Back to the Mountain
Pax, Ora et Labora: gateway to the organic farm at St. Mary's, Sewanee
Fran and I spent this past weekend in Sewanee, TN. “The Mountain,” as it is affectionately called, is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, a college town on the Cumberland Plateau nestled in forested land filled with caves, hiking trails, waterfalls, a natural bridge, and other wonders.
It’s the first time we’ve been back since my friend Bob’s funeral, back in February of 2009. I lived in Sewanee from 1988 to 1993, running the campus bookstore at the University of the South. I left when Fran and I got married, and have been in Atlanta ever since. But even though it’s only about a three hour drive away, I’ve only been back to my old home three or four times since leaving. Not that there’s no reason to go back — Sewanee is beautiful, and almost without exception everyone I knew up there was wonderful. My staying away is partially due to the demands of family life (especially with Rhiannon’s health issues), partially due to a tendency Fran and I have to visit family before friends when we travel, and — here’s the juice — partially due to my own longstanding inner tension that first fully erupted when I lived in Sewanee — the tension concerning my love for nature-based and indigenous spiritualities even while I anchor my identity as a Christian. Sewanee, home to a liberal arts college and seminary affiliated with the Episcopal Church, is kind of a Christian company town; but there are plenty of old hippies and deadheads and magical-thinkers who live out in the woods, enough to make this small community the kind of place where enthusiasm for alternative spirituality can find nurture as well.
So why do I go back now? Mainly because a dear member of my current circle of friends has moved up there: Michael Thompson, one of the leaders of the new Ecumenical Lay Associates at the monastery here in Georgia, has begun a farming project on the grounds of the St. Mary’s Conference Center, near the Episcopal Convent of St. Mary’s just beyond the edge of campus. When I lived in Sewanee, young and rather lacking in self-confidence, I basically lived a double life: the Christian Carl, who was on the vestry at the local church and even flirted with the idea of going to seminary, and the pagan Carl, who participated in sweatlodges and Wiccan circles under the full moon out on a remote bluff near the natural bridge. Perhaps it’s only a relatively new friend, who knows my whole story and who knows me well today, who can most fittingly re-introduce me to the crucible of my youth where I discovered and deepened my twin loves: for the profound silence of contemplation, and the erotic mysteries of the soil.
The story of my subsequent life in Atlanta has been the story of slowly learning to accept myself in my entirety, that somehow there is no contradiction between the man who wrote The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Paganism and the man who wrote The Big Book of Christian Mysticism. In the inclusive, all-embracing spirituality of my maturity, I can agree with Richard Rohr that “everything belongs” even while I now remain committed to practicing my spirituality in a monastic, and therefore Christian, context. But who I am today is the fruit of many years’ searching. In returning to Sewanee, I am coming back not merely as a prodigal son returning home, but as someone profoundly changed — changed simply by finally accepting who I really am, in my gloriously contradictory entirety.
So it seems that I require a new friend, someone intimate with me as I am in 2011, to reintroduce me to a place I knew and loved so well, but where, at least when I lived there, I never could just allow myself to “be.” Part of the experience of going back, however, has been the surprise of discovering just how much more at ease I feel with myself today — and that includes feeling at ease even with the mistakes I made two decades ago. Over the course of the weekend I was reminded both of how fully Sewanee has remained a part of me, and how much the people of this place knew who I truly was, even when I didn’t know how to fully accept myself. I surprised myself — and my companions — with how much of even the tiniest details I remembered about this my home from 20 years ago, recalling how to find a favorite waterfall tucked underneath a bluff at the edge of campus to spontaneously recognizing people I hadn’t seen in 20 years — and whom I barely knew, even back then. But when I did run into one of my closer friends from back then, the wife of a seminary professor, her first question to me was, “So, are you still listening to the Grateful Dead?” I wish I had been clever enough to say, “No these days I’m more inclined to play Dar Williams,” before humming a bar or two of “The Christians and the Pagans.” And in visiting with Sister Lucy, the matriarch of the small community of nuns, now almost blind and confined to a wheelchair but still with plenty of fire in her heart, I felt reminded of more than a few of the monks of Conyers, and felt filled with gratitude for all the holy people in my life, both past and present.
