Well, I did my presentation today. I practiced a couple of times by myself last night and then this morning in front of Mr Sanil. I noticed a minute or so into it that he was filming me, the sneaky jerk. :D I hate watching/hearing recordings of myself. But that aside, I think I did fairly well and he said I was going to rock it. In the actual presentation I was much more nervous, my ramblings about Supernatural confused a lot of people because I don't think many of them had any idea what it was. :D Towards the end of that section of the speech someone rose his hand and said "I'm sorry, what show? What's this?" And I got to try to explain Hardy Boys with angels to a bunch of 40+ year olds who don't like supernatural elements in pop culture. *shrugs*
I was accused (in a friendly way) of giving too much significance and benefit to the Bible. That seems a little weird to me, I really don't know what about my presentation implied that. If anything, I thought I was being overly critical and that people who don't know me might have assumed I was insulting Christianity! But whatever caused that impression, at least it still went over well. I talked to the guy who said that after the meeting and he actually really liked the topic, I think maybe it's just that since I was introduced as a seminary grad who tends to balance out the lack of spirituality in the group, he read me as trying to proselytize or something. So maybe in that context my comments that whether we like it or not Christianity has had a strong influence in our culture sounded to him like "Hey, you can be atheists if you want but you all know Christianity is the foundation of our society and deep down you know it's true." I don't know.
But overall, it seems that everyone was very interested in the topic. There was a lot of good discussion and I got to meet and talk to people that before this had never noticed me. In fact, the guy I mentioned above came early and asked in a sort of confused way if I was the speaker for the day, and where I was from. When I told him "here" he was pretty surprised, said he'd maybe seen me once or twice but had no idea who I was or that I was a regular attender. I'm too quiet! I know this and I'm trying to change it, but it's a difficult process.
Anyway. Now that's finally done, I'm trying to get started in making some changes. Researching this made me realize that I don't handle my time well. So I'm on sort of a media diet. I'm not actually limiting how much TV I watch, but I only want to have it on when I'm actually watching and paying attention instead of always having it on in the background taking attention away from other activities. I want to dedicate more time to reading and writing, not to mention getting the house and yard set up the way I want them. And of course, dedicating more time and energy to that teaching/blogging/ministry project I keep mentioning but haven't finished yet. It's getting there! Mostly at this point I'm trying to decide exactly who I want to see it and therefore whether I want it to be under my legal name or whether I want to keep my pseudonym. That and picking a title. Titles are so hard!
My top choices at this point are "Pagan Church Mouse" (which I mostly like because it sounds completely adorable, but it's one that means I can't use my legal name because in this area that will interfere with jobs), "Ministry In Transit" (I like the idea that it's always arriving, never actually finished), "Do I Dare...?" (referring mostly to my uncertainty and anxiety over the public/social aspects of ministry, and maybe a little my tendency to shake things up and look to unorthodox sources and methods), or maybe something I haven't pinned down yet but relating somehow to ministry and community as family/home/etc. I'm not really sure yet. But like I said. Getting there.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Practice Speech
Hi guys! I'm presenting a topic tomorrow at the atheist church and I'm really nervous about it. I think I tend to do better at this sort of thing when I write it out first, so I'm going to do that here. I'll include speech-y things like introducing myself because I think I need to memorize it with that. So...it will probably read kind of weird in parts but we'll see.
----
Hi! My name is [Sanil], some of you know me. If you don't, but you think I maybe look kind of familiar, I'm the really quiet person who usually sits waaaay in the back there. This is the first time in over a year that I've talked in front of a group, so I'm a little nervous. Bear with me. To let you know a little about myself, I have a master of divinity degree and I plan to be involved in church ministry some day, so I'm very interested in the ways our cultural values and media shape each other. So today I'm going to talk about the ways the media can affect us and how we can take advantage of it by being more aware of the media we consume.
I'm kind of curious about where people stand on this, so I'm going to ask a few questions, just raise your hand if they apply to you.
But as I was reading, a lot of things made sense. The research seemed to confirm that active media viewing could be useful and good for people, but also found that passive viewing leaves us open to manipulation. One of the ways this happens is through the fantasy sold to us through fiction. Do you ever notice how fictional characters' lives are way better than ours? Take the show Friends, just because it ran long enough that I think it's safe to assume most of us at least know what it is. At the start, this group includes two waitresses, an unemployed actor, and one person who doesn't seem to have a job at all. All of the characters are beautiful and thin, they have gigantic and extremely well-furnished Manhattan apartments despite their fairly low-income jobs, and they have a ton of free time. Who wouldn't want that life?
But the thing is, nobody actually does have that life. So people can get caught up in the fantasy, but then that fades and it's easy to become dissatisfied with how their lives compare to it. Why don't I look like that? Why am I so tired and busy all the time? Why does my home look so boring? And then the commercials come on and offer things to make your life somehow more satisfying. The commercials themselves are usually pretty silly and I've often wondered what purpose they fill. No one decides to go buy something because of a funny commercial, right? Well, probably not. But all the commercial has to do is get their name out there, and if that happens when you're feeling down about yourself and the commercials are telling you that their products can make you happier and more like those people in your favorite TV show, that might have a bit of a stronger effect on you.
It turns out a lot of how the media manipulates us is through these indirect associations, rather than telling us something outright. When we watch a TV show, we identify with the characters. The things the characters say and the attitudes and behaviors they show make their way into our mind in a similar way to interactions with real people, and over time we forget the source and remember the information. We internalize it. So on the one hand we might think that negative attitudes in the media are no big deal because we all know it's fake, but the problem there is that it has the greatest effect on us when we're not paying attention and consciously keeping it mind. Just by being aware of the fact that we are influenced by the media and allowing ourselves to analyze and critique what we're watching, we can have greater control over it and use it to our advantage instead of being used by the companies that create it.
That can happen on a few levels. For people who want to really dig deep, there's lots of examples of how to do that. There are quite a few books on pop culture and philosophy right over there, and I've seen similar ones on pop culture and theology. A friend of mine writes about horror and theology and has pointed out some fascinating things that never would have occurred to me. I've always been very interested in stories with a sort of humanist bent, where humanity and life and free will are celebrated. More recently I've started to notice Messianic characters in a lot of the movies and TV shows I like, and it occurred to me during another one of our meetings that Dean Winchester from Supernatural is a postmodern Jesus figure.
That one in particular is very interesting to me because I think it sort of shines a light on how that sacrificial trope is very important to us but also at odds with our humanist values. How do you deal with a martyr in a show where free will and the basic worth of humanity are such important themes? Supernatural seems to deal with it by having that martyr character be very damaged and have an unnecessarily dark view of the universe. He internalizes everyone's guilt. Whether it was actually his fault or just something bad that happened where no one is to blame or even where other people betrayed him, he feels guilty about every bad thing that has ever happened. So while everyone else has this attitude that they can't stop bad things from happening but they can try to make it better instead of feeling guilty, Dean is taking on everybody's sins emotionally and as a result he's much more likely to jump at sacrifice as an option by the end.
I think that's a great secular approach to an idea that our culture clearly values (probably partly because of Christian influence over many generations) but that doesn't mesh with a contemporary humanist outlook. The show does that a lot. It's a show based heavily on Christian mythology, but has a distinct absence of God. Only a few beings even claim to have seen God in the series, most of the angels have some serious doubts that he exists or is still around. In little ways like this the show does a great job of examining the ways religion affects us even if we don't believe in it, and provides some interesting secular perspectives on religious beliefs and values.
