Category Archives: Religion

Deep Thoughts, Emotions, Introspection, Love, Memories, Paganism, Personal Development, Religion, Witchcraft

Turning Inward

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I’m not sure how many people read this blog any more. I know I’ve been silent for almost a month now. To be honest, I’ve logged in to write something several times since my last entry, but have never been able to get past the blank textbox.

This is one of those cases where many aspects of my life have caused me to turn inward, to work on projects and go through things that I’m not ready to post about yet. There’s just so much going on that still needs to be worked out in the stillness of my own mind before broadcast to the world, and as such, I leave what readers I may have wondering what’s going on.

What I can say is that my spiritual life is getting rather interesting right now. There are certain things that I need to work on and certain changes in my life that I’m making in order to prepare for the “next big step.” At some point, I hope to talk about some of that. But for now, I must leave it at this simple teaser.

I’m also working on a writing project, which I have several guides telling me will eventually coalesce into a publishable book. However, I’m in the very early stages of that process. Currently, I’m at the point where the project involves me spending regular times with a separate journal (as opposed to my “everyday” one) and writing about past experiences, people, and choices that I can remember, and my emotional reactions to them. It’s been both a rewarding and trying process, as not all of the memories or the realizations related to them are entirely comfortable. They’re not exactly painful, either. But they take a bit of processing at times.

One of the interesting things is that as I continue with this project, I find myself remembering little things that I had completely forgotten about, things that I haven’t thought about in a decade or more. That in itself can be a bit shocking. Of course, on the flip side, it’s also nice to suddenly discover that I have more memories of my life before high school than I might’ve thought. They’re just there waiting to be found.

Of course, a side effect of this process is that I find myself growing nostalgiac. I find myself wondering what ever happened to old friends, old school chums, and even an old lover or two. I find myself wondering what kind of people they are today. After all, it’s been at least a decade since I’ve seen some of them.

You can’t go home again. But at least you can visit. Even if only in your mind.

Friends, Going Out, Randomness, Religion, Witchcraft

Rochester Pagan Pride 2006

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Saturday, I spent the day at the Rochester Pagan Pride Festival. I had an absolutely wonderful time, and look forward to going again in the future.

Most of the day, I spent hanging out with Wendy and her friends. She was kind enough to let me put out a few fliers for the POC on her table. Quite a few people ended up taking them. With any luck, that means we’ll see some new faces real soon.

I didn’t attend many workshops, as I was having too much fun talking with friends and what-not. The one that I did manage to attend was the Crystal Singing Bowl meditation, led by the good folks from Singing Bowl Expressions. I’ve been to one of the monthly meditations that Dawn and Jeff hold at Psychic’s Thyme before. While I certainly enjoyed my experience there, it paled in comparison to the demonstration at Pride this year. This workshop involved ten different bowls, each vibrating at their own frequency. While I was not one of the many people who immediately found themselves out of their body, I could certainly feel my own energy channels responding to the experience. I also remember opening my eyes a couple of times and realizing I couldn’t focus my vision. It was an incredibly rewarding experience.

I also got a book on Pagan ethics that Patricia Telesco recently wrote under another pen name. As Ms. Telesco was one of the invited speakers at the festival (and I bought the book directly from her), I had the chance to discuss it with her. I told her about my desire to do some research and planning over the next year and put together a local workshop on Pagan ethics. She was quite happy about the idea and encouraged me. I also shared with her about my blog entry concerning the line in the Charge of the Goddess that declares “all acts of love and pleasure” to be rites of the Goddess. She paid me a rather high compliment in regards to how I approached that line and the sentences surrounding it. It was rather encouraging.

