Quaker Pagan Reflections

 The other day, a Christian friend posted a link to two articles on the phenomenon of celebrity pastors, " The Evangelical Industrial Complex ."  And it got me thinking about the similarities and differences that exist, between the evangelical community and within my Pagan community. The issues in the Pagan community are different... but related, I think.  "The market"--whether we're talking about publishing or speakers at large gatherings--is really the only Commons we have for our community; because we have always been cash poor, we have very few non-profit institutions that can promote leadership and share ideas on anything but a market-values basis.  Until very recently, everything we have built had to pay for itself through market share in order to support itself at all.  And while projects like the fund drives for Cherry Hill Seminary   and The Wild Hunt are beginning to help with that, it's still largely true: what has a potential to bring in cash...

The Spiritual Journey so far: Prologue I: Peter In Kenya Prologue II: A Liberal Christian With Balls Part I: A Refugee Looks Back Part II: Leaving Home Part III: Who Am I? Part IV: Learning About Race and Gender Part V: Watching My Students Drown Part VI: Animal Bones  Sometimes there is a weird overlap between being a science teacher and a Pagan. Walking with my Environmental Science class one day to a graveyard to examine the weathering on different kinds of stones, a former student pulled up next to us in his pickup truck, leaned his head out the window and called out, “Hey Mr. Bishop, you want a bear head?” I said, “Sure!”  I mean, how many times do you get an offer like that? Actually, it turns out, more often than you would have thought.  Many of my students hunt, and the display case in my classroom now holds a nice little collection, with the bear and two deer—a buck and a doe—displayed alongside a human skull in fairly lifelike plastic. ...