Recently in Spiritual Development Category

Harris begins chapter two of Raised Right with a description of a music video made by Christian pop artist Carman.  As I read her description, I found them eerily familiar, but could not place them until she mentioned the artist's name.  I spent my teen years listening to and idolizing[1] Carman and I'm sure I saw the video in question.

Harris uses the video to introduce the importance of "spiritual warfare" that was ingrained into her when she was a youth.  She speaks of singing a familiar Sunday school song ("I'm in the Lord's army") and learning the importance of fighting Satan.  She describes one event she witnessed:

While Pastor John was speaking, one of my parents' friends, Greg, came forward and lifted his hands to ask for prayer.  Pastor John reached out his hand and shouted, "I bind you, Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ!"  The moment he said "Jesus Christ," Greg staggered as if shot through the heart and then fell flat on his back, lying spread-eagled on the floor with a smile on his face."

While I got involved in a Full Gospel[2] congregation while in college, I was raised in an American Baptist.  My church -- and as I understand it, Baptist in general -- don't really believe that "miraculous gifts" such as speaking in tongues, prophecies, or instantaneous healing.  They also tend not to believe in or expect to encounter demons in a direct manner as might be described in This Present Darkness or as recounted by pentecostal/charismatic believers.  So while I too sang "I'm in the Lord's army," learned to recite all the parts of the "armor of God," and was inundated in the same spiritual warfare terminology, I suspect that I took these things things far more metaphorically than Harris and her Sunday school classmates.

Of course, this left myself and my classmates trying to understand the metaphor.  We had an enemy we could not confront directly.  We had no demons to cast out.  So we were left wondering what "I'm in the Lord's army" really meant beyond being a silly song.  We wondered what it really meant to put on the full armor of God.  Sure, knew we were supposed to invite friends to Sunday school and church.  We knew we were supposed to read the Bible, pray, and be good.  But for what?  Surely these things were never meant to be an ends in themselves[3].

So in many ways, I think I was more primed for the transition that Harris describes as she continues telling her story:

Though I wouldn't have put it in these words at the time, I came to believe that our battle was not against invisible demons but against evil people who brought the fight into the real world.  They were the spiritual enemy clothed in flesh:  abortionists, feminists, secularists, humanists, the people conspiring to destroy God's witness by corrupting America.  Finally I had an enemy I could see and point out to others, one that didn't require a mysterious intuition or the spiritual gift of discernment to identify.

I can understand that, wholeheartedly.  While Harris had an unseen enemy, I had no enemy.  So latching onto a concrete enemy was a gift from God Himself.  Furthermore, this new, tangible enemy offered a tangible strategy for fighting back:  politics.

Suddenly, "fighting the enemy" meant speaking out against abortion, homosexuality, and premarital sex.  It meant voting for the "holy" candidates so that they could defeat the "evil" ones and stop their "evil" plans[4].  Suddenly, there was a way to become a righteous crusader with a clear path.

Ironically, while this gave me a tangible "enemy," what it did to my perceptions of the "enemy" was almost the exact opposite.  Adulterers, fornicators, homosexuals, and all those other people ceased to become people and became caricatures in my mind.  My "tangible enemy" turned into smoke and mirrors again.  I find myself wondering if Harris intended this chapter to explain the need to reconnect with "flesh and blood" people discussed in the previous one.

Related Posts

I have created a separate page to track all the blog posts I've made regarding this book.  If this post interests you, I would encourage you to go check out the other posts as well.

Notes

[1]  Well, insofar as a good little Baptist is allowed to idolize anyone or anything.

[2]  "Full Gospel" is the preferred term used certain charismatic/pentecostal churches.

[3]  I strongly believe that even "being good" for the sake of "being good" is meaningless and pointless.  "Being good" is about doing something for others because it has a positive impact on their lives.  It's about building a better world.  This is not something that I feel is always properly communicated to young Christians, nor do I feel it is emphasized enough.