But at a simpler and probably more important level, knowing that our values and fiction affect each other gives us a chance to be more careful about what values we're absorbing from our media. I never thought of my entertainment as promoting racism, but when I started reading and hearing the perspective of PoC I noticed that I'd missed quite a bit. I never felt the need to examine the things I watched, because I mostly saw people like me portrayed on screen. And even though I'm very committed to feminism, it took me a long time to start critically examining the things I watched and addressing sexist and misogynistic content. It's so widespread that I just accepted it as normal and let things pass - both in fiction and among my friends.
So how do we react to that? Since it is so widespread, do we have to stop watching anything that includes oppressive content? I think that's something everyone has to decide for themselves, based on how they feel about it and how much it's affecting them. For me, my answer has been that it's okay to watch and like things with problematic elements, so long as I know they are there and actively examine them. I ask myself questions like "How does this make me feel? Is this something that has a wider impact than just something an idiot character says, have I heard my friends make similar statements? Have I had similar thoughts? Does the show have enough good points to balance out the negative?" Some things I've stopped watching after answering those questions. Some things I've decided provide enough of a benefit to accept the flaws. It's really an individual thing, and the important part is not necessarily that we have some sort of objective metric for what media is acceptable and what isn't, but that we realize how we are being influenced and make informed choices about the media we consume.
I mentioned earlier that I didn't believe I could possibly watch "too much" TV, but last week I decided to challenge myself. What shows did I actually really enjoy and want to see? As it turned out, there were only three of them. Three hours a week that I could really justify as being worthwhile programming for me, and because I'd gotten into the habit of using the TV as background noise, I realized I don't often even pay full attention to them or enjoy them like I did when I first discovered them. Often I have a difficult time remembering what happened in an episode I just watched, because I was only half paying attention! Oops. So I challenged myself to only watch TV and movies when I really want to see something, and at those times to put other things away and just focus on what I'm watching. I'm not great at it yet! A couple of times this week the silence has driven me up a wall and I caved. But I'm getting better, and I can see a difference already in my attitude and productivity. I'm being intentional with my time in a way I wasn't before. And I'm not saying that will be true for everyone, but I was very surprised that it was true for me. It wasn't something I'd ever really considered, and I found I'd been operating a lot of assumptions that just didn't hold up once I actually tested them.
So, now I'm interested in what everyone else's experience has been. I know there was kind of a lot of material there, but what jumped out at you or is on your mind?
----
*winces* How was it? I haven't timed it yet, I'm about to print it out and do that. I'm still very nervous, but much less than I was when I started. I know this is kind of late posting and I don't actually expect feedback before I give the presentation, but suggestions are welcome. On the off chance that they come in before I leave in the morning I'll take them into consideration for this, otherwise I'm sure it will come in handy in future speeches!
----
Hi! My name is [Sanil], some of you know me. If you don't, but you think I maybe look kind of familiar, I'm the really quiet person who usually sits waaaay in the back there. This is the first time in over a year that I've talked in front of a group, so I'm a little nervous. Bear with me. To let you know a little about myself, I have a master of divinity degree and I plan to be involved in church ministry some day, so I'm very interested in the ways our cultural values and media shape each other. So today I'm going to talk about the ways the media can affect us and how we can take advantage of it by being more aware of the media we consume.
I'm kind of curious about where people stand on this, so I'm going to ask a few questions, just raise your hand if they apply to you.
- Do you think that you are influenced by television and films?
- Do you think you watch too much TV, or do you want to watch less?
- Have you ever been embarrassed by a sitcom character to the point that you've turned off the show? Or so sad for a character that you cried?
- Do you tend to watch TV in the background or while your mind is on something else?
But as I was reading, a lot of things made sense. The research seemed to confirm that active media viewing could be useful and good for people, but also found that passive viewing leaves us open to manipulation. One of the ways this happens is through the fantasy sold to us through fiction. Do you ever notice how fictional characters' lives are way better than ours? Take the show Friends, just because it ran long enough that I think it's safe to assume most of us at least know what it is. At the start, this group includes two waitresses, an unemployed actor, and one person who doesn't seem to have a job at all. All of the characters are beautiful and thin, they have gigantic and extremely well-furnished Manhattan apartments despite their fairly low-income jobs, and they have a ton of free time. Who wouldn't want that life?
But the thing is, nobody actually does have that life. So people can get caught up in the fantasy, but then that fades and it's easy to become dissatisfied with how their lives compare to it. Why don't I look like that? Why am I so tired and busy all the time? Why does my home look so boring? And then the commercials come on and offer things to make your life somehow more satisfying. The commercials themselves are usually pretty silly and I've often wondered what purpose they fill. No one decides to go buy something because of a funny commercial, right? Well, probably not. But all the commercial has to do is get their name out there, and if that happens when you're feeling down about yourself and the commercials are telling you that their products can make you happier and more like those people in your favorite TV show, that might have a bit of a stronger effect on you.
It turns out a lot of how the media manipulates us is through these indirect associations, rather than telling us something outright. When we watch a TV show, we identify with the characters. The things the characters say and the attitudes and behaviors they show make their way into our mind in a similar way to interactions with real people, and over time we forget the source and remember the information. We internalize it. So on the one hand we might think that negative attitudes in the media are no big deal because we all know it's fake, but the problem there is that it has the greatest effect on us when we're not paying attention and consciously keeping it mind. Just by being aware of the fact that we are influenced by the media and allowing ourselves to analyze and critique what we're watching, we can have greater control over it and use it to our advantage instead of being used by the companies that create it.
That can happen on a few levels. For people who want to really dig deep, there's lots of examples of how to do that. There are quite a few books on pop culture and philosophy right over there, and I've seen similar ones on pop culture and theology. A friend of mine writes about horror and theology and has pointed out some fascinating things that never would have occurred to me. I've always been very interested in stories with a sort of humanist bent, where humanity and life and free will are celebrated. More recently I've started to notice Messianic characters in a lot of the movies and TV shows I like, and it occurred to me during another one of our meetings that Dean Winchester from Supernatural is a postmodern Jesus figure.
That one in particular is very interesting to me because I think it sort of shines a light on how that sacrificial trope is very important to us but also at odds with our humanist values. How do you deal with a martyr in a show where free will and the basic worth of humanity are such important themes? Supernatural seems to deal with it by having that martyr character be very damaged and have an unnecessarily dark view of the universe. He internalizes everyone's guilt. Whether it was actually his fault or just something bad that happened where no one is to blame or even where other people betrayed him, he feels guilty about every bad thing that has ever happened. So while everyone else has this attitude that they can't stop bad things from happening but they can try to make it better instead of feeling guilty, Dean is taking on everybody's sins emotionally and as a result he's much more likely to jump at sacrifice as an option by the end.
I think that's a great secular approach to an idea that our culture clearly values (probably partly because of Christian influence over many generations) but that doesn't mesh with a contemporary humanist outlook. The show does that a lot. It's a show based heavily on Christian mythology, but has a distinct absence of God. Only a few beings even claim to have seen God in the series, most of the angels have some serious doubts that he exists or is still around. In little ways like this the show does a great job of examining the ways religion affects us even if we don't believe in it, and provides some interesting secular perspectives on religious beliefs and values.