I think the person who impressed me most at the festival, however, was someone I never actually got the opportunity to speak to. That’s the young man, Adam, who stood about ten to fifteen feet from the entrance to the festival, handing out Christian tracts to anyone who would take them. According to one of the organizers I spoke with later, Adam is a regular “attendee” of Rochester Pagan Pride. And I think he deserves a great deal of credit for the level of respect he showed. Despite Adam’s obvious disagreement with the religious views of most of the festival goers and his desire to “save” us, he was able to offer his message in a rather unobtrusive way. He was alwas polite when people refused his tracts (strangely, he never actually offered me one) and never attempted to start an argument. I can totally respect the way he chose to demonstrate his convictions.

In a mostly unrelated topic, I’d just like to say that my friend, Becky, also thinks that the guy who waited on me at the sub shop we bought lunch at was interested in me. I’m not sure I agree with her, but it was kind of nice to entertain the notion. I just wish that if he really were interested in me, he’d have said something.

Personal Development, Religion

My first meditation

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Last Tuesday, I led the weekly meditation at the POC for the first time. Well, that’s not entirely true. I was the de facto leader back on 11 July, the first night we ever held the weekly meditation group. However, I “cheated” that night and just played a CD of soft music, allowing everyone to meditate on their own. Last week was the first time that I actually took a more active role and led the group through a guided meditation. I found a written out meditation online that a group had posted after using it as a part of their Lammas ritual in a previous year, and printed it out to use.

I have to admit that it was somewhat of a frightening experience. While I have had a decent amount of experience meditating on my own and have even participated in a guided meditation, I had never acted as the leader in such a setting. To be honest, earlier that Tuesday, I sat at my desk asking myself why I let Michele and Belinda ever talk me into doing this.

But I rose to the challenge, set aside my own worries about my lack of experience and did what needed to be done. And the meditation turned out pretty good that night. I wouldn’t say I did a perfect job, but I managed to perform well enough that everyone seemed to appreciate the experience. Two of those attending even commenting that it was the perfect meditation for them to go through due to the things they were dealing with in their own lives.

What a relief! It’s comforting to know that I will be okay with this. I feel more confident that I will do okay when my turn to lead the group rolls around again. I know that things will go fine. I know that I’m ready to take on this and other responsibilities, despite my insecurities.

All the same, I’m glad that ?thon is in charge of tomorrow night’s meditation.

Deep Thoughts, Introspection, Paganism, Personal Development, Religion

Mistaking Opportunities for Obstacles

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I don’t normall do “cut and paste” columns. However, Juliaki’s insights on this particular topic was too perfect not to share her words. I’m thankful for her graciousness in allowing me to repost them here.

I asked the gods for support and guidance on my path. I asked them to help build me up so that I could go higher than I was, and closer to them. From out of the sky, a shower of boulders slid from the mountain and blocked my path, a pile of boulders higher than my height by far. I raised my fists to the heavens and yelled up to the gods, “I have always been good in your service. I have always done the best that I could. Now, when I ask for your help to rise above the challenges of the world for just a moment, you put obstacles in my way! Why have you done this to me? I ask you to remove them at once!”

The gods whispered to me, with patience so plain, “What you see as obstacles are actually blessings on your path. These obstacles, as you call them, are there so that you may use the will that we gave you to climb up and to rise above the challenges of the world for a moment. If you faced the challenges we gave you with the strength of spirit we put within you and worked through them with the courage of one who does instead of one who makes excuses, you would have risen above this challenge and been granted the wisdom of a wise vista.”

“But you asked for your path to be clear, and it shall be given to you.”

And with that, the boulders disappeared, leaving a flat road ahead of me. A road that looked the same as before, flat and unchanging. A road on which I could rise no higher, for I had rejected blessings as curses and demanded that convenience outweigh growth.

Religion, Witchcraft

All acts of love and pleasure…?

…all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals.

Most people who have any experience with Paganism are familiar with this phrase. Most of us have heard this phrase invoked when justifying any sexual orientation or practice — including some practices that make most of us shudder. In fact, some people consider this one of the most troublesome phrases ever encountered in the Wiccan and general Pagan community because of some of the activities and behaviors it has been used to justify.

And while I certainly agree that people who have used this statement to justify some rather reprehensible behaviors, I do not agree that it is right to blame it on the above phrase. Instead, I argue that the fault should be placed where it has belonged all along: with those who have misused such a declaration without truly understanding it.

To truly understand it, we must look at this statement in context. “All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals” is not a complete quote in and of itself. In fact, it’s not even the full sentence that clause appears in, at least not in the source I’m using. (1) This is a clause in a single sentence taken from “The Charge of the Goddess,” a piece of Wiccan lore generally attributed to Doreen Valiente. The full paragraph (again, according to the way my source divides the Charge into paragraphs, others may vary) reads as follows:

Let My Worship be within the heart that rejoiceth, for behold: all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. And therefore let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.

Notice that the sentence immediately following the well-known phrase begins, “And therefore let there be….” This phrase makes it clear that this following sentence is a continuation of the same train of thought rather than the beginning of a new subject. In essence, it indicates that the virtues listed in this new sentence are directly related to “all acts of love and pleasure.” In effect, the charge is listing characteristics that are essential to “acts of love and pleasure.”

This is the major flaw in many arguments where the “all acts of love and pleasure” clause is used to justify dubious behavior. Those who propose that argument are attempting to define “acts of love and pleasure” by their own superficial, self-serving, and ego-centric definitions. The problem is that the rest of the charge does not permit this, because it clearly says that in order to be an “act of love and pleasure,” a given act or behavior must possess and uphold these virtues. Indeed, any act that does not demonstrate these virtues cannot by definition be an “act of love and pleasure.” So let us take a look at each of these virtues and their implications.

The first virtue called for is beauty. This means that each act — and its results or consequences — must be something that will be found to be pleasing to behold. During and after the act, all people involved with or affected by it must be able to look and take pleasure in it and see the beauty in it. Ugliness — be it physical, emotional, or spiritual — that comes from such an act immediately disqualifies it.

The next virtue is strength. All acts must come from and support a place of strength. The person who draws on “acts of love and pleasure” as a way to cover or make up for their own weakness — or worse, to engender weakness in another — has turned away from love and twisted pleasure into something it was not meant to be. In this sense, strength is antithetical to neediness. A true act of love and pleasure is not done out of neediness, but from a position of mutually empowered desire.

Power, the next virtue, is related to strength. In this sense, I would argue that the “power” here is one of choice. A true “act of love and pleasure” involves choice, and a person performs such acts by their free will rather than through coercion or inner compulsion. In this sense, acts involving more than one person are about equality and mutual choice. The person who emotionally manipulates another into such an act is no better than the person who does the same with physical force.

The next virtue, compassion, is about mitigating one’s own power when dealing with another. This is about taking the other persons needs, desires, rights, and general well-being into account. Acts where one is only concerned about one’s own strength, choice, appreciation of beauty, and any other virtue still falls short of being truly about “love and pleasure.”

The next virtue, honor, is equally important. My own experience has taught me that if we do not keep our integrity intact, then we become nothing. Because of this, it’s all too clear to me that without integrity in our relationships, they too become nothing. The person who cannot maintain their character cannot know love, so how can they commit an act of love?

Humility, like compassion, is about the other person. Whereas compassion reminds us to think of the other person, humility goes one step further and reminds us that it’s also about the act itself. A true act of love and pleasure (2) is about a bond between two souls. Unless we are willing to take our proper place rather than allowing our egos to bloat, there can be no love shared in any real way.

It’s strange to think of mirth as being an important aspect of love and pleasure, it’s nonetheless important. Mirth is about being able to lighten our hearts and enjoy the love we share. Perhaps if we as a society learned the value of mirth in all aspects of our relationships, there wouldn’t be nearly as many tales about “performance anxiety” and similarly distressing problems.