As a former Sunday school teacher, I'd also like to suggest that this is in part that the much of the teaching materials for chidren and teen Sunday school classes are abysmal.  They do not treat the students like intelligent people who need to learn what it truly means to live a life that expresses the fruit of the Spirit and are ready to do exactly that.  If you are a Sunday school teacher, I would encourage you to re-evaluate your curriculum and honestly ask yourself if it insults, patronizes, and holds back your students.

[4]  I'm engaging in a certain amount of hyperbole here.  However, don't overestimate just how much.

Personal Failure linked to and responded to a post about religious devotion.  Her response understandably focused on the slight the post made against atheists.  I wanted to explore this post a bit more myself though as someone who is also a strong believer in religious devotion*

After giving his speech about the importance of piety -- a word I might have personally avoided, given the immense negative connotations that have gotten attached to it and even made their way into the dictionary definitions -- and offered his patronizing disapproval of those who do not follow (his) God, Fr. Zuhlsdorf offers a quote from Pope Benedict:

If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom?

I'll note that, in my opinion, this underlines the problem with many Christians' understanding of piety and morality in general:  It's about giving things up and refraining from things.**  When morality, piety, and devotion become nothing more than avoiding those things which are deemed bad, it's bound to feel restrictive.  It's also bound to leave people wondering what they should do.

Fr. Zuhlsdorf goes on to talk about sins of omission, recognizing that morality, piety, and devotion do require positive action, but he still speaks in negative terms, in terms of failing to act:

That is where we ferret out our negligence in regard to the virtue of religion, negligence in respect to God and to neighbor.

The problem with this approach is that if you're thinking in terms of what you should have done and failed to do, you started a good thing way too late.  It would have been far better to go throughout your day asking what you should be doing, what good you can do.  This enables and encourages positive action rather than guilt over negative action or a failure to act.

Fr. Zuhlsdorf finally gets that idea, but only at the end.  And he glosses over it but briefly.

Second, during the day, silently to yourself, perhaps say a brief prayer.  Pick one.  How about, "Jesus, meek and humble of heart: Make my heart like unto Thine."

His blog post would have been much better if he had started his missive on personal devotion with this prayer, especially if he had expanded on it.  It could have been a post on what it means to have a heart like Jesus, and what kinds of acts such a heart leads to.  Effectively, it could have led into something very similar to my own Prayer for Living Worship.  Such a prayer, written with passages like 1 Corinthians 13 and Galations 5 in mind, would have been a perfect lead in to a sort of devotion that any person -- even one of those "awful atheists" would have trouble finding fault with.

---

*  My own.  Whether or not anyone else is religiously devoted is none of my business, let alone subject to any actual judgment on my part.

** I'll note that this is a problem I have when many Pagans seem to reduce our ethics to nothing more than "don't hurt anyone" as well.

A little over a year ago, I joined efforts with a small group of people to form a new coven.  We came to name our coven The Wick, inspired by the song we play in the background while we prepare ourselves for ritual.  (I hope the songwriter doesn't mind.)  Tonight, we led our first public ritual at Psychic's Thyme as a way to connect with and give back to our greater community.  It was a wonderful experience, and had several people participate with us.

While highly enjoyable and well worth it, planning and leading public rituals takes a bit of work.  Our coven spent the past few business meetings working out details and revising our normal ritual structure to account for working with a larger group and people unfamiliar with the way we do things.  (We use a very different method for casting a circle, for example.)

Tonight, I was given an incredible reminder why that effort is so worthwhile in the long run.  My friend, Cari, attended tonight's ritual an brought her two stepsons, ages nine and eleven.  In a conversation on Facebook, Cari had the following to say (quoted here with permission) about the experience:

On no the whole group was amazing and VERY informative, and patient with my boys. They will never forget tonight and you all I have to thank. Please pass it on to your other members. Colin is now making his own Alter now.

