Lupus "wonders how interaction [with nature] can take place at all" but then ends his paragraph by listing ways that we interact with nature. What's going on here is an obvious (maybe even deliberate?) confusion about the purpose of ritual. Lupus claims that he defines cultus as "active and deliberate interaction with divine beings" who are "definite being[s] with volition and consciousness." But his examples of what he actually considers "cultus" all include rituals in which people exert control over these divine beings — making offerings, singing hymns or dancing in order to exert influence over the gods. Arguably, if this is how he defines the purpose of ritual, then the evidence that he is interacting with "definite beings with volition and consciousness" is just as scanty as those people pouring libations to the earth itself. At least when I pour a libation to a tree, I know that the physical water will actually make a difference to that tree. Burning incense in order to please Zeus, on the other hand?

But the more important point is that not all ritual is propitiatory in nature. In fact, ritual is complex (I really can't believe I have to keep saying this). Sometimes ritual is celebratory, and celebratory ritual is still a way of interacting with the gods, or nature, or even the other people involved in the ritual. Do you take someone out to dinner because you want to get in their pants? Or do you enjoy the act of having dinner with them? And if they don't let you get in their pants, do you conclude that they "don't care" about having dinner with you, or that they might not even be real beings with volition and consciousness?

Lupus's argument here is either a deliberate straw man, or a profound ignorance about the nature and purpose of ritual in different contexts. It may also involve a deeply ingrained prejudice against seeing things other than humans as alive, conscious or possessing self-determination. It's taken scientists a while, but at least now, finally, it is an agreed-upon scientific fact that other animals most definitely are "beings with volition and consciousness." Ecologists acknowledge that even inanimate things (like rock formations, river systems, or chemical compounds) can participate in what are self-organizing, self-sustaining living systems. If it's not too big a leap of faith to believe that Zeus gives a shit about whether or not you burn incense, it shouldn't be so big a leap to believe that self-organizing, self-sustaining living systems in the natural world (of which we are a part) do have some stake in how we interact with them, both through ritual and through everyday life.

Lupus ends his post by repeating many of his previous points, and likewise repeating many of his earlier inaccurate assumptions and logical missteps, so there's not much point in going on with this step-by-step analysis. His main concern seems to be that "nature worship" in the modern sense is, well, modern, and should therefore be avoided because (to paraphrase) "our ancestors didn't do it." It's unclear if he actually thinks anyone really worships nature at all, since throughout his piece he accuses self-identifying "nature worshippers" as calling themselves that merely to hide the fact that they're polytheists. (This sounds to me a lot like monotheists who want to insist that self-describing polytheists are "really just confused monotheists.") His straw men are ridiculous enough that it wouldn't surprise me if he has trouble finding anyone who would agree with his characterization of nature worship. His last paragraph is pretty heavy-handed with "should"-loaded language, while lamenting that so few of our Pagan leaders and luminaries have seen the light and agree with him about the need to emphasize polytheism.

In general, it's mostly an oddly whiney and misinformed piece — at once trying to claim the authority to speak for the majority while complaining that the majority is too ignorant or foolish to agree with him. Safe to say, this is not a very good rhetorical approach to use in trying to win people over. But it might be very effective in preaching to the trollish choir.

My Perspective on "Pagan" - As Told Using the Metaphor of Apartments I've Rented

Alison is procrastinating. Enjoy the ride.....

How It Began

The first apartment I ever rented was the first floor of a three-story house, and I shared it with my then-boyfriend. We never really had any furniture except random pieces we'd inherited from our respective parental units and other odds and ends that we'd salvaged from street corners. The place was spacious and cheap, but we never had enough "real" furniture to fill it up, so it always felt oddly put together. It was easy to keep warm because it was wedged between a basement and the upper stories, both of which had thermostats controlled by the landlords, who lived above us. So, lots of room, cheap and easy to keep liveable.

But there were problems. The people who lived above us (yep, the landlords) were incredibly noisy at all unreasonable hours of the day and night. They didn't bother to fix things in our apartment when they went wrong — like the bedroom window, that was cracked when we moved in and was never replaced — but any temporary fixes to those problems caused huge issues — like me putting duct tape over the cracked window and then hanging a thick blanket up instead of a curtain. Boy did they bitch about that. Also, the basement flooded all the time, and the toilets tended to clog and back up. Eventually, too, the boyfriend and I broke up, and then it was just miserable, because he moved out and I had even less furniture and I spent about six months sleeping on a mattress on the floor, curled up watching hours of X-Files reruns at 3 AM on a tiny 13-inch TV (and this was before HD-TV and LCD flatscreens, people). I eventually came to hate it there, and the landlords didn't like me very much either. Even though it could have been a nice place — it had the space, and everything in it was new, carpets, paint-job, kitchen appliances — underneath is was all falling apart, and the fact that nobody wanted to talk about it or try to fix it, and they always had a problem when I tried to patch things up with my limited resources, just made it worse.

In this story, this apartment represents my relationship with Christianity.

Adorably Retro

Because I couldn't afford to stay in that place once the boyfriend moved out and stopped paying rent, I moved into my own place when the lease was up. This new place had been described as "adorably retro" by the rental agency, but I never figured out why. It had real hardwood floors that must have been about fifty years old, banged up and scratched and splintering, and its walls were covered in some sort of weird stucco plaster. But beneath the plaster was good, solid brick. I got permission to paint, and so the living room ended up being a refreshing ice blue, and the single bedroom was a deep, relaxing lavender. It had a balcony that looked out over a small gravel lot lined with trees, past which you could see the neighbors' gardens. In the hall, there was a little nook that used to house an old-fashioned telephone — I used it as a place to set up my main altar/shrine. Although I kept some of the old furniture that I'd inherited, I also got new furniture — and though it was mostly inexpensive, I got a few nice, solid items meant to last, and I picked them out carefully so that each room had a cohesive feeling, a kind of aesthetic wholeness to it. I spent some years in this apartment working as a waitress, swinging midnight shifts and feeling desperately lonely, but no matter how lonely I got, I still felt like I was home. And that meant something. The world, especially the natural world, would not abandon me.

In this story, this apartment represents my finding a home in Druidry, and wandering in the wilderness of this new spirituality, making it my own.

Townhouse Posturing

I met Jeff while I was still living in this "retro" apartment, and he did the unimaginable and moved to Pittsburgh. In part it was to be with me, but it also happened that his ex-wife's new fiancé had family in Pittsburgh and they were looking for a cheaper city to live in. (Although his ex-wife tried to dispute it in court, we have the documented email evidence to prove that she actually bought a house in Pittsburgh before Jeff ever even started looking for apartments; so it's not like Jeff abandoned his children in order to go live with his mistress.) When Jeff decided to move to Pittsburgh, I helped him find a place.

This apartment was what we could arguably call a "townhouse." It was two-stories and was one of two townhouses that made up a single building on a block of similar structures. Jeff needed a place big enough for the kids to visit every weekend, so it was a three-bedroom place, even though most of the week it was basically empty. This townhouse tried too hard to be a "house." It aspired to all kinds of legitimacy. It had carpeting, and a yard, and what could pass for a front porch. It had two whole bathrooms, and a real kitchen instead of a closet-sized space with a fridge and mini-stove shoved into it. It even had a fireplace.