Back to my friend Michael and his organic farm. See the accompanying picture of the sign he built at the front of his blackberry garden and vineyard. Peace, Prayer and Work it proclaims, in Latin as befits a student of the Rule of St. Benedict. Michael understands that contemplation means everything belongs — that there is no contradiction between the urge for transcendence and the celebration of immanence, that a healthy spirituality entails both toes curling in the dirt and fingers reaching for the heavens. Mother Nature and the mystery we call God lovingly pour themselves into each other, and I think it takes a farmer who prays to fully get this. I’ve always been a bookish nerd, more inclined to skulk about in libraries than to get humus under my fingernails. If it’s not too late to teach this old dog a few new tricks, maybe Michael and his agricultural oblation will invite me to an even deeper place where I can integrate the wisdom of the body with my noetic yearning.
And it’s for that reason that I hope to return to Sewanee, soon and soon again. Where I can see both new friends and old, and embrace all of my own story — the shy introvert who found meaning in the message of the mystics, and the middle class rebel who discovered in alternative spiritualities a way to reconnect with my body and the earth. Maybe Sewanee will help me to truly and finally embrace that these things are not-two.
WSCA Interview Tonight
Tonight I’ll be interviewed by Deidre Hebert on WSCA 106.1 FM in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for her “Pagan FM” program. Dee is doing a series on Paganism in conversation with other faiths, and I suspected I was selected to be the Catholic on the show because of my former sojourn in the Pagan community. So the conversation should be interesting: not only about why I am a Catholic, and how I see Catholicism in conversation/dialog with Neopaganism, but also perhaps looking at the dynamics of my own journey, from Episcopalian to Pagan to Catholic.
Anyway, if you’re interested in listening in, the interview will be live, airing from 10:15 to about 11:00 PM tonight, Eastern time. If you’re not in New Hampshire, you can listen online by clicking here.
The Passing of a Pagan Legend
Isaac Bonewits (1949-2010), in full Druid regalia
I am sad to learn of the death of Isaac Bonewits yesterday, of cancer, at the age of 60. Isaac was probably the single most influential American in the revival of pagan druidism over the last forty years. He was the founder of Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship, the druid organization of which I was a member for several years. ADF had a sweeping vision not only for the revival of Celtic paganism, but indeed all of Indo-European paganism, and stressed sound scholarship, accountability, public worship, and democratically chosen leadership — all qualities that are hardly ubiquitous in the neopagan world. Isaac also wrote a number of books, the most famous being Real Magic, and was prominently featured in Margot Adler’s ground-breaking 1979 study of neopaganism, Drawing Down the Moon. He also appeared, briefly, in Robert Anton Wilson’s counterculture classic, The Cosmic Trigger. (more…)
Quote for the Day
The idea of memory was very important in Celtic spirituality. There are lovely prayers for different occasions. There are prayers for the hearth, for kindling the fire, and for smooring the hearth. At night, the ashes were smoored over the burning coals, sealing off the air. The next morning the coals would still be alive and burning. There is also a lovely prayer for the hearth keepers that evokes St. Bridget, who was both a pagan Celtic goddess and a Christian saint. In herself, Bridget focuses the two worlds easily and naturally. The pagan world and the Christian world have no row with each other in the Irish psyche, rather they come close to each other in a lovely way.
— John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
Divine Light
Divine Light: The Theology of Denys the Areopagite
By William Riordan
San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008
Review by Carl McColman
To fully grasp the beauty and complexity (and some would say, the challenge) of Christian mysticism, sooner or later you will contend with the elusive sixth-century figure known variously as Denys, Dionysius, or Pseudo-Dionysius, the Areopagite. We don’t know his real name. In his own writings, he passes himself off as a figure briefly mentioned in the New Testament — a Greek from Athens, who became a follower of Christ after Paul’s sermon in that city (recounted in Acts 17). For many centuries, these writings were generally accepted to be by Dionysius, and therefore of New Testament-era provenance. But scholars in the fifteenth century began to question this when it became obvious that so-called Dionysius relied on heavily the ideas of Neoplatonic philosophers such as Proclus, who lived in the fifth century. Today, Pseudo-Dionysius is now generally thought to have been a Syrian priest or monk who lived and wrote sometime around the year 500 CE. But if for a thousand years his works were highly influential because of his alleged ties to the Apostle Paul, once his identity was questioned, his reputation plummeted, and through the modern era he was dismissed as, at worst, a forger and a fraud; at best, a crafty Neoplatonist attempting to import pagan ideas into Christianity by the clever use of a pseudonym.
