Conundrums and Kerfuffles: Clergy Language and the Pagani

Blessings, friends and best beloveds, from the sun-and-frost-light streets of the fiercely-wild urban midwest!  The light is indeed waning.  Y’all – it was dark way before 7pm the other day.  My heart quailed in my chest, but I soldier weirdly on into the shadows, waiting for the lessons of Samhain to pin me down, swallowing the season’s medicine.  The last few posts here at PG have been generally reflective regarding the season – it’s hard to think of much else, honestly.  But, I’d hate to avoid gnarly and ouchy word-wrangles for TOO long…

So and Sew.  There was a quasi-recent conversation on Pantheon, the Pagan blog at Patheos.com that sparked the resurgence of some ongoing thoughts of mine regarding language.  Specifically, the use of Christian language in the pursuit of Pagan culture and expression, in this case in relation to “clergy.”  So…well…I thought I’d talk about that a bit.  However, as these topics sometimes do, I found that it ended up touching on some larger flying-bison-sized issues that have been on my mind…so I decided to write a bit about those too.  Next thing I knew, I had something rather unwieldy on my hands, and I’ve decided to post it anyway.  Saints preserve us.

Now, before I pour myself into this tumbler of trouble, I have a few things to say.  First, I’d like to ask you to dance.  Then, when we’re done shaking a caveat tail-feather and have sat down to a glass of spicy apple cider each, I’d like to say a couple of ridiculously and probably needlessly complicated things, and then I’ll move on to some more ridiculously and probably needlessly complicated things.  I may even contradict myself multiple times in the same post.  It’ll be grand.

(I should warn you that this post is pretty hellaciously long.  I considered chopping it into two or more pieces, but frankly, as each piece seems to me to be intimately tied up in the other, in the end I just decided to leave it as a whole.  If you wish to follow me down this uncomfortable rabbit hole after the jump, then I say: welcome.  Have a cookie and a glass of iced tea – it’s a long way down.)