But at a simpler and probably more important level, knowing that our values and fiction affect each other gives us a chance to be more careful about what values we're absorbing from our media. I never thought of my entertainment as promoting racism, but when I started reading and hearing the perspective of PoC I noticed that I'd missed quite a bit. I never felt the need to examine the things I watched, because I mostly saw people like me portrayed on screen. And even though I'm very committed to feminism, it took me a long time to start critically examining the things I watched and addressing sexist and misogynistic content. It's so widespread that I just accepted it as normal and let things pass - both in fiction and among my friends.
So how do we react to that? Since it is so widespread, do we have to stop watching anything that includes oppressive content? I think that's something everyone has to decide for themselves, based on how they feel about it and how much it's affecting them. For me, my answer has been that it's okay to watch and like things with problematic elements, so long as I know they are there and actively examine them. I ask myself questions like "How does this make me feel? Is this something that has a wider impact than just something an idiot character says, have I heard my friends make similar statements? Have I had similar thoughts? Does the show have enough good points to balance out the negative?" Some things I've stopped watching after answering those questions. Some things I've decided provide enough of a benefit to accept the flaws. It's really an individual thing, and the important part is not necessarily that we have some sort of objective metric for what media is acceptable and what isn't, but that we realize how we are being influenced and make informed choices about the media we consume.
I mentioned earlier that I didn't believe I could possibly watch "too much" TV, but last week I decided to challenge myself. What shows did I actually really enjoy and want to see? As it turned out, there were only three of them. Three hours a week that I could really justify as being worthwhile programming for me, and because I'd gotten into the habit of using the TV as background noise, I realized I don't often even pay full attention to them or enjoy them like I did when I first discovered them. Often I have a difficult time remembering what happened in an episode I just watched, because I was only half paying attention! Oops. So I challenged myself to only watch TV and movies when I really want to see something, and at those times to put other things away and just focus on what I'm watching. I'm not great at it yet! A couple of times this week the silence has driven me up a wall and I caved. But I'm getting better, and I can see a difference already in my attitude and productivity. I'm being intentional with my time in a way I wasn't before. And I'm not saying that will be true for everyone, but I was very surprised that it was true for me. It wasn't something I'd ever really considered, and I found I'd been operating a lot of assumptions that just didn't hold up once I actually tested them.
So, now I'm interested in what everyone else's experience has been. I know there was kind of a lot of material there, but what jumped out at you or is on your mind?
----
*winces* How was it? I haven't timed it yet, I'm about to print it out and do that. I'm still very nervous, but much less than I was when I started. I know this is kind of late posting and I don't actually expect feedback before I give the presentation, but suggestions are welcome. On the off chance that they come in before I leave in the morning I'll take them into consideration for this, otherwise I'm sure it will come in handy in future speeches!
Sunday, May 12, 2013
John, Jesus, and Wine
My sister seems to have made Sunday her day to call me and talk about the Bible. Well, I guess that’s fitting. It’s mostly because hearing sermons by people who don’t know what they’re doing tends to drive her crazy. I have the same problem, we both just sort of suck at turning off our critical brains and letting people have their simple, feel-good sermons. We want to learn and teach! Other people don’t seem to get that. So we vent to each other and have these long conversations, and this is what came out of that one. I hope it doesn't offend anyone, but if it does and you feel I'm being harsh feel free to point it out.
A few weeks ago there was a lay speaker at her church who talked about the wedding at Cana, where Jesus turns water into wine (John 2). It’s a church that teaches drinking alcohol at all is wrong, so he spent most of the sermon trying to explain away the fact that there’s alcohol in this story. Oh, that wasn’t real wine, it was watered down to the point that it was impossible to get drunk. And anyway they didn’t have a choice, there was nothing else to drink.
Those arguments are pretty flawed. First of all, it was possible not to drink wine, because some people didn’t do it - John the Baptist, for example. And some people, Jesus included, even seem to have gotten drunk on it. (Luke 7:33-34, Matthew 11:18-19) In fact, right in this story about the wedding it’s noted that the guests are already drunk when Jesus makes wine. Oops.
But really, none of that is the point. The point is that getting all caught up in those details is kind of silly. Don’t think Jesus would drink alcohol today? Fine, go with that. But don’t spend all your energy with this story trying to justify that, because you’re kind of missing the whole purpose of it being included. It’s the first miracle recorded in this gospel, and the fact that the first miracle is creating the best wine is incredibly important for everything that follows.
See, I love the Gospel of John. I used to hate it a lot and then I spent most of a week reading it over and over trying to figure out its theology so I could write my stupid paper on it. We weren’t allowed to use commentaries in that class because the professor wanted us to get in the habit of reading carefully without biases first. We had readings about literary styles and history, but weren’t supposed to look at other opinions of the passage we were studying until after we’d finished it. I didn’t have a problem with most of the assignments, but this one just didn’t make sense until the day before it was due. The moment it finally clicked, my mind kind of broke. I was sitting with my best friend who was a year ahead of me, and I had to put down all my books and just stare and laugh and tell her about it several times. See, John’s very mystical and he seems to say a lot of things that don’t matter and don’t make sense until you realize that it’s all just part of this larger picture he’s trying to paint.
Writing in a time after the destruction of the Temple and probably competing for followers with both Judaism and Greek mystery cults, the author of John has a lot of interest in portraying Jesus as the perfect completion of everything that came before. You like Dionysos? Boy have we got a wine god for you! Distressed over the future of Judaism without a Temple and with foreign polytheists ruling the Israelites? No worries, Jesus is the new and true Israel! And also the Temple, and the Passover sacrifice.
He’s really stuck on that whole Passover thing. There are 3 separate Passovers mentioned in this gospel, the final and most important one being right before Jesus dies. And when he’s not talking about an actual Passover festival, he’s talking about elements of Passover like wine, bread, and lambs and telling us how Jesus is the heavenly, perfect form of all of them. By the time this wedding happens, John the Baptist has already identified Jesus as the Lamb of God, and soon after this Jesus feeds 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread. Wine, bread, lamb - Jesus. This is all repeated in small doses several times over the course of the gospel and then explained in detail during Jesus’ last supper teachings. John loves beating you over the head with the message. Really. Pay attention if you’re ever reading it start to finish, he just repeats himself constantly, having the other characters ask questions over and over again just so Jesus can answer over and over again.
This was written well after Paul’s letters. So by this time the theology of the bread and wine as Jesus’ body and blood had already been developed. Much of John’s audience would have been familiar with that. Therefore, when he starts off this gospel right away talking about Jesus as the lamb, wine, and bread and constantly mentions Passover, he’s not telling them something completely new. Instead, he’s showing it to them in a slightly new light. By constantly comparing Jesus with what came before and emphasizing that what Jesus does with it is better, he’s giving people a reason to see Jesus as more than just another god or failed Messiah. This gospel tells the reader over and over that Jesus is a perfect, spiritual version and everything else is just a metaphor, flawed and inferior.
Focusing on the alcohol content of the wine and how many glasses Jesus may have had is just such an unnecessary distraction. Now I know I don’t really have a stake in this since I’m not a Christian anymore and it’s definitely not my congregation. But the congregation already agrees with him and is probably fine with assuming Jesus didn’t drink any actual alcohol, so I don’t see why he would waste so much time on that. I do want to be a pastor or at least religious educator some day, and I take that pretty seriously, so I don’t like seeing people just completely miss the point.