William Riordan’s accessible introduction to the theology of this figure, whom he prefers to identify using the traditional name “Denys,” seeks to find an orthodox middle ground, seeing the Areopagite neither as a fraud nor as an opportunist, but simply as a theologian seeking to affirm a grand and glorious synthesis between the philosophy of Neoplatonism and the teaching of the church. Riordan carefully delineates the distinctions between Denys’ thought and pagan philosophy, showing how Denys consistently submits his Neoplatonic ideas to Christian doctrine.
After an introductory look at Denys’ historical background, his theological method, and his influence both in the east and the west, Riordan explains both the similarities and differences between Denys and Neoplatonism, and then concentrates on Denys as a teacher of divinization, both in terms of cosmology and individual spirituality. “Divinization is an initiation, and often an arduous one, into Divine Being,” notes Riordan, and he teases out how Deny’s understanding of what we now call “the great chain of being” (Denys himself speaks of heirarchies, a concept he himself developed and which has become contested in our time because of its association with the abuse of power) all serves the larger question of how human beings are initiated into the unfathomable mystery of God, in order to become partakers of the Divine Nature.
Denys’ influence on the course of Christian mystical theology cannot be overstated. And while ours is an age in which many people of faith seek to regain an authentically Jewish celebration of the goodness of creation — which implies moving away from an understanding of metaphysics or spirit as “higher” than matter — the insights of Denys, acknowledging God as transcendent other who both loves the creation but also challenges it to be transformed in him — remain relevant to anyone who finds value in contemplative practice or who seeks to integrate the visionary thought of even non-Christian thinkers like Ken Wilber into the quest for holiness in our time.
I particularly loved the appendix of this book, where Riordan examines Denys’ teachings in the light of Mircea Eliade’s studies of shamans and shamanic initiation. Needless to say, there are some real points of correlation and convergence, and Riordan’s explanation of the three-fold process of purgation, illumination and union in terms of shamanic initiation is, to my mind, alone worth the price of the book.
This is a book heavy on theory rather than practice; in other words, reading it won’t provide you with tips on how to improve your discipline of contemplative prayer. But it might give you some insight into a way of approaching Christian thought that embraces, rather than dismisses, other wisdom traditions, and that underscores the many points of commonality between Christian mysticism and other transformational spiritualities.
The Mystery is Solved!
Thanks to the reach of the Internet — and Facebook — I have discovered the identity of the photographer of the image that is being used for the cover design of The Big Book of Christian Mysticism. The photographer is named Francesco Pirrone; he shot the photograph in the ruins of the Church of San Pantaleo in the village of Martis in Sardinia.
If you care to visit it (I hope I can, someday), click here to see the location of the church on Google Maps.
Here’s an image of the exterior of the church, from a Sardinia Tourism website.
Francesco Pirrone notes that this church is interesting “because the roof collapsed and the floor is dropped.” The Sardinia Tourism website notes that this church was built in the 13th century in Romanesque-Gothic style. The website also mentions a summer bonfire ritual which has interesting parallels to the Beltane/Mayday ceremonies from the British Isles:
On the evening of June 24th a characteristic event takes place which is worth mentioning; “su fogarone”, (a huge bonfire) is prepared, which has to be jumped over by pairs of both children and adults; in the past, before jumping, the pair tied a knot in a handkerchief to symbolise the relationship that was being formed at that very moment and thus becoming “compares e comares de fogarone”; a link, which purified by the flames, was stronger than that of a blood relation.
I can’t tell if this bonfire ritual takes place at the church itself, or just somewhere in Martis. But if does take place at the church, how interesting that what may be a vestigial pagan ceremony is associated with a beautiful church that would eventually appear on the cover of a book about Christian mysticism written by a former neopagan. And how interesting that I should discover all this on the first of May.
