Category: Paganism
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A Pagan’s Christmas Message
I’m in Nashville, home of the Christian Contemporary Music Industry, home of LifeWay Christian Stores, and home of the Southern Baptist Convention. This week, in a kind of radical re-immersion into Christian culture, I’m going to spread the message about Jesus to Jesus-people, and I’m doing so in the most subversively effective way imaginable: through catchy […]
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On the Nature of Salvation for Pagans
The conversation born out of my last post has been, by far, one of the most stimulating dialogues to take place on Bishop In The Grove. My mind is a flurry with thoughts of Gods and Goddesses, mysticism, my own need for a deeper and more engaging practice, and — for the first time in […]
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On Converting a Christian to Paganism
I’m a convert to Paganism. I was born into a Christian tradition, and spent most of the first 25 years of my life identifying as a Christian. I’ve written of this before, but the subject keeps coming up for me. There’s something about how we arrive at our tradition that seems worth reflecting on, especially […]
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Holy Crap… I think I may be a Wiccan
So I’m talking with one my best girlfriends this morning, pacing around her kitchen as she cooks up some kale, and I’m telling her the story of me being told by a women that, “Women, by nature, understand the Goddess better than men,” or that, “There’s just something about women that makes it easier for […]
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What To Do On Samhain When You’re Dead
Earlier this week the air took a turn toward December, becoming wet and visible, and the moisture that fell in cold, slow-motion stuck quickly to the cars, the streets, and the sidewalks. On the morning after the storm a massacre of tree branches covered the earth around my house, proving both the strength of water […]
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To #Occupy, To Fully Engage
During the month that Occupy Wall Street grew from a small gathering to an international movement I mostly stayed home, busy with the work of selling our house. Protesters gathered around the Capitol, camped out with their hand-made signs and their earnest expressions, and I sat at our dining room table, worried about whether our […]
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The Day The Heathens Built A Chapel
The burly, bearded, leather wearing Heathens didn’t quite know what to make of Sister Who, but that didn’t stop them from helping build her Interfaith Chapel. Sister Who squinted as she gave the instructions for how to put which pole into which joint, and when she did her fake eyelashes fluttered like plastic butterflies. Every […]
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More On Christian-Pagan Relations
Pagans hate generalizations made about Pagans (he writes with a smirk). That’s one generalization I feel confident in making. In my last post I made some bold statements about the unwillingness of Pagans to accept the existence of the Christian god, knowing full well that those statements were not completely accurate (or, perhaps even close […]
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Christian-Pagan Couples Counseling
Pagans don’t want to accept the possibility that the Christian god is real. Doing so might open us up to a diatribe about salvation, our inherent sinfulness, or our “need for conversion”. We’ve had that talk a time or two, and – thank you – we’ll pass. Christians are of the “One and Only God” camp. Not […]
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An Early Autumn Chill
Our realtors walked through our bedroom and pointed out that my jewelry (a.k.a. Pagan Bling) would need to go, as would our book shelf of Buffy DVD’s and the half-dozen, brown, wooden elephant figurines left over from our big, gay wedding. They were pleased with the size of the closet, though, if not a little […]
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The Christo-Pagan Conflict
Christianity and Paganism: are the two mutually exclusive? The subject came up after the Full Moon ritual, and it got a little heated.
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Stock The Pantry and Tend The Dirt
We tell stories about Old Gods who governed over the fields, but we rarely step foot in the fields ourselves. In some ways, it would be more appropriate for us to worship gods who govern the produce aisle, or the food processing plants, or the deities of the drive through.
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Know Me By My Pagan Name
What happens when the person I am online – the Druid student, the Pagan – meets real, flesh and blood, non-Pagan identifying people? Which me am I?
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What We Are: One Pagan-American Response
Star Foster asked: “What makes Pagans valuable to America? What do we bring to the table? How do we exemplify American values?”
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The Day The Witches Took Over Church – UPDATED
No one knew why the woman sitting beside the Pagan Chamber Choir was wearing a black, feathered, Carnival mask, and I doubt anybody asked. Her display may have seemed a bit dark for 9:15am on a Sunday, but who was I to judge?
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Letting Go Of The Gun
What are you supposed to do when you realize that you have to sit back and allow a bad thing to play out?
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Rules Of Reverence: The Sacred And The Silly
How do we find a balance between our desire for personal freedom and the legitimate need to have a standard measurement in our community?
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Pill Popping Deities
Are the Gods little more than metaphysical designer drugs for the New Age? Are we in service to them, or is it the other way around?
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Casting Faith
Pagans are so centered around practice. We define ourselves by what we do, not by what we believe (generally speaking). But faith is all about belief, isn’t it? How do we reframe faith as something that you do instead of something that you have?
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Imagination is a Pagan Value
Your imagination is where it all takes place. See a deity? Give thanks to your imagination. Create a circle of protection? Again, imagination.
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Pagans Have Values, Too, Say Bloggers
Think Christians are the only ones with values? Think again.