I continued to officially live in my own "retro" apartment for a year after Jeff moved to Pittsburgh, but I spent more and more of my time at the townhouse. Eventually, most of my clothes and day-to-day stuff ended up over there. But Jeff, having been through a divorce where his ex-wife took everything except the debt she'd wracked up on their joint account, didn't really have any real furniture except for a few old pieces that were too crappy for the EW to have wanted. All of our money went into making the place liveable for the kids — we got bunk-beds and we doubled up on toys and clothing because the EW was pretty awful at getting them to pack anything for the weekend. I felt tremendous pressure to suddenly "play mom" and prove that I was "mature" enough to "handle kids" and all of the adult responsibilities that I quickly discovered the EW was fond of passing off onto other people because she herself was not very good at handling them.

My life, like the townhouse, aspired for a while to be "respectable" and "serious" and "mature" — but I only ever really half lived there, and it always seemed to be other people's ideas of respectability and maturity that did the dictating. Unlike my little "retro" apartment, which seemed to have no pretensions at all. My retro apartment had incredibly old, scratched up wood floors, but at least they were real wood. The townhouse had carpets like a "real house," but they were old, shitty carpets with random ugly stains from previous occupants and they never seemed to get clean despite Jeff's motorcycle-like vacuum. My retro apartment may have had wires randomly sticking out of the walls here and there, but all the wiring worked. It may have only had a gravel lot for the backyard, but beyond that you could see trees and gardens and even the park. At the townhouse, the front yard wasn't really a yard, so much as a cliff, but it still required mowing. The backyard wasn't a yard so much as a weed-bed, but we did our best to plant some flowers and a vegetable garden and try to beat back the tangle. It was a lot of work, and not much pay-off. This seemed to be the way with a lot of things — lots of things that seemed like good ideas, but ended up being difficult or awkward in practice. A door that led out onto the roof from the second-story seemed like a good idea because the roof could be almost like a balcony.... Except that the door didn't open unless you pulled up the cheap carpeting in the corner, and the roof sagged a bit so that it seemed to be possibly dangerous to be up there for any length of time. There was an oddly shaped nook that seemed like it could be a good place for a "library" — a nice idea, except that none of our bookshelves seemed to fit the space properly, they were either too big or too small, and the room was always freezing cold and uncomfortable to sit in. (This was generally true — the place was impossible to heat. My old retro apartment had been super-warm and cozy in the winter, and the heating was included in the rent, but the townhouse had thin plaster walls and leaky windows that never seemed to hold in any heat at all and our heating bills were huge. Also, none of its windows seemed to let in any light even on the sunniest days.) The fireplace, which seemed like such a cute, good idea, didn't work. But it somehow remained stubbornly sooty anyway even after we repainted it, and all the furniture in the living room ended up being awkwardly arranged around this sooty, cold and dead fireplace in which no hearthfire would ever burn.

In this story, this townhouse is like the reconstructionist/hard polytheistic approach.

Interestingly, my time struggling with hard polytheism coincided with this time in my life, when I was kind of half-living in a place built and furnished by and for other people, which aspired to be "respectable" and "real," but wasn't. It tried to hide how old it was while aping (poorly) the comforts of stability (epitomized, in my mind, by the absolutely shitty wall-to-wall carpeting). In the same way, my time struggling with hard polytheism always seemed to be full of other people's opinions and expectations; it seemed impossible to relax and ground in my own relationship with Spirit and with the natural world. Even though I might have been lonely and "irresponsible" living alone in my retro apartment and working as a waitress, I was home. Even though modern Revival Druidry was a bit new-agey and a bit meso-pagan and some of its wiring showed, it still worked and it had warm, sturdy walls.

Smoke Tree Condo

Then, Jeff's job moved us across the country to Seattle, and we found a small, affordable place. It's bigger than my old "retro" apartment, but it's not nearly as big as the townhouse. We have neighbors, and although we rent, many of our neighbors are permanent residents and meet quarterly as members of the condo's management team. We get so much sunlight, especially in the summer, but even in the winter on the rainiest of days, the rooms are well-lit and pleasant. We donated almost all of our old furniture except a few select pieces, and used a bit of savings to buy a few new pieces, so once again, each room feels like a real room, with its own sense of space and style. Our kitchen is smaller than the townhouse kitchen, but has so much counter space that it's perhaps the first truly functional kitchen I've ever had. We have an entire wall of bookcases in our living room, and two more bookcases in the den. All of our sofas fold out, so we have plenty of room for when the kids visit, but the rooms don't sit empty and non-functional wastes of space when they're not around. We have lots of closet space (so much, that we're able to temporarily convert our one walk-in closet into a recording studio on podcasting nights).

There are only a few draw-backs. There's no porch or balcony, nowhere private to sit outside and enjoy the weather. The floors are "wood-like" linoleum... which is a huge improvement over crappy carpeting, but still not as good as real wood. And it's the first apartment I've had that isn't within a block of a wooded park. It's so close to being a perfect fit, and it has many of the best things that I loved about my old "retro" apartment while also having some really nice things that that apartment didn't have (like counter-space and new, energy-efficient appliances and windows). It's the perfect size for us, and I feel very happy here. But I already know that I won't be here forever, and one of the main reasons I know it is because it's too far from green space — "nature" is a thing I have to go out of my way to get to, and even though that's resulted in me volunteering with the parks and learning all sorts of stuff about ecology and natural history, it's not the kind of intimate, immediate relationship that I enjoyed in my old, run-down "retro" apartment.

In this story, our current apartment is like my current spiritual path. It is so close to being perfect, and there are lots of things about it that I love. I feel at home, but I also know that I will eventually need to move on. The biggest reason I know I'll need to move on is because, right now, my relationship with "nature" is somewhat distanced and intellectual, and in this way it parallels my work as a volunteer naturalist and how that's different from being a poet wandering in the wilderness. Eventually, I want to be the poetic ecosophist, the wise sage who can wander in the wilderness and also teach practical, useful wisdom to those who come to seek her out; who has both an intellectual understanding of her gods and their theology, and an intimate and ecstatic relationship with them in way that allows both perspectives to enhance each other.

For now, I finally feel like I can start grounding in my own path again. I have a happy, truly stable place to call home that gives me the time and support I need to prepare for that next step, and I know that the next step means lingering for a little while in this place with "nature" is a little more distant. I also know that, wherever I end up, it's not going to be the metaphorical "respectable single-family suburban house with white picket fence" that the townhouse, in this metaphor, was trying so hard to pretend to be. It's not going to be the respectable, structured, organized religion that reconstructionism/hard polytheism tries so hard to be. I have a better sense of what works for me and what doesn't, and I no longer feel pressured to apologize for not wanting that kind of life, or that kind of religion. So now it's a matter of figuring out what kind of spiritual (and physical) space I do want to live in, and spend some time daydreaming, saving for and working towards my dream-home.

The Moral of The Story

All of these places, despite their differences, were still apartments.

All of these paths, despite their differences, are still Paganism.

(Except, of course, for the first example of Christianity.)

(Damn it.)

(Shut up.)

If you're not Pagan anymore... why won't you go away?

I don't have a problem with people not calling themselves Pagan. I have a problem with those people telling me that it's because "Pagan" means being culturally appropriative, theologically sloppy and intellectually lazy.

If you can't have respect for the complexity and subtlety of my self-identity, why do you expect me to have respect for yours?

