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2004-04-12 Religious Uncertainty Everyone's gone for the day, and it's been pretty quiet and boring today, so I have decided to be a bad girl and put up an entry while being paid. The weekend was great - I had Friday off, and to my great surprise, I was paid for the holiday as well (I haven't been here for 3 consecutive months, so they didn't have to). There is honestly nothing better than getting paid to do holiday stuff, like getting up at 9am rather than 6:30, driving up north, and just plain relaxing and hanging out. Friday wasn't a huge day. My mom and I went up to the Dollarama (surprise, surprise), and I also stopped by to chat with my minister friend for awhile. He was pretty beat since he had been eating very little as a fast for the past 40 days of Lent. I've been meaning to go over to discuss "The Passion" for awhile now, and I found that he pretty much shared my opinions on the film (although he could get more into the theological problems in the film than I could). On Saturday, Sherry, George and Hayley came up to spend the day and night with us. You know, it's still a shock to see how big Hayley is getting, and how much she talks, and how much of her personality is showing. Sherry and I took her up to the nearby park, where she said "Again! Again!" over and over to be put on the little slide. I also found out that my motherliness may be coming out more than I had thought. We have a large Mickey Mouse stuffed animal that stands up in the upstairs hall (which, for some reason, George is really freaked out by - he NEVER should have told me that. Cackle). Sherry and Hayley had gone upstairs, and apparently, Hayley decided she wanted Mickey downstairs. Since Sherry couldn't carry both of them down at the same time, she decided to fling Mickey down without warning any of us down below. Imagine my horror when I saw something flying down and crashing on the stairs! I didn't see the big ears or the red pants that would have identified it as Mickey. Suffice it to say I nearly had a heart attack. That night, I went to the Easter Eve vigil (honoring the "fact" that Jesus, having descended into Hell on Friday, had now destroyed the "eternal chains of death"). I went last year and loved it, since it's one of the oldest Christian rituals that is still in existence today. Thus, there are a lot of pagan undertones to the ritual (such as the plunging of the very phallic Paschal candle 3 times into the basin of Holy water, or the small bonfire the minister sets just outside the church to commence the ritual). Which leads me to explaining the actual title of this entry. No, I did not have some epiphany that led me back to Christianity. On Saturday, part of me wished that there would be some sign, something that would automatically answer all my questions regarding my beliefs. But of course, no such easy way revealed itself to me. If anything, I know with greater certainty that Christianity is not for me. But I don't know if Wicca is quite the right fit either. Right now, I'm considering myself a general "pagan" more than anything else. Wicca has suddenly become a box that I have to squeeze myself into, and that's part of the reason why I left Christianity in the first place. I don't want to be told what to believe, but lately that's exactly what's been going on. It may be more my fault than the Wiccan community, but there it is. For the past couple of years, I've just sort of been reading books on the subject without questioning, without reflection, without figuring out if this is a belief I hold, or could hold. So that's what I'm doing now. Since December, I've been reading that Marian Green book, A Witch Alone (thanks Mike!), and it's set up as a course - read one chapter per month. I've been doing that, and keeping a notebook where I jot down notes from the book as well as from other sources I come across. Last night, I started a second notebook, one in which I'm going point-by-point (from my first notebook) and deciding what I think about it. How do I conceive of the deities? What do I think about reincarnation? What do I think about magic? I'm hoping by doing this, I will figure out a) if I'm actually a Wiccan, and b) if not, which pagan tradition I fall into, if any. I don't actually care anymore if I don't fit into a particular tradition. It doesn't seem so important to me now. Traditions end up being much too political for my tastes; I just want spirituality, religion. Pure, if not simple. Anyway, that's where I'm at. I'd better go wash the coffee pot and start locking up so that I can leave on time. |
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