As I am approaching the first anniversary of stepping onto the Pagan spiritual path, I made a decision several weeks ago (after my Happy Ostara! post) to take a short hiatus from blogging in order to spend substantial time reviewing and reflecting on my spiritual growth over the past year and coming to some decisions about what the best next steps will be for me as I begin my second year of dedication to the Goddess.  I continue to review and plan, (and with a few days off as my school observes the traditionally Catholic practice of spring break following the Christian Easter Sunday, I have more time to sleep, too )  but my curiosity got the better of me today, and I looked at my stats to find that a relative stampede of viewers have made their way to Pagan Dawn in the past few days.

I always find there is a small up-tick in views when I post something new (thank you to the three of you out there who are such faithful readers ), but I hadn’t posted since late March, so my curiosity only increased at the Grand Teton-esque line graph indicating something like 40 or 50 viewers had dropped by over the weekend!  Had I the insightfulness, wit, and gift of language of other Pagan bloggers I read regularly (The Green Witch and Anne Johnson of The Gods are Bored come quickly to mind), I might be tempted to think that the increase in my viewership is due to blog surfers not being able to get enough of my writing, but my style is usually more tortured prose than scintillating poetry.  So . . . what could it be? 

Well . . . I’m not totally sure, but I think it might have something to do with Easter wars.  As you’ll recall if you read my late March post, “Happy Ostara,” I celebrated the arrival of spring at the time of the vernal equinox, and although I still have a lot to learn about Paganism, I understand that most other Pagans/Witches/Wicca celebrate it then, too.  Surprisingly to me, though, as I was catching up on my blog reading, I found a large-ish number of posts by indignant Pagan bloggers addressing the supposed co-opting of Pagan vernal traditions (painted eggs being the real biggie) by Christians who have supposedly morphed them into something associated with the resurrection story.  Another small-but-statistically-significant group of Pagan writers (possibly in an attempt to keep the peace with Christian soldiers??) wrote that really, the origins of celebrations abounding at this time of year are really all too old for any of us to know the absolute truth of, and yes, possibly the Pagan fertility lore and traditions are no older than Christian resurrection celebrations. 

I’m surprised by all of this, not so much because of the content—it’s pretty typical that minority groups of any type will have some members that are militant and others that prefer to appease—but because of the timing of these posts—most were published on the Christian Easter weekend of April 11 and 12.  Wasn’t Easter (Oestara) several weeks ago for us Pagans?  I don’t know about you, but I’m already beginning to look forward to Beltane! 

But content-wise, I guess I’m a little disappointed, too.  When I stepped away from Christianity and toward Paganism, I saw myself as moving toward a culture that accepts and shares with others.  The more we fight for “ownership” of any seasonal celebration, the more likely it is that we will lose any joy and deep meaning it has held for us.  If any of the readers stampeding over to Pagan Dawn last weekend were looking for a Pagan blogger with a bad-ass attitude about Oestara/Easter, I don’t think they found it here.  So I’m probably back to a readership of three now that they’ve seen this site is just one middle-aged woman’s musings about her quite ordinary Pagan life. . .

A little over a week ago, I read in the Seattle Times that Ann Holmes Redding, the Episcopal priest who had been disciplined by her bishop for also adopting Islam, was indeed defrocked for failing to renounce the Muslim faith.  While I am not particularly surprised by this outcome, I wonder if her bishop and faith community were surprised that she did not back down. 

Redding’s story is of ongoing interest to me as I have experienced a certain degree of angst about remaining employed in a Catholic school while adopting Pagan spirituality.  I have no illusions that I could ever openly express my Pagan spirituality where I currently work, but every so often I daydream that I can, if nothing else, become more open with my co-workers about my departure from the Catholic faith I was raised in.  However, in light of the outcome for Redding as well as other situations that are popping up in my school, I understand that I must reveal nothing if I expect to retain my job, which I do need in order to maintain my financial stability.

But I am writing this to focus not so much on me or even on Redding.  I have no doubt that Redding will come out of this all right in all the ways that matter.  It appears that her faith in the God of Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammed has not been destroyed; indeed, it may be stronger for having been tested in this way.  And the number of Redding admirers and supporters has probably grown as we observed the dignified way she dealt with her faith community and the Episcopal hierarchy as her story continued to unfold publicly.  If I feel sorry for anybody as a result of the decision by Redding’s bishop, however, my sorrow is for the regular Episcopal church-going folk who have learned as a result of this that their God is narrow-minded and exclusionary.

