Blogs of Interest
Cameron (Walking the Labyrinth) promised a post this morning and has completed it and at the risk of looking like we’re patting each other on the back too vigorously I wanted to post a link for it here. It’s called Moderation in All Things.
I’ve always likened people making the shift (a term which does the process no justice at all) from conservative Christianity to polytheism to trying to leave a tiny little closet-like room by cramming themselves into a tiny little window which defines their mandated tiny little worldview. But once they manage to squeeze through that window, they find themselves on an endless plain with almost endless possibilities.
I think conservative Christians might agree with this analogy in that they see choice as an evil. If you’re stuck in your tiny little room you can’t make any choices. You can only do what you’re told to do. But once you’re out the window (and it’s size is meant to show how difficult it is to break free of that narrow world view), you find yourself free, and limitless spaces denote limitless choices. So what’s wonderful for the escapee is to an equal degree horrible for those still inmates of the tiny little room syndrome.
“Egads! She’s going to make a choice! Nooooooo!!!!!!!!!!”
Yeah, she’s going to make a choice.
And even if she makes a bad choice, at least it will be her choice, and she will have the option of making sure it’s an informed choice because she’ll finally be free to think about questions with an open mind and won’t be forced to respond with the mandated answer.
It’s hard to make freedom out to be a bad thing. I know they’ll keep trying, but I think Cameron h as shown that they’re wrong.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson is the author of A Heathen’s Day, which since 2005 has addressed the life and thoughts of a modern day Heathen. He maintains a second blog, Digital Gods (www.digital-gods.com) which focuses on polytheism for the digital age. He is also the founder of the Mos Maiorum Foundation (www.mosmaiorum.org) which is dedicated to the study and support of Paganism as ethnic religion. 
I think the struggle with all that freedom is all the responsibility that accompanies it. The church provides "safety" with rules that keep you on the "straight and narrow" path. The best a witch, for example, can produce is a rede. Now harming none sounds easy on the surface, but actually bear tremendous responsibility.
Another term that fits is mindfulness. Heathens, pagans and witches are called to live in awareness. We are called to wake up, to notice, to be responsible. It's a whole lot easier to let the "church" tell you what to do than it is to be mindful of one's choices, and take responsiblity for one's thoughts, speech and actions.
I agree, and that's why conservative Christians especially reject ideas of personal responsibility. It's always somebody else's fault – society, secular humanism, liberalism, diversity, tolerance, etc…but never their own.
Oh my! Hraf, thank you! I am very honored! I think your word picture of squeezing through a tiny little window out of a tiny little closet is extraordinarily apt – consdidering part of my journey has been coming Out of the closet as a lesbian and trans boi! (thats another journey that does not let one get away with being "asleep" in ones soul. Sometimes I think those of us who make that agonizing crawl through the window do so because we MUST – survival and sanity depend on it. An interesting reverse take on this could be found in Chinua Achebe's book "Things Fall Apart, where a secondary character in the book seeks out Christianity because it feeds his soul and the rest of the village's horrified reaction. (Achebe's book is NOT by any stretch of the imagination proseltyzing Christianity which makes this fascinating.) This African community in the 1800's reacts to the defection of one of it's members to another faith much the same way Christianity reacts to those who "fall away"…with fear and anxiety and rejection of the one who defied the schema he grew up in. Christianity does not have a monopoly on this sad state of affairs. It seems to be the fate of the human race! Thanks again for responding to my post. There's nothing wrong with mutual admiration societies! We gotta stick up for each other out here!
I had one more thought…your visual metaphor of being in a small dark closet like room, sqeezing agonizingly through a tiny cramped window, and then finding one's self on a wide open plain of possibilities and freedom. Lovely…I want to extend it. When anybody spends their life – and extend this to animals and people – locked in a small cramped space, and then are suddenly let our or offered the opportunity to get out (speaking literally, not metaphorically) a lot of times they won't go, they have to be dragged out and they are agoraphobic and terrified of any wide open space. Life time prisoners seek to return to their cells, animals held in captivity not only don't have the skills to survive in the wild, they are terrified of it. So…
that metaphor extends nicely to the ideas we have been tossing around of why Conservative stay over in their far right cave, barricaded in. It's all they've ever known.
A small personal experience – I spent four years in a wheel chair and leg brace, not allowed to walk as a kid due to medical issues. (long story for another time) This was from age 6 to age 10, but when they finally told me, as I sat on the examining table – that I could walk now, what do you think I did?
Everybody thinks I hit the ground running. No. I sat there terrified to even get down. My feet had not touched a floor in four years! The Dr. finally had to pick me up and set me down on my feet and coax me into taking a few hesitant steps. Now, by evening I was out in the snow having a snowball fight with my dad and running – very clumsily, but running. I will never forget how his face lit up when I ran to him the first time that afternoon.
But there is a very small example. I should have been over joyed to be free at last and on my feet, and eventually I was. But if only four years did that to me, made me afraid to even try to walk…I literally had no real memories of what walking was like. Imagine then what a life time of indoctrination does.
Many conservatives have never had the freedom of the wide plain to run on, and they are scared to stand up and even walk.
Good imagery, Hraf!