| Religion Meme |
[Jun. 24th, 2009|11:25 am] |
1. What faith were you born into or raised with (if any)?
I was raised a Southern Baptist, which is a type of Baptist and not a geographical location. It was pretty strict--no dancing, no playing cards, no work of any kind on Sunday, women weren't allowed to vote in church matters and women weren't allowed to teach Sunday school to boys over the age of 12.
2. Were you devout as a child/adolescent?
I was deeply devout. I wore out the knees in my pants praying. I was an ace student in Sunday school. When I asked difficult questions, they were difficult because they were more thoughtful than the teacher was prepared for, not because they were heretical.
3. If you are not currently practicing your childhood faith, what led you away from it?
Initially, it was the realization that I was gay, which occurred when I was about 13 or so. Then the whole religion seemed to fall apart like a house of cards.
Today, the problems I have with Christianity are: 1)Original sin. I can't believe that children come into the world tainted by the sin of Eve, or by the procreative act that their parents engage in nine months earlier. 2) Necessity of an external redemption. I believe that God would have created humans with the seeds of our own redemption inside of us, not to rely on an external savior. 3) Divinity of Jesus. I don't think that Jesus was any more of God than anyone else who has lived.
4. How many religious denominations, traditions, and/or groups have you belonged to?
Several. I spent a bunch of years searching various traditions, and I tried on (more or less) Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Unitarianism, and Wicca.
5. How would you describe your religion now?
I'm a Witch. I choose to practice in the Reclaiming tradition. The word "Witch" is sometimes a problem, but I believe that I can tell fortunes, cast spells, talk to trees and animals and rocks and ghosts... What would you call that if not "Witchcraft?"
6. How long have you been practicing that religion?
This time around, I've been a Witch for about 10 years or so. I did practice Witchcraft in high school, but that was before I drifted away from it in college and went on my spiritual journey.
7. Do you pray? If so, how?
Yes. I speak to Mysterious Ones informally and formally. I like prayer beads a great deal. Once, when meditating, I got a clear message from a Mysterious One who said, "Go through life with a prayer on your lips." So, now, I try to pray more often.
8. Do you practice magic? If so, do you distinguish it from prayer?
I do practice magic, and I do distinguish it from prayer. Prayer is more conversational, while magic is more like working to bring about desired changes through spiritual processes. It's like the difference between talking about doing the dishes, and actually doing the dishes.
9. Do you work with divinatory oracles like Tarot, astrology, the Runes, etc?
Yes I do. I very much like the Runes. The Runes are intensely deep, and I'm just now starting to see how deep they really are, after working with them for years. I'm getting into the Rune poems, which can be like Koans in their own way. For example: Wealth /source of discord among kinsmen/ and fire of the sea/ and path of the serpent.
10. Describe your personal concept of God/dess/Higher Power/etc.
I believe that the gods are many and the gods are one. I believe that there is a unified source--and that even people and plants and rocks and televisions and whatever are part of that source, too. There isn't much difference, on a spiritual level, between me and another human. Likewise, there isn't much difference between the Mysterious Ones. However, I also know that I am not capable of holding the real mystery of Divinity in my mind, and so the Mysterious Ones come to me as individual beings, and I can relate to them that way. I consider myself a hard polytheist, however, because I see the differentiation between MOs as the same differentiation between individual humans.
11. How does your religion/spirituality explain the concept of/presence of evil?
"Evil" is a human judgment, not an absolute concept. And I believe that evil arises from a tear in the fabric of empathy. In general, I think that morals are not an area of concern for religion. I know--how radical! I think that secular humanism should inform religious morals. I'm a human first, then a religious person. And I think that my morality should follow that pattern. I really believe that the idea that morals arise out or religion is a monotheistic ideal, and not a polytheistic one.
12. Is music and/or dance important to your path? Why or why not?
Yes, deeply. I find that music and dance are gates to ecstatic experience--that is, the ability to lose personal boundaries and unify with the Divine.
13. What is your concept of the afterlife?
I think we get absorbed back into a divine source, after a while. But really, I'm pretty unclear on the afterlife. I believe that my religion teaches that there here-and-now is more important than the afterlife. (That's what's meant when we say that pagan faiths are "Earth-based"--they view this life as sacred and valuable, not just a proving grounds for the afterlife.)
14. Do you believe in ghosts, spirits, Faeries, devas, and/or other beings beyond ordinary perception?
Yes. I've met them.
15. If you have children, are you raising them in your religion/spirituality? Why or why not?
I probably would. And I would encourage them to try on other faiths as well. I wouldn't want them to feel trapped and have a crisis the way that I did as a child, but I do think that my values and my spirituality are important, and I would want to pass them on. |
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