Recently, I had a chance to hear Ann Holmes Redding speak about her decision to embrace Islam. If you have been reading my blog for the past few months, you may recall that I wrote a previous post about Redding, an Epicscopal priest who is in the process of being de-frocked for her commitment to Islam.  She has maintained that she can be both a Christian and a Muslim; the powers-that-be in the Episcopal Church have obviously decided she cannot. 

Her story resonates with me because of my own situation—having been a seeker over the past several years for a fuller and more fulfilling spirituality than that of the Catholicism I have practiced virtually all my adult life, I have within the past year embraced Paganism, but I am (at least for the time being) in the closet due to my ongoing employment at a Catholic school.

So, wanting to know more about Redding, when I learned that she would be speaking at a nearby Unitarian Universalist congregation, I decided to be in the congregation that day.  As she shared her story with the assembly, the following three ideas stuck with me particularly . . .

• The Abrahamic religions are a “dysfunctional brotherhood” (I couldn’t help thinking at the time, if it were more of a sisterhood, maybe they would be more functional . . . J)
• The anger Redding has encountered in others in her quest to express her spirituality more fully actually has fear at its core.  I imagine those who seek or support Redding’s de-frocking see Redding’s spirituality as an electric light bulb that must either be on or off in one room at a time, when in reality her spirituality is a candle flame, and she could share the flame of her faith life with other candles (Islam, Unitarianism, etc.) while still that Episcopal flame could remain as brightly lit as always.  How sad it is that others are seeking to snuff the Episcopal flame out.  Definitely their loss.
• I was impressed by Redding’s calm resoluteness in the face of this situation.  I got the feeling that her spiritual journey has been quite similar to mine, and while I am not exactly comforted by the probable outcome of her situation (I imagine myself being fired if it were ever to become public knowledge at my school that I have embraced worship of the Goddess), I see in Redding a model to emulate in terms of not allowing others to intimidate me out of a spirituality that is personally fulfilling.

As I alluded to in my last post before this one, there are some unsettled aspects to my life just now—some due to deliberate choices I have made recently, others that are not under my direct control.  If any of these situations come to an unpleasant head, I will definitely need the kind of “soft strength” I saw in Ann Holmes Redding.

I have not posted recently for several reasons; I’ve been sick during the last two weekends (at this time of the year I tend to think of a school building as a giant petri dish . . .), I’ve been doing the usual 10 to 12 hour days in my job as a teacher, and I have been doing quite a bit of reading on Paganism and thinking about what I have read in light of a local news report I read last week about the imminent defrocking of an Episcopal priest.  The Episcopalians have had a fair amount of press over the past several years, mostly due to the elevation to the level of bishop of a couple of priests who happen to be gay.  But the priest I am writing about today is not gay and not a male.  Her name is Ann Holmes Redding, and she is an Episcopal priest who has also recently started practicing Islam.  Perhaps you have read about Redding; if not, you might want to glance at this article which appeared last week in The Seattle Times. 

The reason I am thinking so hard about this is that I have been reading Paganism:  An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions by Joyce and River Higgenbotham, and as I have read I have been struck repeatedly by the feeling of rightness about how I am growing spiritually just now through my embrace of Paganism.  My journey on this path is the result of feeling that the face of the Deity that I was taught about during my years as a Catholic is just one small aspect of the Divine Force.  I have embraced Paganism in order to see the face of the Divine from other angles.  I imagine that Ann Holmes Redding’s embrace of Islam in addition to her practice as an Episcopal priest is a result of similar feelings—a longing to know more than just the face of Deity worshipped by Christians.  And look where it has got her.

In my more optimistic moments I dream of a day when I can be open with my family, my friends, and my co-workers about my spiritual journey into Paganism.  But when I hear of stories like Redding’s I am quite disheartened.  I’m sure some would say that if that’s the way the Episcopal Church treats Redding, she’s better off being defrocked.  I just think it’s terribly sad that Christianity—a faith that really is quite beautiful in some ways—is used by some as a game of political control.   Ann Holmes Redding is a woman who truly has the courage of her convictions.  I wonder, when moments for revealing “the new me” present themselves, will I be as courageous as she is?