These are the top ten posts of this year, as measured by page views. Only 2015 posts are listed. The Purpose of Religion<\/a> from 2011 was the #3 post overall, but it wasn\u2019t eligible. Also, I disqualified the solitary ritual series. Five of them were in the top ten, and that would make this post rather boring.<\/p>\n 10. Worshipping Fearsome Gods<\/a> (November 2015)<\/strong>. Many of you don\u2019t like the word \u201csermon,\u201d but that\u2019s what you call the talky bit in a church service, and that\u2019s what this was. I even have a video of it<\/a>. Anyway, my sermons tend to do very poorly as blog posts. They\u2019re far longer than a typical post, and they\u2019re written for an audience of UUs and visitors, not Pagans and polytheists.\u00a0 But this one did very well. I think that\u2019s because while it was intended for a general audience, it was unapologetically polytheist.<\/p>\n 8. Until There Are No More Missionaries<\/a> (September 2015)<\/strong>. As I left the DFW Pagan Unity Fest<\/a>, I encountered a man preaching a fringe-Christian message of fear and doom. When it became clear he was beyond the reach of reason, I walked away. But I worried about others who would hear his lies and be reminded of an old religion that still had its hooks in them. I wanted to banish him, but I couldn\u2019t. All I can do is to keep telling my story of leaving fundamentalist Christianity and finding Paganism, and keep doing it until there are no more false preachers of doom.<\/p>\n 7. The Limits of Personal Power and The Dangers of Ignoring Them<\/a> (February 2015)<\/strong>. We\u2019ve all seen the posts and memes saying things like \u201cyou create your own reality\u201d \u201canything is possible if you just believe\u201d and \u201cyou have unlimited power.\u201d While even the weakest among us is an incredibly powerful being, the memes are only half true. Our power is not unlimited, and pretending it is causes us to act ineffectively with ourselves and unethically with others. Stop looking for simple answers to complicated problems and start seeing things as they truly are.<\/p>\n 5. Religion and Smart People \u2013 A Reasonable Response to Unreasonable Smugness<\/a> (January 2015)<\/strong>. This is another rebuttal to an atheist making insulting claims, in this case not just about Paganism but about theism in general. A writer for Salon<\/em> called religious belief \u201ca strange aberration among otherwise intelligent people.\u201d The writer\u2019s false and unstated assumptions are huge: he assumes religion is all about belief, he makes scientistic materialism the ultimate arbiter of what is true, and most importantly, he completely ignores religious experiences. Don\u2019t try to tell me I need to abandon a path that\u2019s proved meaningful and helpful just because some people believe some dumb things and some smart people don\u2019t believe anything at all.<\/p>\n 4. 5 Reasons You Can\u2019t Find the Right Spiritual Path<\/a> (July 2015)<\/strong>. Religion used to be simple. You learned the religion of your family growing up and that was that. That\u2019s still the case in some parts of the world. Here, more options bring more freedom but also more complexity. Finding the right spiritual path is possible, but it requires dedicated, consistent, mindful work. This post looks at the five most common reasons seekers can\u2019t find what they\u2019re looking for, and what to do instead.<\/p>\n 3. Responding to the Religiously Obnoxious<\/a> (April 2015)<\/strong>. It seems like at least once a week I see a post in one of my social media groups saying \u201cpeople keep attacking me because I\u2019m Pagan \u2013 what can I do about it?\u201d\u00a0 Many of them are young, stuck in schools and even families that are unsupportive, with few outside resources available to them.\u00a0 The usual clich\u00e9s of \u201cjust ignore them\u201d and \u201cdon\u2019t let it bother you\u201d aren\u2019t helpful. There are things we can do to make things better, starting with being who you are and who you\u2019re called to be.<\/p>\n 2. Our Gods Are Not Safe<\/a> (October 2015)<\/strong>. In order to fully restore the Way of the Gods, polytheism must be accessible for those who simply want to honor the Gods and live virtuous but ordinary lives. It must be as accessible for the accountant and the plumber as for the priest and the scholar. This means expressing polytheist concepts in ways that ordinary people who live in our monotheist-dominated culture can understand.<\/p>\n But it can never mean dumbing things down. In particular, it can never mean downplaying the power of the Gods who are the focus of our polytheism. Our Gods are not safe\u2026 but safety is not the greatest good.<\/p>\n![\"Top](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/243\/2015\/12\/Top-10-of-20151.jpg\")
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<\/a>9. The Lore vs. UPG \u2013 A False Dichotomy<\/a> (March 2015)<\/strong>. There are some Pagans who privilege the written word over personal experience, insisting that unless something has a basis in literature and scholarship, it isn\u2019t proper. I see this as a false dichotomy. Lore is a valuable treasure, but unless we have vibrant religious experiences of our own, our traditions will stagnate into irrelevance.<\/p>\n![\"Horus](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/243\/2015\/12\/Horus-06.07.15-300x225.jpg\")
<\/a>6. You Can\u2019t Practice Paganism While You Look Down Your Nose At It<\/a> (August 2015)<\/strong>. Our mainstream society thinks belief in magic and in many Gods is delusion or foolishness or both. While Paganism does not insist we hold any specific beliefs, if we are more interested in impressing the mainstream and in being \u201crespectable\u201d than in actually being Pagans, our Paganism will be weak and ineffective.<\/p>\n![\"lamp](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/243\/2015\/06\/lamp-post-Oct2013-1200x800.jpg\")
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