The Song and the Flame

“I don’t like rules.”
“I like Paganism because there are no rules. You can do whatever you want.”

I’ve heard these sort of statements countless times from various parts of the vast umbrella that bears the name “Paganism”. I find them profoundly irritating. Why is that?

I mean, I understand the sentiment. I don’t want some remote authority dictating dogma to me either. I know that many pagans have had bad experiences with religious rules being imposed on them, and I can understand the yearning for freedom from that type of oppression. I certainly understand wanting to find your own way, without worrying about “should” and “shouldn’t”, just finding whatever way suits you without restrictions. And yet…

And yet.

I think that a part of my objection is that I feel “no rules” is a false assessment. Leaving aside the issue of how to even define paganism in a way that allows overarching rules (short version: not possible), even if we just look at the loosest and most eclectic of personal paths, I don’t think it’s a case of “no rules”. I think it’s a case of making your own rules as you go, which I see as a different thing from having no rules at all.

Also, though, a lack of rules implies a lack of consequences. “Whatever you want”, to me, says that you can do whatever you want without worrying about it. To me, what this says is that the person talking about wanting to be free of rules is seeking to be free from responsibility. After all, if there are no rules, how can anyone say that anything you’ve done is wrong, or tell you that you’ll have to deal with what happens as a result of your actions?

And, no. Just no. It doesn’t work that way. Whether you like it or not, there are rules to live by, there is responsibility to be taken, and there are consequences, and there are things that just do not fit very well with one another. Rules were not invented just to oppress you. You can wave your hands around and say “no rules!” as much as you want. That doesn’t mean that the real-world, purely-practical repercussions that attend every action we take are going to go away. It doesn’t mean that every shiny bit you pick up is going to mesh well with every other shiny bit. It also doesn’t mean that other pagans are going to agree with your “there are no rules!” outlook and support the decisions you make. All it means is that you’re saying there are no rules.

If you’ve decided that it’s OK for you to do something other people say is against the rules… Fine. But, you know, own it. Don’t try to wave it away with a “no rules”; accept that you’re breaking the rules, or accept that you’re making your own rules that are different from other people’s rules, and either way deal with whatever that leads to. Do not expect me to respect your alleged lack of rules.

I’ve been having a lot of trouble with articulating my problems with this concept. I don’t think this is still quite exactly perfect, but it’ll have to do for now. This has been percolating for far too long, and it’s just at the point where I’ve got to put it out there and hope for the best.

I was listening to This American Life, as I do. The final act of this particular episode was Dan Savage telling the story of his mother’s death and his potential return to Catholicism. In the progress of this, he says that although some people find the idea of an afterlife comforting in the wake of a loved one’s death, he actually found that the concept made his mother’s passing more painful rather than less. “Which is the opposite of religion’s intended effect, is it not?”

I cannot speak with any authority about intended effects, particularly of Catholicism. I’m hardly an expert. What I do know is that my initial personal reaction was to think, “No, it’s not.”

That’s not to say that religion should be uncomforting, or cruel. I certainly don’t mean to imply that people should not find religion comforting in times of trouble. I don’t, however, think that its purpose is to console us. Not even when the trouble we are dealing with is the tragedy of losing a loved one. It is a purpose religion can serve for some people. It isn’t the point of religion. It’s like… You can use newspaper comics to wrap a birthday present, and it will serve that purpose very well and many people do actually do this. But that wasn’t what the comics were produced for.

So what role should religion play in our lives? I suppose the obvious answer has something to do with serving or interacting with the Gods, but there’s more to it than that. The focus, for me, is on the gods, but I as a human should be getting something out of this too. Otherwise, why am I following this religion? I would say more that religion should be about building a relationship with the gods. That means more than just making friends with deities; it also leads, I think, to personal development on a lot of levels. Spiritual, maybe, or emotional, sometimes social. Probably lots of other areas that I’m not thinking about, too. (Hell, I’d tend to suggest that my religion has even had a hand in my culinary development!)

