What is the Point of Your Religion?

April 17, 2012 By Teo Bishop 66 Comments

Last week I asked, “Where does compassion belong among Pagans and Polytheists?” Beneath this first question there is another, more relevant question; one that has been nagging at me for several days:

What is the point of your religion?

I think this is a valuable inquiry, and no one has asked me this just yet. Yesterday I enrolled at Marylhurst University, the first step in a course of study that I hope will one day lead to a Masters of Divinity. I trust that during that course of work someone would be inclined to ask this question.

Why do we do what we do? What does our tradition provide us in the way of making the world we live in, the communities we build, the people that we care for, better? More importantly, how does it inform our capacity to love, our ability to experience joy, or, for that matter, our willingness to stand with the full spectrum of human experience? Is our religion pacifying us, or challenging us to go deeper?

Many people responded to my post about compassion with the statement that they, too, felt this subject had been missing from conversations in their community, which leads me to wonder what people are talking about. I think about the Christians I’ve known, and the Christian communities that I’ve been a part of, and I remember countless times when the conversation would move toward a closer examination of the meaning of compassion, the power of our intentions, the relationship between our choices and the well-being of those around us. These conversations, as I remember them, were not laden with guilt, judgement or biblical references, and they had a kind of immediacy that I was electrifying to me. Our religion was, for us, a call to full presence in the world; being a Christian was a call to accountability to the world I was living in.

And now here I am, a Pagan, no longer a part of Christian community, still searching for that same sense of immediacy, that same urgent need to be present to the world and accountable to something larger than myself.

I can only conclude from all of this that there is some undercurrent of morality, or ethics, or a need for “right action” that is pulling at me, and that it matters little whether or not I call myself a Christian, a Pagan, or a Druid. There is something human about this quest. I heard the Dalai Lama on the radio today, and he said that first and foremost he was a human being. He said that, and I think that if someone who is as revered as him can recognize the value in placing ones humanity first and their cultural and religious framework second, then perhaps I should be willing to do so as well.

I feel like there has to be a greater purpose to our religious traditions than providing us with a sense of security, comfort, and personal or cultural validation. We get trapped in our identities, and we build walls around ourselves. I think we want clarity around whether we are Pagan, Polytheist, Christian, or some other such invention, in order to better insulate ourselves from one another. We want to be right, we fear being vulnerable, and we use our religions to protect ourselves.

But what if our religions encouraged us to reach outward, to seek commonalities, to see less distinction between human beings? What if our religions began with the premise that we were all connected, and that we were all worthy of respect, compassion, and love, and that we were each capable of providing those things to one another? What if there was a way to approach this kind of universality without any need to squabble about whose deity is best, who’s laws are true, and who’s cosmology is most relevant?

I wonder what that religion would look like.

My hope is that through the dialogue on this blog, and hopefully during my course of study at Marylhurst, that we might take a closer look at our human experiences, and in the process of doing so uncover something universal within our singularity; that we might dig into our own sacred subjectivity, and throw aside our need to be right. There is no reward in having all the answers; there is only value in learning how to ask better questions.

So with that, I begin.

What is the point of your religion? What tools does it provide to you? Does it equip you for defense or for outreach? Does it lead you to question, or does it encourage you to rest in your knowing?

I look forward to hearing your insights, your experiences, and your perspective!

Filed Under: Paganism Tagged With: , , , , , , , , 66 Comments

Where Does Compassion Belong Among Pagans and Polytheists?

April 9, 2012 By Teo Bishop 43 Comments

I’m having a hard time with compassion.

So far, I’ve developed a daily ritual at my altar, I’ve reconciled (for the time being) my differences with my Christianity, I’m working to hold the tension between my Druid Revival leanings and my ADF approach, and all of that feels good. I feel like I’m developing a balanced, sincere, honorable religious practice.

And yet, I’m uncertain about compassion.

By saying that I’m uncertain about compassion I don’t mean to imply that I don’t feel compassion, or that I’m uncertain of how to show compassion. It’s more that I’m not sure how I incorporate compassion into my practice. This subject hasn’t come up much in my Pagan studies, and I’m not really sure why.

