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A Pagan Reclaiming Forgiveness
In the midst of this Christian extravaganza, standing beneath the red and green blinking lights, and surrounded by the sound of Jesus followers singing hymns and secular Christmas classics, I’m rediscovering the act of forgiveness. I didn’t expect forgiveness to be a theme of this brief caroling experience. I thought my time singing Christmas songs […]
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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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Please Don’t Cut My Heart Out on Thanksgiving
Blogging is very much a form of community engagement for me. I look at the last few posts, and there is so much to learn from one another about spirituality, religion, semantics, and how to engage in effective dialogue on the internet. It’s a relief to read thoughtful, mindful comments, and witness the kaleidoscope of […]
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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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Responding to the Religious Impulse of a Star
I’ve been in the throws of a creative trip for the past two weeks, one that took me away from my home, my husband, and my regular routine. I’ve been up into the wee hours of the morning, surrounded by creative people and business people, technicians and office workers, trying my best to tap into […]
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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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In A Goddess Centered Universe, What’s A Man To Do?
The Divine Feminine, it seems, is making a comeback. This is what three out of the five panelists told the crowd at a recent symposium I attended. The Divine Feminine is initiating a change in the world, they assured us, and She is bringing to bear a time when the spiritual voice of women will […]
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I Got Religion During #NaNoWriMo
For thirty days in a row I shall wake up every morning, brew a batch of French press coffee, sit down at my solid, cluttered desk (or a reasonable substitute) and write at least one thousand, six hundred and sixty-seven words until, on November 30th, I reach the final 50,000 word mark. You see, I, […]
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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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Where Does Belief Belong?
I’m having a difficult time identifying the right place for belief. I was brought up a Christian. Episcopalian, to be specific. Belief, for me, was connected to creeds. If you’ve never recited a creed, it goes like this: I believe X, and X is this. X did this, was this, is going to be this. […]
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A Druid in Los Angeles on the Autumn Equinox
The weather in this town is a betrayal of my religious sensibilities. It’s all bright and warm and sunny without ceasing. This is the Land of Perpetual Summer. This town resists death at all costs; be that the death of youth, the death of popularity, the death of green. Death is frowned upon in Los […]
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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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The Fire Of A Solitary Druid
We may experience our spiritual journey in solitary, but there is something powerful which unites us all.
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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?
