Quaker Pagan Reflections

I tend to agree with Abraham Lincoln, who once observed that he didn't care much for a man's religion whose dog and cat were not the better for it.  And it's not just dogs and cats, either, but all the beings of the Earth--including the somewhat annoying ones we happen to share a species with.  I take it that that's what religion is for , and that we honor our religious tradition best by illustrating that. Compassionate engagement with the world ought to be the main fruit of anyone's religious life. I would think that was obvious, if we did not live in the age of the Internet.  But living in the age of the Internet, I am exposed to an awful lot of ideas that go under the name "religion," and some of them bear the same religious label I do.  This bothers me, possibly more than it should, because I dislike having the religious tradition that I love so poorly represented.  This is especially true for me of Pagan ideas, because Paganism is a religion that...

When we die, where do we go?  Does more of us remain in the grave, or where we have lived? My husband Peter and I have lived in this down-at-heels farmhouse for three summers now.  It is an odd house, in an odd sort of a neighborhood; I have hundreds of acres of woods, much of it owned by various public groups, in my backyard, a suburban neighborhood of close-built ranch houses across the street, and a neighbor in such another house not a stone's throw from my kitchen window. Despite the fact that deer and bears and hawks and owls are all regular visitors to my yard, despite my flourishing garden and apple trees, I do not live in anything like isolation.  And there is no place on my property that is truly private from my neighbors or from the street. I'll admit, my dream of a house in the woods was of a house off by itself in the woods--maybe not one where I could never glimpse the smoke from my neighbors' chimneys, but definitely one where I would never have to see...