Everyday Witchcraft: Simple Steps for Magical Living
Fun, simple, and easy ways to integrate your spiritual beliefs as a Pagan with your everyday life.
Unity
We live in a world that is filled with people disagreeing with each other. Intolerance abounds.
I had two young women come to me recently (completely separate from each other) asking if they could join my coven. They were seeking solace and new families, because their own families had kicked them out because of their Pagan beliefs.
Our government is so divided, and most of the citizens of the USA with them, that absolutely nothing is being accomplished besides blame and finger-pointing and demonizing of the other side.
In the wider world, there are wars being waged in countless places over differences in religious and political beliefs.
It's freaking depressing.
Then today, I (and others) got an email from Anne, the lovely founder of this site, saying that two different groups of Pagans have been using what was intended as a forum for sharing knowledge and encouraging Paganism in its myriad and beautiful forms as a place to jump on each other for being different.
Let's not, people.
Let us, instead, be kind to each other, and tolerant of beliefs other than our own, and maybe, just maybe, come together in the spirit of love and acceptance, instead of adding to all the mean-spirited disagreement out there.
We're Pagans. No matter what our differences, we have more in common with each other than we do with virtually anyone else out there. We gotta stick together.
So for anyone who wants it, here's a prayer for unity. Say it with me?
[If you don't want to say "goddess and god," feel free to substitute whatever works for you. It's AOK with me.]
Great goddess, great god
Look down upon your children
And help us to live together in peace
Send us tolerance and understanding
Patience with each other
And with ourselves
Help us to play nice
And to get along despite our differences
Let us tear down the walls that keep us apart
And build bridges that will bring us together
Help us to realize
That we must learn to live as one
On our beautiful planet
Great goddess, great god
Let there be peace
And let it begin with me
[Originally published in Everyday Witch A to Z Spellbook, Llewellyn, 2010]
Comments
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Monday, 10 June 2013
Gary,
I see your point.
Mine is that there is no reason to fight over our differences. I am happy to let all other Pagans practice/believe anything they want to as long as they aren't harming me.
And unity isn't just for us as Pagans, it is for us as human beings.
Thanks for commenting,
Deborah· Stifyn Emrys and Naya Aerodiode likes this comment. -
Monday, 10 June 2013
Sorry--that response was for Joseph, not Gary :-) Haven't had my coffee yet.
· gary c. e. likes this comment. -
Monday, 10 June 2013that's okay Deborah - last night i was going to ditto Joseph's comment. So you just have some good foresight. lol.
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Sunday, 09 June 2013Bravo. Can I give you six stars?
· Stephanie Rodriguez and Deborah Blake likes this comment. -
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Monday, 10 June 2013
Anymore, I have resigned to just accepting "Pagan" to mean "anyone and everyone who says they're Pagan." But I like the chaos therein. There's so much to learn from so many different perspectives. We have to be careful to respect the individuality of the different paths found within. I cringe whenever I hear someone talk about what "good pagan values" are. I cringe at comments like, "If you don't believe _____, then you aren't Pagan." We don't need Pagan homogeny.
We can have a melting pot mentality, where we all homogenize our beliefs into one system, or we can have a quilt mentality, a unity among many parts that each retain their own individual character and uniqueness. Me, I prefer the quilt mentality - I enjoy learning and growing spiritually among a diverse environment.
For me, it's more important that we support one another in our individual quests than it is that someone else believes the exact same way that I do.· Stephanie Rodriguez and Deborah Blake likes this comment. -
Monday, 10 June 2013
re: "For me, it's more important that we support one another in our individual quests than it is that someone else believes the exact same way that I do."
precisely - as the old saw goes; it takes all kinds to make a world. -
Monday, 10 June 2013
THIS: For me, it's more important that we support one another in our individual quests than it is that someone else believes the exact same way that I do.
Yes. :-)· Stephanie Rodriguez, Naya Aerodiode and Stifyn Emrys likes this comment. -
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"We're Pagans. No matter what our differences, we have more in common with each other than we do with virtually anyone else out there."
Sorry to be a downer on your very well-intentioned call, but this is exactly the point.
We don't have more in common with each other than we do with others, just because we call ourselves "Pagan" or "Heathen". The labels as used today are so broad that they encompass people that are diametrically opposed on many things.
The fault lines are real, they are very deep, and to gloss over them in the name of "unity" for its own sake is to ignore those very plain facts.
I got the same email from Anne that you did. And it counseled us to admit that there were some fault lines that were never, ever going to be overcome, and that the best we can do is to stop attacking one another hammer and tongs.
Bromides to the contrary aside, that is true, and we need to accept it and move on. There will never be Pagan unity because there is no one thing that all Pagans can accept as a fundamental kernel of what it means to be Pagan. And some have diametrically opposed ideas of what that kernel might or should be.
There are liberals and conservatives and libertarians and humanists and hard polytheists and feminists and anti-feminists and pacifists and warriors and folkish and universalists and modernists and reconstructionists and Gardnerians and Alexandrians and Seax Wiccans and eclectics and British Traditional Wiccans and Asatruar and Druids and Hellenismoi and Khemetics and ecologists and capitalists and anarchists and monarchists and communists and fascists and Republicans and Democrats and a thousand more categories of people who call themselves Pagan. And you know the only thing they all have in common? They call themselves Pagan.
And a label is not, in and of itself, enough to bring about unity.