Now, as my mom points out, this wasn’t a Biblical scholar and he probably just didn’t know. That’s fine, I get it. I’m not criticizing him, just sympathizing with my sister.
We do know more about it, and it’s really hard for both of us to sit and listen respectfully without bursting in to teach. I’ve had to learn that most people in churches just don’t really care. What they want to know is that Jesus loves them and wants them to do good. You’ve all done very well! You can go home now. And apparently that was sort of included here. Once he finally got done talking about alcohol, the speaker mentioned that it was the best wine, and isn’t it just like Jesus to give us the best? Eh. It’s not what I’d do with it, but it probably worked for this congregation and made them happy. I could stand to learn that skill, I suck at simplifying things.
Side note, my sister did have a problem with the idea that Jesus gave them his best. She argues that maybe it’s just that God’s worst is better than a human’s best, how would we know if he was doing the best he could? So then I have this image of Jesus as Felix from Wreck-it Ralph. “WHY DO I PERFECT EVERYTHING I TOUCH?” Poor guy. :D
Anyway. Yes, Jesus drank wine, even though there do seem to have been other options. And he gave wedding guests more wine when they were already drunk, so he was probably pretty cool with it. But more to the point, this story was included for a reason, and if your primary response to it is to explain it away, you just might be missing something.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Altar and Shrine Pics
I mentioned in my previous post that I would be doing two in a row, here's the second. Pictures, so many pictures! Really only a handful. And one's missing because I haven't set it up yet, I might make another post once I do. Anyway, here are the ones that have already been set up. I'm feeling good about them.
This is my "outdoor" altar. It's actually on the porch, which is outside enough for my purposes. Sometimes I want to worship outside, but I don't feel quite comfortable or safe going out in the open because there are almost always people around and I'm self-conscious about it, especially since this is a fairly conservative area. So I finally put this little TV-tray out on the porch and set it up as an altar. Yay! It's a great compromise for me, and I love that I was able to go out and spend some time worshiping while hearing the sounds of the outside world, including a bunch of neighbors in their yards that I could hear but not see.
I want to set up a side table in my room with basically the same altar setup, for days when it's not so nice outside and/or I just want to be alone. In both cases they will be partially portable, I'll only bring out the altar cloth and all the stuff on top of it when I want to use them. For the outdoor one it's mostly because I don't want it to get stolen or dirty, for the indoor one I'm kind of afraid my cats will break it since the table is right at jumping height and will be right in front of a window.
My Frigga/Hestia shrine. I drew a picture of the two of them together in front of a fireplace awhile back (almost a year ago) that I have yet to paint and add. However, I'm also not sure anymore that it's a good picture and I might want to try a new one at some point. But I'll probably still paint the old one and put it up at least for awhile. In the meantime, I'm pretty sure Hestia didn't often (if ever) have statues or images in ancient times anyway, and this Pieta prayer card reminds me a lot of Frigga and her son Baldr. So it's a little minimalist and imperfect, but it works.
The shrine that won't be pictured in this post is the kitchen shrine to Holda and the house spirits. Frigga and Holda have a lot in common and are sometimes considered the same goddess, so I thought about having them share altar space. But that didn't feel quite right, for now I like having them in these different locations. I think of Frigga as a more general hearth and family goddess, and associate Holda specifically with the work of maintaining a household, so it makes sense to me to group Frigga with Hestia (especially since I've gotten some indication from them that they get along and like to talk to each other and share this space) as tenders of the hearth and have Holda in the kitchen with the house spirits (who like Holda are also associated with chores and are known to help those who work hard).
That last part is important. In doing some research for my upcoming May Day festival I've been reading about some Walpurgis customs. One of them is presenting farmers who haven't finished their work by this day with a corn dolly meant to represent Walpurga (or in my case, Holda) as sort of a chastisement. That makes sense to me. Granted I started late, but I haven't been doing a great job of getting the house in order and I'm not sure my spring cleaning will be done in time. Actually, I give it less than a 50% chance. I haven't really earned their help, and I think having that representation to remind me might help kick me into gear. Not really a punishment, just a firm-but-gentle reminder to be grateful that you made it through despite being unprepared and to kick it up a notch in the year ahead. I like that.
My Apollon/Hermes/Artemis shrine, with Gaia above them. I don't know why, I just really love this image. There may be a few too many Mary pictures on my shrines and I do sort of want to replace them with actual deity pictures, but sometimes they just seem to fit. This one, though, is probably not actually a great image for Gaia. I tend to associate it more with Hekate as the cosmic world soul, or even the Source, the thing before Hekate and all of physical creation. But then again, back when I had to include an Earth Mother for ADF rites, this Source was always who I meant anyway, and the culturally specific name I used for the ritual was just a name. So that works. Gaia as an image of the ultimate Source.
Hekate/Dionysos/Ariadne. Another Marian image for Hekate, because seeing it instantly made me think of her. The colors, the angels, the baby...so much of this makes me think of Hekate in ways I can't quite easily explain. I have other pictures of her and items that were previously on her altar, but for now I'm kind of liking the simplicity of just this image and the red candle above it. The masks were ones my partner and I wore at our wedding, and represent Dionysos and Ariadne in the absence of any images for them.
And of course, my pop culture shrine! My Little Pony, a manga called Magic Knight Rayearth that was my first and is still my favorite anime, and a Wright Brothers poster or something mostly because it was already there (it belongs to my partner). If I had any Monster High or Disney dolls, or Doctor Who or Marvel action figures, they'd be here too. But that could be a problem because it's pretty full already. I'd probably have to change them every week or two so everyone could have a turn.
This is my "outdoor" altar. It's actually on the porch, which is outside enough for my purposes. Sometimes I want to worship outside, but I don't feel quite comfortable or safe going out in the open because there are almost always people around and I'm self-conscious about it, especially since this is a fairly conservative area. So I finally put this little TV-tray out on the porch and set it up as an altar. Yay! It's a great compromise for me, and I love that I was able to go out and spend some time worshiping while hearing the sounds of the outside world, including a bunch of neighbors in their yards that I could hear but not see.
I want to set up a side table in my room with basically the same altar setup, for days when it's not so nice outside and/or I just want to be alone. In both cases they will be partially portable, I'll only bring out the altar cloth and all the stuff on top of it when I want to use them. For the outdoor one it's mostly because I don't want it to get stolen or dirty, for the indoor one I'm kind of afraid my cats will break it since the table is right at jumping height and will be right in front of a window.
The shrine that won't be pictured in this post is the kitchen shrine to Holda and the house spirits. Frigga and Holda have a lot in common and are sometimes considered the same goddess, so I thought about having them share altar space. But that didn't feel quite right, for now I like having them in these different locations. I think of Frigga as a more general hearth and family goddess, and associate Holda specifically with the work of maintaining a household, so it makes sense to me to group Frigga with Hestia (especially since I've gotten some indication from them that they get along and like to talk to each other and share this space) as tenders of the hearth and have Holda in the kitchen with the house spirits (who like Holda are also associated with chores and are known to help those who work hard).
That last part is important. In doing some research for my upcoming May Day festival I've been reading about some Walpurgis customs. One of them is presenting farmers who haven't finished their work by this day with a corn dolly meant to represent Walpurga (or in my case, Holda) as sort of a chastisement. That makes sense to me. Granted I started late, but I haven't been doing a great job of getting the house in order and I'm not sure my spring cleaning will be done in time. Actually, I give it less than a 50% chance. I haven't really earned their help, and I think having that representation to remind me might help kick me into gear. Not really a punishment, just a firm-but-gentle reminder to be grateful that you made it through despite being unprepared and to kick it up a notch in the year ahead. I like that.