Synchronicity. It’s a beautiful thing.
Finally, here is another look at the interior of the church, from the lens of Francesco Pirrone.
Of the Equinox and the Spirituality of the Earth
Twice this week, on two separate occasions coming from two different individuals, I have been invited to participate in Spring Equinox rituals that will take place this weekend.
Ten years ago that would have been nothing remarkable, as I was a regular participant in Wiccan and Neopagan groups like the House of Oak Spring or the Grove of the Unicorn or the now-defunct local grove of Ár nDraíocht Féin. But since I wandered “out of the woods and into the Catholic Church” in 2005, understandably my number of invitations to Wiccan Circles and Pagan Rituals have been in short supply. So I find it interesting that I would get not one, but two, offers to honor the turning of the wheel this time around.
And the real irony: both invitations come from Christian friends. Not “Christian” in the sense of “that was how I was raised but I don’t really believe it,” but Christian in the “going to church every Sunday and trying to follow Jesus the best I can” sense.
So… why are the Christians who love the turning of the seasons suddenly coming out of the woodwork? I’m not really sure. But it does seem auspicious, in that just this week I’ve begun reading Christine Valter Paintner’s newly-released book Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying With the Elements from Sorin Books, an imprint of Ave Maria Press (about as mainstream a Catholic publisher as you can get) I’ve just begun the book so I can’t say too much right now, but I will post a review once I’ve finished it. What I can say is that it looks quite good: a poetic and prayerful approach to spirituality grounded in the blessings of the natural world, suitable for Christians to incorporate in our overall spiritual practice. Valter Paintner is a Benedictine oblate whose website is called Abbey of the Arts: Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts.
Meanwhile, both of the Atlanta-area Christians who requested my presence at Equinox rituals this weekend are contemplatives as well. Am I noticing a groundswell of emerging interest in the convergence between contemplative Christianity and a healthy, positive honoring of the good Earth that has been given to us?
I sure hope so.
Alas, I had to decline both opportunities to participate in the Equinox rituals for the most prosaic of reasons: I work this weekend. But I’m pleased that I was honored with the invitations. To all of you who read this, whether you are Neopagans — or Christians with a deep and abiding interest in honoring the blessings of the Earth — I wish you a joyous day in celebration of the coming of Spring.
The Snakes and the Slaves
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.
As I ponder on this day, I am reminded that it, like Columbus Day, can elicit a radically different response from people, based on their world-view and value system. Columbus Day for Euro-Americans was traditionally a day of celebration and commemoration of “discovery,” but for Native Americans and those who share concern for the plight of indigenous people who face the brunt of colonialist expansion, Columbus Day has become the symbol of loss. As one pundit put it, “Columbus didn’t discover America, he invaded it!”
St. Patrick’s Day, likewise, means different things based on whether a person’s interest in Celtic spirituality tends toward the Pagan or the Christian end of the continuum. For Christians, Patrick brought the new faith — hence, enlightenment — to this “island at the end of the world.” But Neopagans re-interpret Patrick not as a liberator, but as an oppressor. The arrival of Patrick’s mission marked the beginning of the end of the old ways. I remember back in the 1980s, in Nashville at a Wiccan bookstore, the first time I saw a leaflet for Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship: It said “Bring back the snakes! Ireland was better off Pagan.”
So when Patrick expelled the snakes from Ireland, was this a mythic way of saying he brought about the end of the native, druidic religion? It might be easy to interpret things that way, and I suppose many, both Christian and Pagan, would agree with this way of reading history. But I am not so sure. I think indigenous Irish spirituality did not so much vanish under Christianity as adapt and evolve. The old gods and goddesses may have retreated undergone and became the fairies of myth and lore, but many practices associated with them — from the veneration of holy wells to the Imbolc ceremonies Christianised under devotion to St. Brigid — have lived on, into the present day. Indeed, when I participated in a Brigid’s Eve Ritual in Co. Kildare in 2005, I quickly lost any sense of orientation as to whether what I was doing was primarily Catholic or Pagan in its focus.
