This is cross-posted from my personal blog -- I'm a writing fool tonight!
I'm gearing up for the OMC educational conference, and as I think about
it, remembering last year, a couple of key things come to mind. One:
I'm reasonably sure I'm going to be the only Pagan there. I was last
year. Two: as such, I'm going to field questions about what it is I
believe. There will be several iterations of this, mostly from
well-meaning mainline-to-charismatic Protestant fellas. They're
unfailingly polite, and unfailingly unaware. I wonder how it is that a
Pagan in the back of beyond (well, for Southern Ontario folks, it may as
well be) is so heavily involved in multifaith work, while elsewhere, if
they're involved at all, they must not be particularly forthcoming with
information.
The first year I attended, there was a Pagan
representative from Ottawa, and Richard James (the founding HP of the
Wiccan Church of Canada) was a panelist. That was the last time I saw
another Pagan at conference.
In light of all this, I find myself
wondering how exactly I can answer this. Ten or fifteen years ago, it
might have been easier. I was a lot more rigid back then: a lot more
bookbound, frankly. The fact is, when it comes to belief...I don't
really have any. I find myself closer and closer to something Starhawk
said years ago. I wish I could remember the exact quote. She said,
roughly, that she doesn't believe in the Goddess any more than she
believes in a rock or a tree. That rings truer now than it ever did
when I was younger.
The fact is, I'm not a believer. I'm not
much for theism at all: it's not that I find monotheism and polytheism
and even atheism distasteful, but rather that they're spiritual
frameworks that happen to other people. That's just an example, of
course. I know there are non-theistic systems of belief, too.
I
experience, in the world, what I identify as the Divine. I don't expect
others to share that, though it's pretty nifty when they do. I
experience this divinity as a sort of ordering principle, not as a
personified entity. Furthermore, probably because I'm very much in
touch with my own woman-ness, I experience this ordering principle in
the universe as primarily feminine. Not female, mind you, but
manifesting in a way that my experience and identity lead me to call
feminine. It's not always that way -- there are times when this
divinity, this ordering principle, feels more masculine. It's not easy
for me to articulate exactly why that is, or how it works. It's very
gut-centred. Sometimes it helps to use names, chiefly from some
culture's mythology, as a sort of shorthand; other times, it seems silly
to outwardly call on something I feel within myself.
My gut, my
instinct, experiences some times and spaces as sacred: not absent from
the everyday world, but somehow hyper-present. In circles. Next to
water, or during a rainstorm. When the sun warms my skin. With my
loved ones near a fire. In intimate moments with my loves. In solitude
and quiet, and sometimes in boisterous gatherings. Really, those
moments of connection can happen anywhere, at any time. I can call them
into being, as I do in circle, or allow them to engulf me when they
happen spontaneously. I can resist, too, but that just seems
counterproductive. It's not a matter of believing -- it's something I
experience.
I use certain tools and techniques, and I follow a
liturgical calendar. The tools and techniques are an eclectic mix of
ancient and modern, but they're mostly chosen for aesthetic reasons: for
me, it's not that one tool has any intrinsic value over another, but
rather that I recognize that I'm conditioned to use certain items for
certain purposes, and therefore it works for me. It makes sense to
layer West and water and cup and cauldron and endings and so on because
it calls on what I can only imperfectly refer to as a kind of ancestral
memory. The calendar I follow divides up the solar year into segments
of a certain duration, spokes and spaces on a wheel. It orders my
world, and it corresponds to the natural changes around me: longer or
shorter days, seasons passing, that sort of thing. Again, it's part of
my world.
So what do I believe? Well, I don't. But I experience some really beautiful things.