My Apollon/Hermes/Artemis shrine, with Gaia above them. I don't know why, I just really love this image. There may be a few too many Mary pictures on my shrines and I do sort of want to replace them with actual deity pictures, but sometimes they just seem to fit. This one, though, is probably not actually a great image for Gaia. I tend to associate it more with Hekate as the cosmic world soul, or even the Source, the thing before Hekate and all of physical creation. But then again, back when I had to include an Earth Mother for ADF rites, this Source was always who I meant anyway, and the culturally specific name I used for the ritual was just a name. So that works. Gaia as an image of the ultimate Source.
Looking Back and Looking Forward
Alright, enough of my moping. Remember way back when this was actually a devotional blog? Let's try some of that again. At least for a little while. I think I'm actually going to do a couple of posts right in a row. I'm going to talk about my spiritual journey from the last couple of months in this one, and then right after that I'll post a bunch of altar pics so I just have a whole page of simple and happy.
As you can probably guess from the complete lack of spiritual content (or all too often, content of any kind) on this blog in the past few months, my religious practice has been fading. That's mostly as a result of the job stuff I was whining about in my last post, combined with a lack of money (or more to the point, a lot of people who know about my situation and make me feel guilty for spending money on things like offerings), the fact that I'm not around other religious folks anymore (You have no idea how much I miss seminary, seriously. Of course I'd meet other pagans and start talking about making a club for pagans at seminary right before I graduated.), and a lot of uncertainty about what I'm even doing in a religious sense. When I was with ADF I was unhappy about a lot, but at least I had structure of some kind and some idea of what I would be studying. But it wasn't really right for me, and without it I've been struggling to figure out what I do want out of a religious practice and community.
I've been starting to pull myself back together and find answers to these questions. The Tumblr pagans started talking a lot about pop culture magic/religion and I got all excited about that for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, I absolutely think pop culture is the contemporary form of what myth was to the ancient world and that it's a valuable tool for helping to process what we as a culture believe and value, and on the other hand the total silliness and fun of building a religious practice around cartoons (for example) frees me up to play around and experiment with new ideas. It was a great way to revive my dying practice and figure out what actually works for me and what doesn't. I discovered that although I like the idea of ritual I'm terrible at the practice of it and that it doesn't make sense for me. Ritual is about providing a common framework for a group. In community worship it helps everyone to focus their minds on the goal and contribute to that temporarily shared understanding of the cosmos. As an individual who tends to analyze metaphors rather than accept and build on them, it's just adding an extra couple of steps that don't need to be there. It's best for me to focus on the bare bones, to keep in mind what any ritual I would design is meant to represent.
That free-form, do-what-works-for-you approach is something that seems to resonate with me in anything. When people start telling me I have to do something a certain way, I immediately start rebelling against it. That's why ADF never worked for me, and why I've come to identify myself as a Discordian more than a pagan. I just can't quite buy into the idea that there's only one way of doing something. My head always gets in the way and starts saying "but what about this? You know that's not true." For it to work, I need to constantly reaffirm as part of my religious worldview that there is no one way and that any method I choose is just an illusion/metaphor that is useful for the moment, that it can be adapted and reworked if I find something that works better. Being a Discordian also helps me to relax and not get angry when I come across dogmatic folks who see the rest of the world as evil or inferior. I just praise Discordia for the chaos, banish the negativity with laughter, and go about my day. It's nice. Sometimes I even watch shows like the 700 Club as a religious practice - if I can start my day listening to them and have it somehow improve my mood, I know Eris is at work and things are gonna be good.
After my pop culture religion phase I took what I learned and came back to my gods. I immediately started to get too serious, though. What should I do next? Who should I worship in particular? Do you want to be my patron? How about you? Gefjon's name is in my head all the time even though I don't know her at all. Does she want me to start worshiping her? Should I make an altar just for her when even Apollon has to share with my limited space? If I choose one of you and devote my whole life to your work, will you help me get a job? Across the board from all the gods I asked, I got a similar response: "Dude, just chill out. Do your thing and let it be fun again, and things will work themselves out." (Paraphrased, obviously.)
So I got back into Unitarian Universalism, checked out the online UU church I'd been told about a few years ago, and decided it was everything I'd been wanting out of a local congregation but couldn't find. So I've been taking an intro class there, attending worship, and generally trying to get more involved in discussion. It's pretty great. I'm fairly certain now that I want to pursue ordination, though I'm less certain about what I want to do with it. I think I could be a good pastor with practice, but I also like chaplain work and will definitely want to get involved with hospice and funeral settings, regardless of whether I work as a chaplain or a pastor. And in the same way, even if I'm a chaplain I will want to occasionally teach in a church. I also want to write somewhere in there. I'm looking at starting up a new blog (either to replace this one or in addition to it) under my real name where I talk about more general ministry topics and maybe some liberal pluralist theology, though I've still got a ways to go in figuring out what to do with it exactly.
So basically I have no idea what my "career" will be but I'm starting to get a better idea of a multi-faceted ministry that will likely include a fair amount of volunteer work, and that's exciting for me. I think in our culture there can be too much focus on jobs and money. When people talk about finding your calling in life they mean "where are you going to work?", but that's not all there is to it. Sometimes a calling doesn't pay, and I'm learning to be okay with that, as well as the fact that my path to ordination and career and all the rest of it hasn't taken exactly the same steps in the same order as most of my peers. It's okay. There's not just one way to do things.
In that fun paradoxical way religion often works (at least for me), letting myself relax and not make a ton of commitments has helped me reconnect with gods in ways I hadn't for awhile. I've set up and rearranged altars and started making offerings again, I'm planning a ritual for Walpurgisnacht (April 30) and May Day (May 1) for Holda, and set a goal to have my basic spring cleaning done by that point...both physical home cleaning and mental/emotional. I'm a lot more excited about it than I have been about rituals lately, though I still don't know exactly what to do for it. Holda's new to me and while I've felt very drawn to her lately, I'm a bit cautious since I don't know much about how people usually honor her. I also kind of want to do magic as part of the ritual but I have no idea how to approach magic so we'll see what I can do about that.
My total inability to connect with the reconstructed ancient Greek calendar means I don't celebrate Thargelia (a festival for Apollon and Artemis) at the "right" time. I had set mine for May 6 & 7, making this a very busy week. Also, the fact that between Halloween (when I said goodbye to Apollon for the season) and basically this festival I don't easily sense him, so I'm not getting a lot of guidance about what to do for this festival. I'm nervous to say it, but I think I'm going to sort of wing it - plan to bring offerings and spend some time in prayer/meditation, but other than that let it unfold naturally and take my lead from him. I'm pretty sure that just celebrating his return will affect me quite a bit anyway and if I try to plan I'll wind up changing everything based on my emotions, so I might as well make room for that from the start.
So, it's not all hopeless moping. A lot of good and exciting things have been happening in my life, too. Spring is back, and it's affecting my emotions and spirituality as much as it is the outside world. I have a lot to celebrate right now, and lots of ways to celebrate it. I think it's going to be a good year!