I can think of no greater praise or reward than to know that the work that my coven-mates and I put into tonight's ritual helped excite two young boys and even inspire one of them to start working on his own altar.  I don't know where they're spiritual journeys will lead these boys in the long run, but knowing that our efforts have helped move them along that path in any way is a great joy.  It's the sort of thing that makes me want to do more such rituals in the futures.

May the gods be praised.  And may the gods be served.  And may those around us prosper as a result.

The picture in this blog show's the coven's basic altar set-up.  The song "We Are the Wick" can be found on Castalia's second CD, Hidden.

Thread of golden light and red fire weave throughout the universe. the connect, intertwine, merge, and separate. This complex web hold everything together, binding and supporting it.

This is the web of wyrd, that runs through everything. It is not static, but fluid and ever-changing. Threads shift and reweave themselves, changing the tapestry and the very universe.

The very universe changes itself in this way. And as a part of it, you are an agent of this constant change. Each action, each choice alters the fabric of the universe, reconfiguring and recreating it.

This is why community is so important. Every individual's changes in the web radiate outward, affecting all. Being aware of this calls for consideration for all those around you who are affected.

More importantly, community allows for communal efforts in the weaving process. Building and strengthening community strengthens the strands that connect the community's members. It creates bonds that strengthen the whole web. And such community bonds allow for a greater reweaving of the web.

This afternoon, I decided to go to the psychic fair at the Henrietta Holiday Inn. While there, I decided to get an aura portrait reading (that's where the psychic sketches the colors in your aura and explain what they mean and how it's affecting your life) by one of the people there. The theme of my reading was that I need to begin working more on integrating my spirituality into the rest of my life. This wasn't a surprising message, because I've been getting it from different angles. In fact, over the past couple of weeks, I'd say the gods have gotten more aggressive about this message. In fact, I think they've gotten to the point where they're basically saying "do this or we're going to do it for you."

For example, a couple Saturdays ago, Marina invited myself and Rudi (a former dancer in the company) to come to her home for lunch after the beginner's jazz dance class. While there, I mentioned that I had to run to Psychic's Thyme at some point that afternoon. Of course, the other two asked me what that was, so I told them. I ended up telling them about my spiritual interests, which fascinated both of them. I ended up telling them about a couple of my experiences with seeing spirits (to my credit, I'm getting better at being open about the fact that I'm developing my abilities as a medium). By the end of the discussion, they both decided they want me to give them a reading after next Saturday's class. And Marina has gone on to tell at least one other person (a student in her intermediate class) associated with the company about my interests. I suspect that by the time she's done, everyone in or associated with the company will know. Hopefully, they're all as open-minded as Marina and Rudi were. (Actually, I'll be happy as long as no one tries to perform an exorcism on me.)

The second example of this came during this past week. When I got a break from work, I decided to quickly check my site stats for this blog. While checking them out, I discovered that someone visited my site from work on Thursday afternoon. I was quite surprised by this, and quickly confirmed that it wasn't a visit I made myself. As I dug into this (I even downloaded the server logs for that day so I could check the parts of my domain that my two Sitemeter accounts don't cover), I discovered that my visitor must have found my site at least somewhat fascinating. While they read only a couple of archives and two individual posts from this blog, they also visited my Dear Lover, Journey (I guess I'm out at work now!), my main site, and my photo albums.

I'm not sure how they found my site. The logs indicate there was no referring site, which suggests they typed the address in directly. I asked the two people at work who I thought it could be, but they admitted that they didn't even know I had my own website. So I'm completely mystified. I really don't care that someone from work read it all. They didn't really find out anything I'm trying to hide. (I'm smart enough to avoid posting anything I want to keep secret.) Though I do hope that they talk to me about it at some point. I'd like to know who it was, especially considering the significant amount of surfing they did.

So yeah, it would seem that everything in my life is coming together. I think I'm okay with that, though. I'm just a bit shell-shocked.

