Pagan Godspell

Happy November, beloveds!  I am back in the pretty-crazy-wild urban midwest, working to absorb the lessons of Samhain and struggling with the evening darkness that looms over me each day earlier than before.  This is a testing time, this particular movement in the year’s symphony – last year, freshly planted in urban climes and holed up in my almost completely empty apartment (for various reasons, my intrepid spouse and I were not able to retrieve our belongings from storage for several months), my ankle thoroughly broken and my hobbling about consistently frustrating and exhausting… well I admit, I may have been adversely influenced in my assessment of the winter season here in my new digs.  This year, I am trying again, crying mercy to that most terrible and glorious Mother Night, making offerings and prayers to Her, great laughing redheaded calavera, in hopes She will pull back the heavy curtain of winter once in a while to reveal its blooms and gifts in the shadows and the naked rose canes, in the white bees that swarm in the dusty lavender sky, that I might know both Her faces this time around.

In the meantime, though, I haven’t been sleeping well.  I don’t tell you this to beg sympathy from you, dear friends, but merely as an opening into today’s subject, which in the wee hours gave me something to ponder, the creaky gears in my brain whirling away when they should have been at rest.

In the face of the advent of the world’s freezing…I was thinking about compassion.  And forgiveness.  And kindness.

More, I was thinking about why, in my experience (*tappity* caveat *tappity*), the Pagani don’t tend to discuss theologies that posit these items with any fervor, seeming to favor worldviews and value systems that laud the rugged individual (I will be the first to say that this may be an impression with no basis in fact and I’d be absolutely willing to change my mind).  What evidence do I have for this?  Well, truthfully, not much that would pass any scientific test… 20+ years of conversation, our noted dearth of any cohesive organized charity organizations/projects, and a seminary education where I suddenly felt vaulted into a culture that talked about this stuff a LOT…so much so that our lack thereof became rather illuminated.  No, I’m not saying that Christians are more virtuous than we are.  I am saying that they talk about compassion, forgiveness, love, agape, charity, feeding people, fellowship, and grace more than I perceive we do, and my fellow seminarians, liberal bleeding-heart radical-Jesus-following folks for the most part, were talking a talk that I liked, and that I think has a place in our own libereal bleeding-heart, radical-earth-based, polytheist, Mama-loving communities (yes, I know Pagans are not all liberals and radicals and tree-huggers and anarchists and communitarians and soup-kitchen volunteers and feminists….yes, I’m aware of this fact…but let’s just say that I’m one of those kinds of folks, and chances might be good that if you dig my blog, you might be at least shakin’ hands with these types, if’n yer not one yerself).  I think there are probably a LOT of reasons for these perceived differences – as ever, it’s complicated…but I suppose I better plow on anyway or I may never sleep again.

So, another good question might be, if what I perceive is even remotely true, where do I think this comes from?  Well, as I mentioned in a previous post, I think this is a hallmark of our American culture in general….radical individualism and all that (I know, I say that a little too often….luckily, a very smart person has made this short film explaining exactly what I mean by it……what actual community might mean to me in opposition to this big individualist demon I keep evoking….’nother time).  I wonder if the gestalt of America isn’t possibly essentially libertarian along these lines, and it’s safe to say that I think extreme capitalist libertarianism/individualism (and its sometimes sidekick, extreme postmodernism/relativism) is a road best left untraveled.  “Looking out for Numero Uno” is, in my most un-humble opinion, simply antithetical to the human endeavor.

Additionally, sometimes I think we Pagani try real hard to distance ourselves from anything that smacks of Abrahamic monotheism.  And while I personally think that this is, first, a kind of silly way to go about establishing an identity/culture/faith system (i.e., an identity based solely on what one is *not* is not a functional identity), and, second, involves a lot of babies being thrown out with a lot of admittedly stinky bathwater, and third, actually impossible….that’s probably yet another post altogether.  Somewhere along the line there, I *was* going to talk about theologies of compassion, gratitude, forgiveness and love.