As you can probably guess from the complete lack of spiritual content (or all too often, content of any kind) on this blog in the past few months, my religious practice has been fading. That's mostly as a result of the job stuff I was whining about in my last post, combined with a lack of money (or more to the point, a lot of people who know about my situation and make me feel guilty for spending money on things like offerings), the fact that I'm not around other religious folks anymore (You have no idea how much I miss seminary, seriously. Of course I'd meet other pagans and start talking about making a club for pagans at seminary right before I graduated.), and a lot of uncertainty about what I'm even doing in a religious sense. When I was with ADF I was unhappy about a lot, but at least I had structure of some kind and some idea of what I would be studying. But it wasn't really right for me, and without it I've been struggling to figure out what I do want out of a religious practice and community.
I've been starting to pull myself back together and find answers to these questions. The Tumblr pagans started talking a lot about pop culture magic/religion and I got all excited about that for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, I absolutely think pop culture is the contemporary form of what myth was to the ancient world and that it's a valuable tool for helping to process what we as a culture believe and value, and on the other hand the total silliness and fun of building a religious practice around cartoons (for example) frees me up to play around and experiment with new ideas. It was a great way to revive my dying practice and figure out what actually works for me and what doesn't. I discovered that although I like the idea of ritual I'm terrible at the practice of it and that it doesn't make sense for me. Ritual is about providing a common framework for a group. In community worship it helps everyone to focus their minds on the goal and contribute to that temporarily shared understanding of the cosmos. As an individual who tends to analyze metaphors rather than accept and build on them, it's just adding an extra couple of steps that don't need to be there. It's best for me to focus on the bare bones, to keep in mind what any ritual I would design is meant to represent.
That free-form, do-what-works-for-you approach is something that seems to resonate with me in anything. When people start telling me I have to do something a certain way, I immediately start rebelling against it. That's why ADF never worked for me, and why I've come to identify myself as a Discordian more than a pagan. I just can't quite buy into the idea that there's only one way of doing something. My head always gets in the way and starts saying "but what about this? You know that's not true." For it to work, I need to constantly reaffirm as part of my religious worldview that there is no one way and that any method I choose is just an illusion/metaphor that is useful for the moment, that it can be adapted and reworked if I find something that works better. Being a Discordian also helps me to relax and not get angry when I come across dogmatic folks who see the rest of the world as evil or inferior. I just praise Discordia for the chaos, banish the negativity with laughter, and go about my day. It's nice. Sometimes I even watch shows like the 700 Club as a religious practice - if I can start my day listening to them and have it somehow improve my mood, I know Eris is at work and things are gonna be good.
After my pop culture religion phase I took what I learned and came back to my gods. I immediately started to get too serious, though. What should I do next? Who should I worship in particular? Do you want to be my patron? How about you? Gefjon's name is in my head all the time even though I don't know her at all. Does she want me to start worshiping her? Should I make an altar just for her when even Apollon has to share with my limited space? If I choose one of you and devote my whole life to your work, will you help me get a job? Across the board from all the gods I asked, I got a similar response: "Dude, just chill out. Do your thing and let it be fun again, and things will work themselves out." (Paraphrased, obviously.)
So I got back into Unitarian Universalism, checked out the online UU church I'd been told about a few years ago, and decided it was everything I'd been wanting out of a local congregation but couldn't find. So I've been taking an intro class there, attending worship, and generally trying to get more involved in discussion. It's pretty great. I'm fairly certain now that I want to pursue ordination, though I'm less certain about what I want to do with it. I think I could be a good pastor with practice, but I also like chaplain work and will definitely want to get involved with hospice and funeral settings, regardless of whether I work as a chaplain or a pastor. And in the same way, even if I'm a chaplain I will want to occasionally teach in a church. I also want to write somewhere in there. I'm looking at starting up a new blog (either to replace this one or in addition to it) under my real name where I talk about more general ministry topics and maybe some liberal pluralist theology, though I've still got a ways to go in figuring out what to do with it exactly.
So basically I have no idea what my "career" will be but I'm starting to get a better idea of a multi-faceted ministry that will likely include a fair amount of volunteer work, and that's exciting for me. I think in our culture there can be too much focus on jobs and money. When people talk about finding your calling in life they mean "where are you going to work?", but that's not all there is to it. Sometimes a calling doesn't pay, and I'm learning to be okay with that, as well as the fact that my path to ordination and career and all the rest of it hasn't taken exactly the same steps in the same order as most of my peers. It's okay. There's not just one way to do things.
In that fun paradoxical way religion often works (at least for me), letting myself relax and not make a ton of commitments has helped me reconnect with gods in ways I hadn't for awhile. I've set up and rearranged altars and started making offerings again, I'm planning a ritual for Walpurgisnacht (April 30) and May Day (May 1) for Holda, and set a goal to have my basic spring cleaning done by that point...both physical home cleaning and mental/emotional. I'm a lot more excited about it than I have been about rituals lately, though I still don't know exactly what to do for it. Holda's new to me and while I've felt very drawn to her lately, I'm a bit cautious since I don't know much about how people usually honor her. I also kind of want to do magic as part of the ritual but I have no idea how to approach magic so we'll see what I can do about that.
My total inability to connect with the reconstructed ancient Greek calendar means I don't celebrate Thargelia (a festival for Apollon and Artemis) at the "right" time. I had set mine for May 6 & 7, making this a very busy week. Also, the fact that between Halloween (when I said goodbye to Apollon for the season) and basically this festival I don't easily sense him, so I'm not getting a lot of guidance about what to do for this festival. I'm nervous to say it, but I think I'm going to sort of wing it - plan to bring offerings and spend some time in prayer/meditation, but other than that let it unfold naturally and take my lead from him. I'm pretty sure that just celebrating his return will affect me quite a bit anyway and if I try to plan I'll wind up changing everything based on my emotions, so I might as well make room for that from the start.
So, it's not all hopeless moping. A lot of good and exciting things have been happening in my life, too. Spring is back, and it's affecting my emotions and spirituality as much as it is the outside world. I have a lot to celebrate right now, and lots of ways to celebrate it. I think it's going to be a good year!
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Depressing Job Search Rambling
I'm really bad at phone interviews. Just when I think I understand what employers are looking for and how I should answer, I come across one who wants the opposite.
A few weeks ago I applied to work at a funeral home. Not a big job, but it was full time and paid well enough that I could work there for awhile and probably could afford to start having kids really soon without running into problems. The plan would have been to stay there for the 3-6 years it would take to finish my UU ordination and then start looking for "real ministry" jobs.
So when the interviewer said "You have a master's. Why are you looking here, are you just looking for any job at this point?" I told him the overview of that. Everyone tells me you have to show an interest in the job, that no employer wants to think you're just applying there because you don't have other options. So I told him that no, I'm not just looking for any job, that I wanted to be involved in ministry and have been looking for exactly this sort of position while I work on getting certified. "Can you do that while working full time?" Yes, absolutely. It will take several years, but that's good because it means I can tell you that I'll definitely be here awhile.
Turns out 6 years is not a long enough commitment here. The employee who left after the shortest amount of time was there for 9 years, he's ideally looking for someone who will stay for 20. His ideal answer, he says, would have been that yes I am just desperate for a job and have no other options so I am looking for any job that will have me and I will stay there forever. So he might call back, but said probably not.