And here’s the thing. That’s not always going to be comfortable. Sometimes it’s going to be a little awkward, and then sometimes it’s going to hurt like hell. When a difficult issue comes up, like what happens to a loved one after their death and how you deal with grief, religion is not necessarily going to hand you an easy answer that will make you feel all better. It’s not unreasonable to turn to religion to try to cope with what’s happening, certainly. I think it is unreasonable, though, to claim that religion isn’t doing its job if the answers it gives you don’t make you feel better. Even in a time of personal crisis.

Renee has said a great deal of very relevant stuff over at her blog, which is what’s touching off this bit from me, so I should begin with a link:
Singing for Apollo

This.

I consider myself maybe a little better-off in the vocal department than Renee describes herself; I think my voice is passable, and was even part of a church singing group when I was still Christian. (And this is a church where they have the congregation sing the Hallelujah Chorus, in appropriate parts, on Easter and they do a bang-up job of it, not one of those where even the choir can’t carry a tune in a bucket. So this does actually mean something.) I’m not making a career out of it or anything, but I manage.

I sing.

I don’t sing around other people that much anymore. Things have deteriorated with age (singing group was, what, nine or ten years ago?) and lack of consistent practice, and as I’ve increasingly withdrawn from an offline social life (more on that later, perhaps) I’ve found that I get more insecure about my offline interactions with other people, where you can’t edit the message or take your time reviewing it before posting or whatever. But I have a long commute twice a day, five days a week. And I have an iPod, and a way to hook it into my car’s audio system. I sing. Not the entire commute, but: I sing.

“I want to sing but I’m a bad singer!” doesn’t make sense to me. You don’t have to be the best singer in the world. You just have to be your best. I sing for Apollo, not for a multiplatinum recording career. You know? And this isn’t like playing an instrument, where you have to figure out the mechanics of how to produce a note and how to change notes and whatnot before you can do anything. If you can speak, you can sing. Maybe sing well, maybe not, but you can sing. And if singing isn’t something that works for you as a way to connect to the Gods, hey, no biggie. But if you want to sing — don’t hide behind the “I don’t have a good voice” excuse. That isn’t the point.

I find the bits about the mechanics of singing particularly relevant, too. It’s not just the product, the song that comes out of my mouth. It’s the process, it’s everything that goes into it. It’s the focus on and awareness of breath, of vocal cords, of the way notes interact with each other and progress one to another. It’s not just song; if all I wanted was the passive act of hearing music, I could simply turn on the Pod and let it run. It’s singing, the active involvement in creating this thing, this connection, this offering.

I’m sure I was going to just link and leave it at that… Heh. Well.

In the “Apollonian Epiphanies” portion of his book on Apollo, Kerenyi says that Callimachus in his capacity as poet delivers a lesson to his audience:

…that he who glimpses [Apollo] is great but he who cannot is inconspicuous, a non-entity (litos). Who then chooses not to look?

The last sentence keeps resonating in my mind. Who chooses? Who chooses?

Three years and more ago, I myself wrote:

Belief is a choice, one that I have made long since. I choose to believe when even my own mind refuses to present any evidence to support what I’m believing. … I choose to believe. Consciously, with my eyes wide open, not with full knowledge perhaps but at least knowing my own limits. Somehow this feels like a very powerful thing.

It occurs to me now that belief is not the only thing I could say that of. What I draw from that line of Kerenyi’s is this: A thwap is not only a choice made by the Gods. They choose to reveal themselves to us; we, in our turn, choose whether to look or to turn away. (Admittedly, sometimes turning away just makes them more persistent in their efforts to be seen. But it is still a choice we can make.)

So, once shown, if there is something special about those who are tapped by the Gods (a concept I’m not very comfortable with, but working out my issues with that is another post), then who in their right mind chooses not to look? Think about words like “great” and “non-entity” for a moment. The great people of this world live their lives under microscopes. The non-entities slip by unnoticed, free to go about their business. With great power comes great responsibility, isn’t that what they say? Ignorance is bliss. What would you rather have? There are two sides to the coin. OK, maybe you’re special, but what does that mean? Often you might not even know in the moment; you might have only the great dark unknown in front of you — or be blinded by the light you see, which is another risk you take by looking. Anything could happen. Anything. Dreams and nightmares are equally possible.

It is a difficult thing we do, when we choose to look and to believe. It is a powerful thing. I still believe this.

What I don’t believe is that any of this is going to make any sense… Translating personal epiphanies like this into English never works well. But it’s what I’ve got for now, so I guess I’ll go ahead and post it.

Karl Kerenyi, “The Spirit”, Apollo: The Wind, the Spirit, and the God: Four Studies, speaking of Vergil’s description of Apollo possessing the Sibyl at Delos:

In Delos it is Apollo who arrives… And he is at the same time the object of the spiritual experience and of observation by the few who, already chosen for their own worth, are able to have or are worthy of having this experience.

I realize, in transcribing this, that Kerenyi is not saying what I initially thought he was. Initially, I read that as referring to the worth of the Sibyl herself; I think, now, that it was instead intended to refer to those gathered to hear her answers. The thought it provokes is the same either way.

In a community that contains a number of people who feel themselves to be called or chosen by various deities, and also contains a number who do not feel so called or chosen, there is inevitably The Question. “Why?” Why are some called, and some left to find their own way without the intervention of the Gods? Why are some chosen and others left without guidance? What sets us apart? What makes us more desirable to the deities that call us? Are we tools suited to their tasks? Are we favorite playthings, collector’s items? Do they choose followers as we choose friends, according to personal attraction and mutual interests?

All possible. All probable, separately or together. But, reading the above passage, another idea occurred to me.

It occurred because I immediately rejected the idea of “worth” as a determinant. I don’t like that. I suppose it’s not PC enough for me — not that I’m usually all that worried about being politically correct, but it makes me feel uncomfortable to say that I am called because I am better than someone who isn’t called. It feels arrogant. I don’t like arrogance. I don’t believe it, either; I don’t believe I’m more of a special snowflake than Jane Doe over there who hasn’t been personally thwacked upside the head with the spiritual equivalent of a rolled-up newspaper.

So I honed in on the option: able to have…this experience. My gut reaction there was, “Able? No, that’s not the right word.” It’s closer than “worthy”, but it’s still not right. I don’t have a special brainwave, or a hidden organ, or whatever, that makes me able to exerience contact with a deity. “Willing”, perhaps, is more of it. Not that we sit down and decide we’re willing — nothing so conscious as that. If it were so simple, fewer people would have crises of faith, no? Just decide you’re willing and you get tapped; easy, no problem, we’ll put you on His schedule. How’s 3pm next Wednesday work for you? Besides that, I know I’ve heard stories of people trying unsuccessfully to run and hide from such an experience; if it were as simple as giving consent, again, this wouldn’t happen. “Not interested? Oh, OK. Next!”

There’s “I’m willing to do this”, though, and then there’s “my psyche is willing to process this experience”. Which is where it starts to verge on “able”, but I don’t like that word because it seems to imply that some people have no potential for it. I think everyone’s got that potential, but a lot of people quite sensibly put up subconscious resistance to it. Because direct deity experience is a damned scary thing at times. It requires letting yourself go out on a limb, perch on the edge of the rooftop, stand on a bare hilltop in the pouring rain and reach for the lightning in the clouds. Kerenyi, in this essay, shows us through Vergil’s work and through the Christian Bible that experiencing the Spirit appears to be something like being caught in a hurricane. He’s not wrong.

Some people thrive on that, some shrink from it, and as with anything there’s a whole spectrum of responses in the middle. And none of those responses is inherently better than the others, but some will be more conducive to a direct relationship with a deity than others. Those chosen aren’t more worthy than those who are not, just as a water main isn’t more “worthy” than a kitchen tap. Which is to say: Worthy of what? You have a greater capacity, you do more work on this particular task. You have a lower capacity, you do something else that you do have a greater capacity for. OK, I talk to Apollo. I can’t write hymns for shit, I have a fuzzy grasp of theology at best, I have difficulty communicating my experiences and beliefs to others (one reason, perhaps, why this blog is so slow). I crave structure but have trouble putting it in place; I am overwhelmed by instinct and it’s sometimes difficult to translate that into anything more than a feeling. These things are important too. Divine experience is not the end-all, be-all of religion, nor is it a magic cure for any religious issues one might have. If anything, it just creates more issues.

I got tapped because my brain has less of a danger-avoidance mechanism regarding spiritual matters. Doesn’t sound so sexy anymore, does it? Which is just fine by me.

It started with a thread about songs people associated with various Greek deities. No, that’s not right. It started, specifically, with one suggestion from that thread.

With eyes shut tight
His dreams are sharp as a knife
And he is saving them
Until the timing is right
–Rhea’s Obsession, “Dreaming Blade”

Apollo, said fiamma. And I listened to the song, and I got it, I totally got it, I saw the correlation in ways that kind of scared the crap out of me a little. And then the subject of the nature of Apollo gets touched on over at Hellenistai, and then gets dragged out in the Apollonian/Dionysian discussion at TC. And this stuff keeps coming up, here and there and everywhere, and, like, OK. I get it.

It’s not that I’m not fully aware of… is it appropriate to refer to the dark side of a god of light? It seems twisting the metaphor until its back breaks, somehow. Whatever you call the bits of personality and disposition that lead to things like the slaughter of Niobe’s children and Cassandra’s curse, I’m well aware of their existence. It’s not as though I’m not aware of the potential light has to be harsh, to reveal more than you want to see (or be seen), to burn. It’s not as though I’m some fluff trying to make out like it’s all lollipops and rainbows with Apollo.

At the same time, I have shied away from that. I am aware of it. I haven’t given it a great deal of thought. I haven’t explored who He is, beyond the bits I’m interested in. I have allowed myself to conveniently shuffle away the fact that He is Plague-Bearer as well as Healer. I’ve let myself make it a comfortable relationship, one in which I never have to deal with the aspects of Him that I find intimidating, even frightening.

Well. Maybe I spot a little fluff lingering around after all.

Some time ago, I started a little personal practice of greeting Apollo each morning and evening. May your light shine on me throughout the day; may your light guide me even in my dreams. I dropped the good-night part, because I have a policy of never asking questions to which I do not wish to know the answer. I’d had a good think about the idea of being guided even in my dreams, and realized that might qualify as asking questions to which I didn’t really want to know the answer. So I stopped. I realize now that may have been a mistake.

Sometimes you have to know the answer, whether you want to or not.

And so it was I found myself lying in bed the other night, waiting for Tim to come to bed and trying to fall asleep, with those words ringing in my mind while “Dreaming Blade” ran on infinite loop in the background. “May your light guide me even in my dreams.” Say it. I tried, and my voice would not do it. Say it. Another try. You wanted a task. This is it. Know me. Say it. A sense of… almost being embraced, and simultaneously pulled off the edge into freefall, the arms around me a promise that I would survive the fall but also a promise that it must happen. “May your light guide me even in my dreams.” Say. It. Until at last I forced the words out, in a very small whisper.

And slept a dreamless sleep, wouldn’t you know.

What am I going to do about this? Read. Think. Write long, rambling, half-nonsensical blog entries like this one, I suspect. Remember. Be aware. I don’t know. Stop allowing comfort to lull me into complacence, I suspect. Or at least attempt something like that. Do my best to accomplish the task I’ve been assigned. The pressure feels off for now, but I don’t think it will stay that way if I just fall right back into the same old thing.

Piety. Eusebia. Giving the Gods their due and appropriately recognizing their role in our lives. This is important; that seems fairly self-evident to me. If I don’t think the Gods are active in my life, what am I doing here? And if they are indeed, then how can I ignore them?

But… what does that mean? How do I do this? What are the parameters?

