Two Lists

I've decided that it's a bit much to ask that I "limit negativity and complaining" (as per my Mindbloom task) all in one fell swoop, so instead I'm going to make a list -- or two lists, actually. And for every item on the "things that are annoying me list," I'm going to make sure there are two things on my "this makes the world awesome" list. Here goes.

Things Currently Annoying Me

1. Double-standards for history.

Prompted by someone on Twitter sharing a link to a youtube video by a professor of early Christian history explaining that "Christians weren't persecuted" during the first three centuries CE. Her statement is, in fact, that Christians weren't systematically persecuted for refusing to deny Christ, that stories of this persecution were later exaggerated and embellished, and that holding to a literalist view of there having been mass systematic persecution is harmful for today's society. Now, I'm totally down with the last point, and anyone who isn't aware that accounts of persecution were exaggerated is simply not aware of the process of myth-making that goes on in every religion as they seek to establish legitimacy and moral authority. But saying that there was not systematic persecution of Christians for the specific reason they claimed is a long way from saying "Christians weren't persecuted." There is documented historical evidence that some Christians refused to participate in certain political activities because of their religious beliefs, and they were punished accordingly (at times being put to death). No, this was not "systematic." And while the Christians believed that participating in specific activities would have been a "denial of Christ," those in power would not have necessarily seen it that way but would have seen it as an act of political rebellion. In our society today, we uphold the freedom of religion, which includes the right to abstain from political activities (like serving in the military or pledging to the flag) for religious reasons, or even simply as a matter of conscience if the issue holds a place of importance for the person equal to a religious conviction (believe me, as a pacifist, I have looked into this, and there are plenty of people who would like to make conscientious objection a crime on par with treason, an offense punishable by death -- so the issue of being killed for one's religious beliefs is still alive and well today). If someone today were put to death for refusing to comply with their government based on religious convictions (especially when their refusal did not result in any direct harm to anyone else), we would describe that as religious persecution. So yes, the stories were exaggerated, and yes, subscribing to a myth of mass victimization is definitely unhealthy. But only by holding some kind of weird double-standard can we come to the conclusion that therefore what happened to some Christians in the past somehow "doesn't count" as religious persecution.

This also goes for ancient Greek society. I've been seeing this claim popping up here and there that the view of ancient Greek society as patriarchal and sexist is incorrect and was the result of modern scholars discounting the role of women in that society as being inherently less important simply because they were women. This claim insists that, in fact, the role of women in the household and in private life was just as vital and important to society as the role of men in the public and political sphere, and that therefore ancient Greek society was not inherently sexist. But this claim overlooks a couple of serious issues: First, the activities of half of the population will be an important influence on a given society no matter what those activities include -- this is kind of a no-shit-Sherlock moment. Determining whether or not there is systemic sexism in a given culture is not a matter of determining how much influence women have, but what is the nature of that influence and what are the social and political forces acting on it, shaping it and restricting it. Second, the fact remains that a woman born in ancient Greek society had only very specific options available to her, and that these options were determined by her sex. Last time I checked, we had agreed that the "separate but equal" argument wasn't going to fly (in part because it's mostly an impossibility), and that it was still inherently unjust to restrict someone's lifestyle and choices according to race or sex. Were modern scholars biased in their claims? Maybe. But that doesn't mean that ancient Greek society wasn't sexist. By modern standards, I find it hard to argue that it wasn't.

2. Shitting on "nice" people.

I have never really understood why people feel like they're allowed to shit on other people for being nice. Calling people out (respectfully and constructively) for hypocrisy, duplicity, enabling and insensitivity or bullying in the guise of "caring" -- sure. But I think we're on dangerous ground (and living in a deeply cynical age) when the mere fact that someone seems pleasant and friendly is grounds to attack them. Knowing whether or not someone is being hypocritical or enabling requires a certain amount of familiarity with the context of that person's "niceness." It's worrying to me when people feel like they can presume that kind of insight into others based on stereotypes and broad generalizations.

"Nice" is an easy and fairly neutral word in most contexts; it's a word that a lot of people use to indicate a lack of familiarity, or a first impression. ("I only just met her, but she seemed nice," or "My coworker picked me up a coffee during their lunch break -- that was nice of them.") Last time I checked, it was generally a bad idea to go about disparaging people because of first impressions and a lack of information, assuming all sorts of nefarious schemes and ulterior motives behind a person's congenial attitude.

I think it's especially telling that the people who seem most eager to shit on "nice" people are people who tend to be somewhat caustic in how they relate to others. I wonder how often they themselves have been told that they aren't "all that nice." And I wonder how often the person telling them that was trying to communicate that they were in fact being rude, arrogant, defensive, disrespectful, or simply creating a hostile environment not conducive to real communication. (I wonder how often they were told directly and clearly that they were being disrespectful or defensive, and they chose to hear it as an accusation of not being "nice" instead of confronting the actual substance of the complaint.) But I guess being provocatively self-righteous about our bad attitudes is way easier than doing the hard work of learning how to communicate with others effectively and treating people with respect.