I'm sorry, what is with all this sneakiness? Why wouldn't he just say "I'm looking for a long-term commitment. Can you agree to stay here for at least 10 years?" Because yes, I can. If that's what he wants I would love to do it. I was really excited about this job. It tied so well into everything I want to do, and I'm having doubts about my readiness for pastoral ministry. This could have been the perfect position for me, and I blew it. And I'd been praying and hoping so hard for it and I feel like I threw away my chance to actually do what I'm meant to do, and it sucks.
I knew I wanted it, but I didn't realize how much until he basically said I can't have it. And now I've just been so depressed and unmotivated to look for anything else. I know that's not a good way to handle it, and I'm getting back to the job search slowly, but it's so frustrating. Why do I have to be able to read minds to get a job? This just doesn't make any sense, and I'm so sick of the whole process. I feel like I'm never going to get a job, I'm never going to pay off my loans, never have kids. I'm never going to amount to anything. And everyone knows it and I can't spend time with my relatives or friends without someone making me feel like crap because my life is going nowhere and I have school debt and I'm bringing down my partner. And this is something I could have done well and I would have enjoyed and now it's gone. Part of me wants to call the guy back and tell him all this and promise that if he needs me to stay, I will. But that's so stupid and probably wouldn't reflect well on me, though then again, I don't even know anymore. This whole job market thing is not what I expected. I'm so lost here and I hate it and every day is awful and I just want it to stop.
A few weeks ago I applied to work at a funeral home. Not a big job, but it was full time and paid well enough that I could work there for awhile and probably could afford to start having kids really soon without running into problems. The plan would have been to stay there for the 3-6 years it would take to finish my UU ordination and then start looking for "real ministry" jobs.
So when the interviewer said "You have a master's. Why are you looking here, are you just looking for any job at this point?" I told him the overview of that. Everyone tells me you have to show an interest in the job, that no employer wants to think you're just applying there because you don't have other options. So I told him that no, I'm not just looking for any job, that I wanted to be involved in ministry and have been looking for exactly this sort of position while I work on getting certified. "Can you do that while working full time?" Yes, absolutely. It will take several years, but that's good because it means I can tell you that I'll definitely be here awhile.
Turns out 6 years is not a long enough commitment here. The employee who left after the shortest amount of time was there for 9 years, he's ideally looking for someone who will stay for 20. His ideal answer, he says, would have been that yes I am just desperate for a job and have no other options so I am looking for any job that will have me and I will stay there forever. So he might call back, but said probably not.
I'm sorry, what is with all this sneakiness? Why wouldn't he just say "I'm looking for a long-term commitment. Can you agree to stay here for at least 10 years?" Because yes, I can. If that's what he wants I would love to do it. I was really excited about this job. It tied so well into everything I want to do, and I'm having doubts about my readiness for pastoral ministry. This could have been the perfect position for me, and I blew it. And I'd been praying and hoping so hard for it and I feel like I threw away my chance to actually do what I'm meant to do, and it sucks.
I knew I wanted it, but I didn't realize how much until he basically said I can't have it. And now I've just been so depressed and unmotivated to look for anything else. I know that's not a good way to handle it, and I'm getting back to the job search slowly, but it's so frustrating. Why do I have to be able to read minds to get a job? This just doesn't make any sense, and I'm so sick of the whole process. I feel like I'm never going to get a job, I'm never going to pay off my loans, never have kids. I'm never going to amount to anything. And everyone knows it and I can't spend time with my relatives or friends without someone making me feel like crap because my life is going nowhere and I have school debt and I'm bringing down my partner. And this is something I could have done well and I would have enjoyed and now it's gone. Part of me wants to call the guy back and tell him all this and promise that if he needs me to stay, I will. But that's so stupid and probably wouldn't reflect well on me, though then again, I don't even know anymore. This whole job market thing is not what I expected. I'm so lost here and I hate it and every day is awful and I just want it to stop.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Other People's Gods
People who have known me since my old blog might remember that I had a lot of issues when I first started my student chaplain position at a nursing home. My first day there, the director introduced me and then asked me to come up and pray. PANIC! I don't pray in public. I don't even pray with one other person. Silent prayer, all the way. Add in that these were a bunch of strangers and I had some heavy social anxiety going on, and then in case that wasn't enough I was going through a lot of religious upheaval in my personal life. At this time I was somewhere between an atheist and a pagan, loosely identifying as a pantheist but without a clear idea of what that meant for me. And here I was at a conservative Christian place where I really needed the job having to try to explain why I was uncomfortable offering Christian prayer at the moment.
I had to get over that pretty quick and I found a loophole of sorts that worked for me, but at the back of my mind I've always kind of wondered why it was so difficult to explain my problem. When I asked classmates and teachers about it, everyone was baffled as to why I would have a problem. "If you don't believe in God, it doesn't matter anyway, right?" I knew there was something wrong about that, but I couldn't figure it out. Finally I just decided I would avoid mentions of anything specifically Christian but that it didn't bother me to use the name "God" for the vague universal being I felt existed but was unknown to me.
I've spent some time away from UUs mostly due to an inability to get to a local congregation. A few years ago I tried their online church but it didn't work for me. It was very crowded and counter-intuitive, and I stopped using it within a few weeks. But I've missed being part of a UU group, so I went back to check it out last night. Wow! They completely redid it and I am loving it so far. I started taking the introductory class, and something I read reminded me of my problem with prayer. I hadn't thought much about the web and why it's so important to UUs to have a variety of religious traditions, but the reading material here matched up with my own interests - all religious experiences are important because together they form a more complete picture of the universe. Rather than require everyone to adhere to a specific set of beliefs, UUs welcome everyone and try to learn something from the way all our experiences come together in this one congregation.
It's not that I don't believe in God, or even that I don't believe in the Christian idea of God. It's more that I think it's one way of looking at the divine, one piece of the experience. On my own, I can make my peace with that and fit it into a larger context that also includes my experience. For example, a friend of mine from seminary was a pluralist of sorts who believed all other religions were just ways other people understood God. She would have no problem praying to my gods, she said, because when I prayed to them I was really praying to God. "Everything good is God," she often said. In fact, she quite liked Apollo and encouraged me in my religious practice. But at the core, she was convinced that Apollo was just a name I used for her God that included all gods. And from my perspective, I would say the opposite. She groups everything good under the name "God," and in so doing she often uses "God" to refer to a variety of beings that she just doesn't recognize as separate entities.
I actually think both of those statements are true, and in fact that they are simply different ways of describing the same idea. What we were really both saying there was that we saw the divine as mysterious and impossible to know completely from our limited human perspectives. Not completely unknowable, because we both experienced and felt we knew it, but impossible to fully comprehend. All religious language, then, was one way of experiencing the divine. A religion is a set of language and rituals that help people to experience and communicate the divine, necessarily filtered through human cultures. Therefore I can say that her all-encompassing God is real and important because it is what enables her to see and interact with the divine, and my many gods are real and important because they do the same for me. That's not to say that those things are only real in our minds or that the gods don't exist as separate beings, but rather that different people may experience different gods in different ways and call them different names.
When I serve as a chaplain, I try to work out of the client's perspective as much as possible. Recognizing that for me we are both right, in theory I have nothing to lose from embracing their ideas for the time I'm with them. Except that I also think language matters. When we name the divine, we shape our interactions with it. Most religions come with rules for how to do it "right," to avoid offending deities and to provide a sense of continuity and completion within a single religious tradition. For the conservative Christians I was serving at the time, that included a dismissal of all other gods and religions. My supervisor would cheerfully tell me that I was welcome there anyway because they have "all religions represented here - Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, even a Catholic!"
