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Encouraged by my devout sister-in-law, I’ve just finished Surprised at Oxford, a memoir by Carolyn Weber. Attending Oxford University on scholarship in the 1990s, Ms Weber experienced a year of emotional upheaval, leading not only to finding love but to a heartfelt religious conversion. She found her answers in Evangelical Christianity and the promise of eternal life, which, in her telling, gave ultimate meaning to everything.

I was in for some surprises in May of 2006, when I first visited Samos, a Greek island near the border with Turkey, to give a talk at a students’ club. I had been invited by Minas Papageorgiou—a student back then and now a writer, researcher and journalist—to speak about Mary Magdalene. He took me on a journey up a stream named Potami (pron. potámi), the Greek word for river. It turned out to be a magical place as the stream runs through a forest and forms small lakes and waterfalls.

Where and how does religion start?  With my mother's recent illness, I've been thinking about this a lot.  My mom is straight up Christian, go to church every Sunday, go to bible study, be a member of a circle.  She's involved.  Being part of her church gives her great joy and peace.  When she was going in for a surgery years ago, the minister from her church showed up and prayed with her.  I saw a change come over my mother, a peace and an acceptance.  It was beautiful.  However, I've only ever hated going to church, listening to ministers and all of it.  It all felt off to me.

My father, who passed 33 years ago, never went to church except for weddings and funerals.  He always told me god wasn't in a building.  Now being a farmer, he was close to the land and had a connection to the land.  Growing up, there was nothing better than outside chores.  I hated housework and loved being in the fields or with the animals.  I would rather clean the barn than the house.  Spending an hour cleaning the milk house was better than ten minutes of doing dishes.  The only time outside chores wasn't better was in the depth of winter when it was below zero. 

Facing death, inmates create art to reflect their spiritual outlook. A Jew talks about what the formation of his identity. And an explanation of some of the principles behind so-called Chinese "alchemy" (which is, in fact, quite different from Western alchemy). It's Faithful Friday, our segment on faiths and religious communities from around the world. All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

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.

As promised, an excerpt from my paper on the Christian Trinity. A few things to consider: