2005-04-28 - 2:10 p.m.
(Warning: much long-winded navel-gazing ahead. Get some coffee before reading.)
I’m finding myself in a reminiscent mood these days. I find myself thinking about what choices I’ve made that have led me to where I am now, the whos and the whys and the wherefores.
I’ve mentioned in passing that I used to be Pagan. In my wild youth, I chanted in circles and invoked the powers of Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. I read books about mythology and spirituality and ritual, and walked around with my mind ablaze. I said prayers to the Lord and Lady, lit candles on my altar and left gifts of rum and honey and flowers. I carried a rune bag with me everywhere. I danced around a Maypole in Central Park, met with an eclectic coven in the Hare Krishna Temple on St. Mark’s Place. Later I did rituals with the lady in the upstairs apartment who claimed to know New Orleans voodoo and wrote occult fiction. My mind was full of other worlds, other times, other planes of existence.
The whole business started early. I was always interested in mythology, and by extension stories about witches and magic. I was the only kid in the fifth grade who knew about Urbain Grandier and the Salem witch trials. I’d read a couple of how-to books on ritual magic, but they were complex and too focused on getting results. Witchcraft was a way to get money and sex, not as a way to gain enlightenment. I was also learning about Zen through studying karate, so gaining enlightenment was an important thing. I was pretty sure my parents wouldn’t let me actually do any of the things in my books, so I abandoned them for other things.
In college I met Pagans who actually were seeking enlightenment, who prayed and meditated and tried to be good people. I was still in my skeptical atheist phase, so I just stood back and watched. The whole business changed in my senior year, when I took a mythology course. The professor was a colleague of Joseph Campbell, and very skilled at drawing attention to the cultural origins of myths. This was 1992, when Robert Bly was attracting attention to a growing men’s movement. I seized on the concepts of the Wild Man and of initiation, of the symbolic nature of swords and Grails and wounds that do not heal. Nothing in Christianity seemed to match the power of these symbols, so I turned to the campus Pagans.
After I graduated, I settled in Staten Island. My housemate was involved with a Pagan group in Manhattan, and she introduced me to them and to a more practical, easily done ritual than what I’d read about. I was young, scared, scraping by on temp jobs in a city where I hardly knew anyone. I’d been through two devastating breakups that year, and I was desperate for friends. Lord knows this bunch were friendly. Kooky, iconoclastic, intellectual, accepting, everything I could ever want. Through this group I found an apartment in Brooklyn, a roommate, and of course the lady upstairs. She was quite delusional; she talked about a great conspiracy to locate seven Objects of Power and how she and everyone she knew were involved. She was also very funny and generous with her attention, and attention was what I wanted. I was so hungry to belong to something greater than myself that I half believed her stories. Her apartment was a sort of Pagan salon; parties and Circles and get-togethers of all sorts almost every week. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t sure from week to week that I’d have enough to cover the rent; I Belonged. I wasn’t just some guy fresh out of school; I was a warrior magician, doing battle with my demons.
The circumstances that got me to move from New York to Worcester, MA back to St. Louis are complex enough to merit their own journal entry. Suffice it to say that I came home chastened and humbled, and somewhat broken. I managed to find work and find friends. The SCA helped me connect with the local Pagan scene, which was much different from what I was used to. I still faced some of the same questions and problems, and I was finding fewer and fewer answers on this path. I kept on it, though, reading books and praying to the Gods and asking questions of myself.
So why did I eventually become a Christian? Part of it was reading Fr. Matthew Fox’s “Original Blessing” and realizing that I might have been wrong about Christianity. Part of it came from extensive discussion and debate with a dedicated Episcopalian. Part of it was the example of a friend who retained her Christian faith in spite of unimaginable hardship. Part of it was a growing dissatisfaction with the people I was meeting at Circles and other gatherings. But the biggest reason for my change of heart and spiritual path was a single awakening event, a sort of cosmic dope-slap that occurred as I was getting ready to go to work. You can imagine what it was like to go to work after having your spiritual perspective shifted. At least I didn’t go blind for three days, like Paul in Damascus.
I started going to an Episcopal church in August of 1997, and was baptized Easter of 1998. I learned that faith does not have to be unreasoning or blind, that often the Word of God deals with specific situations at specific times, and that good works are as important to spiritual growth as meditation and study. Most importantly, I learned that I don’t have to be more than I am, because what I am is enough. I don’t have to be a mystic or a prophet or a warrior magician; I can be ordinary, which at times is a challenge in itself.
(Just an aside: this is the path that’s best for me. I don’t think that my path is superior to all others, or that non-Christians are condemned to perdition. This is where I’m going, and that’s all.)
As a young man, I sought to be extraordinary. Established religions were for people who couldn’t think clearly enough to define life for themselves. I was a free thinker, a seeker with a finely tuned sense for bullshit but desperate for a sense of community. I was going to be a writer, a scholar, and of course a loving husband and father. I was going to make a Difference. And now… I am a writer, just not of fiction like I’d hoped. I’m a scholar of sorts, and a loving husband and father. I spend eight hours a day helping poor people get and keep houses. I still have improvements to make, still have things to learn, but I’ve managed to create the things that I wanted so badly.