Troll Country

I had a plan for this morning, but that plan is being derailed because I can't manage to disentangle myself from the trollish behavior now going on over on John's blog (which is distracting me even from being able to follow up on the more productive, more interesting thoughts that his post and the resulting conversation provoked). Which I know speaks to my own lack of discipline. But damn it.

For instance, I responded to another person's comment about how John admitting to feelings of embarrassment is "not exactly a glowing example of tolerance" in this way:

Tolerance is not the same as perfection. If we expect perfection from everyone else, it’s no wonder if we go around feeling as though every imperfection in others is some form of intolerance or oppression towards us.

John, like everyone, sometimes overstates his case or overgeneralizes, but in my experience, he is always working from a place of respect. If he chooses to admit publicly that some parts of the Pagan community make him feel uncomfortable, I think that is a good thing. We need people who are willing to be honest, without mistaking their personal feelings for Truth-capital-T. Only when we support that kind of honesty in dialogue can we have accountability within a community.

You know that you've wandered into troll territory when such a comment incites this response from a third party:

"We shouldn’t have to ‘tolerate’ one another and our differences; we should accept and respect."

This is nit-picking over vocabulary instead of grappling with the meaning and context of the comment, and furthermore it's not even my vocabulary that this second troll is nit-picking, but the word choice of the person I was responding to!

As for what we can expect from others when it comes to our differences and disagreements, this is my list, going from "that's kinda sucky but at least it's not actual oppression" to "that's so nice of you":

• (1) Indifference - "Do whatever you like. I'll be over here, ignoring you."
• (2) Tolerance - "Do whatever you like. I can take large doses of you without it making me queasy."
• (3) Respect - "Do whatever you like. Like me, you are an individual with an ethical sense and a functioning brain, and I trust you to use both effectively in making your own choices."
• (4) Acceptance - "Do what you do. I'll accept what you have to offer as a valued contribution to our shared community."*
• (5) Appreciation - "Do that thing you do so well. I may not understand it completely, but it sure is pretty."
• (6) Admiration - "Do that thing you do so well. My understanding of your work allows me to enjoy it all the more."
• (7) Accolades - "You did that thing you do so well. Here is a cookie."
• (8) Authority - "You do that thing better than anyone else in our community. Can you show me how to do it?"*
• (9) Perfection - "You do that thing perfectly. There is no way you could ever improve and you are beyond all criticism. Any criticisms of your work or suggestions about how it might be better are inherently baseless and therefore examples of intolerance."**

* Note that Acceptance and Authority assume that you are a member of a shared community. You should not expect acceptance from or authority in a community of which you yourself declare that you are not a member. However, you may be afforded Respect, Appreciation and even Accolades from a community other than your own.

** Note that this never happens.


~~
I'm pretty sure that almost every time I've heard a recon in Troll Country complain about intolerance or a lack of respect (especially from that apparently ubiquitous monster "majority Pagans," whom I've never actually met either online or in person), what they're really complaining about is receiving responses (2) - (4) instead of the responses (5) - (9) that they think they deserve (even from people that they are very carefully insisting are not part of their community). Most important to note is that, all other things being equal, none of these responses counts as actual intolerance, let alone overt oppression. (1) and (2) may not be very nice, but they still do not deny or reject your personal freedom to do what you like.

Now I need someone with more skill than me to turn this into a meme-catching infographic.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

I should note the meditative work I've been doing on "natural polytheism" recently, as well as the equinox ritual we attended this past weekend, not to mention my on-going work on the podcast and the work I'm doing as a volunteer naturalist (our training is almost over!).... but instead, I'm going to take a second to Rage in a quiet way.

Last week, Ian Corrigan wrote an interesting post about the use of the word "unsacred" in the title of the blog, No Unsacred Place. He trots out the fairly familiar complaint that the word "sacred" means to set aside as special, and if "everything is sacred" then nothing can be sacred.

I left a comment explaining the context of Wendell Berry's quote, and drawing attention to the very important fact that, first, Berry is speaking poetically (since "unsacred" is not even a proper word, that should have been a pretty obvious hint), and second, Berry is very specifically trying to call our attention to our relationship with the places we create through the act of "setting them aside." Berry is using the word "unsacred" in a very particular way, in order to challenge us to think about how we engage with the very notion of "sacred."

Jeff and I explored this idea, as well as the contrast between the concept of "space" and "place" (which Berry also plays with in his poem), in our most recent podcast episode, which I'm about to finish editing and posting. In fact, I'm working on the show notes, which is how I ended up back at Ian's post snagging the URL to include in our list of links....

When I see that Michael York (academic and author of that book, Pagan Theology) has left a comment on Ian's post since the last time I was there, in which he praises Ian's essay and says he agrees with a previous commenter whose entire comment consisted of a single sentence: "Thank the Gods for people who care what words mean!"

York left his comment after I left mine. There is absolutely no acknowledgement from York (or from Ian) that either of them even understand the more subtle point that Berry is trying to make, or the value of considering the context of the original quote. There is no acknowledgement that my comment has helped to contribute to the conversation. Instead, to be perfectly honest, York's follow-up remark seems very much like an intentional kind of "silent treatment." He refers specifically to a previous commenter's remark, which means he did bother to read the comments that other readers had left before him. My comment was substantive, relevant and brought valuable new information to the conversation in order to expand the focus beyond prescriptivist nit-picking about the technical, literal, dictionary-definition of words. Quite honestly, in this case, "caring what words mean" obviously has to include an understanding and appreciation of the context and use of words (especially words invented by the poet specifically for the purpose of challenging our usual, easy assumptions about how we use those words).

And yet, my comment receives absolutely no response. Ian acknowledges it just barely enough to give his permission for me to re-publish his post over on No Unsacred Place, but beyond that, you could practically hear crickets chirping.

Now, yes, I take this as an affront to my pride. I totally have some ego going on here.

But I think this is also part of what's wrong with the way that celebrity functions in the Pagan community. There is a certain type of Big Name Pagan — I'm not going to pull punches: they're usually white, male, middle-aged or older, and they usually pride themselves on having some kind of academic background, and unfortunately there seems to be a higher concentration of them in Druidry than in other Pagan traditions — who responds to criticism or challenge from others (especially if they are young and female) with silence, at best. Nobody would even know I'd been there. I doubt that either Ian or York will ever refer back to my comment as relevant, interesting or helpful, even if at some later point they decide to re-evaluate their ideas or even come to agree with me.

The fact is: Ian was mistaken. He didn't bother to find out what the context of the original quote was or to think about it any more deeply than the assumption that if someone was using a word (or intentionally invented a word) in a way that bothered him, it must be because they were using it incorrectly. I pointed that out to him (in a way that was respectful and enthusiastic to share some of the more interesting implications of the quote), but the simple reality is that I am young and female and knew full well what I was doing when I chose that title for the PNC nature blog (we even had a conversation about it among the staff before settling on it). All of that meant that there was no way for him to maintain his position of being the One Who Knew More — not only did he not know the context of the original quote, but he didn't know that I knew it and had taken it into consideration when I made my choice.

So Ian responds with relative silence (I doubt I would have received acknowledgement at all if I hadn't asked him a direct question that he couldn't very well have afforded to ignore).

Seeing some uppity young woman being sensible about the whole thing, along comes York and decides that, on top of responding to my comment with very deliberate silence (which he calls attention to by making sure everyone knows he's read the comment thread), he's going to double down on the original, overly-simplistic approach that Ian took in his original post and praise Ian for it.