Purists on both side of the Christian/Pagan divide will not like this very much, but I think this is the glory of Irish spirituality — and the true legacy of Patrick. Neither Pagans nor Christians are going to go away, so we can choose to hate each other — or we can decide to live together peacefully, and perhaps even joyfully. I opt for the latter. And I think the folk traditions of the Celtic lands are some of the best tools we have for learning how to be good neighbors with one another.
One other thought about St. Patrick. He first came to Ireland not as a missionary, but as a slave — and escaped several years later as a runaway. Much of the drama of his story came from his sense that he needed to return to the land of his own captivity as a spiritual emissary. Part of his legacy as the apostle to the Irish was his work against human trafficking. Now, there’s nothing within Celtic paganism that mandates the owning of slaves, and likewise we know that many Christians over the centuries have been slave owners, so it is a mistake to assume that because Pagan Ireland was a slave state, and the coming of Christianity brought also the fight against slavery, that this makes Christianity automatically morally superior to Paganism. That argument just doesn’t hold water. But what is worth considering is this: perhaps the “snakes” that Patrick expelled were not the Druids, but the slave traders and slave owners. By bringing an ethic of human dignity and respect to Ireland, Patrick brought a character that the best expressions of both Paganism and Christianity can celebrate.
Perhaps Pagans will always lament the coming of Patrick, and Christians will always celebrate it. In some ways, we will simply always be different. But if we can both agree that slavery is a bad thing and that freedom is good, perhaps we can see in this a call to freedom of religion, and the possibility of true interfaith spirituality and peaceful co-existence that will liberate us to work together for the common good. After all, human trafficking is still with us, and other problems (like the environmental crisis) exist where Neopagans and Christians can work together to achieve a common goal. In this way, everyone wins. Except for the snakes.
How Little We Know, How Much We Miss
I’m entering into 2010 reflecting on the limits of knowledge and the challenges facing anyone interested in interreligious dialogue or interfaith spirituality. If we are not humbled by how little we know, we are in trouble.
Ali of Meadowsweet & Myrrh, in her latest contribution to a conversation we’ve been having about the movie Avatar and the representation of pagan, indigenous and/or pantheistic spirituality in that movie, has this perceptive insight:
I am all for interfaith dialogue and the fruitful integration and living-together of different traditions. But before we begin our blending, I think it is utterly important that we strive to understand what those differences actually are, and accept no pale caricatures in their place. Otherwise, what we are doing is not integrating, but imposing. While a rose is a rose is a rose, to look at another spiritual tradition through rose-colored glasses, paint a rose-colored picture and then try to pass it off as the real thing is just not something I willing to settle for.
I agree with her. She said this in the context of challenging my assertion that Avatar was “a Neopagan’s dream,” which she contests by pointing out problems with the movie’s depiction of Pandoran spirituality. Hey, as dense and post-pagan as I am, even I had figured out that Eywa was essentially a monotheistic fictionalization of a “pagan goddess,” and I suppose my chief error was not giving that misgiving any airtime in my review.
Why did I not bother to point out the flaws in the movie’s “paganism” that even I picked up on? I think the answer is simple: because, as a Christian, it really wasn’t my problem. But in saying that, I’m pointing to how much I embody the problem Ali addresses in the above quote. (more…)
Grace and the Goddess: AVATAR as a Christian/Pagan Parable
James Cameron’s new film, Avatar, tells a story we’ve all heard before; as I commented on Twitter last night, it is Dances with Wolves meets Star Trek: Insurrection, with elements of The Matrix and Whale Rider thrown in. But Avatar is grander and more epic than any of these films, and of course, it’s a stunning achievement of CGI artistry. For its sheer beauty, go see it. But critics are whining that the story is “weak” or “boring” and I think they’re rather justified in their gripes. Nevertheless, I think it raises enough questions for someone like me, interested as I am in the interface between Christianity and indigenous culture, that it’s worth commenting on.
Warning: plot spoilers abound in the rest of this review. Read at your own risk. (more…)
A New Pagan Blog
My friend Laura, who is one of my cohorts from back in my Pagan days — and who, despite being a former Catholic herself, was one of the most supportive of my friends when I was called to abandon Neopaganism in order to enter the Catholic Church — has begun a blog devoted to the Goddess Persephone.
