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Tag: faith and reason

Published on Leave a comment on On trust
A winding dirt road surrounded by scruffy bushes and with mountains in the distance.

A winding dirt road surrounded by scruffy bushes and with mountains in the distance. The road I'm on barely warrants the name; it is more of a trail, the width of a car, that winds through the forest. I'm in four wheel drive, bumping slowly downwards. At one point, the road turns upward sharply than drops away again immediately. I stop at the top. The nose of the vehicle is pointed up at the trees and I can't see the road at all. My friend in the passenger seat - a more experienced off-road driver - laughs at my nervousness: "The road is still there. You know it's there, so just go."

View from above of a pair of feet in sneakers walking on cement. "Don't look at the floor. It's not going anywhere," says my Tai Chi teacher. My partner and I laugh; he knows that right now I can't really feel my feet. That is combining with my lack of balance to make my animal instincts less sure that the floor is, indeed, still there from one step to the next.

I lean atheistic in no small part because I like to perceive instead of believe. I want to trust my senses, but they are sometimes failing me. My instincts can be tricked and can override my logic, so I must extend my trust to common sense and my memories.

I need to know that the ground is still there, still strong and supportive, even if I can't see or feel it.

Published on Leave a comment on The universe seeing itself

Each of us is a piece of the cosmos experiencing itself. We have always used our senses to do this, and our imaginations at least back to cave paintings, but in our world now, we have enhanced abilities so the piece of the cosmos we each represent can see more and experience more than our ancestors could dream of.

Zoom in and see the composition of nature.

A single fan-shaped ginkgo leak and three images of it from a microscope.
A dried ginkgo leaf under a microscope.

Zoom out and see our earth from an impossible perspective.

Photos of Earth from Space: Blue Marble Eastern hemisphere, Blue Marble western hemisphere, and Black Marble: the Earth at night.
The Blue Marble East and West from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and The Black Marble from NASA Earth Observatory

Pan around the world and witness stories where you will never be.

A curved wall of books.
"Reading in the Round" by Let Ideas Compete; CC BY-NC 2.0

Feed your inner divine cosmos with information and with imagination and with beauty at all scales.

Published on Leave a comment on What is the point?

Inspired by "What's the Point of Witchcraft?" on the Keeping Her Keys blog.

A rocky beach with a large piece of driftwood and stacks of stones balanced on the driftwood.

I don't get easy comfort from my gods. The universe is unimaginably expansive and the stars are out of reach. The moon, the ocean, the mists, the mountains... they don't placate, they don't offer aid, and they don't hear prayers. I don't find answers in the stars or solutions in magic spells.

The point of my Paganism isn't finding answers. The point of my Paganism is to be asking questions.

Where do we come from and why are we here?
Our very molecules were created in the heart of stars. What we are made out of, and everything we see, touch, and eat, has been around since the beginning of time. We are so beautifully part of everything; it is a mighty responsibility to figure out what that means.

What is a meaningful life?
We are simultaneously microscopic in relation to the universe and immense to those we love. Even the greatest, most famous, most powerful of us are humbled by the breadth, width, and depth of time and space. Even the most ordinary of us are made noble by our sacred origins. We can live in that paradox.

How can we best honour our own divinity?
We will eventually die and our bodies will return to the components from which we are made. So much before that is out of our control, and what happens after is a mystery, but we can try to honour our inner god/dess while we're in our temporary, fragile bodies.

How can we best honour the divinity in others?
To know the god/dess in everyone is to know that we must create fairness, accessibility, and acceptance in our individual lives, in our sacred spaces, and in our whole world. This is sacred work.

What does it mean to be connected and to be in community?
"We are connected with the Earth ecologically, not just chemically. And we are connected with one another socially: as communal animals who need to belong and to feel loved and supported." - Mark Green, Atheopaganism.

The point isn't getting answers - there aren't any. The point is to seek knowledge and deepen understanding. The point is to ask more questions.