Received Saturday, 14 June 2008

In glory, the flame rises,
licking the cold air.
Its searing heat burns away
all impurities, carrying them into nothingness.
The fire of purification makes anew,
leaving that which remains stronger, more whole.

Fear not the times of trials and tribulations, for such are the tools of the smith. each blow of th hammer brings about new strength and greater resilience. Each time you are placed against the anvil of life, you are reshaped, being made into a better vessel, a more radiant tool of my will. With each change you endure, your purpose becomes easier to fulfill. So cherish the moments when your basic essence is tested and tempered, for it is for the good of all, including yourself.

After watching other people do likewise, I decided to take some time this month to set out my goals for this coming year. I realize I'm a bit late, considering we're already three days into the new year, but I figure it's better to be late than to never do it at all. Besides, I did some of my goal setting at Yule, so in some respects, I was ahead of the game.

1. Lead more rituals.

This is actually a goal that was set for me. The Yule ritual last month was just the beginning. I have agreed (not quite at knifepoint) to plan the rituals for the two equinoxes and two solstices in 2008. To be honest, I need the experience, and it's just time for me to continue.

2. Share what I know and what I've learned.

This goal is a bit vague because I'm not sure how it's going to play out right yet. All I know is that I need to start sharing with others what I've learned over the past few years, even as my own learning process continues. This may mean some classes and/or workshops in the local community. Or it may mean signing up to lead a workshop at the Naturist Festival this August (as I'm pretty sure I'll be going again). But at any rate, it's time for me to start contributing in this arena.

3. Continue to become more social.

This one isn't so much a new goal as a continuation of a theme from last year. I've gotten out to meet more people, and I've even learned to do a better job of stepping out socially rather than hoping people will seek me out or otherwise find me. I simply need to continue this trend and improve on the progress I've already made.

4. Continue the exercise trend.

Last summer saw me walking regularly. When the weather warms back up, I'm going to be right back out there. In the meantime, I'm also going to try to keep some level of exercise going on, though probably not to the same degree. But I figure if I can make it over to the fitness center for an hour or two every week, that should hold me over until the summer returns.

I'm simply decided that my real form of exercise is and will remain walking. Nothing works as well for me. New Year's Day, I walked down to the 7-11 and back, which is about a mile in each direction. Despite the snow and cold air, I loved it. Riding a stationary bike is exercise and work. Going for a nice walk is pure joy.

On the bright side, the time I'm spending at the fitness center appears to be enough to maintain the reduced waist size I reached towards the end of last year.

Pam over at Willful Grace created a wonderful post in which she describes the major events in her life in each of the last twelve months as well as the lessons she learned from those events. It's a fantastic post and I encourage everyone to read it.

More importantly, Pam inspired me to do something similar. Sadly, my post won't be nearly as organized or well thought out as Pam's is. To be honest, I don't think I could come up with a single even for every month since last January. And besides, there are a couple of months that I doubt I could boil down into a single event or a single lesson learned from the events of some months.

The good news is that I'm not in a competition with Pam, so I'm under neither obligation nor pressure to match her excellent post. This gives me the freedom to simply allow her to inspire me and see where the inspiration takes me. So for that, I'd like to say thank you to her. And without further ado, I devote this post to the highlights of the previous year of my life.

I think that the first major highlight of the year came in February, when I met Rob. I didn't talk about Rob much in this blog, and there's a good reason for it. Rob represented the first time that a potential (and real, however temporary) love interest actually read my blog. As such, I struggled with finding the balance of what I could say, knowing that I didn't want to reveal anything I hadn't already discussed with him. After all, reading about what another person is feeling about you in his blog rather than firsthand strikes me as a horrible thing.

Rob found me online -- on Valentine's Day no less -- and contacted me to express a desire to get to know me and explore the possibility of a relationship. In many ways, we hit it off quite well. And I have to admit that I was swept off my feet. Rob was the first guy to actually pursue me. (Usually, I've had to chase after the other guy.) I learned just how much I could enjoy being the object of pursuit. In fact, I'd say that one of the things I learned about myself due to my encounter with Rob is that I like a slightly aggressive guy.