The final virtue, reverence, again brings us outside of ourselves. It’s about respecting oneself, the other person, and the act itself. It’s an understanding that if we are going to truly declare this an “act of love and pleasure,” it is indeed sacred. Reverence teaches us that sacred things should be treated as something special.

Now that we’ve looked at the virtues listed — those which must absolutely exist, lest an act fail to truly be about love and pleasure — it’s time to look at the beginning of the first sentence. Before declaring all acts of love and pleasure to be rituals of the Goddess, the Charge first calls for the Goddess’s praise to be “in the heart that rejoiceth.” This is equally significant. Immediately following this clause and as a lead-in to the well-known clause comes the connecting phrase, “for behold.” This tells us that a rejoicing heart is also significant to all acts of love and pleasure. Indeed, for hearts that rejoice are the end result and direct effect of a true “act of love and pleasure.” As such, one who truly wishes to evaluate whether their proposed “act of love and pleasure” should not only consider how well it reflects, possesses, and upholds the virtues we’ve discussed, but should also consider the resultant state of the hearts of those involved.

While some may find the suggestion that “all acts of love and pleasure” discomforting due to the behavior of some unethical people, I still find it a truly liberating and profound statement. However, it is important to understand what actually qualifies as an “act of love and pleasure” to truly appreciate the concept. Otherwise, one risks profaning the profound through ignorance.

Notes:

(1) I’ve copied all quotes from The Charge of the Goddess from an online copy hosted on the Starkindler Website.

(2) It’s obvious I’m referring to sexual activity between two people. I’ve tried to be vague about it in most places, as I firmly believe that there are other “acts of love and pleasure” rather than just sex. I also believe that this phrase is also talking about our platonic and familial relationships and how we handle them, too. Most of what I am saying can be applied to such situations equally well. However, most people who abuse the “all acts of love and pleasure” clause are doing so to justify sexual activity. As such, I felt it equally important to cover sexual relationships directly to some degree.

Gender and Sexuality, Love, Movies, Religion

Movie Review: Latter Days

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This past weeken, I watched Lattere Days. This is a tale about a gay man, Christian, living in Los Angeles who meets, sets out to bed, and eventually falls in love with anotehr young man by the name of Aaron. Of course, Christian’s plans are complicated by the fact that Aaron is a missionary for the LDS church, just starting his two year mission.

The remarkable part about this movie is that it’s not just a movie about a young man from a religiously conservative background coming to terms with his sexual orientation and being excommunicated from his church (and presumably biological) family. This is also a movie wherein a cynical and superficial gay man begins to take a closer look at his own life and initiates a search to give it deeper meaning. In effect, this movie seeks to strike the balance between criticizing harmful repression and taking an honest look at the emptiness that can come from the superficiality we sometimes fall into while trying to escape the latter. In effect, both boys face their own demons as a result of coming into each others lives.

The scenes between Aaron and his mother after he’s found out and sent home are well done. Particularly, the scene where Aaron challenges his mother to actually look at him is quite incredible, and something that I think most gay people with religiously (or otherwise) conservative parents can appreciate on some level. Of course, even Aaron’s mother has her moment, when confronted with Christian’s act of love in coming to Idaho just to tell her how sorry he is for the loss of her son (at this point, Christian was falsely led to believe that Aaron had committed suicide).

This was truly a touching movie, and one I think many people will be able to connect with on one level or another.

Religion

Why Some Christians Focus on Atheists and Agnostics

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I posted this over at Writers on the Loose. I decided to cross-post it here to see what some of my friends think about my theories.

On a previous column, Zjabs left me the following comment:

Ingvi- Quite often you and I are on the same side of the issue. I find nothing in your column to disagree with. What I do find interesting is that your belief in the “wrong” thing (in the eyes of the Christians) is okay. No one has tried to convert you or tried to open your eyes to Christ, etc. But when I post a column about my lack of belief, I’ve been given the third degree. Which begs the question- have the people on this site mellowed, or is it more understandable to have one believe in something, even if it doesn’t match our own beliefs, then to have someone proclaim they don’t believe at all? Now there’s a column idea for you!

