Thoughts about my religion.
Jun. 17th, 2002 09:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnpalmerThis was inspired by GypsyJen's live journal... parts of it are in a comment I added to her journal entry, and this has been edited a bit from that, to make it more expository, rather than responsive.
I'm essentially wiccan at this point. The reason I'm wiccan might hearken back to a line from a book. A person was in bad shape, and a friend urged them to stay... they wouldn't, and the friend said "okay, but if you don't stay here, go *SOMEWHERE*."
I was Christian, and a different type of Christian than most folks. I understand that words *ARE NOT* reality, and sometimes aren't even decent pictures of reality. So, I didn't take the bible, or any teachings, as absolute, literal reality, because they can't be. But, then it turns out that, in one of the Gospels, Jesus is reported in some manuscripts to have said, basically, "preach to people; they'll be saved if they believe and damned otherwise".
Belief is about words; those imperfect words that are not reality. What any being like God would want is for people to *BE*, not to *BELIEVE*.
(Hey, new "kindergarten" sigfile... "Believe" is five letters too long.)
But, accepted by Christians on earth, right in the books that are most directly meaningful, is a statement that belief is everything.
Okay... I realized that, at this point, I couldn't be "Christian" in the sense that most people used the word. I believe I follow the guidelines that the man people call Jesus set down, as best as I am able (with the attendant human screwups and attempts to get better), but that's not enough to claim the title among people who will assume more than it means.
So, "I didn't stay here, but I went somewhere".
Wicca includes both a goddess and a god, and I don't personify them too greatly. I use them for stereotypical-to-me female and male energies. If I want to love, and nurture, I call upon the Goddess. If I need to be strong and fight through troubles, I call upon the God.
I might be calling upon the same being (i.e.: monotheism has it right, but I'm calling on different aspects), two beings, more than two beings, or nothing... I don't care. I'm doing it for me, because I don't know how or why to do anything for them.
I work with the mythology, of the god being born, loving the goddess, then dying to be reborn again, because it gives me something new to ponder and celebrate. Sometimes (like today) I imagine the goddess doing the same thing, though in a more overlapping schedule, with the crone still around as the goddess is reborn.
Magic... well, I'm a magic skeptic.
Could I find words that would transform your understanding, and make things better for you (on this topic, or another)? Maybe. Would that process be something amazing and wonderful, and the effect of my will on my actions, influencing yours? Yes. I might call that magic. I like that thought.
Could I find ways to discipline my mind, and influence myself, to effect changes in me? Might those changes have far reaching consequences? e.g., if I used 'magic' to increase my confidence, could that not cause ripples that reach out in many different ways, because now *I* am making ripples that reach out futher? Sure... and I do consider that 'magic' of a sort.
Do I think that casting a healing spell to try to help someone *WILL* help that someone? No, not directly... I'll do it, if I do, for the sake of both of our minds. "I care enough to do this", and "I'm doing something, which is better than doing nothing".
Do I think I can bring rain to a drought stricken area? No.
I might try some will working in those cases, and I might 'have faith' in it (which is a very different thing for me than 'believing'), but for the sake of my own sanity, I have to believe that I'm not going to effect a physical change on the universe.
Finally... the Rede.
That's something that's a bit of a sore point with me. The Rede is usually said "an it harm none, do as you will". "An" is an old form that means "when" or "if". "*IF* it harms no one, you can do what you want", or "When no one gets hurt, do whatever you feel like".
A lot of people (many of them Wiccans) claim that it means "harm none, then do what you want". I believe that it's impossible to "harm none" by most reasonable interpretations of those words.
But I love the freedom giving statement of "until you hurt someone, everything you do is okay". (The Goddess *must* be a mother... that really just says "It's always fun until someone loses an eye." Hah... "eight words the Wiccan rede draws nigh... it's always fun until someone loses an eye"
I know some folks think that a religion isn't a religion until it tells you what you *HAVE* to do. Well, I don't know anything (yet) in Wicca that is a set of rules one must do. But I do believe we have a responsibility to the earth and the creatures on it. I believe wiccans should be 'creators' (in some way) and 'shapers' (in some way)... people who try to make the world around them better (in some way). Those are things that I think will be necessary to anyone with an awake and enlightened mind.
I guess that thought could come from wicca (as much as from anywhere), but I don't think it's a command. And, I like it a heck of a lot better that way.