Go check it out: Maid to Queen: Meditations on Persephone
After the Magic (Four Years Later)
This evening, Google Alerts alerted me to the following critique of my conversion to Catholicism. It comes from a blog called Meanderings Along Ancestral Pagan Paths, by someone who goes by the handle of “Ancestral Celt,” and includes a quote from a members-only Pagan site called An Fianna:
…I cannot understand Mr McColman’s reasoning for Catholicism: the magic left, meditation didn’t work anymore. As someone else recently said:
‘The magic left?’ So what about the catholic priest who claims to magically transform a wafer and a few drops of vino into the body of his God, by way of some mumbled mystical mutterings? Meditation didn’t work anymore? So what about the spiritual exercises of the Jesuits, compliments of ‘Saint’ Ignacius De Loyola? Or the mind numbingly boring constant repetitious prayers of the rosary before a plaster catholic idol of your choice? (Source: An Fianna)
It like giving up a diet because you’ve hit a plateau, isn’t it? Or, am I completely missing the point?
Well, I don’t know if “Ancestral Celt” is completely missing the point or not, but my decision to forsake Paganism for Catholicism entailed a lot more than just my dissatisfaction with Pagan-themed meditation or magic (although that was certainly part of the adventure). To push Ancestral Celt’s diet analogy, when I hit my “plateau,” I didn’t give up dieting, but I did switch diets. After four years, I have no regrets, so — for me at least — it was the right choice.
Meanwhile, the quote from “An Fianna” displays precisely the kind of rote anti-Catholicism/Christian-bashing found in some corners of the Pagan world, that I chafed against for quite some time, even before I became interested in the Catholic Church. (more…)
In Honour of Nature
In Honour of Nature: The Sacred Well in a New Time
By Mary Shanahan
Ballyheigue, Co. Kerry: Lumenium, 2007
Review by Carl McColman
I love Irish holy wells. The sacred wells dedicated to St. Brigid in Kildare and Liscannor; Tobernault near Sligo; and Tober Phadraig near Clonmel are some of the most beautiful and moving spiritual sites I’ve ever visited — and these are just a few of the natural water sources in Ireland that have been venerated as places of healing and spiritual presence for ages untold. Emerging out of pagan water worship, the holy wells appear at various points in Celtic mythology as sacred power centers, sites where wisdom could be gained or communication with the gods might occur. With the coming of Christianity these ancient sacred sites were not suppressed but transformed, and where once people sang praises to their local fertility deities, later generations would recite the rosary and offer prayers to the Son of God and the Mother of God. Anyone interested in Celtic wisdom, Celtic Christianity, and points of continuity between indigenous and Christian spirituality will find holy wells to be places of simple yet profound spiritual nourishment.
Part of what makes the holy well tradition so special is its emphasis on the local and the particular. Each holy well is unique, with its one-of-a-kind natural setting and its own particular folklore and “pattern” (ritual of prayers and movement, which might include, as an example, reciting the rosary while walking clockwise around the well 9 times). Christianity, like the other “great” world religions, emphasizes what is universal and cosmic in significance, but the veneration of holy wells remains oriented more toward what is distinctive and singular about each individual water source.
With this in mind, Mary Shanahan’s booklet In Honour of Nature is a lot like the wells it celebrates: the author has made no attempt to exhaustively discuss holy wells throughout Ireland or even throughout a single county; rather this work zeroes in on seven wells in the northern part of County Kerry, in the lovely southwest of Ireland. Co. Kerry, like several other of Ireland’s westernmost counties, is a place where the traditional Irish language and folklore has against insurmountable odds survived, even if terribly threatened by the crushing power of English language and modern culture. So Kerry is a wonderful setting for those of us who believe that the old Irish ways have a lot to say to our troubled time. In Honour of Nature provides insight into the nature and scope of well veneration, offers directions to each of the wells profiled (with a warning that some of them are on private property!), tells the story of each well, points out what is distinctive about the well, and offers a wealth of background information on various aspects of Irish wisdom, from Sheela-na-Gigs to tree folklore. Points for personal reflection and an array of gorgeous photographs round out this handsome guide. In Honour of Nature, available from the author’s website, would be most useful for anyone planning a visit to Co. Kerry — but even armchair travelers with a love for Ireland and Celtic wisdom will enjoy reading this small treasure.
