Quaker Pagan Reflections

“Nature is not mute. It is man who is deaf.” - Terence Mckenna If we accept that land is alive, and has spirit and the ability to communicate to us how (and whether) it wants to relate to us, how do we find out what that is? I've said that I respect Andras's family's patience in learning to hear from their land before diving in to constructing sacred sites on it, and it's something that I think Peter and I share.  But what is it that we're "hearing," and how are we best to listen for it? This is where Andras's ideas and mine diverge--in theory, if not in practice. I'm tempted to go into detail here, explaining some examples of what happens when Pagans don't listen to the land, but instead arbitrarily impose their preconceived notions about what kinds of shrines they "get" to construct on land once they own it.  Unfortunately, if I give specific examples, those who have been to those sites or were the ones to build them will ...

At the beginning of February, I got to go to Earthspirit's  Feast of Lights .  When I was there, I got to attend  Andras Corban Arthen's "Sacred Land: an Anamanta Workshop." I've enjoyed Andras's teaching ever since I was a little Witchling and I took his Witchcraft 101 classes.  It was nice having beginner-oriented stuff that wasn't condescending or lightweight, and even though it was obvious in his survey of all the different sorts of Witches he'd encountered that he liked his own tradition best, he did real justice to the subject, and offered enough practical ideas that I took home something to think about. Twenty-five years later, and he's still at it--making me think.  Not enough of us really think about how our Paganism connects us to the local landscape.  I know that I've thought about it more and more since moving to our house at the edge of the woods , and I was ready to look at my relationship with the earth in new ways.  I got...

I've been laboring for a while to put into words just what makes community such a necessary part of spiritual life.  I don't mean by this that it is wrong or a failure for any of us attempt to stay faithful and connected to our gods alone; I don't mean to echo the words of Gerald Gardner, who said we could not "be a Witch alone."  Sometimes all magic, whether of a Pagan or a Quaker variety, has to happen in solitude.  Sometimes there is no community that is hearing the music we hear; sometimes we are called away, on our own; and sometimes, solitude is for a time precisely what we are called to experience. But solitude in itself can never allow us to find our fullest spiritual growth. Without a community around us that is also striving for direct experience of Spirit, our own efforts in that direction will be held back.  For one thing, when the men and women around us are good at going deep, they tend to pull us deeper along with them.  I think of that a...

If you are a reader, you probably know the feeling.  Having moved from one house or apartment to another, you find yourself wanting to take down a particular book, and you know exactly where it is... in your old home. That kind of phantom access, to a world that is no longer there, is more and more familiar to me as I age.  So often I will catch myself in a reverie, thinking of a friend or vista from my past... and somehow, the past feels like that misplaced book: I know exactly where it was, and it is a struggle, sometimes, to remember that I will never again walk down the halls of my old high school (they've torn the building down) or jump off the swingset I had as a child, or crawl inside the hollow log that used to lie hidden in a wood that is itself, no longer there. The past feels present to me, and I reach out my hand for it, only to discover with puzzlement over and over again that it is gone--at least, gone in the shape I knew. Last spring, we lost a neighbor ....

The black month November says M de la Villemarque is the month of the dead. On All Saints Eve, (the Scotch Halloween) crowds flock to the grave yards to pray by the family graves, to fill with holy water the little hollows left for this pious purpose in the Breton grave stones, or in some places to offer libations of milk. All night masses for the dead are said and the bells toll; in some places after vespers, the parish priest goes round in procession by torch light to bless the tombs. In every house the cloth and the remains of the supper are left on the table that the souls of the dead may take their seats about the board; the fire too is left burning on the hearth, that the dead may warm their thin hands at the embers as they did in life. When the dead mass has been said, the death bell tolled, the supper eaten, and the household are abed, weird wailings are heard outside the door, blent with the sighing of the wind. They are the songs of the souls, who borrow the voice of the pa...

In Part 1 of my Open Letter , I feel that I made two important errors, and I need to own them here. The first was a lack of clarity on when I was asking that Christian Friends should take pains to discern the will of Spirit in sharing based on the Bible or Christianity.  I was not as clear as I meant to be that I was not talking about when Christians speak among themselves, or when established friends within a spiritual community are speaking to one another.  My caution applies to cases where Christian Friends--within liberal meetings, where it is relevant, as it is not in the other branches of Friends--speak in meeting for worship, or on behalf of their meetings or one-on-one with non-Christians they don't know.  In those situations, the dangers from outrunning our Guide is great, and a good way to avoid hurting one another unnecessarily is to stay low to Spirit while speaking boldly and confidently what Spirit gives us to share. Some took my words to mean that every...

Last month, I went to the annual gathering of Friends General Conference, one of the large umbrella organizations that many of the Yearly Meetings belong to.  While there, I met several other Friends who also identify as Pagan.  One of them wrote to me afterwards, asking himself questions about the compatibility of Quaker and Pagan religious paths.  What follows is based on my response to him:  What Quakerism and Paganism share most profoundly is that both are experiential religions.  Neither one demands that you believe a doctrine or recite a creed, but both lead you through experiences by which you come to experience the Divine directly. Those experiences often happen on a level that is wordless.  The Gods transcend language, but human beings live by words.  The Gods break us open, changing us at our deepest levels; words knit us together again in our new forms.  All of the Quaker testimonies, and all of the Pagan myths, are afterthoughts, an...