One word to sum up a religion

First off, I would recommend that everyone go and read this discussion on the Academic Pagans LiveJournal Community. It’s my jumping off point.

Some of my favorite one word descriptors were*:
Feri: Ecstasy (Alternately, paradox)
Reclaiming: Immanence
CR: Justice
CR: Truth
CR: Honor, Inspiration, Justice, Connection, Communion
CR: Truth, Honor, and Duty
Modern Paganism: Re-sacralisation
Wicca: Balance

I think these are all virtues and qualities that I aspire to, and it’s not surprising that these religions have inspired my own spiritual path. But I had a gut punch reaction to the discussion about Truth. It may describe why I’ve noticed myself leaning more and more towards CR as a spiritual path. Which has been surprising me. But that’s a discussion for another day.

My absolute favorite one word summary, the gut-puncher, is CR’s as Truth. Truth is honor, imbas, duty and justice. It also aides true community and hospitality. And these are all ideas I find are the core of my own growing sense of self and religious identity. What’s amusing to me is how hard I find many of these virtues. I am not comfortable and easy with truth, honor, or duty. And I find, at least, the gift for a gift idea of hospitality to be a little odd and limiting. But the more I work with them, the more I realize how good they are. How magical and freeing they can be.

I’m feeling the need to really think and meditate about Truth as the central idea of CR. It may not end up being the ultimate core summary of my own spirituality, but I think right now it’s a lesson I need to be working on and can easily see myself working on it for years.

*I took these from many different users, to give credit where it’s due read the entry and all the comments.

Contemplative Meditation from a Nun to You

I came across this meditation in my reading today. It’s from M. Macha NightMare’s blog Broomstick Chronicles. For background, she is very involved in interfaith programs where she lives and went on a retreat hosted by nuns of two different religions. The Christian nun shared this group meditation:

“Sister Marion showed us a teaching method used in her order wherein a short passage of the Bible is read aloud slowly, and really listened to. After a brief period of silence, they are read a second time. I volunteered and found myself in the odd position of reading just a few verses of the Gospel of Luke.

“We Pagans don't have a sacred text, per se; however, I intend to try this practice with a few lines of poetry, lyrical words about Nature, or maybe part of The Charge of the Goddess. I think it could enhance our understanding. As I get older, I find I enjoy contemplative spiritual practices at least as much as more active practices, if not more.”

You can find the rest of the entry here.

While I like the idea of doing this with the Charge of the Goddess, or selections from Starhawk’s “creation myth” from The Earth Path, I also think that poems would be of particular use here. Especially primary source poems from Ireland and Wales. I can see doing this with a lot of the poems credited to Tailsen. Or evening use this as part of a longer meditation series with the three cauldrons from the Cauldron of Posey. And this would be an excellent use of Graves’ The White Goddess, since his work should be read as a poetic inspiration rather than historical fact.

Teachers and Inspiration

My first draft of this was all about me trying to explain my conflicted feelings towards ADF, both the love and the, um, not love (hate is too strong of a word here). But the more I wrote, the more I realized that’s ridiculous to even try to explain it in one entry. It would be horrifically abbreviated, unless I wrote a treaties and I have better things to do with my time and this blog.

And as conflicted as I am about ADF, you should hear me discuss Feri and Reclaiming traditions, another large influence on my own religion. Yeah, I know, I just took two pagan religions, each vastly different from the other, and cited them as my religious inspiration. I find that both have different aspects I’m drawn to and to be fair, I’m really conflicted with Feri and Reclaiming as well.

And since I’m listing my influences I’d have to add CR and Buddhism. I know, I just outed my self as eclectic. *gasp* The horror. I guess I’ll have to live with it.

I find the spark of the divine in all religions, I just have an easier time connecting with it through certain theologies and not through others. More often, I find the works spiritual elders (Ian Corrigan, Ceisiwr Serith, Starhawk, T. Thorne Coyle, M. Macha Nightmare, Anne Hill, Dianne Sylvan, Rumi, Buddha, the Dali Lama, Ram Dass and Erynn Rowan Laurie to name many of the people who inspire me) help me access and refine my own sense of spirit and connection to it. These people inspire me, the religions they belong to and the practices they teach inspire me. My spiritual home cannot be captured expect perhaps in the rhythm of the city, an expanse of the night sky and the breath of a tree.