Sadly, things with Rob were fast-paced and terribly short lived. After a few dates and immediately after our first night together, Rob decided I wasn't what he was looking for after all. I have to admit that after being pursued that hard and dropped just as quickly, I was stinging. Though I did learn an important lesson in that respect, too. My guides tried to tell me things were going too fast and I should slow things back down. But I allowed myself to get carried away in the heat of the moment.

Of course, I don't think things would've ended any differently. After much time, I realize that Rob and I just weren't right for each other. And that would've been the case no matter how slowly we took things. Though I do admit that I wonder if slowing down would've enabled us to realize this before we took things as far as we did, saving at least some heartache. So the lesson I learned from that is that when spirit says slow down, it's best to listen, even if you are enjoying the heat of the moment.

March and April brought new choices with them. After the events of February, I realized that I needed to get out more and put myself in positions where I could meet more people. Before then, I had a small group of great friends, and I'm still thankful for them. But I realized that if I wanted more out of life (especially in the realms of socializing and dating), it was time to expand my circles even farther. So I began to join various groups and look for other ways to get out in the wider community. I would say I've seen some mixed results from those efforts, but I'd say they were positive overall. And it's still a work in progress. And I've made some great friendships (especially one in particular) as a result that I think I will always cherish.

The summer months, starting with June, brought unexpected changes in me. In June, I started walking more. In fact, the weekend before my birthday, I took my first ever seven mile walk along the Erie canal. That first walks was both exciting and draining. I came away with a sunburn and some pretty serious blisters on my feet, but I also developed a passion for the trek. In fact, I loved it so much, that I repeated the walk once a month through September and am even counting down the days until the warm weather returns and I can resume the little tradition.

In addition to the canal walk, I began taking a walk after my weekly dinner with friends on Monday nights. Those walks began when I got ready to leave the restaurant one Monday night and decided it was too gorgeous an evening to just go home. So a second walking tradition was born. By the end of summer, I was up to three one-hour walks a week (except on the weekend I'd take the canal walk, in which case that trek would replace one of the regular walks). I began to see this as something I did for enjoyment.

As an aside, this is also the summer that I began to enjoy sunbathing. This is something I had considered a waste of time while growing up and would often shake my head at my sister in disgust during summer vacations when she'd sunbathe daily. In fact, when I confessed to my sister this summer that I'd started enjoying the practice myself, she immediately asked, "Who are you and what have you done with my brother?"

In August, I went with friends the Northeast Naturist Festival. I had a pleasant time while there (though I will note that I kept my clothes on 99.9% of the time I was there) and enjoyed my first real vacation (i.e. a prolonged period off where I did something other than visit family) in years. I came to appreciate again the importance of pampering myself.

The naturist retreat also marked the point in time where I'd say I really began to start coming into my own in terms of spirituality. I had a few moving experiences while there, and they initiated changes in myself that continued over the next several months, and will likely continue into the coming year.

At this point, I will also note that I started really "coming into my own" in general around this time. Or at least I began to notice it. I began building much more self-confidence and a willingness to take risks and make myself more vulnerable. In some ways, I'd say my transformation into a minor social butterfly started to become more noticeable at this point.

In September and October, I had more spiritual awakenings. It is at this time when my patroness, Freyja, began to make it more clear that the nature of our relationship was going to change significantly. (I'm still not ready to publicly discuss the nature of that change, however.) Again, I found myself in situations where my comfort zones were pushed and I was encouraged (not quite at knifepoint) to stretch as a person.

Also in October, I went to a cousin's wedding. While making the trip with my parents and members from my father's side of the family, Freyja also impressed upon me the fact that I've cut myself off from my family. She began to impress upon me the fact that I need to get closer to them. She says it's because there are ways in which I can help various people in my family. Of course, I'm not sure how that's going to work, considering that the kind of help I can best offer is something most of them would be opposed to. But I guess time will tell.

