God(s) in School

I've seen this meme posted by quite a few people on facebook lately:

Can anyone tell me why this is a bad idea? ...Anyone?

Okay, well please let me educate you, then.  Let's start from the beginning.  We need to establish prior knowledge before we learn something new, right?  So how many religions are practiced in the US?  According to this article on religioustolerance.org, it's impossible to state an accurate number.  This article, found on undergod.procon.org, on the other hand, chose 313 religions (1-35 constituting different Christian denominations).  Think about that for a moment.  Three hundred and thirteen different religions practiced in the US, and thirty-five of those are classified under the umbrella term of Christian.  That's a lot of faiths!  In fact, religioustolerance.org states,

"The total number of faith groups in the U.S. cannot be calculated. The value depends upon exactly how one defines "faith group" or "religion." Perhaps we can say that every person's religion is, to some degree, unique. Thus there are over 200 million religions in the U.S."

Now, the first article, found on religioustolerance.org, estimated that 76.5% of American adults identify as Christian in some form or another.  So roughly three quarters of the US adult population is Christian.  If you are Christian, you definitely hold the majority.  Congratulations.  Let me remind you that it is Christians who are sharing the above meme.  What many Christians are forgetting (or maybe they're not) is that there's another quarter of the US population out there that doesn't necessarily agree with them and they have the right to religious freedom just as much as all the Christians.

As a Pagan (or Neo-Pagan), if I went in to my future job as a teacher in a middle school and started teaching my faith to my students, as if it was fact, and as if it was the only spirituality available to them, the majority of my students' parents would be furious.  I can see them now, storming the principal's office, expressing their outrage, and demanding my immediate termination.  And, honestly, they would have every right to do so.

There is no place for explicit spiritual education in public schools.  If you wish for your child to be educated in, around, and submerged by your religious values and beliefs, send your child to a private religious school.  There are plenty of religious schools to be found, and many of them offer scholarships and financial aid of varying degrees.

So if you feel that strongly about your child's spiritual education, send him to a school where he can be educated in math and language arts as well as in the Bible and Jesus Christ, by all means.  But don't sit at your keyboard and your computer screen ignorantly yelling about public school going to Hell unless we bring God back into the classroom, because as soon as you invite your God into the public classroom, all of mine get to come along, too.

Goodbye, 2012

What have I accomplished this year?  Let's see...

• I became fully Pagan and performed a personal dedication ceremony to the Goddess and the God.
  
• I shift-skipped between days and nights before finally landing a Monday-Friday position doing a job I really enjoy so far.
  
• I met a new Wiccan friend who I've performed ritual with and loved it.
  
• I lost a friend to disagreements about where our loyalties truly lie.
  
• I learned more about myself.
  
• My husband and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary.
  
• Hubby and I put in an offer on a short sale house, and are waiting on the bank to give us their reply.
  
• I applied to go back to college and will be starting in January.
  
• I purchased a very large and very beautiful custom Book of Shadows, and I've begun creating the pages that will go in it.
  
• The world did not end!

All in all, this year has been rather eventful.  The biggest shift has been in my spiritual life, although many of the other events I listed are rather...eventful.

Here's to the close of 2012, and to the fresh start that a new year always brings!

Happy 2013!

Magick and Working With Deities

I am constantly learning about magick, working with deities, and how to intermingle the two.  There is one hang up that I continue to come across and I'd like to see if I can talk it out with myself through this post.

I have learned that while working magick, you can't just hope that what you want will manifest itself because you wish it will be so; you have to command the energy you harness and bend it to your will.  Basically, I've learned that magick takes force; one cannot be timid in their attempt to work magick.  I can see why this may be so, and because of it I can also see why the Rede is so important.

On the other hand, I've learned that you do not command deities.  To work with deities, it is polite to request their presence and/or their assistance.  Also, if you work magick "in the name of insert deity's name here," you better know for certain that the work you are doing will actually bring honor to that deity's reputation.  Apparently, gods and goddesses don't like it when you tarnish the name they've made for themselves (or the name other cultures have made for them).

This makes working magick a little tricky in my mind.  I find it confusing because I'm used to relying on God completely to create change in my life.  While I've always believed "God helps those who help themselves," I was also taught that God has a plan for your life and to trust in Him completely.  To me, that kind of meant that what God sent my way in life was what God was giving me to achieve his plan for my life, and how I dealt with what he gave me was my way of helping myself.

In this new spirituality I'm exploring, deities don't exactly work that way.  I guess I almost feel like I have to ask a deity's permission to use magick, and then I don't feel very forceful doing it because the action relied on someone's permission.


I need to have more faith in myself.  My feeling of being helpless without a deity sounds a little crazy in my head.  I guess I understand how atheists might view Christians, relying on a god like a security blanket.


So what I got out of this post was that I need to work on having more faith in myself and not being afraid of angering a deity and subsequently being struck down.

Speaking in Tongues

I always thought speaking in tongues was primarily a Christian practice, and it still is as far as I know, but I think other faiths may be opening up to it as well.  I also always thought that speaking in tongues was for crazy people.  Here's why.


Growing up I was told that Pentecostal Christians were those crazy people that wriggled around on the floor during church and rambled gibberish and had all sorts of crazy notions about God.  I'm not meaning that statement to offend any Pentecostals who might happen upon this blog; I'm only sharing what I was taught as a kid from my parents.  It is interesting to note that my father was raised Pentecostal for a short time.

My parents saw the act of speaking in tongues as a joke.  They basically believed that these people who claimed to be able to speak in tongues were frauds.  I came to believe this, too.

My Episcopal priest gave a sermon on speaking in tongues one Sunday that I remember.  He explained the act of speaking in tongues by using the old testament story about the Tower of Babel as part of his defense for his position.  For those who may not be familiar with the story of the Tower of Babel, it was told that all of Earth's people spoke one language at the time.  The people basically attempted to build a tower that could reach God in Heaven.  God was angered by this and as punishment He "confused the language of the whole world." (Genesis 11:9)  My priest explained this to be when other languages came about and how come some people speak English while others speak Hebrew and others speak German, and French, and on and on.

The reason my priest used this as a foundation for his sermon was to set the stage for Jesus' disciples and their acts after his crucifixion.  He basically explained the miracle of speaking in tongues as the Holy Spirit touching a person and giving that person the ability, temporarily, to be able to speak fluently in a language foreign to them for the purpose of prophesying Jesus' message all over the world.  This explanation actually made sense to me; it gave a concrete and functional purpose to the gift of speaking in tongues.  I still believe to this day that truly speaking in tongues is this act by the Holy Spirit that my priest spoke about, and I'm not even Christian anymore.

I know that there are plenty of Christians out there who will discount my belief and give personal example of speaking in tongues as evidence.  What I would like to make clear is that I'm not trying to discount their experiences to say they're not spiritual ones; I just wouldn't label the practice as speaking in tongues.  Every persons' relationship with God or Goddess or Spirit or Deity is individual and personal.  If a person feels closer to God through letting their mouth and their tongue make whatever sounds it's going to make, I can accept that as a truly spiritual act.  In fact, it's much like meditation but through the use of one's voice instead of the use of one's third eye. It also hearkens to the Pagan practice of chanting to bring about a higher spiritual experience.


There are many other points I thought about making, but the overall idea of this post is to simply give my opinion on the act of speaking in tongues and what I believe the actual act is.  I believe fundamentalist Christians have misunderstood the reason behind and the meaning of speaking in tongues and have in turn stumbled upon another spiritual practice and have mis-labeled it.

The Nature of God/dess

Recently, I emailed CricketSong of Lunar Wisdom (youtube channel) a question that had been weighing on my spiritual life for some time: what is the nature of God/dess?  I loved her reply so much, I asked her permission to share it on my blog, and she said yes!  So, without further ado, here's her eloquent answer:

You pose an interesting question. Here are my thoughts and opinions on the question of the nature of god/goddess.

My belief is that God Herself is transcendent immanent and manifested. Everything that exists on this physical plane of existence is a manifestation of God Herself. The nature of deity is spirit or energy and essence that cannot be touched physically but rather emotionally.

God Herself is all-powerful, omniscient, supremely understanding and loving as well as perfect, however what is important to understand is that perfection is subjective. We understand these words from a very human perspective and even then we each understand perfection from a personal perspective that is tainted by our own human experiences. God Herself is beyond this, though she is also of each individual human experience because we each are of and are part of what makes God Herself.

What is different between Wicca and Christianity is that we understand that God Herself IS within each of us but we ARE God Herself as well because we ARE manifestations of God Herself. There truly is no difference between humans and deities. Deities are personifications of God Herself so that we can easily relate to the qualities and attributes of The All. When we look at immortality we also understand that we, too, are immortal. Our physical bodies die but we are reborn. Personally I do not believe that God Herself requires worship. Worship is not a word I use when I discuss my relationship with deity. I work with my goddess and god. I also remember that I am a manifestation of them and treat myself with respect and love.

Many blessings of abundance and love!

~ CricketSong ~

This answer explained so much for me, and it really helped me understand where I was having a hang-up in my spiritual journey.  Thank you again to CricketSong for the wonderful answer, and I hope her explanation can help someone else, too!

God as Perfect

In Christianity, God is perfect.  He is all-knowing, all-powerful. He is omniscient.  I may be wrong on this, but for the most part when I've looked into other polytheistic mythologies and pantheons, the gods aren't all-powerful, and they're actually rather human in nature.  The biggest difference between humans and gods in many pantheons (such as the Greek and Roman gods) is that gods are immortal.  They're not even invincible, they just won't die of old age.

They're also not all-powerful.  Each god has a special ability over nature or an aspect of human culture.  Poseidon rules the ocean, Zeus rules the sky, Ares is the god of war, Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty, etc.

It's a little weird to think of deities that have limits after being raised to believe in one all mighty and limitless god.  Rather, I've learned to believe each god or goddess to be an aspect of Spirit, a face of the All, just a piece of the overall puzzle of deity.

But it's still weird.  If Spirit doesn't have limits (debatable? I don't know) then why would any of Spirit's faces or aspects have limits?  Is it because that aspect is balanced by another aspect to nullify Spirit's limits?  This thinking can become confusing and complicated.

Anyway, God as perfect is still more or less an Abrahamic idea as far as I can tell.  Any Pagans or Buddhists or Hindus or anyone of a polytheistic view who would like to expand on the biology, makeup, or other aspects of Spirit/God/Deity, please feel free to comment!  Also, any monotheists who have a mind for input, please include yours as well.  I would, however, appreciate civility and politeness when commenting.  Any comment I receive that I deem to be inappropriate will be deleted.


Thanks all!

Tamra