That is what religious diversity meant to them, the only valid expressions of religion they could understand. To adopt that perspective and refer to God that way would be to reject myself. More importantly, it would be dishonest and disrespectful to their tradition. As a child I was taught that God wouldn't even hear the prayers of a non-Christian, and I've continued to understand the conservative Christian God as one with no tolerance for those who don't worship him or who worship other gods as well. So how could I claim to pray for them? What good would it do? I was supposed to be unwelcome there, my very existence within that paradigm caused too much cognitive dissonance for me to even discuss it, let alone make sense of it and find my place there.
I like to think that I've come a long way since then. Looking back on that time, I probably had no business serving in that sort of role, but back then I didn't know any better. I had to finish my field education and this was the place that would have me. At least I wasn't their actual chaplain, just a student - finding my place and encountering conflicts was part of the learning experience. But now I've moved on from there, matured in my own faith and understanding, and because of that I'm better prepared to identify and worth through that sort of challenge. Now I would see it as an opportunity for dialogue. Instead of trying to choose the path of least resistance and avoiding any mention of my actual beliefs, I would make a point to talk to the client. What are their beliefs? How do they view the divine, and what does prayer do for them? How can I help them to feel supported and connected?
That's what's important, the opportunity to experience the divine and grow from it, to nourish their connection with it. If I find that I really just can't pray in a way that is true to their experience, I suppose it would depend on the circumstances - I might offer to help them pray and let them take the lead, or call someone who could. But based on my time in the nursing home, I don't expect that to happen often, if at all. While many of them did have the sort of beliefs I'd been taught as a child, they also saw God as big enough to allow for some difference. You almost have to, when your religion has that many varieties and adherents. They wouldn't see a pluralist Christian as a non-believer, and the more I think about it the less I think I was actually praying as any sort of intercessor for them. It doesn't matter if their God accepts my prayer, as if they weren't praying on their own as well and were relying on me. My role is more passive than that - responding to their needs and helping them to see the divine already present in their lives, regardless of what names they may call it. And as long as I frame the conversation around them and their experience without claiming it as my own, there shouldn't be any reason for dishonesty.
I had to get over that pretty quick and I found a loophole of sorts that worked for me, but at the back of my mind I've always kind of wondered why it was so difficult to explain my problem. When I asked classmates and teachers about it, everyone was baffled as to why I would have a problem. "If you don't believe in God, it doesn't matter anyway, right?" I knew there was something wrong about that, but I couldn't figure it out. Finally I just decided I would avoid mentions of anything specifically Christian but that it didn't bother me to use the name "God" for the vague universal being I felt existed but was unknown to me.
I've spent some time away from UUs mostly due to an inability to get to a local congregation. A few years ago I tried their online church but it didn't work for me. It was very crowded and counter-intuitive, and I stopped using it within a few weeks. But I've missed being part of a UU group, so I went back to check it out last night. Wow! They completely redid it and I am loving it so far. I started taking the introductory class, and something I read reminded me of my problem with prayer. I hadn't thought much about the web and why it's so important to UUs to have a variety of religious traditions, but the reading material here matched up with my own interests - all religious experiences are important because together they form a more complete picture of the universe. Rather than require everyone to adhere to a specific set of beliefs, UUs welcome everyone and try to learn something from the way all our experiences come together in this one congregation.
It's not that I don't believe in God, or even that I don't believe in the Christian idea of God. It's more that I think it's one way of looking at the divine, one piece of the experience. On my own, I can make my peace with that and fit it into a larger context that also includes my experience. For example, a friend of mine from seminary was a pluralist of sorts who believed all other religions were just ways other people understood God. She would have no problem praying to my gods, she said, because when I prayed to them I was really praying to God. "Everything good is God," she often said. In fact, she quite liked Apollo and encouraged me in my religious practice. But at the core, she was convinced that Apollo was just a name I used for her God that included all gods. And from my perspective, I would say the opposite. She groups everything good under the name "God," and in so doing she often uses "God" to refer to a variety of beings that she just doesn't recognize as separate entities.
I actually think both of those statements are true, and in fact that they are simply different ways of describing the same idea. What we were really both saying there was that we saw the divine as mysterious and impossible to know completely from our limited human perspectives. Not completely unknowable, because we both experienced and felt we knew it, but impossible to fully comprehend. All religious language, then, was one way of experiencing the divine. A religion is a set of language and rituals that help people to experience and communicate the divine, necessarily filtered through human cultures. Therefore I can say that her all-encompassing God is real and important because it is what enables her to see and interact with the divine, and my many gods are real and important because they do the same for me. That's not to say that those things are only real in our minds or that the gods don't exist as separate beings, but rather that different people may experience different gods in different ways and call them different names.
When I serve as a chaplain, I try to work out of the client's perspective as much as possible. Recognizing that for me we are both right, in theory I have nothing to lose from embracing their ideas for the time I'm with them. Except that I also think language matters. When we name the divine, we shape our interactions with it. Most religions come with rules for how to do it "right," to avoid offending deities and to provide a sense of continuity and completion within a single religious tradition. For the conservative Christians I was serving at the time, that included a dismissal of all other gods and religions. My supervisor would cheerfully tell me that I was welcome there anyway because they have "all religions represented here - Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, even a Catholic!"
That is what religious diversity meant to them, the only valid expressions of religion they could understand. To adopt that perspective and refer to God that way would be to reject myself. More importantly, it would be dishonest and disrespectful to their tradition. As a child I was taught that God wouldn't even hear the prayers of a non-Christian, and I've continued to understand the conservative Christian God as one with no tolerance for those who don't worship him or who worship other gods as well. So how could I claim to pray for them? What good would it do? I was supposed to be unwelcome there, my very existence within that paradigm caused too much cognitive dissonance for me to even discuss it, let alone make sense of it and find my place there.
I like to think that I've come a long way since then. Looking back on that time, I probably had no business serving in that sort of role, but back then I didn't know any better. I had to finish my field education and this was the place that would have me. At least I wasn't their actual chaplain, just a student - finding my place and encountering conflicts was part of the learning experience. But now I've moved on from there, matured in my own faith and understanding, and because of that I'm better prepared to identify and worth through that sort of challenge. Now I would see it as an opportunity for dialogue. Instead of trying to choose the path of least resistance and avoiding any mention of my actual beliefs, I would make a point to talk to the client. What are their beliefs? How do they view the divine, and what does prayer do for them? How can I help them to feel supported and connected?
That's what's important, the opportunity to experience the divine and grow from it, to nourish their connection with it. If I find that I really just can't pray in a way that is true to their experience, I suppose it would depend on the circumstances - I might offer to help them pray and let them take the lead, or call someone who could. But based on my time in the nursing home, I don't expect that to happen often, if at all. While many of them did have the sort of beliefs I'd been taught as a child, they also saw God as big enough to allow for some difference. You almost have to, when your religion has that many varieties and adherents. They wouldn't see a pluralist Christian as a non-believer, and the more I think about it the less I think I was actually praying as any sort of intercessor for them. It doesn't matter if their God accepts my prayer, as if they weren't praying on their own as well and were relying on me. My role is more passive than that - responding to their needs and helping them to see the divine already present in their lives, regardless of what names they may call it. And as long as I frame the conversation around them and their experience without claiming it as my own, there shouldn't be any reason for dishonesty.
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