PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com Exploring a personal, eclectic path by looking at the intersection of three great traditions.
“I don’t know what to do. They wonder why I don’t visit but when I do it’s so painful.” My friend, just cresting her forties, was dealing with a difficult relationship with her parents. They refused to accept any responsibility for—or attempt to change—the behaviours that she’d found hurtful since childhood. She was struggling to find forgiveness, to be able to maintain some connection with them, but every interaction reopened old wounds.
Krishna Das tells the story of an important teaching he received from a fellow disciple of his guru, Maharaji: The disciple showed him with great ceremony an object hidden deep in a cupboard, wrapped in a dirty cloth. It was a small beat-up aluminum pot. The disciple unwrapped it and showed it off reverently. “Do you see?” he said. “You don’t have to shine. You don’t have to shine.” *
I used to joke with friends about what I called my “checkered religious history” — I’ve been a Jehovah’s Witness, an Anglican, a wannabe Catholic, a Pagan, a Yogini and a Buddhist—the last three all at once (and still). I have always felt free to choose and/or drop beliefs without a great deal of angst. This shows either a lightness of spirit…or a lack of seriousness. Perhaps both.
On Hallowe’en I carve a pumpkin and give out candy. That same night, the Pagan feast of Samhain, I honour my ancestors beyond the veil. The next day, All Hallows, I honour my favourite saints.
Saints you ask? Oh yes. You can take the girl out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the girl. So I have saints too, just Pagan ones.
But what is a Pagan saint?
“Now it seemed like everyone suffered from some trauma; they just didn’t know it yet.” (1)
Trauma awareness does indeed seem to be everywhere these days, spurring the use of trigger warnings and encouraging the adoption of various practices, from analysis to hallucinogenic journeys, meant to help uncover and heal it.
Do you remember learning your letters as a child? When my kids were little we had an alphabet puzzle, very simple, where the letter shapes fit easily into their spaces. Playing with them as an adult I fell back into a sensory reverie—I loved the feel of them. They were fun to manipulate as objects, and the satisfaction of clicking them into place remained with me, bringing me back to a space of childhood sensitivity to the physical world.
Way back in 1975, when I was 14, I’d already had two years of study with a Jehovah Witness friend. I was a bookish child, and her challenging of my beliefs led to my flirtation with the small colourful books full of Bible facts that the Witnesses used in their evangelizing. The lush illustrations and easy quizzes satisfied my curious, literal, pre-teen mind.