Published on Leave a comment on Faith without belief

Billy Graham
A still of Billy Graham's TED Talk: On Technology and Faith.

In the "Believers And Doubters" episode of TED Radio Hour, Anne Graham Lotz talks about her father - Billy Graham - and how he differentiated between belief and faith. Basically, he took the controversial position that James 2:19 means that there is a difference between belief and faith, for even the demons believe in god. Faith requires more than acknowledgement of the existence of something, but the additional step of having confidence and trust in it and loyalty and fidelity to it.

It's treated as standard: believe in, have faith in, and therefore worship. Except Pagans - and others - like to mess with the system. Some Pagans may believe in gods they choose not to have faith in or worship. Some may worship with neither belief nor faith. And some have faith and worship without belief. Anyone who tries to define Paganism in terms of any one axis - that to be Pagan, one must have Pagan beliefs, for example - misses that we undermine the believer versus non-believer dichotomy and screw with the assumption that belief, faith, and worship must go together.

I don't believe in the sun, for it just is. I have faith in it - that it will continue to rise and warm and feed - but it doesn't need my worship.

I don't believe in the ocean, for it just is. I know it to be the source of life, so I make my offerings and my worship, but I don't have faith in it.

I do believe that all life is a sacred expression of the universe and I have faith that that means all lives, from the biggest to the smallest and from the highest to the deepest, have meaning, as we are all ways for the sacred universe to perceive itself and learn about itself. And there's everything and nothing to worship in that.

Published on Leave a comment on The problem of getting sh*t done

Cartoon person with a broom yelling "Let's cleanse this space!".
Art from Hyperbole and a Half.

I used to work for a small business. It was a really small business; the kind where the owner and I shared a walk-in closet as an office and we didn't have to make reservations for the company Christmas party. I was there for ten years, doing what needed to be done all day, every day. There wasn't a lot of theorizing - there wasn't time for theories. There wasn't a lot of philosophizing - there wasn't time for philosophy. There was shit to do.

I have moved into the non-profit world now. I am in operations - practical, day-to-day stuff - but some days it feels like it is all meetings anyway. And so many of the meetings don't seem to achieve anything: meetings about the wording of our mission statement, meetings about activities we don't have the capacity to do, and meetings about meetings. I despair as the minutes tick by while people theorize and philosophize and day dream... I just want to get back to my to-do list. I have shit to do.

My spiritual family tends to the practical too. We had to improvise ritual space the other day, and we busted that out: quick division of the roles such that everything was evenly divided and no one had to awkwardly skip around the circle to call a second quarter, and we were soon underway. We all spoke clearly, got our lines mostly right, and cued each other as needed. Not quite clockwork, but we got through the sacred space set-up efficiently as a team. And then we got to a certain point and were gearing up to get to the next task on the ritual checklist when one person said "we should take a moment".

Oh. right. A ritual is more than a list of tasks to complete.

The "get shit done" approach serves me well at work, where the task list is:

Buy forks.
Follow up on overdue invoices.
Fix the printer.
Buy more forks.
Issue membership contracts.
Order coffee.
Pay invoices.
Buy even more forks.1

But while the kind of experience that happens in Circle is crafted through a checklist of tasks, it isn't the checklist.2 The steps are not there for their own sake; they are the means by which we reach the state where we can connect beyond ourselves to deities, to community, to spirit, to grace... and if we lose sight of that, we risk creating empty containers instead of sacred space. Sometimes, getting shit done requires focusing on something bigger than getting shit done.

Published on Leave a comment on We’re not the centre of the universe

Penny: "Okay - I'm a Sagittarius, which probably tells you way more than you need to know." Sheldon: "Yes - it tells us that you participate in the mass cultural delusion that the sun's apparent position relative to arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality." Three or four times a year, people find reason to blame the normal problems of modern life on Mercury going backwards in the sky - the dreaded so-called "Mercury retrograde". People who are normally quite rational seem to buy into this superstition.

