To Be Silent

There's a funny thing about being part of a stigmatized group.  As you get more comfortable with who you are and what you believe, you begin to be more public about it.  Take pride in it.  Own it.  But as you get deeper into it.  As you get more involved and become part of the community, you find yourself once again speaking in hushed tones and taking care with your words.

When I first came to Paganism, I spoke about it to a handful of friends, but that was it.  That was it because being found out had repercussions.  Serious repercussions.  And so I kept silent.  And I learned the value of my magickal name as it developed.  It was freedom.  Freedom to be who I was, who I am, without fear (or at least less of it) of that being traced back to the name on my birth certificate.  I will say, some Wiccans feel a magickal name should be used only in a sacred context.  But I was a solitary and a kid and that ship sailed long ago so I've made my peace with it.  And so it was my freedom.  My pen name, my online persona, my spiritual identity.

And slowly, through college and into adulthood I came to be more open about it.  I told more people about what I believed and I got really, really good at spotting those who would be okay knowing and who wouldn't.  The lady at the bookstore who saw me in "that section" and commented about some of "those people" being in Delafield probably couldn't handle that I was one of them.  But by early on in my adult years, I started wearing my pentacle out in public.  

And I started to show up at gatherings with other Pagans in public places.  I got to know a few, and came to find out that a few people I knew already were Pagan.  But we're all very good at being silent.  Because we have to.  And so it comes out in hints and whispers.  Little clues.  Was that a pentacle I saw?  They're friends with whom?  They're mysteriously out of town during a big Pagan festival... interesting.  And it turns out a lot of us have at least a few of these experiences where the person workin in the shop down the street or hanging out in a particular crowd, or the person we're dating (yes, seriously) happens to be Pagan.  And it's a relief when we find eachother.  It's exhausting keeping secrets, maintaining secure online groups and identities, and making sure that at the local meetup we're not talking too loud.  And finding one more safe person to talk to about it is like a breath of fresh air.

But now I know people.  And a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.  And so while I've become comfortable enough to post secure posts on Facebook about it and have a blog about it, I find in some ways I'm even more quiet than I ever was.  As my mundane world crosses over into my spiritual world more and more I have to keep those secrets.  Because I know people who are in custody battles because they share my faith.  I know of people who have lost jobs because of it.  And I know of people who have been threatened and even shot at because of it.

And so here I am, full circle.  I'm still proud to be who I am, and I don't plan on a full retreat back into the broom closet, so to speak.  But once again I have learned to be silent.

I think you're all wrong

Yes, it's a cheap tag line to elicit a response.  But it's also true.  In the ecclectic Pagan world, and in other circles I've run in, we talk an awful lot about accepting other people's paths and orthopraxy versus orthodoxy.  And it's absolutely 100% true in one respect.  It's not important to us what specific theology the others in our circles adhere to, if any at all.  We share a lot in common, but rarely, if ever, everything.  And that's prefectly alright.  We can circle with eachother just the same.  But we don't actually all have the same theology.  More to the point we don't all have compatable theologies.

And I don't think we need to let this get in our way.  I don't think we need or want an orthodoxy.  But I've run into several discussions in the past few years, and really over the past decade and a half, that make me think that while practically, it doesn't matter, philosophically it's challenging.  This is especially true as you get further out to the edge of mainstream modern Paganism.  Christo-Paganism, nontheistic/atheistic Paganism, and the relationship between syncretistic Paganism and more defined paths like the various reconstructionisms and revivals push us to deal with these questions head on.  And the results aren't always pretty.

For the most part, we're usually able to lean on the 'valid path' conversations that are the glue that keeps our communities more or less together.  But as long as I've been part of the community (and before I was able to adequately work through these challenges myself) there has been a certain level of judgment from some quarters regarding those in the more controversial theological groupings.

Case in point was a recent article by T. Thorne Coyle which consisted of her interview with a non-theistic pagan friend of hers.  The conversation was predestined to be interpreted in whatever way the reader was likely to take such a conversaton.  I, personally, have struggled with the atheist versus theist issue personally, so while I though some of the wording was awkward at times, I could understand the difficulty in expressing how the interviewee felt without unduly offending people.  But some people were offended.  Because it's the internet, land of the easily offended.

But aside from the predictability of it, there's a real issue there.  Some people really can't handle nontheistic approaches to Paganism without reading into it all sorts of intent into the commentary.  Why?  Because nontheists think us theists are wrong.  And that sounds an awful lot like the judgy dogma our community recoils in horror from.  And I don't take anything away from the genuine feeling of offense toward a nontheistic world view.  We feel what we feel and while we may desire to change or improve upon those feelings, we can't grow if we simply deny them.

But here's the dirty little secret that any of us who think with a rational mind know about Pagan theology:  We think they're wrong, too.  What's more, the hard polytheists think the soft polytheists are wrong, the syncretistic Pagans think the reconstructionists and revivalists are wrong, etc, etc, etc.  Why?  Because we do have our theologies.  And we wouldn't have them if we didn't think they were right.  And I'm sorry, but there's no getting around the fact that while we can all respect eachother, circle with eachother, and learn from eachother, those theological approaches are not compatable.  In short, we can't believe what we believe without thinking everyone else is wrong.  And, as several bloggers have noted, rather eloquently, that's okay.

There's some practicality here, too.  I would have a hard time in a Christo-pagan ritual, despite the fact that I know enough about their practice to know they aren't many of the things they are often accused of being.  I actually admire their approach to deity.  But it's just too close to my past for me to be able to approach it comfortably.  Too much of it triggers an instant response in my head for me to get past it and enjoy a ritual based on it.  And many people answered T. Thorne Coyle's article in much the same way with respect to non-theists.  I'd have less of an issue with someone who had very similar physiological and psychological reactions to ritual, but assigned no divine meaning to them.  But several people in the thread found the conflict irreconcilable.  And that's okay.  Don't circle with them, not because you don't like them, but because you wouldn't be able to get past the issue enough to get something out of it.  Or circle with them anyway, but get something else out of it.

It doesn't mean we have to throw the baby out with the bath water, faction off into big D Denominations, and mutually excommunicate eachother.  We can keep on just the way we always have, because we can believe we are right and still accept that we may not have all of the picture.  Still accept that while we feel very strongly about our beliefs, we may not be right on all counts.  Accept that the theological differences, while important, are not road blocks to community.  There's value in our community.  Real value.  And there's value in the rituals the ecclectics among us perform, despite our personal theological conflicts.  To keep those things alive we need to be honest about how we are the same, and how we are different, and what those differences mean.  Because if we have these differences, but never work through their meanings and how they interact, they become irreconcilable conflicts.