A year ago, I couldn’t really imagine when I’d be out of the broom closet to my family.  I didn’t want them thinking that I’d gone off the deep end or was even having a mid-life crisis, so I tried to be very circumspect in my attempts to learn about and put my pagan beliefs into practice.  I guess I’ve been quite successful, because my husband and kids all know now that I consider myself to be pagan, and I think they’re all quite comfortable with it. 

This is probably why I have been posting much less frequently—a year ago I definitely needed the outlet of this blog as basically my only means of communication about my thoughts and feelings, but now that I can be more free with my words and actions around home, I’ve needed to blog less and less.  I did, in fact, come to the point about a month ago of considering taking my blog down, but I’ve decided to keep it here for the foreseeable future so that anyone else out there who is going through what I went through spiritually over the last year or two may find my posts and find some emotional support. 

I also intend to continue posting here, although I think the subject matter may become more diverse and time is always an issue September-June due to my workload during those months.  As I will continue to teach in a Catholic school over the next year, I am sure there will be interactions with students, co-workers, and the boss that I’ll want to reflect on here.  And as I continue to study and forge ahead on this spiritual path, I know that I will want to continue using this blog as a record of my journey.

One of the books I purchased on a recent book-buying binge was The Circle Within by Dianne Sylvan. I ordered through Amazon and so had to wait a few days before my shipment arrived in the mail. Meantime, I was feeling starved for good reading on Pagan spirituality, so I went to the library and checked out a couple of popular books on the topic that I had not yet read. The only one I’ll mention by name is The Practical Pagan by Dana Eilers because I found the information in this book to be just what the title promises—practical. Because Eilers is a lawyer, her focus, for much of the book, is how to avoid legal trouble and still have a fulfilling spiritual life. Kind of depressing to think that in the 21st century there are still uninformed types out there who believe Pagans are Satan-worshippers who practice human sacrifice, but Eilers’ book makes it abundantly clear that religious intolerance is alive and well and possibly living where you are.

I am not going to give the title of the second book I borrowed from the library because it is just really awful. I will say that it is by a popular and prolific writer on Witchcraft whom readers seem to either love or hate. And even though I thought while leafing through it at the library that it wasn’t totally my kind of book, I wanted to read it and make my own decision about this author’s work. I’ve always been an avid reader and when I was younger, I never entertained the thought of not finishing a book I had started. At midlife, though, I have begun to realize how precious time is, and I made a promise to myself that I would not finish books I hated reading. This one definitely qualifies, so back it goes, unfinished, to the library!

Happily for me, my book order has arrived, and if the rest of the books are anything like The Circle Within (which I delved into immediately—it’s been on my to-read list for a long time!), I will say I don’t regret a single penny of what I spent! Now, if you’ve read through my older posts, you will know that I am a former Catholic turned Pagan. I’ve been pretty open about the angst I sometimes feel because I teach in a Catholic school and, having undergone a change of spirituality that would definitely not find favor with the higher-ups, I am in the broom closet rather more than I’d like to be.

What I haven’t been quite so open about is the fact that sometimes I mourn my loss of Catholic faith, for there were times in years past that I experienced deep emotional fulfillment when participating in Catholic liturgy, reading Scripture, or just praying on my own. Even in the face of some aspects of Catholic theology and some of the positions taken by Church officials that made me squirm, this satisfaction with my personal practice of Catholicism is what kept me going. So when I finally, officially walked away from Catholicism a year ago, I felt bereft in some ways.

And here, at last, is where The Circle Within comes in. In the first chapter of this book, Dianne Sylvan goes to some lengths to describe her own spiritual journey, including what she has learned about being spiritually alive by adopting some of the attitudes and engaging in some of the practices of Catholic (and Buddhist) nuns and monks. I just had this great sense of comfort and relief after reading the first chapter of this book that I didn’t need to throw the baby out with the bath water. My theology may have changed, but my spirituality and spiritual practice are alive and well. I can disagree with Catholic theology while at the same time admiring and continuing some of the practices of Catholics (and really all people) who are truly spiritually alive.

If you’ve read my last few posts, you’ll recall that L. and I had agreed to get together for an Imbolc ritual at the beginning of February.  As the time we agreed upon approached, she laid out in general terms how she thought our ritual should go, and I very much appreciated her taking the lead since she has a much longer history of Pagan practice than I do, and at that point I was feeling quite unsure of myself—not about my belief, but about my ability to plan and undertake a meaningful ritual.  And so the day arrived, we met at the agreed upon location, she led, I followed, and . . . it didn’t really work for me. *sigh*

I’ve spent some time pondering why, and I don’t think it’s any one thing, but just a little bit of several things.  Although we are both ex-Catholics who have stepped onto the Pagan path, that path is rather wide and we are pretty far apart in terms of our individual focuses.  Her practice tends to be influenced by Native American spirituality, and mine . . . is not.   I also think I was feeling pretty self-conscious about not wanting to seem like such a novice, but that just led me to holding back emotionally during our ritual.  In purely practical terms, I think I had difficulties because we were outside on a bitterly cold day and we didn’t move enough to stay warm.  So my goals, as I prepare for our Ostara ritual are to reflect on the “flavor” I would like to bring to it, to loosen up enough to become more emotionally involved in it, and to either plan it for a day of warmer weather or to dress more warmly.  J  Stay tuned.