In Between the Worlds
Yesterday while working at the Abbey Store I got a surprise: a man came in whom I recognized, but couldn’t quite place. We spoke, and he reminded me who he was. I knew him years ago, when I was active in the Atlanta Neopagan community — and he was a Wiccan elder.
It turns out he’s discovered contemplative Christianity and has fallen in love with it. He spoke enthusiastically about meditating with the monks in the monastery church. I told him that I had become a Catholic in 2005, and he replied, “I still have a foot in both worlds.”
I nodded sympathetically. That’s basically where I was for quite some time before I embraced Catholicism, as I tried to discern how it could be that I was simultaneously making a living as a Pagan author/teacher and falling in love (again) with mystical Christianity. We talked about how a generous spirituality honors and acknowledges love and truth and beauty wherever it is to be found — even when discerned in two wisdom traditions that on the surface are hostile to one another.
Wiccans describe their magical circles as “a world between the worlds.” Sometimes I feel like I’ve taken up permanent residence between the worlds, as a devout and committed contemplative Christian who continues to feel affection and love for the nature-honoring and spiritually compassionate side of Paganism. Hanging out in this neighborhood means I’ll always be misunderstood by those who need clear boundaries and non-negotiable limits in order to feel spiritually safe within their own tradition (whether Christian or Pagan or whatever). But it also means that I get to express the fullness of my love — love for Christ, love for the mystical path, love for the earth and the body, love for community and family and friends and those who are hurting or hungry or in need of healing.
Reduced to its absolute essence, to be a mystic means to be one who loves. I’m hardly a mystic, just like on too many days I’m not very good at loving. But I aspire to be both an initiate into God’s mysteries, and one who loves in harmony with the heart of God. I think the desire for one is basically the same thing as the desire for the other. So I continue to pray that I may love all things the way God does. Even when it means that I’m always sort of hanging out in between the worlds.
Quakers and Pagans
I’m briefly quoted in an interesting article on Neopagans who embrace Quaker spirituality. Cat Chapin-Bishop, who frequently hangs out at this blog and who is herself a Quaker Pagan, is featured in it as well.
A Druid’s Final Resting Place?
My dear friend Judith alerted me to this fascinating news article:
Possible Grave of a Druid found in the United Kingdom
My only quibble with this article is its calling this archaeological find the “first” such evidence of a druid burial. I think the case can be (and has been) made that the Lindow Man bog body, unearthed in the 1980s, is that of a druid as well.
Pagan Christianity?
Pagan Christianity? Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices
Revised and Updated
By Frank Viola and George Barna
Carol Stream, IL: Barna (An Imprint of Tyndale House Publishers), 2008
Review by Carl McColman
For years now, Neopagans have been joking (and griping) about how Christianity often appears as little more than a pagan ripoff. To find support for this claim, one need look no further than the marked similarity between many Catholic saints and pre-Christian deities (such as the Celtic goddess Brigit and her Irish namesake, St. Brigid) or indeed the uncanny correlation between the liturgical year and ancient pagan holidays (for example, Christmas corresponds with the Roman Saturnalia; Candlemas and All Saints with the Gaelic festivals of Imbolc and Samhain, etc.).
Of course, part of the joke (or frustration) in the minds of many Neopagans has been how willfully blind Christians seem to be in regard to the pagan influence on their faith. “We know that Easter is really a festival in honor of the spring goddess Eostara, no matter what the Christians might think or say” is practically a proverbial saying among pagans, who go on to note that colored eggs and rabbits were particularly sacred to this Germanic deity!
