This is the post I had originally intended to follow my intro post.  It’s the one in which I attempt to make some sense for myself of what works for me out of the many ways Pagans think about and interact with the Divine.  Coming from a Catholic background and having a pretty analytical mindset in general, often I try to categorize and tidy things up too much.  But during my recent months of exploring Paganism, I have found delight in discovering that there is no such thing as neat and tidy in describing many Pagans’ spirituality.   There’s a bumper sticker I’ve seen every so often that says something like “My karma ran over your dogma,” which, years ago, I found to be merely a clever play on words.  Now that I am a recovering Catholic walking the Pagan path, I see the sentiment in a whole new light, and with a little editing I have (figuratively speaking) pasted that bumper sticker on my consciousness.  In my mind it now says, “My karma ran over your MY dogma,” a little reminder to myself that I am no longer constrained by institutional rules for being in touch with the Divine, while at the same time acknowledging that other spiritual paths (including Catholicism–I know many wonderful Catholics!) are right for some others.

So, I know what I have departed from (Catholicism), but I’m not as sure I’ve arrived anywhere else yet.  I find this both unsettling and exhilarating.  At times in my earlier years, I took great comfort and pride in knowing Catholic theology and practice well enough to teach it (I am a former Catholic school religion teacher), but now, as I enter middle age, I am seeing things in a different way.  I’m tempted to call it my midlife crisis, except that this has such negative connotations.  I’ve heard that the Chinese ideogram “crisis” is made up of two other ideograms meaning “danger” and “opportunity.”  (According to a University of Pennsylvania professor of Chinese language and literature, however, this is not really accurate, nor is the use of “ideogram” really correct in referring to Chinese characters.  For more information, please see http://www.pinyin.info/chinese/crisis.html .)  Regardless of whether or not the Chinese character for crisis actually conveys a sense of opportunity, I see my own midlife spiritual crisis as being a time of opportunity.

I see that I’ve wandered pretty far afield from my original intent, which was to try to give some sort of definition or description of my spiritual location.  I know that if I wrap this post up without having done that, I will either be preoccupied by it while doing other things, or I soon will be back at my computer doing another post on it anyway, so to meet my own need for efficiency (I have a lot to do today!), I am going to finish up by describing my location right now in the Pagan world as solitary and eclectic but with leanings toward hedgecraft.  I see Divine Energy in every aspect of nature, and I  view my body as a temple of Divine Energy (admittedly, a temple, which at this point needs more nurturing–but that is a subject for another post. . .).

I imagined that my first “post-introduction” post would be something of a Paganism 101-type thing so as to help myself (and any other baby Pagan who wanders by my blog) figure out just where I am and where I seem to be heading along the Pagan path.  But as I was working in my vegetable garden today, I started to think about the lettuces I was harvesting.  As I tugged each leaf away from the base of its plant, I thought about the energy (both mine and the Divine) that went into growing it all.  Then I started to wonder how much longer I could expect to be able to harvest from these plants before they start bolting in the glorious summer warmth that is here in the Pacific Northwest at last.  On the heels of that thought, I began to muse about the cycles in nature.  Jumbled in with all of that was a thought about a post I had read somewhere recently (gee, I guess I’m going to have to get better at marking these things so that I can link to them in my posts) regarding the ethics of meat-eating for Pagans.  The gist of the post, as best I can remember, was that meat eating didn’t seem to be in line with Pagan reverence for all life.  So then I continued to think about whether what I was doing at the time (disconnecting lettuce leaves from their source of life) showed reverence for life, and what I came up with (this is going to sound trite, I know) is that my family and I are life forms that need nourishing, too.   Not only that, but we enjoy a little meat, fish, or fowl every now and then.   

I guess some arguments Pagans make against eating meat might have some validity, especially those that focus on the amount of meat we Americans tend to eat (often way too much) or the gruesome conditions many animals bred for our eventual consumption are kept in.  But objection to meat eating simply on the basis that it shows a lack of reverence for some forms of life is a false argument, in my opinion.  For assuredly, the lettuce leaves I harvested and my own body are just as imbued with Divine energy as the animals which contribute to my omnivorous diet.

What does a middle-aged cradle Catholic do when she finds Roman Catholicism no longer works for her (if it ever did), but she still feels spiritual yearnings?  She ignores them for as long as possible, begins losing quite a lot of sleep, starts lurking around religion and spirituality websites, and eventually determines that substituting another “flavor” of Christianity won’t work any better for her than Catholicism did.  That was me a few years ago.  Of course, there’s much more to the tale than that, but I think this will suffice as an introduction to who I am. As to what this blog will be about, well . . .I’ve finally stopped plugging my ears and instead started to listen intently when the Goddess whispers.  She has much to say to me, I believe, and yet I hope she takes a bit of pity on me and understands that I am still very much a baby seeker on the path of Pagan spirituality.  This blog will be my way to keep track of what I’m learning as I enter and embrace the Pagan world.