Otherwise, things are looking up in my spiritual life.  I have been to more Pagan events—even heard Starhawk speak at the Women of Wisdom conference last week!  And my husband and I just wrapped up our umpteenth home improvement project, after which I conducted a ceremony to bless our re-configured space so that I would feel spiritually comfortable in it.  I am happy to report that the blessing ceremony I wrote and carried out was not bad, and when I am in our new space, I do get a feeling of peace and goodness.

When I met with L. a couple weeks ago, I told her I feared I might lose my job if anyone I work with found out that I have become a pagan.  At first, the likelihood of this was not very great—I was quite comfortable as a solitary practitioner for awhile.  But more recently, I have developed a desire to get out and meet other pagans and hopefully find a teacher or group with whom I can gain more practical ritual/worship experience.  The more I wanted this, the more anxious I became about my job—word of who-saw-whom-where-doing-what gets around in the most unlikely ways in circles I move and live in.

But my need to move forward outweighed my anxiety about my job, so I started taking some baby steps out of the closet a few months ago, and then last week, I attended my first full-fledged, call-it-what-it-is pagan event.  And I’m happy to report I’m still employed and the sky hasn’t fallen. J

I had been dreading going back into the classroom this year.  It was over the past spring that I had finally adopted the label “Pagan” to describe myself spiritually, but at that point, I had acknowledged it to myself and no one else.  I spent much of late spring time and my summer break from teaching to explore my newly adopted spiritual identity.  With loads of time that I could call my own each day, I read books on Pagan spirituality and history that were stimulating and challenging, I worked in my garden, I started this blog, I walked and worked out regularly, I observed Lammas, and . . . I became preoccupied about whether I could return to my teaching job.  You see, although I have stepped onto the Pagan spiritual path, I still teach in a Catholic school, and I am bound by contract to uphold Catholic teachings and to be a model of Catholic living to my students.

Although I had already gone through a period of spiritual barrenness that had lasted several years, I had—up to last spring—continued to consider myself Catholic.  During those barren years I just went through the motions of attending Mass but doing little else to bolster any Catholic belief I might still have had.  And as I look back on it now, I am not entirely sure of what moment and what incident it was that was pivotal in bringing me to the full, conscious realization that I had found the Goddess.  But whatever it was, when I acknowledged to myself what I was feeling, it was as if I finally realized I had been holding my breath and could at last exhale.  At first, I felt exhilarated.  It was like a new romantic relationship—a crush, if you will.  I wasn’t concerned with anything beyond spending time together and getting to know as much as possible about my new lover.

As I grew in understanding over weeks of intense learning and spiritual reflection, I was sometimes overwhelmed by the beauty of my unfolding relationship with the Goddess, and I realized I did not want to keep it secret any longer, so at an appropriate moment I told my husband.  Happily for me, he not only accepted my revelation, he has embraced it to a large degree by encouraging me to take the time I need to celebrate and to continue learning. 

And so for a short while, it was easy to push aside any thoughts of my impending return to teaching in a Catholic school classroom, but as July turned to August and I began doing some of the mundane tasks associated with preparing for another year of teaching, I started to ruminate over that contract I had signed in the spring.  Could I truly uphold Catholic teachings and model Catholic living and still be spiritually true to myself?  To return to the romantic relationship analogy for a moment, it felt in some ways as if the school I work for would be the sugar daddy that would provide me a regular paycheck—how far would I have to forsake my lover to maintain that financial security?

As it turns out so far, it has been easier than I expected it would be for me to resume teaching in a Catholic setting for four main reasons:

 I really like teaching in general—it’s challenging and intellectually stimulating.

I like the subject matter I teach.  I haven’t taught religion for a number of years, so I don’t have any conflict there. 

I really like the other teachers I work with.  We may not be on precisely the same page spiritually right now, but many of them do have active Catholic spiritual lives, and I respect them for that.  My respect for them in this regard has always been there, but it has been fed and supported by my recent reading of the book Pagan Spirituality by Joyce and River Higganbottham, which goes into great detail in explaining various “levels” of spirituality.  I saw a lot in this book that could be applied not only to Pagans but to people of many other belief systems as well.