First, I do understand why we’re so turned off by the vast majority of creamy, extra-bubbly new-agey “spirituality” that touts so-called “compassion” and “gratitude” (and sells lots of scented pillar candles) within a capitalist cultural context so shallow that the words lose all their meaning.  It’s commercial.  It’s false.  It’s insulting.  This kind of pap is usually coming from folks who are also peddling “positive thinking,” a cultural trend that I was recently blazingly thrilled to see one of my favorite thinkers, Barbara Ehrenreich, take to the carpet in her latest book Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (a much much needed and about time too kind of book…I recommend it highly).  After years of being told to have “an attitude of gratitude” in response to personal tragedy*, and to “think positively” in the face of misfortune and suffering (implying of course that your inability to heal miraculously or achieve financial success in the face of overwhelming obstacles is simply the natural and deserved result of being a Negative Nancy….the same bullshit found in The Secret, of which, you’ll recall, I am not overfond), it comes as no surprise that people would look with suspicion at “compassion,” “gratitude,” “kindness” etc., and rightly so…the words themselves seem to have become little more than bumper-sticker fodder.

I also get how some of the prevalent mainstream theologies of our day that do give lip service to the importance of forgiveness and kindness are often borne out of a parent theology that infantilizes people and robs them of personal agency and responsibility.  This kind of “forgiveness” can become either a perpetual excuse for folks who have no plans to change themselves for the better on one side, or a reason to grovel before a choosy, judgmental god, who metes out tiny parcels of mercy seemingly according to his moody whim, and who enjoys watching you squirm in agony, lowly worm that you are, on the other.  Either one of these is unconscionable to me.  Interestingly enough, we might also be told by similar theologies to live up to standards that we don’t even reserve for god.  Feeling obligated to forgive someone when you simply cannot do so is a perfect recipe for self-inflicted mental suffering.  And being told to love all people unconditionally all the time is, frankly, an unreasonably high bar for a bunch of emotional, beautiful, fragile, mortal animals.  But also note that love is different than permissiveness.  Something else to ponder.  Authentic balance (“balance”…another overused word in our times, but somehow still completely elusive) is hard. And out of the exhausted afterglow of theological gymnastics…then what?  Well, mysticism, usually.  To cleave: a word that means both itself and its opposite.  Love that is all encompassing, all forgiving, all consuming, all embracing and unconditional….yet comes with expectations, challenges, and hopes.  Love that demands dedication and personal examination….the same Love that forgives you when you fail.  Remarkable.

What I think I’m trying to say is that I think it is possible to construct a meaningful, authentic, dynamic theology that embraces both personal agency/responsibility, as well as grace, forgiveness, kindness, and love, requiring the flexibility to change given new circumstances and new information, but with an eye towards the richness of tradition.  What does it look like on the ground?  It looks like feeding people and making sacrifices in order to help others and preserve relationship, while still maintaining a healthy level of self-awareness and boundary-integrity.  It looks like making a conscious choice to forgive others for stupid small things, like the person who cut you off in traffic, or the hairdresser who implied that your pre-cut hair resembled a mullet.  It looks like forgiving yourself for mistakes, while also learning from them, and vetting yourself against an evolving code of ethics, personal and communal.  It looks like thinking about each person you encounter as a complex, feeling, thinking creature.  It requires thinking like an actor, an artist, a writer, a storyteller, a ritualist.  Lucky for us, we are all these things, innately.  A politics of compassion and forgiveness and love is a politics of real down and dirty life – beautiful and awful at once…neither the saccharine and shallow Joel Osteen brand of new-age capitalist prosperity pablum, nor flesh-denigrating, Other-hating, agency-robbing, oppressive nonsense.  Like good art, most folks just know it when they see it.  The real.  The real mess.  Forever and ever.  Cookies and milk.  Bread and wine.  Peanut butter in my chocolate and chocolate in my peanut butter.  Amen.

What does this mean?  I’m not sure.  Every time I open my yap, a million other questions spring to mind.  I think a theology/politics of compassion easily arises out of a Pagan worldview – out of a belief in rootedness, in being connected and aware of the planet, in real, working relationships, and a desire to preserve and celebrate Beauty.  And certainly, I see a lot of people living this every day, struggling with the heart of it.  So maybe it’s not really that I believe that Pagans don’t operate out of a theology of compassion, but that we simply don’t articulate it very often.  I’m not sure.

What I am sure about, at least, is that challah tastes good.  Especially with a vanilla glaze.  And that in the first week of November, when the nights are flush with an unexpected warmth so much so that even the stars seem to pulse brighter with a seasonal laughing pre-winter joy, I can feel the innate prophecy of the world’s turning in every snap of leaves beneath my feet.  And that the dawn will make all things new.

*Whatever happened to mourning?  Used to be so important they hired professionals to help out.  Now we’re told to move on, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, smile, and fake it ’til we make it.  Guh!  Leave me and my ashes and my sackcloth alone.  Mourning, I will now and forever maintain, is important.  Death is holy, and things hurt.  Have a little respect for the gravity of Life.