Saturday, October 9, 2010

A pagan gets it right

The Star-Ledger, the state-wide newspaper in New Jersey, ran an article on pagan celebrations and the increasing openness of pagans and wiccans to be more public in their beliefs. It was not critical, just a news story in the ‘Living’ section describing a gathering of pagans in the Pine Barrens to welcome the planting season.

“The celebration, symbolizing a phoenix rising from the ashes, features a young woman fluttering around the circle grasping twin rods enfolded in a white sheet like wings. As she takes gliding steps, emulating a creature in flight, she’s showered with birdseed tossed by members of the crowd.

Standing in the center of the circle are Kokopelli and Maeve, the priest and priestess leading the ritual. Kokopelli (full name, Arne Erickson) is wearing holly-colored clothes and a garland to embody the spirit of the Green Man, a figure of fertility and renewal. Decked in a black gown and purple bandanna, Maeve (Peggy Sahulka) is invoking the goddess Aphrodite.

Maeve says, “She changes everything she touches. We are the flow, we are the ebb, we are the weavers, we are the web. Changes. Touches. We are changers and everything we touch can. . . “

“Change,” the crowd completes the sentence.”

I have no desire to ridicule them or their practices. . . in some ways it is instructive, the desire to find meaning and transcendence is in the heart of man. But in view of the richness of glory in Jesus Christ, for me their practices and beliefs just don’t resonate. What caught attention was a quote from one of the participants,

 “I’m a recovering Catholic, born-again Pagan,” says Lorenda Knisel, a journalist from Abescon recruited to portray the phoenix during the afternoon ritual. “In Christianity, the sacred is something you have to strive for after you die. It’s a morose way to be, having to wait for this promised afterlife in heaven. I want to be happy now. I want to see the divine in myself now, in this body, in this world.”

First response after reading her quote was how she had missed it. . . she had been exposed to some Christian teaching and even considered herself Christian, and yet for her there was no life in it. It was something “you have to strive for” and the promise of Christianity is reached only after you die.

She also had it exactly right. . . “I want to be happy now. I want to see the divine in myself now, in this body, in this world.” The promise of Christianity is that something of God – Christ - comes into my life, something outside of what I am in myself brings life and resource within that makes me new and more than what I could ever be on my own apart from Him. He is as real and definite as anything else Lorenda hopes to know in this world, and He has more life than anything found in nature.  And He can be seen. . . God can open the eyes of the heart to see the beauty and glory in Christ and we can know life in Him now.

Lorenda is exactly right, it is a morose way to be, always striving in this life for something you can not reach or touch or know until after this life. . . how frustrating, knowing there is sacredness and yet always feeling apart from it. Knowing that happiness lies in being a part of the Divine and yet not finding it. In Christ, the divine comes within in a real and living way now. . . for the one who is alive in spirit in Christ, there is peace & hope & joy & life for the soul.

In her desire for life in things, she had it right. . . she had just missed it.

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