Solstice Series: Just One Virtue

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in December we will be asking people questions about Paganism and Pagan religions and culture. Want to weigh in? Find the next question at the bottom of this post!

If you could pick out just one virtue, quality, concept or tradition that you feel makes Paganism stand out among the faith traditions of the world, what would you pick as an example?

Kathy Nance responds:

When Doreen Valiente wrote these beautiful words in the Charge of the Goddess, she summed up what I think separates modern Paganism from other faith traditions. We are an embodied tradition. We take joy in the physical and material. We see matter not as fallen, but as sacred.

The reason is this: if the Divine permeates all things, then all things are sacred. The pleasures of sexuality are sacred. Succulent foods are a Divine gift. Dancing, running, lifting weights—all are acts of worship as we enjoy the Divine gift of our physicality.

Both my tradition of birth, Christianity, and Eastern traditions elevate the spiritual over the material. Whether it’s telling the Christian faithful to rule over the weakness of the flesh, or calling Buddhists to seek spiritual enlightenment as a way to avoid physical rebirth, both traditional Western and Eastern faiths show a higher value for the soul than the body.

I see some of those same values in the New Age movement. I’ve been in more than one workshop in which the teacher would speak of the virtues of asceticism. Spiritual advancement would mean a leaving behind of gross physicality and its needs. Why, an advanced person would be able to do without food at all, getting all the nutrients he or she needed merely from breathing and a little sunshine!

I am not a plant or a nun. I’m a Pagan. I want to dance naked around fires. I want to eat peaches so ripe the juice runs down my arm. I want to make love. And because I’m a Pagan, I can do all those things without sin or shame.

For all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals.

Let us worship well!

Here’s my two cents on the matter:

I suppose I should say tolerance. That seems like it should be the shining virtue of Paganism, but the one I think makes us stand out? That I cherish? It’s our reverence for mirth. We can find laughter in anything and especially in ourselves. Humor is sacred. It is profane. It is irreverent. It shakes up the world. Humor is the joyful way of tackling major issues.

When Demeter was mourning for the loss of her daughter the earth went barren in her grief. The only thing that brought her out of her despair was when Baubo did a little dance and flashed Demeter with her lady-parts. It was crude, rude and socially unacceptable. It was also hilarious and just what was needed to bring Demeter back from the darkness she had sunk into.

My tradition is jokingly known as The House of Forever Beltane, because we rarely let an opportunity for a joke slide by. Innuendo, double-entendres and just plain old fart jokes aren’t unusual around us. I have said for a long time that a giggly 13 year-old boy lives inside me and he finds the most crude and obnoxious things irresistible.

I fervently believe in Mark Twain’s maxim: “Sacred cows make the best hamburger.” Pagans are notorious for making fun of religion. While we are less sarcastic and far more good-natured than atheist humor, we can be just as irreverent. We don’t merely make fun of other religions, we sock it to our own pretty hard too. After all, everyone knows the Gardnerian Book of Shadows can only be properly understood if read in the original Klingon.

Besides which, humor is a wonderful tool for approaching difficult subjects. Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman and Sacha Baron Cohen make us think about difficult issues while making us laugh. That’s a holy and sacred thing. Traditionally fools and jesters speak truth to power. Pagans recognize that.

We laugh because we care. We laugh because we live. We laugh because life is good. You better believe it! Don’t make me go Gaea on Uranus!

Next question is:

There are a lot of different ways pride is viewed in our communities: pride of self, pride of tribe, pride of ancestry, pride of country. What place does pride have in your spirituality?

If you’d like to weigh just e-mail me your short response (250-500 words). It’s sfoster at patheos.com.