So: I'd like your opinion on a theological matter of some importance.
I know it sounds like a joke, but it isn't really.
I don't like mead. I've never met a mead I liked.
I'd rather drink bad beer than drink good mead.
I'd rather drink water than drink mead.
Hell: I'd rather drink goat piss than drink mead.
(Insofar there's any appreciable difference between the two, anyway.)
So, can I still be heathen?
A while back I told my friend Volkhvy that he couldn't be a Slavic Reconstructionist and not like beets.
(Fortunately, it's no longer an issue. Once he'd had real beets, he found that he liked them just fine. What those hairy red things in cans are, I really don't know.)
Well, I'll stand by that assertion. There are some lines that just can't be crossed, or words cease to mean anything at all.
Identity formation is a complex business. We're still learning how to be the pagans that our time and place need us to be. (To this necessary process of becoming pagan, heathen theorist Swain Wodening has given the felicitous name worthing, from Old English weorðan, “become.”)
In our collective worthing, it's true that we do need to draw at least some lines. (Whether or not liking beets is properly one such remains to be seen.)
But establishing an identity doesn't necessarily mean uniformity or party lines. Sometimes we belong most in our not-belonging.
After all, isn't being a heathen who doesn't like mead already something of its own identity?