I thought it would be appropriate to take a moment to respond to his question. However, before I can do that, I think it important to examine the full context of the situations he’s referring to.

I think that first, it’s important to keep in mind that Zjab’s column about his lack of belief was in response to another column by Jen. In Jen’s column, she specifically asked people why others weren’t Christian. It only seems that Jen and others would respond to Zjab’s own response with further dialogue. In contrast, my columns have been mostly independent — or respond to other people’s columns in an almost tangential way. So there’s not quite the same flow of dialogue. In effect, I haven’t left quite the same opening for such “conversion attempts” (though to be honest, I think that labeling the comments left for Zjabs as such might be a bit of a stretch). So in essence, we’re probably comparing apples and oranges here.

However, if we step beyond these two scenarios involving Zjabs, myself, and the other members of WOTL, I am inclined to agree that the way many Christians approach people who don’t believe in any religion often differs from the way they approach those who follow a different religion. In fact, while there are small groups and individuals within Christianity that are focused on “reaching out” to people of other religions (one example of this in regards to the Pagan religions is Exwitch Ministries), it seems to me that most Christians are focused on convincing the atheists and the agnostics that they should become Christian. And I think that there are a number of closely related reasons for this.

I think that the most central reason for this is that in our country’s history, Christianity has had the luxury of being the only religion (or at least the only noticeable one) around. As such, Christians got used to thinking they’re the “only game in town,” the only religion, if you will. (And in fairness, I’ve run into several agnostics and atheists who seem to hold a similar view on some level.) Even the Jewish religion was seen as not being all that different, and trying to evangelize Jews just focused around convincing them that Jesus really was the Messiah. As such, Christian apologetics has only had to focus on convincing the unbeliever or skeptic of the validity of Christian doctrine. And to this day, the average Christian has access to plenty of material designed to woo the atheist, the agnostic, and any other kind of “unbeliever.”

However, now that Christians are finding themselves once again living in a pluralistic society, they are discovering that they are not as prepared to respond to someone who doesn’t just disbelieve, but actually believes something else. The same arguments that woo an atheist or agnostic are not as effective — assuming they’re effective at all — on a Hindu, a Buddhist, or a Pagan. And I think that because of this, a lot of Christians choose to focus on evangelizing those they already have the “tools” to evangelize.

As an aside, I will note that many who do try and convert people who follow a different religion tend to try to do so in a sort of “two-phase” process. In this process, they start by trying to demonstrate why the individual’s religion is wrong, doesn’t make sense, or is otherwise inferior. Once this first “phase” is done, they then resort to the same material they would use to evangelize someone who was an agnostic. To be honest, I haven’t found this approach all that impressive, and I suspect it’s only effective with “tentative believers” in other religions, anyway.

Another result of this history of Christianity being “the only game in town” for so long is that a natural friction or rivalry between the Christians and the atheists and agnostics has developed over time. I have watched several discussions between these two groups, and it has been the rare case where the discussion didn’t devolve into both sides trying to prove themselves to be right and other to be wrong. It also seems to me that far too many people on “both sides of the fence” prefer this conflict, and take efforts to keep the trend alive. The end result is that both Christians and atheists and agnostics seem to be conditioned to expect this rivalry to pop up, prepare for it, and as a result, generate a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. In the rare cases where the old rivalry doesn’t rear its ugly head, I’ve noted that it’s usually due to the fact that key people on both sides of the discussion make concerted efforts to avoid it.