The Good Old Boy system prevails, old white men pat each other on the back and reinforce each other's prominence and expertise, the more interesting and subtle aspects of the conversation get ignored.... and a couple years from now, we'll be having this same exact conversation all over again. We never make any progress, our theology remains shallow and myopic, and we wonder why other religious traditions don't take us seriously even though we wear shiny things and fancy robes.

This is why we can't have nice things.

In Which Ali Rambles About How She Was Never Loved Enough As A Child

I just had a realization, a minor revelation about the source of some of my anxiety about wanting to do so much and feeling like I never have enough time.

I am blessed to know a number of amazing, creative people.

Take Heather, for instance. I've never met her, I'm just a fan of her blog. In another life where our paths could have crossed in person, she seems like the kind of person I would have been friends with (or maybe not — who knows if we might have remained strangers — she often sounds as awkward and introverted as I am, which is another reason I like her writing). Today, Heather shared a post on her blog about committing to writing one poem for each day during the months of August and September, building on her experience in June and July when she created one index card's worth of art for each day.

My first thought was: Awesome! That sounds so inspiring! I want to do that!

My second thought was: How in hell can I make time to sit down and write a poem each day? I spend most of my time feeling tired and half-burnt-out from all the other self-assigned projects I've taken on, and I have more naturalist training coming up, and another season of FF&C starting in a week, and I can barely commit to fifteen minutes of prayer at the altar or thirty minutes of Tai Chi in the morning....

These are my third thoughts. When I realize that, instead of feeling frustrated that there are too many things I want to do, I should stop for a moment and thank the gods that I know so many inspiring people. People who make me say, "Awesome! I want to do that!" People who know how to live their lives with grace and guts, even when shit is hitting the fan and they feel like they can't keep it together, who still manage to be honest and strong and kick-ass.

So some of my desire to do all these awesome things is to show support and appreciation for the work of these other brilliant, strong, creative people. Because I never really got that kind of support. I wanted to be a writer from early on because my first grade teacher made a passing comment about how she liked my stories. I don't remember anyone ever giving me that kind of compliment before, but I remember my parents' pride in hearing it. For a while, I wanted to be a nature writer and study science (I was very specific, the way kids sometimes get, I wanted to be a marine mammalogist) — I kept a naturalist journal where I made detailed sketches and took notes on all the local flora and fauna down at the creek near my house.... until the day when I found a newborn rabbit that had been dug up from its burrow by a neighborhood dog, and I brought it home with me in a shoebox and was ready to stay up and nurse it all night, but my parents said no, they would take care of it... and in the morning, I woke up to find its body cold and stiff curled up in the box where they'd left it on the back porch.

So I wrote poetry. Dark, morose poetry. My freshman year of high school, I wrote a poem every day. I filled notebooks and notebooks with really bad poems. I slouched in the back of geometry class and wrote poems in backwards handwriting, from right to left. My mom bought me a novel written by a girl who was only eighteen — and I thought, this is the expectation, then. I have to be good enough to write a best-selling novel by the time I'm eighteen. I didn't. I write and I write and I write... but my parents never read anything I write anyway. My senior year, I organized a school-wide arts festival, the largest in the school's history, complete with art gallery, fashion show, live music and poetry readings. My mother filmed hours of other people performing.... but the camcorder battery died within the first 30 seconds of when I finally got up to read. I still haven't been able to write a book manuscript. I have a publisher who said he'd love to publish anything I wrote, just send a manuscript his way whenever I'm ready..... and I still haven't been able to write a book.

What's my excuse? I don't know. I want to do everything, but somehow time gets away from me and I waste hours not getting anything done. Every time I see someone doing something amazing and creative, I want to read their work or take the time to really deeply consider what they've said. I've spent three days — three days — taking notes on a book that's only 150 pages long, so that we could do an hour-long FF&C episode on it. Why? Because four years ago I criticized something else this author wrote, and he came back at me asking for a detailed review of exactly what I thought was wrong with the book.... and I never got around to giving it to him. I didn't tell him to fuck off, I didn't point out that a critical review of a book did not obligate me to pick apart his every argument for logical fallacies, I didn't point out that the critical review I did give the book had plenty of specifics in it already.... Instead, I have spent four years feeling like I owe him a detailed critique, promising myself that someday I really am going to go back and read that book a second time and go through it bit by bit..... and now that I'm reviewing another of his books, I'm leaving no stone unturned, no argument left unexplored. Nevermind that, at this rate, we'll never record the episode, and that even if/when we do, he'll probably never listen to it, and even if he did, his response (like those of listeners) will probably be that I went way overboard and "over-analyzed" what was a very short book and my expectations for it were too high and so therefore my review isn't important..... Why do I do it? I don't know. Because I would want someone to give that much thought and put that much effort into a critique of my work. Because I believe if someone puts the time and effort into creating something, they deserve the same attention and effort in return.

And because giving this much thought to it has deepened my understanding of my own ideas. Yes, that too. But ideas that never have a chance to catch their breath or find their own expression because I feel like I'm constantly in a race to find a better way to express them, or constantly trying to weigh them against the ideas of others, to refine them and deepen them. I am a perfectionist, not just of things but of ideas themselves.

I realize that I feel deeply sad about some of this. People are eager to think little of you. My recent blog post about being "deity dumped" received numerous enthusiastic responses from people full of advice — much of it kindly meant. But an even more recent post, exploring an aspect of my practice in crafted, delicate language, a piece I was proud of writing and that I felt was much better from both a technical and an emotional perspective.... received almost no comment. When I admit that I think the work I do is valuable, and that I work hard to be respectful and to listen deeply to others, I'm told I am arrogant and holier-than-thou.

I feel the strong desire to stop. Jeff, and even my parents, have remarked about how different my attitude towards ebooks is now than it was a few years ago. I used to hate them. I used to think that they would ruin the genre and jeopardize serious reading (not to mention libraries and public access to information and the ability to pass down books through the generations as sacred objects of power). Now, I really enjoy the convenience of wanting a book and being able to download it within seconds. What they don't seem to get is that I am thinking like a consumer now, instead of a writer. I gave up. I no longer think that anyone would read the kind of book I would want to write. I no longer believe that, no matter what I did, my parents would be proud of me or ever really hear me.

So I spend a lot of my time trying to really hear others, to really listen. There are so many people doing so many amazing, wonderful things. I could spend all of my time running around amazed and saying "Wow!" and never get anything done. Even now, the podcast is practically little more than that — me sharing the latest crazy-awesome news and thoughts from other people.

But I find myself burnt out and tired. I find myself wondering why I still feel so stressed out and busy all the time, when all of the deadlines are self-imposed and nobody would really notice or care if I dropped offline for good and never posted another update or recorded another podcast episode or wrote another line. I could just stop. I could give up and watch television all day, and no one would think any worse of me. Plenty of people would be downright jealous. Lots of people dream of being able to eek by on their spouse's single income and not have to work for somebody else at a job they hate.

But this ramble has gotten way out of hand. What I wanted to say was, maybe I can find another way to honor the creativity and inspiration I find in other people: to say thank you and celebrate them, without feeling the pressure of needing to pour all of my attention into that and leave no time for my own work. Maybe some kind of simple ritual, similar to the offerings I make in the mornings to my gods, ancestors and spirits of the land. A ritual that will help me to set boundaries while still showing support and gratitude. I want to think about this more....