I suppose I should start out with what “piety” is not to me. I mean, if I start talking about a “pious” person, it can bring up some pretty strong and fairly negative connotations. Piety starts to look like a person who’s all God(s), all the time. Every smallest blessing is “from God”, even those that are products of the person’s own efforts. Any trial is an ordeal that God helps one through, or maybe a part of God’s plan. And you hear about it all the time, because the other thing is, God’s glory should be spread by the pious person. Right?

I don’t think so. I’ve talked about personal responsibility elsewhere here. I don’t think piety is giving that up. Piety is not giving the Gods credit for every single good thing and for your surviving every single bad thing. Piety is not about abasing yourself, about surrendering all free will and credit for anything (good or bad) that happens.

What piety is, is acknowledging the Gods’ role in your life, in honest terms. Honest not just about what they do for you, but also about where the boundary is where it’s no longer what they’re doing, it’s just your own skill or dumb luck or whatever. In my case, it’s a quick recognition each morning, with especial attention paid to those who are important to my life in general terms or who have some connection to something going on that day. It’s pouring a libation following some particularly good thing — to Hermes after a successful journey, for example. It’s formally recognizing and honoring a deity when I’m in their space, such as pouring a libation to Poseidon when I come to the ocean on vacation. It’s even smaller things, too, thinking of Zeus in a thunderstorm.

But it’s not surrendering your entire life to the worship of the Gods. There’s a difference between living mindfully and living slavishly. Piety is the former, and not the latter.

June is International Pagan Values Blogging Month, apparently. The call is to “write of the virtues and ethics and morals and values we have found in our Pagan paths” and “share how we carry these precious things forward in our own lives and out into the world.”

I am not normally fond of talking about “Pagan values”, but rather than waste my time reinventing the wheel to explain why I think I’ll just quote Sannion, with the addendum that I don’t know Pax personally but agree with the general sentiment here:

My friend Pax isn’t like the Borg drones I met in the AOL chats, or the folks behind the pagan unity campaign. He’s not interested in mushing us all up together, enforcing uniformity of thought and action. If anything he’s trying to accomplish the complete opposite of that objective. He is starting with the common denominator of our shared status as adherents of pagan religions and asking us to discuss what that really means. To examine our core beliefs, shaped by our various traditions, and to explore the values, ethics, and morals that we hold so dear. He is trying to show that no one group has a monopoly on such things.

Sannion’s whole entry is well worth a read-through, btw, and he’s much more polite about the whole Pagan Unity Campaign debacle than I might have been. Five years on, it still raises my hackles and I still remember Stormbear and Ginger with quite a bit of animosity. But I’m getting off-track; my point was, reading Sannion’s entry prompted me to wonder whether I should maybe try to write something up about my particular Pagan values. I’m not sure that I have a lot to contribute to the conversation at large, but it’s something that’s well worth exploring for my own sake, isn’t it? So, here I am.

The problem is, though, I get hung up on that bit about the stuff we have found in our Pagan paths. I didn’t find any new morals here, for the most part. The values and morals and virtues and whatever? Those are mine. They mesh with my chosen religious path, but they don’t exist because of it. You know?

That doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, though, I suppose; I can still write about the values I feel are connected to my religious path, yes? Even if I didn’t so much “find” them here.

I think I must write about piety, which I’ve done considerable development in since leaving the Christian church, and probably hospitality. I don’t need the diversity essay, though; Sannion’s already hit the points I would have, and done it better too. (And I’m not certain that’s as much tied to Reconstructionism or Hellenism specifically as much as it is my own personal outlook on living in a religiously pluralistic society.)

At some point, I decided not to call myself Reconstructionist because I didn’t feel I met the scholarly criteria for it. I felt I gave myself more “wiggle room” than Reconstructionism seems to imply and didn’t read enough primary and secondary-scholarly sources to really say I based my practice on them. I’ve recently started to question that, though. This is largely because of a particular discussion in which I found myself defending a particular aspect of Reconstructionism with unexpected fervor, and in which I felt as though the incorrect labels being applied were being applied to me despite my not generally feeling as though I can claim to be Reconstructionist.