It is silly enough to believe that the movement of a planet some 77 million kilometers away has an impact on our emails and travel plans, but to believe that an illusion of movement of a planet affects our lives is ridiculous. See, Mercury doesn't actually move backwards; it just appears to do so from the earth's perspective. If we were the centre of the solar system, Mercury would be moving in loops, but we're not the centre of anything. We circle around an average star in a mediocre neighbourhood, universally-speaking.

Humans, as a species, are arrogant. In mainstream Western culture, nature is about our needs. The God of the Bible created everything to feed and clothe and serve us, and we are the ultimate creation - the reason for all the rest. Some Pagans may say that we worship nature, but sometimes we fall victim to delusions of human importance too, and we end up worshiping nature only in relation to its utility to us, where autumn is all about our harvest and spring is all about our planting, and never mind that that's the human wheel of the year, not nature's.

That same thinking feeds "Mercury retrograde" fears. At it's core, that superstition assumes that the earth is the centre around which all things revolve and that we're so cosmically important that the fact that we see a planet going backwards from our limited viewpoint is enough to create communication and travel chaos.

I have recently read several articles that explain why Mercury retrograde is nonsense and then go on to say that the author believes in it anyway because they've experienced it. One author lists a whole bunch of reasons why they personally might be experiencing communication difficulties, including some long term stress, and somehow concludes that those reasons are not sufficient to explain some recent problems they've had and that the difference must be Mercury. Humans are awful at evaluating this kind of stuff. We have huge perception biases, we are terrible at calculating risk, and we often have little understanding of how certain factors actually do affect us.

I really like this: "... if there’s any life lessons to learn from Mercury retrograde, it’s that we may be vulnerable to illusions when we think that everything revolves around us."

Pagans, we are better than "Mercury retrograde".

ETA: Looks like I'm not the only Pagan finding the "Mercury retrograde" thing particularly obnoxious right now. Read Lupa / The Green Wolf's take on it: "Is Anyone Else Getting Weird Vibes?": On Confirmation Bias and Emotional States.

Published on Leave a comment on Nightly prayer for the not-so-theistic

Long-exposure of stars from Death Valley National Park
Photo: Joe Dsilva / Flickr / Creative Commons License

I am humble, for I am made of earth.
I am but a single, tiny grain of sand on a nearly infinite beach.

And yet, I am the universe seeing itself.
I am the universe learning itself.
I am the universe knowing itself.

So I am noble, for I am made of ancient stardust.

Everyone I meet is another piece of the universe on its own journey.
We are all small and we are all great.
We are all humble and we are all noble.

And I am grateful.
So mote it be.

Published on Leave a comment on What the “a”?

The Greek letter a When I was a kid, I had a strong preference for reading, crafting - solitary activities. I was a reluctant participant in birthday parties, organized clubs, and group activities. My mother used to accuse me of being "anti-social", but being a reader of books beyond my age group, I knew from quite young that that term carried the burden of misanthropy and hostility towards people that I simply didn't have. I didn't hate people or social society; I simply didn't care to participate. At about 8 years old, I told my Mom I was "asocial", but I think the distinction was lost on her.

From the Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-), meaning "without":

Asocial, apolitical, asexual, amoral, agnostic, apathetic... atheist. An "a" that negates without reacting against. An "a" that creates neutral ground between the pro- and the anti-. An "a" that takes no sides; that simply doesn't care to participate at all.

Considered in those terms, I am perhaps not so much agnostic - without interest in spiritual knowledge - as I am more atheistic - without interest in god(s).

I've just taken the compost out and I'm standing in my driveway, looking at the moon. I am captivated by its beauty, which is amplified by countless generations of myths and poems and enlivened by scientific knowledge. I connect to my ancestors who saw the same moon and to all the people that see the same moon. I am so small in the context of all the time behind and time ahead and space all around, and I am so large in being part of the web of life. I am the universe seeing itself and I am but a flicker in its great story. I feel wonder and awe and my feet, cold in my thin slippers. I am grateful for the moment. If what I send out is a prayer, it is to the pull of the moon and the beauty of the night and the convergence of everything that gave me that moment. If there's a god there, it is one that is larger than a personality and smaller than a power and more diffuse than a name.