We Pagans and Polytheists concern ourselves a great deal with orthopraxy, or right action. We discussion belief from time to time, but mainly as it relates to what we do. In light of this, I think we are actually well suited to explore the subject of compassion.

Compassion, as I see it, is all about the doing. It is about right action in relationship to another person or living thing. Compassion speaks to a quality of interaction, and as I understand it, arises from a place of empathy. We act with compassion by seeking to understand, relate to, and care for another person, exactly where they are in that moment. In this way, compassion can be seen as a practice similar to a daily ritual at one’s altar, except that the opportunity to show compassion is present every time we connect with another person.

Compassion is not a solitary act; it is an act of communing.

Just before bed last night, I read a post by my colleague, Star Foster, in which she announced that she would be taking a brief hiatus from blogging. I also read a rather heated and uncomfortable debate between Star and her readership, followed by a flurry of posts about the exchange on Facebook. Everyone was worked up, and many were downright angry.

I’m not taking sides on the matter, because I don’t think that would be helpful. What I will say is that what is evident in the argument that unfolded around her original post, and the situation that Star describes in her Sabbatical post are indications that we are in dire need to have a discussion about compassion and what it means in our interactions with one another.

The internet, by and large, has not proven to be a haven for compassion. We all know this. We engage in social networks from a place of relative isolation, and in the process we practice a kind of inauthentic, calculated transparency. Our profile pics are not our genuine faces, and our text-voice is not our voice-voice. When we communicate online, we are interacting with something that only resembles a part of a complete person. I wonder if in recognizing this fact we give ourselves permission to be meaner than we would if a person was sitting across from us. Perhaps compassion feels multidimensional, whereas the internet presents us all as two-dimensional characters. I don’t know.

But I do know that I was upset by the intensity and insensitivity of the language that followed Star’s posts. I like Star, with all of her feistiness. I also know and like many of the people who responded to her, and I trust that they are equally as capable of compassion as she is.

In thinking about this, I had to acknowledge my own inability to convey and express compassion. My first draft of this post was quite righteous, and I’m afraid was devoid of any compassion whatsoever. Ironic, no? In my own quest to call out others for their lack of compassion, I experienced a lack of compassion. Why would that be so?

I have many questions. I would like to know if compassion could be a guiding principle in our interaction with one another, and if we might allow it to come more to the forefront of our minds. When we find ourselves being caddy with one another, or hateful, or when we use our language to shut one another down in conversation, I wonder if we might take a moment to ask ourselves if there is a more compassionate way of acting.

I could be the most pious, most devout, most respected person in the world (or at least, in my corner of the blogosphere), but if I don’t practice compassion with the people I come into contact with what is my piety worth? Perhaps it’s worth something to the Gods I worship, but I’m not living in a world populated exclusively by my Gods. Everybody else is here too, and you are all deserving of my compassion.

I would like to see compassion become a point of discussion in our community. I would like to see us discuss with a calm, self-reflective, gentle voice how we can be more compassionate with one another. I could imagine us searching through our histories, both mythological and ordinary, for examples of compassion-in-action, and holding up those mythological and historical figures who exemplify compassion as being worthy of special recognition.

And, I’d like us to think of compassion as an act of magick, as though our clear, concise choice to use our faculties and will to respond to our fellow human being with care and kindness is mystical in nature.

Could we conceive of compassion as a magickal practice?

If we are a people concerned with religious orthopraxy – right action in relation to the Gods – what would happen if we began to think of compassion for one another as a king of social orthopraxy – right action in relationship to one another? How might that change things?

What are your thoughts on compassion?

Filed Under: Community, Paganism Tagged With: , , , , , , , 43 Comments

More On Christian-Pagan Relations

September 20, 2011 By Teo Bishop 20 Comments

Pagans hate generalizations made about Pagans (he writes with a smirk).

That’s one generalization I feel confident in making.

In my last post I made some bold statements about the unwillingness of Pagans to accept the existence of the Christian god, knowing full well that those statements were not completely accurate (or, perhaps even close to accurate). I did so in order to get the conversation started, and I recognize that there are better ways to initiate dialogue. Many of my readers let me know as much. I’m grateful to those of you who spoke up, and I thank you for your willingness to call “bullshit.”

