Pagan values: the sanctity of the earth

If you had to find one value that the majority of Pagans would identify as a Pagan value, the sanctity of the earth might be it. For many Pagans, this value is central to our spirituality.

Some say that the earth is the Goddess and don't mean that metaphorically (some do). Many subscribe to something like the Gaia hypothesis, which posits that the earth itself not only houses living beings but is a living being itself. Many say that we find the gods in nature. Pagans tend to be animists, believing that even things like trees, rocks, and mountains have a kind of soul, spirit or consciousness. Many if not most contemporary Pagans believe that the earth is holy and has instrinsic value.

In keeping with this value, Pagans strive to live in right relationship with the earth and her creatures. We invoke the ideas of balance and right relationship and reject models of dominance. We may practice permaculture, buy organic foods, garden organically, strive to live sustainably, belong to conservationist groups and land trusts, advocate rights or protections for animals, or shelter and rescue domestic animals. Most of the Pagans I know are involved in one or more of these practical, earth-honoring activities.

Our rituals often take place out of doors, and even when they take place indoors, we often invoke and honor nature, the earth, or earth spirits and guardians. Many Pagans honor the old agricultural cycles and the phases of the moon. We practice grounding ourselves and our energy, and we value the particular places where we live. One Witch I know says he can't sleep well if he doesn't know the land.

Some conservative Christians make the disingenuous mistake that all environmentalists are Pagans. Of course that isn't true; one can value nature, animals, trees, habitat, and the wild without practicing Paganism. But Pagan religions are the only ones I know that make concern for the earth a central spiritual value.

Surely the image of earth as Mother arose in cultures where there was less separation from the land than in ours, and where breastfeeding children was the norm. The way that a human mother gives of herself for her child, providing nourishment and care, fulfilling the needs of early life, mut have struck our ancestors as analogous to the way the earth provides us with water, food, medicine, shelter.

In right relationship, we love the One who sustains us, as She sustains us with her love. Blessed be.

So what makes those Pagan values?

I think my five favorite Pagan values are in fact Pagan, even if not every Pagan holds them, and even if non-Pagans hold (some of) them. Why? Because they're values that arise from (many kinds of) contemporary Pagan spiritual practice. And while they're not uniquely Pagan values, strictly speaking, they are values that other religions I know of don't hold as spiritual values. So these values are intrinsic to the way I practice my religion and to my spiritual life, but they're not intrinsic, as far as I know, to other religions or spiritual practices.

That's my rough-and-ready definition of what makes something a Pagan value.

Pagan values, a brief introduction

June 2009 is International Pagan Values Blogging Month. Well, twist my arm and hold the baby (or, er, vice versa). My undergraduate and graduate training were in philosophy with specializations in ethics and feminism. Though I'm a recovering academic, I still care deeply about value and can wax pedantic with the best of them. I'll try to avoid that in a series of short posts (you can't hold the baby for that long) about my favorite Pagan values, ethical and non-. I'm optimistic about this being a series because Adonis is taking the week of from work, so I'll be holding the baby less than all the time.

So to begin, a list of my favorite Pagan values:

1. sanctity of the earth
2. immanence of the divine
3. pleasure and beauty
4. (re)enchantment
5. healing

Available: freelance Pagan priestess

Women are more likely than men to be religious. When women belong to a particular culture, tradition, or faith, they're more likely to be conservative about that culture, tradition, or faith (or so I think I've read; I remember it surprised me). Women--usually mothers--often play the role of cultural conservator: I think of mothers lighting shabbas candles; mothers cooking big holiday meals, sending cards, buying gifts, remembering birthdays; grandmothers attending Mass every day. Women don't often hold positions of power in religious hierarchy (though that started to change with the second wave of feminism), but they most often do the day-to-day religious work in a culture.

In Wicca, of course, especially those strains of Wicca influenced by feminism, women hold spiritual authority. (This is something of a truism, but my own experience suggests a pretty firm divide between feminist-inflected Wicca and other, more traditionally male-centered Wicca; I don't think the public face of Wicca is as feminist or female-friendly as one might expect from a Goddess-centered spirituality.) Also, since Paganisms are relatively new, historically, and often improvisational and ad hoc, and since they seem to attract seekers with anarchist or countercultural sympathies, many Pagans don't set much store by tradition. (Obviously there are exceptions, but even traditionalist Pagans don't have that many years of tradition to uphold; and Reconstructionists are, you know, reconstructing, which involves much faithfully making things up.)

I think a lot about what it means, as a woman and now a mother, to serve the Goddess, and what it means to be called to a kind of clergy-like service in a faith that has no clergy (and that some would argue should have no clergy; please forgive a new mother for not looking up all the links; I think Kerr Cuhulain made an argument to that effect recently). I think about how I want to practice my faith now that I have a child. Can I still slack off on some of the sabbats? (Pagan true confession: I never manage much for Beltane.) How will I get my child a spiritual education? (Join the UU church? Develop a curriculum for Pagan SunDay School, as one non-Pagan friend suggested I do?) Is spiritual community even more important now, and is a specifically Wiccan/Pagan/earthwise community important? How do I rustle up one of those?

In short, what does it mean to be a religious conservator and innovator within my family?