Then in December, the bombshell dropped. About two weeks before Yule, Freyja suggested (again, not quite at knifepoint) that I should plan the Yule ritual for a small group of friends. So I placed the necessary calls, made the commitment, and moved forward. I have to admit, I was rather nervous, especially after becoming sick for the week prior to the ritual, which I had originally hoped to better use for planning. But things turned out beautifully and everyone had a pleasant time. And fortunately, I have much more advanced noticed for the next ritual I'm expected to plan, which isn't until the Spring Equinox.

I'd say it's been an interesting, profound, and profitable year. Hopefully the coming one will continue in that trend.

One of the inherent problems with agreeing to enter into a working relationship with a specific deity is that said deity actually expects you to work. And eventually, that work will include tasks that require you to step outside of your comfort zones and do things you're not sure you're ready for. This morning, I experienced one such instance in my own life.

A small group of friends and I have been talking about getting together more regularly to do ritual. This is the group (or at least the core part, though I hope we invite a few of the others for Yule) that gets together every year to celebrate Samhain together. The rest of the year, we get together more sporadically. As I said, that's something a few of us would like to change.

As I was driving in to work this morning, I got thinking about this fact, and the upcoming solstice. A couple of us had been talking about the fact that we really should do a Yule ritual. However, no one has sat down to actually make any plans. It was this last fact I was considering when Freyja decided to speak her mind.

"You know, you could plan the ritual."

I blinked and immediately thought to myself that I'm not sure where I'd begin. Suddenly, I had a handful of ideas running through my head. Obviously, she wasn't going to let me off that easy. So I thought about it for the rest of the drive to the office. Once I got here, I made a call and offered to plan the ritual. It turns out that this was a good thing, because the others had already agreed to do ritual for Yule and even set the date, but weren't sure what they were going to do. So it looks like I'll be taking the lead on the planning as long as they provide the space.

I'm also getting the inkling (another one of her ideas, I'm afraid) that I'm going to suggest that we trade off. I'll plan the solstices and equinoxes if the others will take care of the other four high days.

Egads, what have I gotten myself into? But then, I keep getting told that I need to quit hiding and take on a more active role. I guess this is a step in that direction.

Darn goddesses, anyway.

I've been thinking about writing a spiritually-themed post for the past couple of weeks. However, until tonight, I haven't gotten around to it. In part, this is due to laziness on my part. I simply haven't taken the time to sit down and try to put my thoughts in order.

Of course, it's also in part because we have entered the dark half of the year, and the part of the Wheel where silence tends to reign. So my thoughts have turned inward, and I find myself wanting to spend most of my time mulling about spiritual matters -- especially how they apply to my life -- rather than blathering on about them.

And then there's the fact that my musings and experiences have taken me into realms that I'm simply not sure I want to talk about quite yet. In many ways, I'm still adjusting to recent events and new things in my life and I'm not ready to be broadcasting some of it. So in many ways, I expect this post will be short and somewhat vague.

It is clear that I have started a new leg of my spiritual journey, and one that will be guided and influenced quite heavily by my lady and patroness, Freyja. This is not surprising, as anyone who knows me well likely has a good sense of how dear and important she is to me. So it's probably not too surprising that she has chosen to strengthen and deepen our relationship.

Of course, this has not been a sudden thing. Indeed, the first conscious indication that new things were coming occurred during the Friday night seance at the naturist festival I went to back in August. During that seance, Freyja began to prepare me energetically. I spent the entire evening feeling like my head was buzzing. (She even made her presence known to Belinda in order to confirm for me what was going on.)

Since that time, things have continued to progress between her and I, and it's been an exhilarating if nerve-wracking experience. I'm not entirely sure where everything is going, though I'm becoming more comfortable with the overall experience.

I do know that it means that I'm going to end up taking a more visible and active role in the world around me. I have work to do, and I have work to do in order to get ready for it.