Consumerism, Social Media and Loneliness

Full disclosure: I am feeling immensely curmudgeony today. In fact, I've been feeling that way for the past several days (as is probably evident from my last post — in which I spoke too soon, several folks on TC ended up sharing some intriguing ideas and information regarding virginity in ancient Greece, so I was a bit premature in bitching about the canned responses... persistent questioning in this case paid off).

One reason for the crankiness is lack of sleep — a nightmare last night had me awake at 2 AM and I didn't fall back asleep until 4 AM, after Jeff had gotten up and headed to the airport. The nightmare involved a group of young people (three, I think, two girls and one boy) who along with some sort of teacher had staged a massacre — they initially set up a scenario where one of the girls was supposedly mauled by a savage, rabid dog and came stumbling out into the view of the crowd dripping with blood, her flesh town, and the two others were somehow also in on it, setting loose the dog and encouraging it to "sick" on anyone who attempted to run (which everyone did), resulting in a mass of chaos as people ran screaming, trampling each other, and others had weapons, knives, etc. so that the dream descended into a jumble of nightmarish images of people with their eyes gouged out and their limbs torn ragged, etc. I didn't wake up afraid, but more just didn't want to close my eyes and be subjected to the violent images again, so I worked at some light-breathing and meditative exercises (including drawing Brigid's mantle about me) while lying in bed. I did eventually fall back asleep after Jeff had left, at which point I had some sort of dream about Abed (from the TV show Community) being abandoned by his friends now that Troy was dating Britta and all his fears about loneliness and being metaphorically "stuffed in a locker" coming true after all — again, not a fearful dream, but this time a very sad one.

I'm feeling out of sorts and disconnected from people. Earlier, before the nightmare started (which was actually a dream within a dream), I was dreaming of being back at my parents' house, hanging out with my brother and Arthur. I realized how much I miss Arthur, and other aspects of living in Pittsburgh (though Arthur isn't even in Pittsburgh anymore) and how I'm still not feeling very well settled out here in Seattle. On Saturday, a cool gray day after Friday's hot and sunny weather, Jeff and I spent an incredibly lazy day hanging out; the people across the street were noisy and jubilant from early in the morning and Jeff said he heard one of them say something about it being "the day of the wedding"... which led to a bout of crying for me, remembering our wedding and how it felt very much like just one more stressful day in a string of stressful days and how hurt I'd been (still am) that none of my family had seemed as excited and happy for me that day as these people across the street sounded (and how the people who'd been nicest to Jeff and me on our wedding and honeymoon were always strangers giving us spontaneous hugs and congratulations). Jeff pointed out that, at least in his family, there has never been a wedding or baby shower that lived up to the ideal of being a truly celebratory experience — that there was always some conflict or controversy or family drama going on, always a certain extent to which people were just faking their excitement and sincerity. So Jeff spent some time with me remembering all of the beautiful things about our wedding and honeymoon, and when was the first time he felt like we were "really married" (the massage we got at the spa in Santa Fe).

Weirdly enough, though I felt wiped out and deeply sad, there was also a lightness, too, a sense of relief. Every year around Lughnasad it seems I get burnt out, and then comes a day when there's a shift in the air, a different energy, and you can taste autumn for the first time. That was what Saturday felt like, and I felt like I could completely relax, curled up on the sofa with the light falling through the low, misty clouds onto our skin so that it looked illuminated, iridescent.

Sunday we spent out in the woods again, hiking around Tiger Mountain (not up to the summit this time, but along some other trails that led to some boulders that form ancient caves on the mountainside). I found myself stressing a bit about our upcoming naturalist training and feeling that I hadn't done as much studying and research as I would have liked since the end of our spring training. I get into these obsessive thought patterns that just wear me out.

This morning, after the lack of sleep, I just find myself annoyed at how idiotic things seem to be and how much I wish I could just step aside from all of it. The latest controversy in the Pagan community is now whether or not it's discriminatory for online services like eBay and Etsy to discontinue the sale of "intangible" services like blessings and prayers, or to restrict the kinds of medical claims sellers are allowed to make for their products. I hate the fact that my community has such a persecution complex that, instead of seeing this as an opportunity to hold fellow community members accountable to a higher standard of honesty and integrity, they want to complain about discrimination. Is the Pagan community so full of snakeoil salesmen?

It especially bothers me in light of the prevalence among Pagans to complain about Christianity as some sort of homogeneous brainwashing that converted the world through intimidation and force all those centuries ago.... Today, consumerism and capitalism function in just the same way, making promises of a better, easier life if you just buy into the system, enforcing that economic model at the point of a gun and securing its interests all over the world through the use of military force. The result: the exploitation of the most vulnerable and disenfranchised in our society, people who are impoverished and marginalized, and the destruction of our environment. If Pagans as a community could muster even a fraction of the self-righteous anger about capitalist consumerism and the problems it perpetuates right here and now as they do over past wrongs (that are often exaggerated or completely imaginary — "never again the Burning Times")..... But no. Instead, they buy into the system completely, they worship gods with explicit connections to the exploitation of land and people in the name of the "freedom" of the market (Columbia, anyone?) and they get all worked up when their ability to sell superstition to the highest bidder is called into question by businesses that do not want to be associated with hucksters and frauds. They invent reasons to feel victimized and persecuted, instead of rising to the challenge of turning a critical eye on the roll that selling spells and blessings plays in their own community. If these restrictions seem to unfairly impinge on Pagans more than those of other religions, maybe we should ask ourselves why our religion is so much more deeply entrenched in capitalism and money-making than these others? Why Pagans are more willing to spend $30 on a love spell than donate $15 to protect the environment against exploitation and destruction? This is not social justice — this is the whining of pampered, privileged white kids who want to be able to profit from selling products branded with dubious "magical" claims without any expectation of accountability or integrity. Maybe I'm just becoming cranky in my old age, but I lean more and more towards the belief that the selling of religious services in general is deeply problematic. (And yeah, I do still fault Bonewits' theology of polytheism to a certain extent, for building capitalist assumptions right into the foundation of what so many folks in the U.S. think of as "hard polytheism.")

Worthy and Worthless

Someone not worth linking to or naming recently said that all kittens are going to burn in hell unless you pledge to give Jesus all your money and your first born son. And even though this person is not worth naming or linking to and may not have actually said that or in fact even be a real person at all, they're still worth directing scorn and insults at, so I'm going to devote a blog post to ranting about why I think they're wrong about everything and are too worthless even to name.... And since I haven't bothered to name, link to or even directly quote from this someone, you will have no way of knowing if my version of this person's position is in any way accurate, or if I'm misinterpreting or intentionally misrepresenting this person in order to stir up controversy and drive up readership on my blog. Because I'm not actually interested in honest conversation or thoughtful engagement with complicated issues. I'm more interested in being a passive-aggressive ranter who feeds on others' hard work by turning it to shit and mud-slinging.

This is why I dislike the Pagan community so much sometimes. People who are supposedly "leaders" of our community can get away with behaving in some pretty nasty, childish ways. It's disappointing, yes, but even more than that, it's embarrassing to think that these people represent the community to the general public. This is why we can't have nice things. This is why, when I first told my parents I was Pagan, they asked me if that meant I "hated Christians" — because that's the stereotype that such leaders continue to play out before the eyes of others. Angry, small-minded, petty and totally missing the point.