And finally, I do think that Zjabs is right in that people find any belief to be more comprehensible than a complete lack of beliefs. Christians may disagree with my polytheistic and magical views, but at least they can intellectually understand it. Trying to understand how someone can not believe in anything. To be perfectly honest, I have a bit of trouble in grasping that, myself. I can certainly understand not believing in any specific religion because of the lack of a compelling (to them, at least) reason to believe in them. I can even understand someone not believing in God or not being skeptical about the nature of such a God if God exists. But I do have trouble grasping the more hardcore atheists who are absolutely convinced there is no God.

Paganism, Rants, Religion, Witchcraft

The Boy Scouts of America continue to slit their collective throats

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Imagine being a young boy, sitting with your fellow Boy Scouts at Scout camp, listening to one of your leaders talk about how diverse your troop has become in terms of religious background. He’s praising this religious diversity as a good thing. So when asked, you reveal your own religious background, only to be told two days later that you’re “too different” and the leadership would like you to leave the troop. How long do you suppose it’ll be before you ever trust an adult that tells you they value “diversity” again?

Sadly, this scenarios actually happened to young Cody and Justin Buchheim in Anacoco. While most of the boys were showing their “diversity” by the fact that they attended a Baptist church, a Methodist church, or a Catholic church, Cody spoke up and indicated that he and his brother did not attend a Christian church at all, but were Wiccan. Unfortunately, the sponsors of their troop felt that being Wiccan was “too far outside the box” to make good Boy Scout material.

Now, I first have to wonder, if “diversity” means “everyone just goes to a different church, but are still essentially Christian,” can it really be called diversity? Truth be told, the actual doctrinal differences between many Christian denominations are so subtle and complex, that many of the members of those denominations would have trouble clearly explaining those differences.

So when two boys hear these proclamations of diversity being good without being able to realize just how superficial this “diversity” being praised really is, they find themselves in a trap. A trap that they were practically pulled into. After all, Cody only volunteered information about his religious background when the Scout leader explicitly asked him what church he attended. It seems to me that Scout leaders need to be more prepared for the answers they get when asking a question. They also need to be prepared not to punish boys for the answers they give.

Then you have the leader who told the boys’ father that the boys would not have been asked to leave if Cody had just lied when answering the question. Now, bear in mind that the first word in the Boy Scout Law (the bit about doing one’s duty to one’s country and God is actually part of the Boy Scout Oath, not the Law) after “A scout is…” happens to be “trustworthy.” Furthermore the first statement on the BSA website when explaining what it means to be trustworthy reads, “a Scout tells the truth.” So you have a Scout leader who basically says that the boys should have avoided getting kicked out by breaking the law they promised to obey when they took the Scout Oath (second line of the oath). What exactly is the BSA teaching their boys these days, anyway?

I think what I found really telling was the region’s executive regional director’s comments on the situation. He laid it all at the feet of the local troop and their sponsor, claiming that it’s the local troop’s sponsor’s call on who they accept as members. Does that mean that I can sponsor a Boy Scout troop (oh wait, that whole homosexuality thing would get in the way) and exclude all Christian boys from the troop? I’m willing to bet good money that the regional and national directors would be real quick to step in.

Fortunately, the sponsor’s own district church committe — within the United Methodist Church — took the bull by the horns, and told the local church/sponsor “you can’t do that.”

In the end, the boys were invited to come back, only to leave the troop of their own volition (and I can’t say as I blame them). Their mother is currently filing to start a local chapter of Spiral Scouts.

The BSA needs to take notice. This constant practice of narrowly defining what kind of boy makes a “proper Scout” is only hurting them. They lost support over the homosexuality debacle, and they’ll most likely continue to lose support as they allow “local sponsors” to define what religious practices are acceptable for Scouts. And it’s making more people turn to other options, like the Spiral Scouts.

Books, Religion

Thoughts on “The Visitation”

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This weekend, I ran to Blockbuster and rented a copy of “The Visitation,” a movie that is “loosely based” on the novel by the same title, written by Frank Peretti.; I originally started reading Peretti’s novels when I was in high school. A good adult friend from my little hometown church recommended them to me, and I was hooked. Even now that I don’t agree with the author’s theology, I can still enjoy many of his works.