Things That Make The World Awesome

1. Exercise as meditation.

I've been doing yoga and tai chi in the mornings regularly for a little more than a week now. I tend to burn out on exercise precisely because I try to be too intense about it (and there's always an excuse about why I don't have time to devote an hour of intense exercise, followed by a cool down and a shower... and before you know it, it's been two hours and I haven't gotten to work yet, and I have so much to do!)... so I've been approaching it this time as a form of physical meditation, where the "point" is not to "feel the burn," but to settle into a refreshed and awake state of mind. That seems to be helping tremendously; it's good to get up and get active early in the morning, doing a simple exercise that is more about the movement itself than about improving at something (like strength, or weight loss). I also ordered a book on the spiritual and energetic aspects of tai chi, and that should be arriving today at some point. It's just a shame that tai chi is seen mostly as a trendy exercise for old people in this country. I'm really intrigued by its relationship to Taoism as a spiritual path, but it's hard to find much information on that.

2. Cu talks to birds.

Really, just Cu in general. He is such an awesome cat. Just now, he came over to the windowsill and sat chirping at a bird (possibly a robin?) perched on the roof of the apartment building across the street. Most mornings now, he'll come and just sit staring at me until I get up and feed him, and if Jeff's already fed him, then he'll just come and hang out with me until I get up. During the day, he'll wander about the house, finding a spot in whatever room he happens to like -- but when I'm in bed, it's like he has to be in the same room as me, on eye level, so that whenever I open my eyes... there he is. (Okay, it sounds creepier than it is. It's actually adorable.)

3. Metaphors We Live By

I've been reading Lakoff's Metaphors We Live By, and Sarah Allan's book, The Way of Water, in which she applies Lakoff's linguistic theories to examine the root metaphors of Taoism and ancient Chinese religion more generally. Last weekend, Jeff and I spent hours discussing how Lakoff's ideas apply to the concept of "nature worship" in a Pagan context, and we even planned an outline and took extensive notes -- we seriously might have enough material for a short book on the topic. It might sound silly, but I really enjoyed working with him through these ideas, bringing together his knowledge of linguistics with my background in religious studies (and ecology, to a lesser extent). It was the kind of in-depth, detailed conversation I used to have in college, and it just reaffirms for me the fact that I'm not kidding myself when I say that I really love people who know more than I do. There's a special kind of pleasure in being able to collaborate with someone who can keep up with you intellectually, who gets excited by ideas the way you do, and whose area(s) of expertise don't always overlap with yours. Awesome. Somehow, this turned into a discussion of why Jeff rocks so hard.

4. Lists that work.

Okay. So I couldn't come up with a fourth thing to complete my list (or maybe I'm just lazy), but I'm already in a better mood than when I started this post, feeling much more energized and enthusiastic than when I was bitching in my head about people being stupid on the internet. So, yay for focusing on the good stuff in life and staying centered in gratitude and appreciation!

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! :)

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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.

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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.

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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.

Authority and Relationship in CR

Part of my reply to a conversation on TC about different Celtic traditions:

I guess that's where I start to feel uncomfortable with CR. My understanding is that folks in CR approach Celtic Reconstructionism as first and foremost based upon academic/scholarly work, turning to UPG only to "fill in the gaps" that scholarship can't. This reminds me a lot of the "god of the gaps" approach to monotheism that has caused so much trouble among modern Abrahamic religions when faced with the conflicting authority of "inspired" sacred texts and scientific knowledge - except in this case, CR comes down firmly on the other side of that divide. What's ironic is that in both cases, each religious community comes down in favor of external authority. The CR approach says it is better to trust the external authority of careful and objective scholarship and research than the personal interpretive and experiential engagement that they call "UPG" - and the literalist/fundamentalist monotheists say it is better to trust the external authority of ancient sacred texts as the "word of God" than the attempts of science and scholarship as merely human (and therefore flawed) endeavors to discover truth. But in both cases, the emphasis is on finding a trustworthy external authority (the only difference is how "trustworthy" and "external" are defined).

Maybe it's my own streak of stubbornness - but I'm not keen on religions that emphasize external authority over personal relationship. I much prefer spiritual traditions that emphasize the difficult but necessary work of balancing and, when possible, reconciling the two. One consequence of the CR approach, for instance, is that while it tends to emphasize a "hard polytheism" that views the gods as real, distinct beings - it also undermines the CR practitioner's ability to engage authentically with them in the present, since he or she is expected to ignore or at least distrust any insight about or experience of them that contradicts the external authority of current academic scholarship. To me, that seems a bit like trying to be friends with someone while constantly comparing what they say and do against their high school report cards and SAT scores. Sure, that kind of information can give you insight into who they were and who they've become (and it provides an "objective," standardized measure that I guess would be helpful in catching a perpetrator of identity theft), but it seems an odd way to try to cultivate a relationship in the here and now. And what's especially weird to me is that the ancient Celts did not even have a concept of "objective scholarly research" - so the very attitude that such research should take precedence over "UPG" is pretty much by definition not part of the worldview of ancient Celtic tradition.

I think CR folks would respond (and have responded) that Celtic Reconstructionism is inherently a modern phenomenon and so obviously it will be influenced and shaped by the knowledge and culture of modern Western society. That's great, as far as it goes, but it's basically another way of saying that they feel comfortable picking and choosing the ways in which they strive to emulate ancient Celtic cultures. That's something we all have to do, in the end, if we want to have any kind of Celtic-inspired spiritual practice today. It's the unspoken, unacknowledged assumptions that underlie the process of picking and choosing that make me uncomfortable.