I strongly believe in surrounding yourself with sincere, supportive, caring people. I strongly believe in avoiding bullshit if you can at all help it. And that means avoiding bullshit-farms even if you might miss out on the off chance that one of those bulls swallowed a diamond and, if you just keep digging, you might get lucky. Not worth it.

One way I avoid bullshit is to avoid anything that starts with "Someone not worth mentioning/naming/linking to said such-and-such.. and here's why they're wrong." That's a big red flag right there. Because if you're about to write an entire blog post about something, saying that the person is not worth mentioning is simply dishonest. Obviously they are, or you wouldn't be taking the time out of your day. So if you're not willing to link to a source and you make no convincing argument up-front about why you're not linking (such as, for instance, not wanting to drive traffic to a hate group's website or something legitimate like that, in which case you could still name the source without providing a link)... chances are, it's because you're too insecure or insincere in your own opinion to trust your readers to make up their own mind. Chances are, you just want to rant without being challenged. (Like I'm doing now, yeah, because this is a personal journal that nobody reads and that doesn't allow comments.) Chances are, you're hoping to get away with making sweeping value judgements (like the intrinsic "worth" of an idea or point of view that you've given only a passing, biased summary of) without alerting the person you're criticizing and allowing them to respond — because allowing them to respond could lead to an actual conversation, which would totally undermine your self-righteous ranting.

So if the ideas you're writing about aren't "worth" sourcing, then the blog post you're sharing isn't worth my time to read. I don't need any more rants in my life, thanks. I have enough ranting going on in my own mind, I don't need to invite you into that mental space to clutter up my day.

I do wish that our community had more leaders who were grounded in a healthy spiritual life that gave them the tools to cope with insecurity and petty behavior. I'm mortified that on the largest interfaith website out there, we're represented by writing like this. (Yeah, that's right, I'm linking to the post that inspired this rant, because it's aggressive, petty and ridiculous.)

Sure, there are some diamonds that plopped down here and there amongst the bullshit, statements like "I believe in the holy power of the Many." Or maybe that's just a fancied up bit of pretty glass...

Because there are also statements (far more of them) like this: "Christianity won because it was the Borg. It was organized and ruthless. It bulldozed everything in it’s path." and "We have to learn to survive in a world infested by the Borg. We have to learn that resistance is not futile and assimilation means death."

Yeah..... that doesn't sound like celebrating the holiness of diversity to me. That sounds a lot like making sweeping generalizations about a huge segment of the world population, portraying them as less-than-human monsters who need to be demonized and punished, with any attempt at understanding or mutual respect being equated to "assimilation" and death.

With statements so steeped in bullshit, I find it hard to swallow the whole "belief in the holy power of the Many" claim. I don't see it in evidence. If this is what belief in the sacredness of diversity looks like, I weep for my community.

DOTR Initiation - Questions & Answers

1. How do you affirm that we are a community of Druids walking personal paths, and your desire to be one of us?

The Druid Order of the Three Realms embraces concepts like integrity, respect, community, service and interdependence - all values that have been deeply embedded in my own spiritual path even before I learned to call it by the name of Druidry. The encouragement and support I've received from DOTR members, and from my mentor B— in particular, during my year as a DOTR Aspirant have been invaluable to me as I've worked to refine and expand my Druid practice beyond what I've learned as a member of OBOD and AODA in the past.

The Druid Order of the Three Realms also embodies a balance of community engagement and personal exploration in a nonhierarchical way that moves beyond the usual organizational models of modern Revival Druidry based on the old social fraternities, and I find myself very much in tune with this new approach that remains open to the changing reality for religious institutions in a (post-)postmodern world. I would be honored and proud to count myself a member of the Order, and I look forward to be an active and contributing member in the future!


2. How do you affirm a vital relationship with the Earth, our mother?

In my daily life I adopt a handful of "green"/eco-friendly practices, including a vegetarian diet of largely organic, locally-grown foods (recently promoted by the UN as the most effective lifestyle change a person can make to help reduce their impact on the planet). I also strive whenever possible to avoid using plastics and to reduce my energy consumption; my husband and I also started a composting program for our old apartment building (and happily, the apartment complex we're moving into in Seattle has a composting program already in place!).

I'm the founder, project manager and a contributing writer for the Pagan Newswire Collective blog project, No Unsacred Place: Earth and Nature in Pagan Traditions, where I coordinate essays, articles and news pieces promoting ecological awareness and environmentalism among Pagans and exploring the many ways that Druids, Witches and Pagans embrace nature spirituality in their diverse traditions. I also contribute to Aontacht Magazine as their new Wild Earth feature editor, and as a writer and blogger I share my experiences and contemplations about our sacred relationship with the Earth on my blog through poems, stories and personal reflections.

In my personal spiritual practice, relationship with the Earth and the natural local landscape holds a place of primary importance. While living in Pittsburgh, I made hillwalking in the nearby wooded nature preserve a regular part of my practice and often held personal rituals and meditations out doors (in all kinds of weather!). My altar and household shrines reflected the changing seasons of the local landscape and honored the plants, animals and other inhabitants sharing the land with me.

Now, moving to Seattle, I hope to continue making time outside connecting with the natural world a central part of my spiritual life. I've applied to volunteer with the local parks service as an amateur naturalist, for which I'll receive seasonal training about the ecology of the local bioregion(s) and then be able to pass on that learning to others through public and student-oriented educational programs and guided explorations of the many urban green spaces in the city. I might also have the chance to adopt a few acres of a nearby park as part of the forest restoration effort.


3. How do you celebrate the Sun and its sacred days both alone and together in the grove?

My husband, Jeff, and I have been celebrating each of the eight holy days (the four solar festivals and four Celtic fire festivals) together for the past few years, and we're often able to include Jeff's kids in the celebrations as well. Our celebrations are usually very simple, and include making offerings to the three realms of land, sea and sky, as well as singing songs and telling stories that resonate with the spiritual significance of the time of year. Usually for the summer and winter solstices, we rise before dawn and make our way to the local park where we climb the highest hill and greet the sun as it rises above the horizon (the kids' favorite song to sing on these occasions is They Might Be Giants' "Why Does the Sun Shine?"). This past year, Jeff and I planned our wedding to coincide with the autumnal equinox, in celebration of our relationship of balance between masculine and feminine, light and dark, day and night, activity and receptivity and the many other sacred dualities that go into forming a sacred marriage. (We were also very lucky to be able to include our families and friends in our Druid ceremony on the beach, on the threshold of the three realms, for which we feel especially blessed.)

On certain occasions, I will also hold personal observances of the holidays in a more formal ritual fashion (Jeff is not as keen on ritual). For these rituals, I usually build off of the DOTR outline and incorporate my own chants, prayers and meditative trance-work. This is the closest I'm able to come to participating in DOTR grove rituals as a long-distance member, but I hope that someday down the road I might be able to find others in the local area who want to work within the DOTR ritual model and hold in-person rituals together, too.


4. How do you hear the call to the inner life, and how are you weaving a wisdom that is both personal and communal?

It is mostly through my writing and my poetry that I engage with my inner life and explore the work of soul and spirit in their many different forms, but I also use meditation, trance-work and dreams to connect to this inner realm. Besides the DOTR Three Realms Working, I've developed a daily meditation of my own (Peace of the Three Realms) based on the Druid Prayer for Peace, that helps me to align with the energies of land, sea and sky as well as with the Druidic elements of nwyfre, gwyar and calas, and I've also begun to explore (although only a little) working with the Three Cauldrons from Celtic tradition. Through trance-work, I explore my inner landscapes with the guidance of Badger, my primary spirit/animal guide; and in dream, I seem practically unable to avoid bumping into Manannan every once in a while!