Unfortunately, I was dismayed by the changes made when transforming this book into a movie. This was particularly dismaying as Peretti was listed as one of the producers, suggesting that he had (though limited I’m sure) some say in these changes. Primarily, a number of characters were changed, merged, or just plain deleted. A prime example of this was the circumstances surrounding the death Travis Jordan’s wife. This had the effect of transforming Jordan from a man mourning the loss caused by a disease he and his church couldn’t “pray away” into a man who was bitter do to an unsolved murder.

Normally, I can be fairly understanding when things are changed in order to make a book-based movie “work.” Books and movies are completely different media, and what works in one doesn’t always work in the other. But the changes to the characters and plot-lines in this case represent a change to the entire theme of the original book.

“The Visitation” was a rather unique book amongst Peretti’s writing experiences. It was different in that it was about something Peretti doesn’t often write about. Unlike books where he’s focused on the spiritual or supernatural — like “This Present Darkness” — or some particular issue of religio-political significance — like “Prophet” — this book focuses on people, as well as people’s experiences with “church stuff.” The supernatural “miracles” of the man who would be the new Jesus take a secondary role to the people who are reacting to him, or to Travis’s painful memories of his memories — both pleasant and unpleasant — of life in the church. It is these things that made me appreciate this book most out of all of his other novels. And I was saddened to see all of this missing from the movie.

The movie itself was pretty good for a movie. But I think that everyone did both the movie and an excellent novel a great disservice by associating it — even “loosely” — with Peretti’s awesome book. And I’m disappointed that Peretti would not only allow it to happen, but appears to have been at least partly involved in such a travesty.

Deep Thoughts, Paganism, Religion

A new perspective on paid Pagan clergy

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This evening, I was catching up on reading my favorite blogs. During this process, I ran across a post by Stacey (not to be confused with The Sentinel/Stace) in which she talks about what she terms “the pastor disconnect.” In it, she discusses the dismay that ministers experience when they realize how much time they spend doing administrative work for the church compared to the amount of time that they spend doing “ministry” — all of the stuff that they anticipated when feeling “the call.”

As I read Stacey’s thoughts, I could’t help but think how it relates to my feelings on Pagan clergy. As I’ve made it clear in the past, I’m not a huge fan of the concept. But as I read about “the pastor disconnect,” I found a new perspective from which to dislike the whole idea. As I read Stacey describe what new ministers go through when they realize how administrative their job is and how that’s not what they were expecting at all, I couldn’t help but thinking of someone like my friend Jasmin (or myself) eventually having a similar experience as a Pagan minister. After all, most people I know who are interested in becoming paid Pagan clergy want to do so because they want to help others grow spiritually and otherwise. So as the infrastructure to support such an effort grows, I can see these people becoming disillusioned by the increasing amount of administrative work that they’d have to do in order to keep the infrastructure running smoothly. Just like the Christian ministers that crash and burn because of this, I can easily see this becoming a huge issue for many would-be Pagan ministers — maybe more so, as we Pagans tend to be quite free-wheeling and often seem to dislike any structure that gets “too complicated” anyway.

I don’t know. Maybe paid clergy would still work out in the Pagan community. Maybe those who felt called would somehow manage to make it through it, just like so many Christian ministers do. Personally, though, I can’t help but feel there has to be a better way. I don’t know what it is. (My initial reaction would be to suggest getting people who like to do administrative stuff and pay them to do only that while the “ministers” like Jasmin do the stuff they’re strong at. But I know churches that in theory try to do that, too. And it just doesn’t work out.) Hopefully someone will figure it out.

Personally, though, if I ever decide to start doing any sort of “ministering,” I still think I’d rather do it as some sort of professional counselor rather than as a paid head of a Pagan church. In the end, I just think it’d be a more workable solution for me.