{"id":125,"date":"2012-04-09T19:09:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T19:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/04\/fighting-fires-and-building-systems\/"},"modified":"2012-04-09T19:09:00","modified_gmt":"2012-04-09T19:09:00","slug":"fighting-fires-and-building-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/04\/fighting-fires-and-building-systems.html","title":{"rendered":"Fighting Fires and Building Systems"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
<\/a><\/div>\n

In the past week or so I\u2019ve seen several Pagan bloggers and other writers saying our first religious priority should be personal growth and empowerment. Other say our first priority should be honoring and serving our gods and goddesses, while still others say it should be creating ecstatic religious experiences, caring for the Earth, caring for our fellow humans, or building lasting religious institutions.<\/p>\n

All these writers were passionately advocating for their views, some calmly and some with an evangelistic zeal. <\/p>\n

When your house is on fire you don\u2019t care that the bathroom needs to be cleaned and the carpet needs to be replaced and oh, yeah, you need to make dinner. When your house is on fire all that matters is getting the people and the animals to safety and putting the fire out.<\/p>\n

When you convince people their house is on fire they jump into action. They start reading ancient lore and going to meetings and raising money and riding bicycles and and all the things we wish everyone would do. There\u2019s a crisis and they\u2019re doing<\/i> something about it! They feel good and we feel good and some small improvement starts to happen in the world. <\/p>\n

But sooner or later two things happen. First, people get tired. Running around in crisis mode \u2013 or in new religious convert mode \u2013 is exhilarating, but it\u2019s also draining. You can only keep it up for so long before you get burned out. And second, eventually you realize your house isn\u2019t on fire.<\/p>\n

We have some serious problems in our world (climate change and social justice being at or near the top of the immediacy list), but none of them demand we stop everything we\u2019re doing and devote all our efforts toward fixing them now<\/i>. The Huns are not at the gates. An asteroid is not bearing down on Chicago. Barack Obama is not Chairman Mao and Rick Santorum is not Savonarola. Zeus is not threatening to destroy our cities if we don\u2019t resume proper sacrifices. \u201cImportant\u201d and \u201curgent\u201d aren\u2019t synonymous.<\/p>\n

What should be the primary focus of Pagan religion and Pagan practitioners? In February I discussed eight \u201cchannels\u201d of Pagan practice<\/a>: areas of interest, emphasis and expertise. They are all important and we should be knowledgeable about all of them, but we cannot be experts on all of them. Pick one or two that call most strongly to you and explore them deeply\u2026 but understand that other intelligent, observant, compassionate Pagans have other callings and will make other choices.<\/p>\n

This is more than just respecting each others\u2019 choices and callings. It\u2019s about building structures and systems that support the kind of world we want to have and the kind of lives we want to live. <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say you want to minimize your contributions toward climate change and decide (or are convinced) you need to stop driving a car. If you don\u2019t already live in a walkable neighborhood with a nearby grocery store, it\u2019s going to be difficult. If you don\u2019t live near public transportation, or if your job isn\u2019t either very close or also located near public transportation, it\u2019s going to be difficult. If your friends and family all live in the next town, it\u2019s going to be difficult. There are structural and systemic decisions made years in the past (some by you, some by local communities, and some by society at large) that must be redesigned, reworked, and rebuilt before getting rid of your car becomes a practical alternative.<\/p>\n

The same kind of supporting systems and structures need to be built around our religion. They typically aren\u2019t as tangible as transportation infrastructure but they\u2019re every bit as important. Want to serve the old gods? We need historians to help us understand how they were worshipped in the past. We need artists to create representations of them and tributes to them. We need priests and priestesses to help us connect with them. We need mystics to commune directly with them and help us understand what they need here and now.<\/p>\n

None of this stops you from going into the woods and opening yourself to the god of the forest. If he\u2019s so inclined, you can have a deeply meaningful unmediated experience of wonder and awe. But if you want to identify which god or goddess spoke to you (they don\u2019t wear name tags and they don\u2019t always broadcast who they are), you\u2019re going to need some help. if you want to interpret your experience, you need some help. If you want to check your experience against those of others, you need some help. <\/p>\n

Want to take what you learned and put it into action to make the world a better place here and now? You\u2019re going to need some help.<\/p>\n

How do you get that help? You turn to the historians and artists and priests and priestesses and other practitioners. Hopefully there\u2019s one near you \u2013 or at least one you can find.<\/p>\n

But they won\u2019t be there if they\u2019re all fighting fires. They won\u2019t be there if they\u2019re burned out and give up. They won\u2019t be there if the systems and structures they need for their own support aren\u2019t there for them.<\/p>\n

What should be the primary focus of your<\/i> Pagan practice? Whatever calls to you, where ever your passion lies. That\u2019s where you\u2019ll do the most good \u2013 that\u2019s where you\u2019ll make the biggest contribution.<\/p>\n

Recognize that others are doing the same thing in other channels.<\/p>\n

And together, we\u2019re building a strong, deep, vibrant, resilient Pagan religion \u2013 from the ground up.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Other say our first priority should be honoring and serving our gods and goddesses, while still others say it should be creating ecstatic religious experiences, caring for the Earth, caring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nFighting Fires and Building Systems<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the past week or so I\u2019ve seen several Pagan bloggers and other writers saying our first religious priority should be personal growth and empowerment.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/04\/fighting-fires-and-building-systems.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fighting Fires and Building Systems\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the past week or so I\u2019ve seen several Pagan bloggers and other writers saying our first religious priority should be personal growth and empowerment.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/04\/fighting-fires-and-building-systems.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"John Beckett\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-04-09T19:09:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-hB_tE17dlDU\/T4N6B3FKBjI\/AAAAAAAAA-U\/yzwlw-4dSeY\/s320\/Roatan+port+construction.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John Beckett\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"John Beckett\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/04\/fighting-fires-and-building-systems.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/04\/fighting-fires-and-building-systems.html\",\"name\":\"Fighting Fires and Building Systems\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-04-09T19:09:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-04-09T19:09:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#\/schema\/person\/b4c8980dc36f971434424c304ca429ad\"},\"description\":\"In the past week or so I\u2019ve seen several Pagan bloggers and other writers saying our first religious priority should be personal growth and empowerment.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/04\/fighting-fires-and-building-systems.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/04\/fighting-fires-and-building-systems.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/04\/fighting-fires-and-building-systems.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Fighting Fires and Building Systems\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/\",\"name\":\"John Beckett\",\"description\":\"Musings of a Druid, Pagan, and Unitarian Universalist.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#\/schema\/person\/b4c8980dc36f971434424c304ca429ad\",\"name\":\"John Beckett\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0f50bfa2a79f70103847fe75540bb29c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0f50bfa2a79f70103847fe75540bb29c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"John Beckett\"},\"description\":\"I grew up in Tennessee with the woods right outside my back door. 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