I also use divination to connect with my gods as well as my intuition/soul/subconscious (whatever you want to call it!). Mostly this is through tarot cards and occasionally other oracle card decks, but I plan to embark on a more serious study of the ogham as soon as I'm settled in Seattle!

I've also been studying astrology, and particularly the psychological approach to astrology best exemplified in the work of astrologers like Liz Greene and Stephen Arroyo, for the past year, complimented by a deeper exploration of Jungian archetypes and mythological patterns found in the works of Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade. This work has afforded me a great deal of insight into my own psyche and the patterns that underlie some of my approaches to life, the world and other people. I'm looking forward to exploring ways that I can utilize this insight and the framework established by astrological study to serve my community by understanding better what unique gifts I have to offer and maybe even by providing astrological counseling for others at some point. (I've started offering to do free natal chart readings online and have already had about two dozen clients!)


5. What special work have you taken on, for yourself, for others, for our community?

As I mentioned above, I've been exploring the possibility of providing astrological counseling as a service to the community in the near future. I've also worked as a writer and editor to help create opportunities for discussion and exploration in the Pagan community through articles, essays and blog posts focusing on our relationship with the Earth. On a few occasions, I've helped draft rituals or liturgies as a part of an online group celebrating together (these have mostly been through my work as a Flamekeeper with a Brighidine Cill, exploring Brighid's role as a solar and stellar goddess).

To be honest, since most of this work has been online in one way or another, I've sometimes struggled over the past year to remember to make any special spiritual/religious work a priority for myself as well as for others. It's been a challenge to take time to devote to my personal spiritual life and seek out work that benefits me even if it doesn't seem to have any greater benefits for the communities I belong to. I want to strive to do better at this in the future, to nurture the wellspring of my own personal spirituality as well as continue to be committed to my community/public work.


6. How do you find balance in the three: the sky, the earth and the sea? How are the Three Realms becoming a way of life for you?

The dynamic balance and relationship of the Three Realms informs my spirituality at the deepest level, and provides a flexible, adaptive context for all of my spiritual work. I begin every ritual or meditation session by attuning to the energies of the Three Realms and honoring the deities, the ancestors and the spirits of the land.

At times, my view of the Three Realms is of them as overlapping spheres: below, above and sacred center (or axis mundi), or the immanent, transcendent and the manifest worlds - which roughly correspond to sea, sky and land. At other times, particularly when I'm outside in natural landscapes performing rituals or sitting in meditation, I connect with the Three Realms much more immediately as the very real spaces that make up the local landscape - the winds, weather, sun and stars of the physical sky, the rolling hills and dense forests of the physical land, and the murmuring waves and rocking tides of the physical sea and the waters that run through the earth in rivers and streams. I try to hold these two understandings of the Three Realms - the literal and the theological - together as a kind of sacred paradox, instead of reducing one to the other. So I see in the sky the transcendent theological realm of the gods, and in the sea the immanent sacred waters of life of which all things are made... but I also see the physical sky and sea, too, in all their complexity and overlapping, interconnected relationship.

The expression of the Three Realms through the three Druidic elements of nwyfre, gwyar and calas has also given me a way of understanding the different processes and energies in the world and how they balance, interact with and give rise to each other. I understand nwyfre as force, energy and source; gwyar as flow, change and relationship; and calas as form, manifestation and natural limitation or boundaries. I see these as different from the traditional/classic four elements of earth, air, fire and water. While these four are more like "building blocks," the stuff that all things are made up of, the three Druidic elements of nwyfre, gwyar and calas are more like aspects or principles describing the basic, essentials ways that the four elements express and interact. The metaphor I've used before (and the best I've been able to come up with so far) is that the four classic elements of earth, air, fire and water are like the notes of a scale, and the elements of nwyfre, gwyar and calas describe the shape, progression and process of joining these individual notes into a melody.


7. Can you say that this path of the Druid is your path and that you wish to take it up as your practice for your life in this world?

Yes! Most definitely, whole-heartedly, a thousand times yes!

More on Reconstructionism as a Religious Methodology

Seren,

Thanks for your response! I was hoping someone with more "insider insight" would jump into the conversation. :) A lot of what you say makes sense and helps to put my impression of CR as an outsider to the community into some perspective. I think perhaps it's the lack of books written by CRs about what CRs "actually do," as you point out, that can sometimes leave those of us not immediately part of that community with the impression that a lot of CR is all talk and little actual living practice. (There's no reason why CR has to prove itself or make its practices available to people outside of the community, of course! I'm just saying that I wonder if that's one of the places where the confusion arises.)

I'm also interested in what the general principles for the CR approach are, exactly, and if there's somewhere where these are actually outlined and explored in detail. In the CR FAQ there are references here and there (usually when answering questions about who does or does not count as CR) to a community with a shared set of principles.... but I haven't been able to find a place where those principles are actually explained and clarified. You yourself mention how Rua's book "doesn't represent CR, and at times represents concepts and ideas that are antithetical to it." I haven't read the book, so it might be hard to answer this question: but I wonder if you'd be able to actually say what those concepts or ideas are that are antithetical to CR? Is it the methodology he uses, or the conclusions he comes to, or both?

The Fomorian issue is a good one of what I was talking about when I said that some of the criticisms seem to be theological rather than historical in nature. My own academic background is in comparative religious studies, and I've done field work that involved observation and interviews with people in various religious communities, as well as primary and secondary source research of historical traditions (for instance, I worked as a research assistant for a time with a professor studying the propagandist literature produced in Germany during the Protestant Reformation). In my experience in the field of comparative religious studies (and this may be different from the more historical/archeological approach), it is notoriously difficult to extrapolate theological concepts from cultural artifacts alone. Your review of Rua's book (thanks for the link!) goes into a bit more detail about why you think some of his conclusions are wrong and what evidence he doesn't take into account that you think he should have.... but it still seems to me that the question about whether or not the Fomorians are "evil"/adversarial or not is a theological question, and not something that can be definitively settled purely through academic examination of the remaining historical evidence. It may be that there were different opinions and approaches to that question even among the ancient Celts themselves. There is very often a distinction between the "official" view of a tradition's clergy or educated class, for instance, and that of the lay or working class, and in both cases some or even most of the evidence for these differences may be lost to time, with perhaps only the preserved "official" version or the wide-spread lay version surviving, or enough of both surviving as to leave us with only a vague and seemingly contradictory view. Sometimes the very same cultural artifacts (like sacred texts, ritual objects, designated sacred temples or spaces, etc.) were interpreted in vastly different ways by different members of the same religious community. And this makes drawing conclusions about the specific theologies of religious communities that are no longer accessible or able to speak for themselves often extremely difficult.

I'm inclined to agree with the idea that viewing the Fomorians as "evil" is a simplified and probably inaccurate view.... but that's in part because of my own contemporary liberal tendencies towards inclusivity and tolerance (you could even accuse me of being a bit P.C.) that makes the concept of "evil" in general distasteful and not very creditable to me. I'm completely willing to admit that I have no way of definitively proving if my ancestors held that same view, and they very well may not have. It is possible, after all, that even without taking all of the evidence into account, Rua may have inadvertently come to the correct conclusion. My impression is that the legacy of modern historical research is actually full of that kind of thing happening, while historians with very sound methodology can still end up with the conclusions that were in retrospect wrong or biased in some way.