What I also failed to mention was that my post was informed by the current controversy around Dominionism, and its corresponding backlash from the Pagan community. If you aren’t already familiar with what’s got the Witches, Druids, and Asatru abuzz throughout the blogosphere, click here, here or here for some backstory.

All of my literary shortcomings aside, there were some interesting ideas written in response to my post, and I’d like to unpack a few of them now and gauge whether you are in agreement with them or not. Let’s see if if we can keep the dialogue going, shall we?

“It is impossible for an unreasonable person to be a reasonable person.”

Themon, an OBOD Bard and regular contributor to the comments at Bishop In The Grove, made this statement, saying that there is no way to have interfaith dialogue with an unreasonable person.

I asked my 16 year old step-kid if this was a true statement during a mind-breaking batch of geometry homework.

“Um… if it’s a given that the person is unreasonable, then yes — that’s true,” the wunderkind said with one lifted eyebrow and a shrug. Silly stepdads and their philosophical questions.

I wonder what we might consider to be “reasonable” when it comes to theology and religion. Some would argue that the whole subject is a bunch of hooey. Others, like the Dominionists, might argue that only their particular viewpoint is reasonable, and if you don’t believe them just ask their god… he’ll totally back them up.

Themon goes on to write,

“I think the only real prerequisite to interfaith dialogue is mutual respect. It’s reasonable to ask to be treated with respect. It’s reasonable for them to want to be treated with respect.”

This seems fair to me.

Mrs. B. Confesses

Mrs. B., the beloved blogger at Confessions of a Pagan Soccer Mom chimed in with a statement about the way that she perceives Deity:

“I work under the idea that all Gods are one God and that s/he comes to everyone in the guise that is best for that person at any given moment.  I can say that my Catholic husband feels much the same way.”

Fascinating idea, really. So relational. I find the though of divinity this fluid and accommodating, this concerned with where I am at the moment of contact, to be very comforting.

Mrs. B. isn’t the only one who’s struck a theological balance in an interfaith marriage.

Literata writes about her Catholic husband,

“My spouse’s way of understanding polytheism is to think of different deities as different metaphors for what is fundamentally the same thing. It’s rather like the idea of aspects – “All goddesses are one goddess,” in Dion Fortune’s words.”

I know that many Pagans hold a different view; that each God or Goddess possesses his or her own individual consciousness. To some, the idea of “aspects” betrays something true about the individuality of the Gods. Personally, I lean more in this direction, but I also am attracted to the idea of one god with many faces.

Perhaps somewhere in between these two polarities exists some common ground between Pagans and Christians.

Or…

“There is no midway point in beliefs between paganism and Christianity.”

Perhaps the strongest tone found in any of the comments came from Kenneth, an active contributor to the conversations at various Patheos blogs. If what he says is true, I’m not sure where that leaves me – a person who feels compelled to find a thread of continuity between the tradition of my youth (Episcopal Christianity) and the tradition that resonates with me now (Neo-Pagan Druidry).

Kenneth continues,

“We will not create a good space for dialogue by looking for commonality of beliefs. What we can do is to try to respect the depth and authenticity of each other’s beliefs.”

I appreciate this statement. Ultimately, I think that’s what I’m striving for in the dialogue created on this blog. I would like to see more Christians voicing in about the way that their perspective of Deity informs the conversations they have with Pagans. I’d like to hear how a polytheist conceives of “spiritual unity,” or if that phrase is too ambiguous or not resonant in any way. I’d like to hear from folks outside of these two categories, too. I’m interested — fascinated, really — by the spiritual experiences of human beings, and I’m seeking to synthesize what I learn from you with what I feel in my heart, in my head, in my body.

The intention I’ve set for Bishop In The Grove, a blog initially started to chart my course through the ADF Dedicant Path, is to create a space for dialogue. We each bring our unique voice to the conversation, and we are all both teacher and student for one another.

 

If any of these ideas have inspired you, or if you’d like to weigh in on what I’ve written here, please do so in the comment section. If you’d like to help me broaden the discussion even further, you can share this post on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or by e-mailing it to a friend.

 

Filed Under: Christianity, Community, Paganism Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , 20 Comments
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