Since I began describing myself as a Quaker Pagan, I run into people who are suspicious of my claim to be both Quaker and Pagan. To these folks, Peter and I look like spiritual cheats, trying to sneak fifteen items through the clearly labeled Twelve Item Express Lane of a spiritual life.
“Cafeteria spirituality,” I’ve heard it described, expressing the notion that my husband and I are picking and choosing only the tastiest morsels of either religion, like spoiled children loading our plates with desserts, but refusing to eat our vegetables.
This isn’t the case. The term “cafeteria religion” implies imposing human whims over the (presumably) sacred norms of religion. But Peter and I are both/ands not out of personal preference, but because we were called to our religion… twice. By two different families of Spirit.
I can explain this best through my own story.
Vegas was not a vacation destination I ever would have chosen. And I did not need to play the hero by rushing to volunteer in the aftermath. But I was asked to be part of the Red Cross team, so I packed my suitcase on Monday night, rose in the dark and landed at noon local time barely a mile from the concert/shooting site.
Surreal may be the best adjective to describe Vegas, generally and in better times. The lights on the Strip are eye candy that one cannot ignore. But behind the good-times face put on for tourists, not one person I encountered was not grieving or at least shaken to the core. A woman in a business suit waiting on her order at Panera Bread who broke down when she saw our Red Cross badges. The person checking me into my hotel room, who quietly admitted that one of their staff was killed, her friend, but still unnamed at that time. The paramedics who wondered out loud to me whether they would have been as brave as their coworker who was off duty that night but raced to the scene, rescued people, rushed them to a hospital, then repeated the process over and over again.
After being on site a few days I became acutely aware that in our time we have created a new "client population," a diaspora of those who endure a tragedy like Route 91, then return home and try to go back to work, to families, to whatever was normal for them before. Because nothing will ever be the same again. Normal is no longer a relevant word for them. 
With 22,000 people present at just this one shooting, you can be sure, wherever you live, that someone connected to you has been affected. In fact, every one of us has been affected. In Red Cross spiritual care, we say that our goal is to be changed but not wounded by our work. But I see that our society, our nation, the entire world, is wounded by the violence. As Pagans who feel compelled to serve others, we can be prepared through solid training at Cherry Hill Seminary. I never planned on being a chaplain, but I'm so glad studied and did the work. 