I'm essentially wiccan at this point. The reason I'm wiccan might hearken back to a line from a book. A person was in bad shape, and a friend urged them to stay... they wouldn't, and the friend said "okay, but if you don't stay here, go *SOMEWHERE*."
I was Christian, and a different type of Christian than most folks. I understand that words *ARE NOT* reality, and sometimes aren't even decent pictures of reality. So, I didn't take the bible, or any teachings, as absolute, literal reality, because they can't be. But, then it turns out that, in one of the Gospels, Jesus is reported in some manuscripts to have said, basically, "preach to people; they'll be saved if they believe and damned otherwise".
Belief is about words; those imperfect words that are not reality. What any being like God would want is for people to *BE*, not to *BELIEVE*.
(Hey, new "kindergarten" sigfile... "Believe" is five letters too long.)
But, accepted by Christians on earth, right in the books that are most directly meaningful, is a statement that belief is everything.
Okay... I realized that, at this point, I couldn't be "Christian" in the sense that most people used the word. I believe I follow the guidelines that the man people call Jesus set down, as best as I am able (with the attendant human screwups and attempts to get better), but that's not enough to claim the title among people who will assume more than it means.
So, "I didn't stay here, but I went somewhere".
Wicca includes both a goddess and a god, and I don't personify them too greatly. I use them for stereotypical-to-me female and male energies. If I want to love, and nurture, I call upon the Goddess. If I need to be strong and fight through troubles, I call upon the God.
I might be calling upon the same being (i.e.: monotheism has it right, but I'm calling on different aspects), two beings, more than two beings, or nothing... I don't care. I'm doing it for me, because I don't know how or why to do anything for them.
I work with the mythology, of the god being born, loving the goddess, then dying to be reborn again, because it gives me something new to ponder and celebrate. Sometimes (like today) I imagine the goddess doing the same thing, though in a more overlapping schedule, with the crone still around as the goddess is reborn.
Magic... well, I'm a magic skeptic.
Could I find words that would transform your understanding, and make things better for you (on this topic, or another)? Maybe. Would that process be something amazing and wonderful, and the effect of my will on my actions, influencing yours? Yes. I might call that magic. I like that thought.
Could I find ways to discipline my mind, and influence myself, to effect changes in me? Might those changes have far reaching consequences? e.g., if I used 'magic' to increase my confidence, could that not cause ripples that reach out in many different ways, because now *I* am making ripples that reach out futher? Sure... and I do consider that 'magic' of a sort.
Do I think that casting a healing spell to try to help someone *WILL* help that someone? No, not directly... I'll do it, if I do, for the sake of both of our minds. "I care enough to do this", and "I'm doing something, which is better than doing nothing".
Do I think I can bring rain to a drought stricken area? No.
I might try some will working in those cases, and I might 'have faith' in it (which is a very different thing for me than 'believing'), but for the sake of my own sanity, I have to believe that I'm not going to effect a physical change on the universe.
Finally... the Rede.
That's something that's a bit of a sore point with me. The Rede is usually said "an it harm none, do as you will". "An" is an old form that means "when" or "if". "*IF* it harms no one, you can do what you want", or "When no one gets hurt, do whatever you feel like".
A lot of people (many of them Wiccans) claim that it means "harm none, then do what you want". I believe that it's impossible to "harm none" by most reasonable interpretations of those words.
But I love the freedom giving statement of "until you hurt someone, everything you do is okay". (The Goddess *must* be a mother... that really just says "It's always fun until someone loses an eye." Hah... "eight words the Wiccan rede draws nigh... it's always fun until someone loses an eye"
I know some folks think that a religion isn't a religion until it tells you what you *HAVE* to do. Well, I don't know anything (yet) in Wicca that is a set of rules one must do. But I do believe we have a responsibility to the earth and the creatures on it. I believe wiccans should be 'creators' (in some way) and 'shapers' (in some way)... people who try to make the world around them better (in some way). Those are things that I think will be necessary to anyone with an awake and enlightened mind.
I guess that thought could come from wicca (as much as from anywhere), but I don't think it's a command. And, I like it a heck of a lot better that way.
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Serendipity
Date: 2002-06-17 10:42 am (UTC)But I did want to note, for the record, that you and I seem to have come to roughly the same place by completely different routes. Which, I suspect, is a bit of what bonds us.
And while I'm with you on the whole question of personifying That Other Power, I am also reminded (often) of a night in my garden when all the metaphors worked in a way that I can only describe as "magical."
(-