Which again brings me back to the question of what exactly are the shared principles or approaches that CR uses? I've read through the CR FAQ and nothing there is all that different from the approach that I take - but clearly, I find my own balance of scholarly research, community feedback and personal interpretive and experiential engagement. (I am definitely not just haphazardly throwing together whatever bits and pieces I happen to like, which seems to be CR's biggest beef with non-reconstructionist folks.) To what extent, in your experience, does the CR criticism of non-CR approaches depend more on the conclusions that are reached than on the actual method of reaching them? I'm not so much saying that CR seems restrictive - but that it seems [i]selective[/i] in a very specific way. And I'm interested in what actually guides or informs that specific way of being selective.

(One example, for instance, is the very idea that the starting point is the question, "how did they [our ancestors] do it?" [i]Why[/i] is that the starting point? What assumptions about the the concept of authenticity itself underlie the belief that ancient cultural traditions are more authentic than modern ones, or that academic scholarship is more authentic than UPG? You have to start somewhere, sure, but I'm really curious about the reasons for starting there in particular. My guess is that trying to thoroughly answer that question will give more insight into the more subtle, less conscious ways in which CRs balance methodology, UPG and community-identity.)

Again, sorry this is so long! Thanks for indulging me with all my questions! :)

---

Sunflower,

Thanks for these links! I've now spent a good hour reading through a bunch of these old threads - with the result that I feel like maybe I'm being a bit redundant. ;) A lot of the points that Catja brings up really hit the nail on the head as far as what I'm trying to get at. I'm not at all a professional scholar like she is, but my experience in academia pretty much jives with her experience: that (a) modern scholarship thrives on "the gaps" which open up new possibilities for exploration and study, (b) a working, living religion will inevitably have to make certain leaps in order to overcome such gaps, and so (c) modern research is not the same process as reconstructing a religion, and you're going to run into contradictions and conflicts if you try to make them the same. Since my academic background is actually in the comparative study of religions, I tend to like to poke at "the gap" represented by point (c) in CR and other Recon communities because the scholar in me is like, "Oooh! Unexamined assumptions that guide the evolution of a unique religious community! Fetch me my research poking stick!" Which I guess can make me seem kind of obnoxious. :-/ But really it's just because I'm really fascinated by those questions and, regardless of what my own spiritual tradition is, I really enjoy finding out what other religious communities do and why.

Seren is taking the brunt of my questions right now, unfortunately, because I tend to bombard the people who will tolerate my questioning with demands that they explain all those other people who won't. ;) But like I said, I hope I'm not being too clumsy or hurtful in my enthusiasm.

---

Finn,

That may well be, and I definitely didn't mean to imply that CRs don't ever have authentic relationships with deities. I guess I was just saying that, for me personally anyway, it would be a real stumbling block to have to constantly worry about how my relationship with deity measured up against the expectations of the community and the standards of academic research, especially when both of those tend to be moving targets a lot of the time. Perhaps this is actually why CRs tend to be quieter and more careful about sharing their personal practice? And maybe a few folks (like Erynn Rowan Laurie, f'ex) being a bit bolder and willing to share would help mitigate the misconception and even alleviate some of that anxiety? It's a delicate subject, and very personal, though, so....


I think you're probably right about the role that the clergy (in this case, the Druids) played in establishing and maintaining a structured religious tradition in ancient Celtic societies - though, like I mentioned to Seren above, there is almost always also some discrepancies and differences of opinion between a community's educated class and its lay/working class. My point is more that, even with the Druids acting as a class of informed tradition-keepers who built up a collective body of practice and theology (or at least, theology to the extent that they did) - this is still very different from the way modern academics approach historical/scholarly research today. Very different. Sunflower's links to Catja's stuff above says it way better than I could, though, but that's basically my point.

---

Darkhawk,

I think this is a really good point - and that your footnote is also right on track. I think it's also important to remember, when striving to be "scholarly" in one's approach, that actual academics go through 3 - 7+ years of additional training and education above and beyond undergrad in order to be accepted members of the academic community. Much of that additional study is learning the processes (and limits) of the academic community itself. For that reason alone, academic work is not [i]really[/i] available to absolutely everyone - there is always going to be a lot of reliance by non-academics (even in, or especially in, Recon) on what academics are able to make available to the general public in ways that can be readily and widely understood, let alone practically applied to reconstructing a religion.

But depending too much on the divine inspiration of those who have a god-phone is a big problem, you're absolutely right. It's the other extreme that you can too easily swing towards. One of the original draws for me about Paganism was that it put a good deal of emphasis on making the tools available to anyone and everyone to kind of "build your own god-phone" (to overstretch the metaphor ;)) - in other words, to give you the tools and practices to help you cultivate a direct relationship with the divine for yourself. I'm of the belief that this is something anyone can do, and that there aren't just chosen individuals who have a better connection to the divine than others.... But it is, like academic work, something that requires a certain degree of training, practice and on-going commitment. For that reason, it doesn't [i]really[/i] avoid the same problem as the scholarly approach. There is the same caveat to divine inspiration as there is for academic work - in theory it can be available to anyone, but in practice not everyone will be willing or able to make the necessary commitment.



This is one reason that I really dislike the term "UPG" and how it's used, and tend to avoid using it myself if I can. I like to refer to a person's "interpretive and experiential engagement" instead. Why? Because there is really no such thing as an entirely individualized, private "UPG." All interpretations and experiences are interpretations or experiences [i]of[/i] something - and they are always influenced in one way or another by the socio-cultural contexts of the people having the experience or making the interpretation. That is why it is an interpretive or experiential [i]engagement[/i] - a person is engaging with something else, either a deity, a landscape, a human community, a cultural symbol, or some combination of these things or any number of others. An experience or interpretation might be more or less unique to that individual, but it is never entirely and purely solitary.

So the distinction between UPG as private or solitary, and academic/scholarly work as the primary corroborative approach to developing a shared community understanding is, I think, a false one. There are many, many ways in which communities can build a shared spiritual tradition that does not rely on or borrow from the methods and processes of academia. I bristle a bit when Recons/CRs talk about UPG as though it were entirely private and solitary in distinction from the community approach of academic scholarship. To me, this seems to ignore the fact that an individual's interpretive framework of their experiences is always going to be shaped by their membership in one or more communities, and so the way they integrate and understand these moments of personal "gnosis," inspiration or imagination cannot be entirely separated from the cultural or communal contexts they belong to.

Rather, I think it's more likely that those moments designated as "UPG" just tend to be more deeply influenced by modern culture than by the ancient pre-Christian cultures that the Recons/CRs are striving to reconstruct. When a person has a sudden inspiration about how modern physics and Jungian psychology (both modern, scientifically-grounded theories)might work together to explain a dream they had recently, it's called UPG. When a person has a sudden insight into how the connection between two pieces of archeological evidence help to explain the meaning of some ancient text (which may itself have been a poem or dream recorded by some long-dead priest), it's called research. The difference is in the relative value that the Recon/CR community places on the cultural artifacts and perspectives involved.

That said, I don't have much experience with non-CR Recons, and only a little bit of experience of CR at that. But I totally agree that CRs, IMLE, tend to be the most UPG/mysticism-friendly of the Recon communities.