tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post7115397923875287974..comments2023-10-05T06:20:40.173-04:00Comments on Quaker Pagan Reflections: Pagan Values Month: The Face Across the TableCat C-B (and/or Peter B)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10002916434676859262noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-13129294489120193472009-06-22T16:02:35.283-04:002009-06-22T16:02:35.283-04:00And may we all become "anointed ones"And may we all become "anointed ones"T. Thorn Coylehttp://www.thorncoyle.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-20249431044208068012009-06-19T08:49:55.259-04:002009-06-19T08:49:55.259-04:00I have a serious brain-crush on you.I have a serious brain-crush on you.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-88729391171341309982009-06-18T20:37:30.634-04:002009-06-18T20:37:30.634-04:00Hystery, are you coming to FGC Gathering any time ...Hystery, are you coming to FGC Gathering any time soon?? :)Morganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05201286586062722169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-76821221783636447112009-06-14T16:52:58.997-04:002009-06-14T16:52:58.997-04:00Hm. My study tells me that the emergence of Neo-P...Hm. My study tells me that the emergence of Neo-Paganism in the United States has a great deal to do with Friends and with other liberal people and liberalizing tendencies that have always played a minor chord in American religious history. Seems to me like there have always been individuals who have just been wrung out by orthodoxy. In the past, such individuals bled out their truth in relative isolation. Neo-Paganism isn't so much new as it is a more efficient collection of those drippings. <br /><br />When Friends resist my Paganism I wonder how closely they've read some of their most radical history. I also wonder if they've come to terms with the influence of nineteenth-century Protestant evangelicalism on their own sense of tradition (but that's a whole 'nother post!)<br /><br />I also get bummed about Pagan attitudes about scholarship and history and with the notion that what they are doing is new. If I were teaching a course on the development of Paganism in the United States, I would begin in the colonial period and work my way through. Our elders have always existed in American history. They just called themselves Quakers, Unitarians, Universalists, Spiritualists, Theosophists and free thinkers. How many Pagans have read Matilda Joslyn Gage, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, or Margaret Fuller? <br /><br />I realize now how negative this response might seem but I'll leave it even at the risk of sounding like a jerk. Gerda Lerner wrote about the tragedy of women's history in which each new generation of women wrote as if no woman had written before. Neo-Pagans do the same thing. Our ignorance of our forebears and their work retards our development and keeps us in a prolonged state of spiritual adolescence.Hysteryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02044678910937934731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-24086462620081962242009-06-13T23:25:41.395-04:002009-06-13T23:25:41.395-04:00Thank you, thank you - for reminding me again of t...Thank you, thank you - for reminding me again of the holiness inherent in the Pagan path.<br /><br />Love,<br />Terri in JoburgAquila ka Hecatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00725237187718174157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-21376816519623964012009-06-13T19:48:16.684-04:002009-06-13T19:48:16.684-04:00"The fact that our communities are primarily ..."The fact that our communities are primarily oriented toward ritual and practice, not the study of holy books or learned disputations, teaches most of us on a gut level that we can and should expect to meet our gods--to dance with them, embrace them and be embraced by them, to feast with them, sing with them, and (yes) argue with them."<br /><br />I enjoyed your entire post and when I read the part quoted above, I went Awwwwww... I just love the closeness you describe. I don't do well with a god so far remove that I need someone else to intervene in my behalf all the time. <br /><br />I'm an Eclectic Pagan and I don't know much about the Quaker path, so I hope to learn a lot following your blog.<br /><br />Thanks so much for sharing!Magaly Guerrerohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18295455026184103230noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-22213167282842747472009-06-13T13:45:42.873-04:002009-06-13T13:45:42.873-04:00Cat, bless you for such a profound and powerful po...Cat, bless you for such a profound and powerful posting. As a new Pagan and long-time Tibetan Buddhist who values active participation in both ways, I feel a kinship with you. (And having been raised and still part of a Catholic family, I also understand and appreciate the Christian perspective on faith.)<br /><br />I have often contrasted my participation in the Reclaiming movement of earth-based Witchcraft and meditation-based Tibetan Buddhism as the relationship between a younger sister and an older sister. They do share many resemblances--such as the unquestioning acceptance of reincarnation (an idea that was very alien to my Catholic teachers). The Pagan tradition is indeed very young, joyful, garrulous, playful, and often freeform in a way that can be undisciplined. The Buddhist tradition, on the other hand, is like the mature older sister, the young woman who has greater experience, self-possession, poise, maturity--and still good humor and grace. They are both excellent relations, both People whose influence magnify my love and promulgation of the Divine.<br /><br />I do find that my Pagan community shows its newness in certain areas. Addressing issues around death and dying is one very good example--a reality that informed Siddartha's Noble Truths, and about which nearly 3,000 years of contemplation have granted Buddhist teachers a richness of insights that have proven invaluable to me. Pagan insights into death and coping with that reality can be no less profound but are less structured and individual (as so much of Neo-Paganism is). When you're tossed by the waves of grief, having a more structured set of practices can be a comfort. That's important.<br /><br />Reclaiming is a tradition that considers activism--usually on behalf of feminist or environmental causes--a fundamendal aspect of spritual practice, and it's what brought me to this Pagan movement. Buddhism, by contrast, is only recently turning on to this idea, as exemplified by the buzzword "engaged Buddhism." As you point out, we Pagans are already *in* the world. It's our church. When I spend time teaching my nieces and nephews about what's happening to our bee populations, and how we can help combat the loss of this critical member of our natural world--that IS my worship of the Divine. That's practice. When I teach them the Reclaiming chant "We are alive/As the Earth is alive/... If we have courage/We can be Healers (CLAP)/Like the sun we will rise...": THAT is my liturgy. <br /><br />As a growing number of Americans acknowledge a lack of ANY spiritual tradition or religious affiliation, I for one sometimes feel more kinship these days with any person who has some kind of formal religious/spritual practice (I know it's popular to distinguish those 2, but I do think a religion gives a vehicle to make personal spritual insight something that carries over into our participation with our community and the greater world.) I resonate more with my mother, a dyed-in-the-wool deep Catholic, than I do with, for instance, a person with no religious practice.<br /><br />Thank you, again, Cat, for such beautiful thoughts.Rick Loftus, M.D.noreply@blogger.com