What does it mean to be a freelance priestess in my wider community? For we Pagani a sense of place--of the very earth under our feet--is important, but there aren't a whole lot of Pagans in my place. I image playing a role something like a public monastic; I imagine tending a temple and playing a visible role in a wider community. I'm a solid celebrant, though I usually have to create my own occasions and invite people to celebrate with me. But I imagine that my public role might be more counselor and healer. I'm also an excellent teacher--really, it's one of the things I do best, though I've been several years without a classroom or students.

In short, I have vision, skills, training, and interest, but I don't know how or what to manifest.

I remain open to Her call. The changes in my life in the past year alone have been tremendous. I'm incredibly blessed. I just wonder if I need to be taking more assertive action. I don't want to miss out. Yet the message I get so often is, be patient and wait.

So I turn these ideas over in my mind, I listen, and I wait.

Thoughts on healing: caring and bearing witness

It could be a tenet of Wicca (but it's not, since Wicca tends toward tenetlessness) that Witches Heal. Though we often speak as though healing is something we do for another person, as in a doctor healing her patient, in fact we can only heal ourselves. I can care for another person and provide some conditions for healing, but only he heals himself. Similarly, and of concern to many Pagans, we cannot heal the earth; but we can care for the earth and provide conditions under which it will thrive and heal itself.

One of the most important things we can do as healers is to bear witness: to hold a non-judgmental but discerning space for the person or being who is healing. We need to be able to discern what would help them (an action, a holding, a medicine, a clean needle, a kind word, a pointed observation, a touch), but we cannot sit in judgment, for judgment limits and constrains where healing needs room for natural expansion and contraction. Bearing witness means being able to see things as they are, not as we wish they would be, and to "hold space" compassionately for whatever arises. Much of the work of a healer lies in being present to another, not buffeted by or frightened by their emotions, not sucked in, not closed down, not colluding, not withholding. Being with. And in that being, seeing what else might be needed.

4 years of desire

Just a quick note to celebrate that I've been keeping this blog for four years. So much has changed in my life, but writing about that will have to wait. Happy blogiversary to me!

Witches heal

I found the following on this week's page in We'Moon '09. I've been thinking about this a lot over the last couple years; I think she's exactly right.

I began thinking about ancestral memory and what if? What if the wounds I carry are not solely from my lifetime, but also from my mother's, my father's, and grandparents' passed genetically and psychically? What if the multiple abuses I have processed in therapy are from ancestral wounds as well as current, and what if the connections extend beyond even ancestral lineage to some kind of interspecies link?

I feel lighter when I entertain these thoughts and constantly renew my commitment to my path of healing, not only for my family and myself but also for all beings. I am beginning to see that the web of life weaves connections between all of time, space and place. And how each small healing benefits the whole cosmos.

(Janice Young)

Now on twitter

I started tweeting last week and am having lots of fun spouting random thoughts onto the web (like blogging, but more pithy). If you're a regular reader and would like to follow, drop me an email and I'll tell you how to find me.

A sense of wonder so indestructible

Happy birthday to me! I'm 39 today and thrilled to be incarnated. Still, I called my mother this morning and apologized for that whole labor thing.

A quotation I want to remember for Lucian's Wiccaning/baby blessing ceremony:

"If I had influence over the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life." (Rachel Carson)

Ahisma

This afternoon I was eating a piece of cake from a take-out container when Gryphon, my dog, who loves chocolate, ventured a lick at some frosting on the lid. I said his name in a scolding way and, without thinking, lifted the magazine I was holding in my hand in a gesture of playful admonishment, as if I were going to bop him on the muzzle (something I would never do, even in a playful way). This is a 70-pound dog who wrestles on the floor with Adonis, but something in my gesture and-- yes--the energy of my intent caused him to cower as if he'd been struck. His posture was as automatic as my raised hand had been.

I felt awful. The thought came to me immediately, "he HAS been hit." In his life before us, I mean. Lugh, whom we raised from puppyhood, wouldn't have even understood the gesture. But Gryphon knew it. I apologized to him and promised I would never hurt him. I hope he understood me.

Lugh was the most joyful being I've ever known. People responded to him because he embodied pure joy. Gryphon is sometimes happy, I think, and often content, but I don't know that I've ever seen him express joy. Surely he had a difficult early life where he was at best neglected. He is an anxious dog.

I want to give him a good life and to help him, as best I can, to suffer less from anxiety. But I also have to accept him for who he is. I practice seeing his divine nature, his Buddha nature, if you will, and I also practice seeing him clearly for who he is as an animal.

I practice acceptance of my dog. He is who he is. I don't need him to be joyful. Or, if I do, that's my need, twisted and unfairly projected onto him.

Similarly, I practice acceptance of my son: easy in some ways, since infants are such shining beings, but difficult, too, for example when he's crying and I can't find a way to comfort him, or he's waking every two hours in the night to nurse for 45 minutes. But he doesn't need to be other than who he is, either in his divine nature or his baby nature (or his individual nature).

But the hardest practice, I find, is to feel acceptance for myself. To believe, truly, that there is nothing about me that needs to change. To accept who I am, right now, in this moment. To approach myself with gentleness instead of force. That is my challenge, and it's a worthy one, I believe, because my child will learn how to treat himself by watching how I treat myself.