thoughts from the middle Archives - We're Made of Mud and Magic

What is the point?

Mud and MagicJanuary 21, 2018March 3, 2020Leave a comment

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.

Faith without belief

Mud and MagicJanuary 3, 2017March 3, 2020Leave a comment

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.

What the “a”?

Mud and MagicNovember 5, 2015March 6, 2020Leave a comment

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.

Well, why not both? 9114Well%2C+why+not+both%3F2015-09-14+04%3A55%3A31Mud+and+Magic

Mud and MagicSeptember 13, 2015March 6, 20204 Comments

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.

Calling your own out 8091Calling+your+own+out2015-01-26+04%3A30%3A37Mud+and+Magic

Mud and MagicJanuary 25, 2015March 7, 20201 Comment

Here in the middle, we have slippery and eclectic religious beliefs. We are neither clearly polytheists nor definitively humanists but a little of each and a bit of some other things too, bringing together beliefs that seem to contradict each other and living in a liminal spiritual space. We seek to become comfortable with uncertainty, or maybe to be content to be uncomfortable in our uncertainty.

Here in the middle, we have the opportunity to see a lot of Paganism's debates from both the inside and the outside. We can often see both sides of an issue, but it is rarely a good idea to weigh in. The problem with being in the middle is all sides are likely to disavow you.

All of that is the say that I very much appreciate when I see Pagans who are firmly part of one camp or another calling their own out¹ when they think it is needed. Criticism - even well thought out and kind criticism - from outside tends to be met with defensiveness, while critiques from within can lead to real discussions and transformations.

Here in the middle, we need to be honest with ourselves too. Having some objectivity on other "Paganisms" does not make us immune to having blind spots and problematic behaviours all our own.

But that's a big topic for another day. For now, let's just say that we need keep ourselves honest.

Here in the middle 4512Here+in+the+middle2014-02-16+06%3A45%3A22Mud+and+Magic

Mud and MagicFebruary 15, 2014March 6, 20202 Comments

Here in the middle, we mostly don't want to have to choose between faith and reason. See, on one side, there are hard core atheist scientists telling us that there is no meaning and that the universe is just physical forces and genetic replication with blind, pitiless indifference. On the other side, there are fundamentalist religious fanatics telling us that we have to believe in a certain God in a certain way or we will be condemned for eternity. And while they yell at each other, most of us just want to get on with it.

Pie chart of American's beliefs about evolution and creationism — Gallup Poll, May 2012

I watched the opening remarks of the Nye-Ham Debate: Evolution versus Creationism but decided that my blood pressure couldn't handle the whole thing. I do find ignorance about science and how it works to be galling. When I find out that 46% of Americans believe that God created people in their current form within the last 10,000 years, that 42% of Canadians believe that people and dinosaurs co-existed, and that 66% of those polled say that literal creationism is 'definitely true' or 'probably true', versus 53% for evolution, I despair of the state of the North American educational system. However...

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence. - Richard Dawkins

Secularism, with its moral relativism, is in direct opposition to Christianity and its absolute morality. The battle is between these two worldviews--one that stands on God's Word and one that accepts man's opinions. - Ken Ham

The anti-religious atheists and the fundamentalists have, together, set up a rigid dichotomy between faith and science. It is probably the only thing the two extremes agree on: that they cannot co-exist. And they are right; I believe the extremists on both sides cannot find peace with each other.

Here in the middle, we can have knowledge of science and still pray. We're capable of understanding fossils and the big bang and how chimps and humans are related, while still going to church, or temple, or mosque, or Circle. Some of us decide that divinity guides evolution. Some of us just figure that there's divinity and there's evolution, and we will do our best to understand both. And we get on with a life that is neither intellectually impaired (as some hard atheists would say of the religious) nor spiritually lacking (as some fundamentalists would say of secularists).

The fundamentalists on both sides think they are warring for the minds and hearts of the public. They have set up an "us versus them" situation and declared that one side must be right and the other wrong and there is no middle ground. A lot of people, confronted with having to make a choice, will choose the faith they learned first instead of the science they learned later, or will choose the comforting choice that says that there's a loving God looking out for them instead of an empty heaven, or will choose the story they understand instead of the complex and incomplete reality. Despite advances in scientific knowledge and all the information we now have at our fingertips, the percentage of adult Americans who hold Creationist views (45%) hasn't changed significantly in 30 years.

Here in the middle, standing on that middle ground that isn't supposed to exist, we don't want to be scolded and we don't need to be educated. We don't want to be threatened with hell and we don't need to take every religious story literally in order to take our faith seriously. We find ways to understand what has been explained, to explore the mystery of what hasn't been explained, and keep our minds and our hearts open. And maybe we don't feel so righteous, and maybe we're not always so sure of ourselves, but we can live with that.

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End note: I really enjoyed this post on the Nye-Ham debates from the Science on Religion blog and this post on questions we should be asking ourselves after the debate from Under the Ancient Oaks.