Now along comes Frank Viola, a leader in the burgeoning house church movement, who has teamed up with evangelical marketing guru George Barna to educate Christians on just how “pagan” their religion really is. Reading Pagan Christianity? is certainly an eye-opener; the authors don’t even bother with such issues as saints or holy days (although they never explicitly say so, it’s clear that they are writing for evangelical Protestants and certainly not for Catholics). Rather, they go after a number of issues that even Neopagans don’t typically concern themselves with: public church buildings, professional clergy, clergy vestments, professional music directors and choirs, even the ordinary order of worship (whether in the Catholic mass or the Protestant service) — these, and other, commonplace aspects of contemporary mainstream Christianity are all dissected, one by one, with virtually always the same verdict: these practices are rooted in Greek, Roman, or other pagan cultures, with little or no support in the Bible or the earliest Christian writings. The others go on to editorialize about how all these unscriptural, “pagan” practices are in their opinion harmful to the Body of Christ.
Needless to say, I have profoundly mixed feelings about this book. (more…)
Magic and Miracles
Recently I was bemused by a review of one of my Neopagan books in which the critic, in panning the book, accused me of “not believing in magic.” I thought, “Well, if she means I don’t believe in magic the way a 6-year-old believes in Santa Claus, I guess she’s right.” Still, it was interesting for me to ponder about how I think about magic, both now (almost three years after entering the Catholic faith) and then (the book in question, Before You Cast a Spell, was written in 2003).
I first was drawn to Neopaganism — particularly the spiritualities of Wicca, Druidry, and Asatru — because I was interested in an earth-centered and post-patriarchal way of expressing myself spiritually. That’s what I thought Paganism was all about, thanks to reading books by folks like Starhawk, Margot Adler, and Philip Carr-Gomm. Alas, once I got into the Pagan world, what I mostly found were a lot of folks wrapped up in the chase for secret knowledge and spiritual power, both of which categories were rolled together under the umbrella term of “magic” (or “magick,” to use Crowley’s rather pompous revisioning of the word). Hindsight is 20/20, and I realize that, given my unwillingness to buy into the fantasy/superstition of Pagan magic, I was ill-suited to be a Pagan from day one. But I’m nothing if not stubborn, and so I stubbornly tried to make it work — to find some way I could reconcile my naturally skeptical mind with what seemed to me to be the mostly naive if not childlike approach to this notion of magic that I encountered at every turn in the Pagan world.
The question I kept pondering about magic was simply this: “How does it work?” No one — none of the books I read, none of the websites I visited, none of the teachers I studied under — could provide me with a satisfactory answer. (more…)
The Eve of Yule
Tonight will be longest night of the year. The exact solstice moment occurs at 1:08 AM Saturday morning, Atlanta time. So happy winter solstice, everyone!
This means that at Newgrange in Ireland, probably starting yesterday and running through Monday, the annual solstice event is occurring, meaning that for just a few minutes each morning — weather permitting — the sun will shine directly into the heart of this megalithic tomb. Even though it is about 5,000 years old, this ancient structure is perfectly aligned so that the winter solstice sunrise briefly shines directly into its heart, casting light into chambers that the rest of the year would lie in serene darkness.
We know so little about what our ancestors believed. Clearly, to build a tomb like Newgrange (which easily took several generations to complete) with such a precise astronomical alignment speaks not only to a profound reverence for the dead, but also a deep knowledge of the environment — and, we may presume, some sort of conviction about immortality. The form those beliefs may have taken, of course, has been lost in the mists of time. All that is left is a massive structure, which after millennia stands as a silent testimony to an ancient wisdom long lost.
It begs the question: what other forms of knowledge or wisdom have been lost to us? And what will take to regain such insight?
Good questions for us as we reflect on the longest night of the year, and the anticipated return of the sun.
N.B. My apologies to readers from the southern hemisphere — hope you have a joyful summer solstice!
Double Blasphemy
I went to see Beowulf last night. I thought it was pretty mediocre. Sure, it renders Grendel’s Mother as the hottest thing in a catsuit since Seven of Nine, but that’s hardly a commendation. Really, there’s not much to say about this movie other than it has its share of gee-whiz animation.
As for the story, this film does a pretty good job at eviscerating the original tale. I thought we could have expected much better from Neil Gaiman. (more…)
Pagans in the Pews
Here’s an encouraging report from theooze.com about an evangelical church in Salem, Massachusetts, that is working hard to create meaningful dialogue between Christians and Neopagans:
