Pagan Godspell

Gorgeous greetings from the not-so-wild midwest! There is a sweet wind blowing across the carpets of brilliant green grass, and my heart cannot help but be lifted, even while broken. This is the Mama’s gift – to be beautiful and generous despite the wreck of civilization. She may not forgive in the end, but she will always break forth in beauty.

On this exquisite day, when the sheer act of being an embodied creature on our beloved mossy stone is a joy, I have been thinking about a subject I’ve seen bandied about on a few other blogs lately. The issue of the Pagan body.

It may come to the attention of a few folks attending most Pagan gatherings that, much like the rest of the world, our people possess a wide range of body types. What those folks may also note is that there are many among us who are fat.* There do seem to be quite a few people of size among us Pagani, it’s true. I’m one of them. There are a number of reasons why I could speculate there are so many of us fat folk in Pagan circles (granted, as no hard and fast research has been done in this area to my knowledge, this is pure speculation on my part based on my own experiences and, indeed, a few of my own reasons for being attraced to Paganism as a youngster). For one, Paganism tends to attract social outcasts of a variety of stripes (if you doubt that being fat places you squarely at the social margins of American society, despite the hysterical media stories about how enormously fat everyone in America is supposed to be, then you obviously have never been a fat person, and it may be possible that you have not been paying the least amount of attention anywhere anytime). Thus, people looking for a place to belong, where they feel beautiful, sexy, and validated as sensual human beings, might look for a spiritual community that gives them that feeling (and rightly so). Contemporary Paganism (or at least many of the dominant popular Paganisms of the moment, such as eclectic and feminist Wicca, etc.) tends to embrace a body-positive and body-validating thea/ology, and the feminist Paganisms especially tend to validate the diversity of female body types as divine and beautiful at any size. Goddesses (or faces of The Goddess, depending on your theistic flava) are diverse – there be some heavy gorgeous mamas among them, and in the late 80s and early 90s it was not uncommon to see that mysterious bebe the Venus of Willendorf adorning the bellies of women determined to own and love their glorious round dancing instead of spending their precious earth-time cursing their thighs (time that could better be spent making art, flirting with trees, doing the tango, or working to eliminate sexism & fat hatred and plotting to take over the world…hmmmmmm).

The point is, while the reasons that we (and I) may have for choosing/being chosen by this particular spirituality may not be exclusively founded on whether or not we feel accepted as fat people, it can most definitely be a factor. Conversions are complicated. Revelation is multifaceted. Joy has many levels. When I found my heart among the Pagani, it surely was a bonus that I also found a group of people who professed to believe that my body has value no matter what size.

But then, somebody is a-bound to mention, there is the matter of health.

At Pantheacon this year, a prominent Pagan speaker (I don’t remember who – I wasn’t personally there and am recreating what I’ve read on other folks’ blogs) brought up this issue, and to my understanding called for Pagans to take a more health-conscious approach to their physical selves, as Paganism is an embodied spirituality. Whether the speaker was speaking exclusively about fat Pagans or not, the way our culture reads health seems to automatically lean towards lean, and thus, her words can and have been interpreted to mean that Pagans, in the pursuit of healthy embodied spiritual lives, may need to shed some poundage. Because after all, as we all know, weight loss and health are righteously fused together at the thunder-hips.

I have been neglecting to respond to this barest whisper of what I see as a new trend/theme in contemporary Paganism as I have some mixed feelings about it…not to mention I’ve been a tad mired in a bit o’ the funk lately regarding the epic kill-cycle of our craptacular civilization and its no-hold-barred ecocidal attack on my beloved Mama (you may have noticed). Yet, it has been nibbling here at my fatty insides, and once the sharpsy teeth of my tiny brain get ahold of a thing, they’re not usually satisfied unless I’ve worried it to a raggedy state and tried to wedge my foot firmly in my mouth a few times.

So first off – yes, I agree that as the firefly-shod, star-footed, heart-bound singers of this particular earth-happy, sensuous and sensual, body-caressin’, flesh-lovin’ set of religious traditions, it behooves us to embrace an approach to our bodies that relishes their fully realized, healthiest and most glorious, shiny states. My body is of the Mama, and She is of me (and not of me, more of me, more than me. Of you – and not of you, more of you, more than you. It’s the best Mystery there is), so of course, as I love her, it would make sense to also love me. I am also in the opinion that what’s good for the Mama is probably good for me, so I happen to be big (har!) on ecologically sustainable whole foods nutrition. I’m for real food, traditional food, fermented food, local food, organic food, chemical-free food, balanced food, etc. I’ve tried vegetarian, vegan, macrobiotic, and traditional foods. I think processed foods are crap. I hate corn syrup (plague syrup of evil) and hydrogenated oils. Thus, I would fully support a push towards a whole foods approach to Pagan festival meals, potlucks, etc. (I’ve seen a lot of crappy mccrapperfood at Pagan festivals). Discussions about nutrition and food and their relationship to spirituality are good coven meeting topics. I got no beef here (har!). Of course, health, it should be noted, does not exist in a vacuum, and for many folks, there are some enormous systemic issues stading in the way between an individual and that individual’s holistic healthy being.

What does start to chafe me is the overemphasis on weight loss, already the ubiquitous (and incorrect, unfair, biased and wrong) physical litmus test for social and medical approval, and the idea that we, as Pagans, ought to start making weight loss some kind of spiritual litmus test. Do I think anyone has really said this? No – but I can see it going there, and you’ll have to pardon me if I get a little nervous about it, having seen it happen in a million other avenues of our contemporary culture.

NOW – far be it for me to attempt to argue that fat people can be healthy (which I would if I were more savvy on the stats). That’s an enormous debate, and one that I simply do not have the stomach (har!) for at this time. Let us simply ponder the possibility that medical science, wed in this case to the diet industry (a multi-billion dollar enterprise), might have agendas, and that if you look at all the studies n’ stuff (all of it), you’ll eventually find that it all contradicts itself all the freakin’ time (eggs good! eggs bad! eat meat! meat will kill you! fat always evil and bad! fat sometimes okay! cholesterol big fucking problem! cholesterol not really a big fucking problem!), and maybe, just maybe, folks can be thin and unhealthy (fo sho’), and maybe, just maaaaybe, folks can then also be fat and healthy (not to mention what defines being “fat” or “obese” in the first place is a little hazy). Yes, I know – I be craaaaaazy.  But don’t hurt yourself rushing to tell me I’m just a big deluded fatty with an axe to grind cuz I can’t lose my waddle. I’ve heard it all. All fat people have heard it all. I do think that our contemporary American lifestyle breeds poor health. You bet. What I’m saying is that whether or not a person is fat is simply not an indicator of their state of health.  And the truth is that after all the hype and the freakin’ out and the diets and the studies and whatnot, what we fat folks are left with is the same stuff that most Americans and other “first worlders” are left with – no real hard fast answers, no silver bullets, and the same choices that anyone living on planet earth needs to make to be a “healthy” person (eat real food in reasonable amounts, move your ass, drink water, avoid toxic shit [it bears noting that none of these items, given our civilization, are easy to do]) – the ones that lotsa skinny folks don’t do either. And the plain fact is that making these decisions in this society as it stands is hard. For everybody – because as it turns out, real health is radical stuff. And being radical in any form under our current worldview means fighting an uphill battle pushing a rock so big that even Sisyphus would faint dead away to see it. I know all this stuff – know it all. Yet, I be fat. But, again, I’m not going to convince you here. If you think my ass is making me die faster, that’s fine.

But here’s the thang – as I said previously, we fat folks have heard it all. And historically, the wagging finger, watch-yer-waist, individual shame train doesn’t work. If you want to promote health, good nutrition, exercise, etc. amongst the Pagani, then start having conversations about guidelines for potluck dishes and festival dinners, the possibility of more organics, organizing for better agricultural practices, organizing against big food companies, fight against corn syrup, work towards making organics affordable for all, lead workshops on whole foods nutrition (not eating for weight loss, just eating for health), fighting for the rights of holistic health practicitoners to practice in their state, organizing hikes and walks during festivals, outdoor games, etc. But please don’t start to tell me that because I’m fat I must not be close enough to the Mama, or that I’m not taking my embodied spirituality seriously enough. Health, in a radical holism, includes spirituality, as well as planetary health, community, psychology, etc., but it will not be achieved by employing a thea/ology of guilt or facile weight-loss cheerleading. Please don’t make my precious time with my chosen community a feast of blame.

I’m fat. If you want a history of my relationship with my fat, I could give it to you. But it has taken me a really really long time to realize that my body, how it is in this moment or the next, has value. I sincerely hope that we can approach the issue of health and embodied spirituality as a people without also participating in shaming fat bodies (ETA: or shaming any bodies for that matter – fat, thin, round, tall, differently abled, etc. Bodies be what they are. Sacred.)

So have some (organic and local if you can get ‘em!) strawberries – they’re in season. They taste like bare feet in dew wet grass on a May morning, perfection, the love of the Mama embodied in gorgeous red delicious joy. Nothing the crafty chemical taste people can come up with can ever ever come close. Like everything else the Mama gives you to nourish your body, strawberries also happen to be kick-ass healthy for ya. Strawberries are kisses from the Good Earth.

*About “fat”: I’ve been fat my whole life. Thus, I am more than familiar with the wide (har!) range of terminology for my body type, from the “I’m avoiding the term fat” terms like “large,” “plus-sized,” “rubenesque” and “big-boned” to all the cruel offerings from the inescapably creative masses, such as “lardass,” “blubberbutt,” or the multitude of bovine and porcine references. Of course, all terms for those of us who possess more girth than is socially acceptable are loaded. Yet, in the interest of reclaiming a term that was originally purely biologically descriptive (everybody has fat and eats fat [and should eat fat..it's a basic thing, peeps - you gots to eat fat to live] – some of us have more than others), I like the word FAT. I’m FAT. When I use this term, I often receive kind-hearted horrified looks and frantic comments by well-meaning acquaintances (Oh no! You’re not fat!!!). But I am fat. The difference here is that when I say “I am fat,” I am NOT also saying “I am an ugly, lazy, unhealthy, pathetic piece of shit,” which is what the term “fat” has come to encompass. Which is bullshit. I be fat. That’s all. I am also tall. And have brown hair. (Oh no! You don’t have brown hair! Your hair is just….earth-toned.) Savvy?