Naturally, the way to proceed here seems to be to do a little bit of research. Let’s start with defining Reconstructionism.

TC’s paraphrase of Campbell says that Reconstructionism “differs from other types of modern Paganism primarily on its reliance on solid academic and historical sources regarding deities, worship and symbolism”, and then goes on to give five major points of difference. All five of those points I very much agree with; the general statement does not run counter to my religious outlook so much as I’ve just got gaps to fill in. It is my ideal, though I struggle to reach it.

Hellenion’s mission statement contains a definition of Reconstructionism (in Hellenic context) which gets more specific as to time periods and such than I had (though all the sources I’ve been drawing on are likely to conform to it), and offers guidelines for updates to the religion with which I firmly agree. Again, I don’t see anything here I wouldn’t agree with; I do see things I have personally failed to achieve thus far.

Ruadhan says that “Religious reconstruction of any variety is a method; the method is based largely on book-learning, and applying what one has learned of pre-Christian polytheistic religions to their own religious practises.” …Which, again, is true of what I’m doing even if I haven’t done as much book-learning (as opposed to web-learning from people who have actually done the book-learning) as I’d like.

I begin to see a pattern.

The question now is, if the only thing stopping me being Recon is that I haven’t met that ideal… is that really enough to stop me using the label anyway? Do I forgo using the term “writer” just because I haven’t (quite) finished a novel yet and because I feel my writing is substandard? Do I drop the self-descriptor that I am an avid reader despite the fact that I’ve taken longer and longer to finish reading anything these past few years and have trouble with nonfiction sometimes? When I was Christian, did I quit calling myself that because I hadn’t read the Bible all the way through and couldn’t quote theology on demand?

Sure, there are things that I don’t claim to be despite having an interest in them because I feel like I’m just a raw novice beginner and can’t really properly call myself that. Photographer. Graphic designer. Novelist (as distinct from “writer”). But these are things that I am genuinely just beginning at. I’ve been on this religious path for several years now, and while I still have a long way to go, I think I also know more than I think I do — or at least I know where to look if I don’t have a specific answer. Is it perhaps time to stop letting my own insecurities dictate things for me, rather than an honest look at what I’m doing and what I believe?

I know where I’m going, and where I’m going is rather clearly toward Reconstructionism. Do I really have to be there already before I can say “this is what I am”? I think… perhaps the answer to that is “no”.

And I think it’s time to change my “religion” listing at TC.

Seen on a church sign on the way to work last week: “Let God Change You From Victim to Victor”.

No. Just… no. Where to start?

My initial reaction was based on a deeply-rooted instinct that I have a personal responsibility to do the most I can to effect change in my life before petitioning the Gods for help. There is an old Christian saying that God helps those who help themselves. That’s something that has stuck firmly with me through every religious change I’ve gone through. I cannot simply render up my problems to the Gods and expect to sit back and wait for Them to change me. I have to put in the work myself.

A suggestion to let God change me suggests, to me, that I should relinquish that responsibility. I can’t. I won’t. And I don’t think They’d let me anyway, but that’s beside the point here. It’s important for me to be responsible for my actions.

That’s a strong moral conviction, but there’s more to it than that. There’s another saying about how with power comes responsibility — well, the reverse is true too. If I give up that responsibility and put it all on the Gods, I am also surrendering my power. And, you know, I’m not talking “rule the world” power here. I’m not talking “control people’s minds” power. Those things I don’t have anyway, and I don’t want, and I would happily give up.

There is also, though, the power to make my own decisions. The power to have some say in my own destiny. The power to be me, and not a puppet on a string. These things I will not let go willingly. And to let some god magically scrub away my problems… That implies a surrender that I will not give. It implies taking my life out of my hands and putting it in someone else’s. More, it implies taking my mind and my spirit and doing the same thing with them. Here. Make me your idea of perfect. Whatever you think. My opinion doesn’t matter. I know a lot of people find solace in the idea of giving their problems to God, but it seems a dangerous proposition to me.

Fortunately, I think my Gods would smack me silly if I tried it anyway.