I realized that even if I do eventually seek employment in a non-religious school, public or private, I am a fairly private person, so I would still keep my spiritual life separate from my professional life.

I had actually found it more difficult to teach in a Catholic school over the last few years—during my period of spiritual barrenness—than I do now that I am on the Pagan spiritual path, and since I am a solitary practitioner of Paganism right now, I am tempted to just let things lie as they are.  But I can see that there will come a time, and it may be sooner than I think, that I will want to engage in group rituals or do some more formalized learning with a teacher, which would mean that I would need to become more publicly Pagan than I am just now.  I live in a fairly small, tight-knit community within a large city, and I would just feel more at ease about coming out as a Pagan if the terms of my employment contract did not include modeling and upholding the Catholic faith.  So although my immediate dilemma has been resolved, I am now looking more seriously at teaching jobs in non-religious settings.  Who knows?  Maybe 8 months from now I will be posting an entry here about my impending new position!  As it is right now, I am feeling a lot less anxious about it all than I was a month ago.

I’m a great fan of National Public Radio and our local affiliate, KUOW 94.9, for a number of reasons, not the least of which are the programs The Splendid Table with Lynne Rosetto Kasper and Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion (both from American Public Media) as well as This American Life with Ira Glass and To The Point with Warren Olney (both from Public Radio International).  In addition, both NPR and KUOW provide top-notch, in-depth reporting, including work for NPR’s national desk by highly respected journalist, author, and Wiccan priestess Margot Adler! 

But what inspires me to bring up NPR/KUOW today is retired Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl and her frequent talks on KUOW that come under the heading “Book Lust.”  She has also produced at least four books—the first of which was titled (of course) Book Lust–on reading “for every mood, moment, and reason.”  She is an absolutely passionate reader, and I’m bringing her up today because I have recently reconnected with my passion for reading via a stack of excellent books on the history and practice of neo-paganism. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, I worked my way through Ronald Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon and when I say “work” I mean WORK!  It was some of the most challenging reading I have done in years, but definitely worth all the effort, as it provides a detailed history of the growth of neo-paganism (mostly in Great Britain, although there was one chapter devoted to some of the key personal and professional relationships between British and American developers/practitioners of paganism and witchcraft).  It is based on an absolute plethora of research of many primary sources and presented in a very even-handed way.  If you are willing to exercise your mental muscles a bit in order to gain a very detailed understanding of neo-paganism in Great Britain and the U.S., I would highly recommend Triumph of the Moon.

Prior to reading Hutton’s book, I devoured When God Was A Woman by Merlin Stone.  Shorter than Hutton’s book and somewhat less scholarly in tone, it nonetheless did an excellent job, I felt, of arguing that interpretation of evidence of goddess religions of the distant past was biased due to the fact that most researchers in the 18^th and 19^th centuries were males operating in a Judeo-Christian, male-centric academic atmosphere.  Stone points out that the term cult, which has very negative connotations, was frequently used by those scholars in connection with goddess-based religions, while the less pejorative term “religion” was more often employed to describe the male-dominant belief systems of old.   Stone also does a fascinating take (with some conjecture on her part, I think) on the Bible as a history of the conquest of goddess-worshipping peoples by the descendents of Abraham.  Although this book doesn’t seem as meticulously researched as Triumph of the Moon, I consider the time I spent reading it worthwhile in that it affirmed and expanded my understanding of the feminine aspects of divinity. 

Since finishing those two books one at a time, I have begun reading four other books simultaneously:  Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon, Joyce and River Higginbotham’s Pagan Spirituality, Scott Cunningham’s Wicca-A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, and A Witch Alone:  Thirteen Moons to Master Natural Magic by Marian Green.  A Witch Alone lends itself to being read a little bit at a time—each of the thirteen chapters is meant to be read and followed up with activities and journaling that would ideally be done over the course of one lunar cycle, and Scott Cunningham’s Guide seems to be more of a resource book than a read-it-straight-through type of book.  I’ve looked at enough of all four of these books to more or less safely say I would recommend them to others wanting to know the basics of neo-paganism.  I’ve also received, through comments on my previous post, suggestions for one or two other books that sound like must-reads, but I’m not complaining about the growing size of my reading list—I love this feeling of book lust!

With so many worthwhile books to read, I really wish there were more hours in the day, but I’m afraid I’ll have to make do with the typical 24 . . . but really, not even that, as I have started transitioning back into my life as a middle school teacher.  These last several weeks, with oodles of time to read, reflect, and attempt a ritual or two, work in the garden and kitchen, and get enough sleep each night have been a glorious time of learning and personal reflection for me, and even though I’ll probably have to start cutting back to reading just a page or two each evening before hitting the sheets, I’m determined not to drop the ball, the books, or the blog completely. J

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. . .).