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Published on 4 Comments on Well, why not both?

Screenshot of the title shot for "The Middle" TV show. "Jön Upsal's Garden" put out a challenging question:

"... anyone who identifies as a pagan atheist, or humanistic pagan, or religious humanism, or whatever the heck they call themselves. Why do you include the word "pagan" in your self-identification?"

The post was mostly directed at The Allergic Pagan, who responded quite eloquently here, and another powerful response has already been put out by Nature is Sacred, but I thought it was an interesting question to engage with as someone from the middle.

Despite my skepticism, slippery beliefs, and uncertain faith, I am deeply committed to my identity as a Pagan. To me, it brings together things I can't find together any where else:

That I get a shiver of awe when seeing a sky full of stars and when I learned in Geology 101 that we are all made of stardust.

That I can feel deeply reverent while learning about the oldest living organisms and while chanting with my community around a candlelit altar.

That I can find deep connection with Pagans who may be polytheists, animists, pantheists, atheists, or something else, because we can all share sacred space, and that I can debate and dissect the very basics of religion with those same people after because we share a Pagan tent that's very large and very diverse.

That we're a dynamic religion where experimentation is encouraged, but where we also have traditions and elders to guide us.

That I can change my spirituality to fit new scientific information and that I can create myths and beautiful rituals out of facts.

I love being a part of a religion - of a community - that includes both atheists and polytheists and that lets me be in the middle.

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Published on 1 Comment on My Paganism is grey

Venn diagram of black and white making grey A recent article on the dystopian film trend starts: "Before your film can dominate the global box office, it needs ideally to have been a word-of-mouth bookshelf smash. And unless your name is John Green or JK Rowling, your best option is to write a piece of bestselling YA dystopian fiction or fantasy."

There's no shortage of dystopian fiction right now, and theories about why we can't seem to get enough of reading and watching it. I think I know why there's so much of it being written: it is easy.

Writing a great book is probably never easy, but it is easy for most of us to think of ways the world could go wrong – the news is full of examples every night – and creating suspense and tension through the simple means of putting freedom, lives, and basic rights at risk is a bit of a shortcut. Wallowing in this kind of dark fantasy is easy for us, like imagining what people would say at your funeral in the "they'll regret this when I'm gone" way of a dramatic teenager1.

I'm seeing some things pop up in the wider online Paganism that remind me of this. People talking a lot about bones and poisons, about using desecrated items from other religions, and about demons and curses. People reclaiming our connections to the occult and to Satanism. People talking about the dark and awful sides of our gods.

They aren't wrong. We shouldn't shy away from our history or from knowing about the ugliest, bloodiest, hardest parts of ourselves and of nature. To only talk about the bounty and beauty is false, but so much of what I see that is standing against the "white light"/"fluffy bunny" approach feels like just a dark fantasy version of the same thing.

Of course, if you genuinely believe that the world is dark and that nature is red is tooth and claw, your religious practices will and should reflect that. And if you genuinely believe that the universe is love and the gods are divine parents, your practices will and should look very different. But my concern is that in disparaging the latter as being childish and naive, we have made the former into the intelligent and realistic option (we do love our binaries), and I have seen as many Pagans burn out from the "darker-than-thou" competition as from getting tired of the pressure to throw positive thoughts at all problems.

My Paganism is a faith that tries to participate in and reflect reality, and edginess is not the same as realism. If others prefer their religion mixed with fantasy, that's really nothing to me, but I don't think it's fair to look down on bright fantasy while elevating dark. Escapism is the same whether cloaked in flowers and white light or in bones and shadows.

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