I don’t often write about Mormonism here, and when I do it’s usually as a leaping off point to talk about Paganism or Jungianism. For those of you who don’t know, I was raised Mormon and left the Mormon Church formally by having my name withdrawn from the Church roles in 2001. I now infrequently attend the Mormon Church with my wife and kids, which often results in my posting something using Mormonism as a foil. This past weekend, my... Read more
“God is dead. […] And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? […] What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?” — Nietzsche, The Gay Science Over at Patheos, bloggers are being asked to write about their “defining moments”, “moments where we move from our chosen path……it is in those moments that our future is determined and our faith is... Read more
“There is another world, and it is this one.” — Paul Eluard I recently got turned on to Lev Gossman’s novel, The Magicians, after reading a review by Matthew Bowman on the Peculiar People blog on the Mormon channel at Patheos. So I bought the book, and I just finished it. It was excellent. As Bowman explains, The Magicians, is like Harry Potter, “if Harry Potter coped with his angst through cynicism, sarcasm, and eye-rolling, like real humans.” Bowman’s review... Read more
How can we know the dancer from the dance? — W.B. Yeats Theism, Pantheism, and Panetheism In his latest effort to tell the Pagan world why everyone is wrong and he is right, Sam Webster has taken aim an panentheism, the belief that God is both transcendent and immanent. Webster dispatches panentheism in one paragraph explaining that it is “logically untenable” for God to be All and then some. Panentheism represents one of three logical possibilities for describing the nature... Read more
the path to heaven doesn’t lie down in flat miles. It’s in the imagination with which you perceive this world, and the gestures with which you honor it. From Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Swan” My Pagan practice consists of the gestures with which I honor the world and the imagination which perceives it. Read more
There are many ways to define one’s religious identity. It might be defined in terms of shared values. Or the expression of those shared values in group practices. Yvonne Aburrow’s recent series on dual-faith practice drew my attention to a 2007 post by Peter Bishop published @ Quaker Pagan Reflections where he defines religious identity in terms of having received divine communication in that setting: “God (the Divine, the Gods…whatever you want to call Him/Her/It/Them) calls to us. Divinity “bleeds... Read more
The other day, my 10 year old daughter was complaining about her freckles to my wife, and my wife told her they were Mother Nature’s kisses. My daughter’s response: “Mother Nature uses the tongue.” My ears perked up and I thought, “How true that is!” French kissing can be wonderfully intimate under the right circumstances; it can also be a violation under different circumstances. Nature is like that: sometimes like a lover, as close to us as our own skin,... Read more
Imagine for a moment, Pagans of all kinds having a heartfelt conversation with Muslims about the nuances between Shia and Sunni Islam on the one hand and between Reconstructionist Polytheism and Naturalistic Pantheism on the other. Or a similar conversation Mormons. Or with Evangelical Christians. Imagine now that these conversations are not about finding common ground. Let me repeat that — imagine these conversations are not about finding common ground. Instead, imagine that the conversation aims at understanding of difference.... Read more
A few months ago, I was contacted through Facebook by a lady, Eliane, in Brazil, who I had baptized while I was a Mormon missionary there. We both tiptoed around each other in our first exchange, but eventually disclosed that we had both left the Mormon church. To put this in context, I baptized probably around two dozen people during the two years I proselytized for the LDS Church more than 15 years ago. Of all those people, Eliane’s conversion... Read more
Someone in my UU discussion group shared this story today about a student who suffered from doubt over whether Kwan-Yin/Kannon/Tara actually exists. In frustration, he asked his teacher for help. The lama closed his eyes for a few moments, then replied: “She knows she’s not real.” I wonder how this might apply to Pagan deities. Read more
The Allergic Pagan
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