Tell Me a Story

(This post has been brought to you by the winning entry for PanGaia's Pagan Fiction Contest. You're kidding me, right?)

If I read one more Pagan conversion story, I am going to scream. "Once upon a time I was not Pagan but I was unhappy and then I discovered Paganism and everything was WONDERFUL." Oh, the Augustinian conversion story, how I loathe you.

I'm not saying that story isn't true for the people who tell it. (I've told a similar one before, and I stand by it as my lived experience. It was indeed what happened.) But – it's like this. When I was in therapy, one of the questions on the entry form was about your religion, and I put "Pagan." The therapist asked me about it – I think her exact words were something like "Tell me about that." And I started telling her my conversion story.

I think a lot of people do this; it's a way of explaining process, making our Paganism seem less strange to cowans because we give them logical reasons for every step of the way. But I've started to wonder if it's really the best model at hand.

For one thing, it's also a hugely familiar story, particularly to the kind of people who like us least (Evangelical Christians). Now, I don't mean to say that something is bad just because Evangelical Christians do it (I for one enjoy oxygen, for example), but I do think there are some theological underpinnings to the conversion story that make it, at best, questionable for Pagans.

The key event in the conversion story is the conversion. It's the climax of the narrative structure: the narrator's dissatisfaction with the religion of their birth is the plot, the conversion is the climax, and the description of their current belief the denouement. This structure makes the religion – the Paganism – the least important part of the story, the aftermath of other, more exciting events. It's a happy ending, but how much do you care about a happy ending to a story other than that it's happy?

Conversion makes sense as a central point for a Christian, because Christianity has a focus on salvation. For Christians, the moment of conversion is a moment of grace, the point at which not only their life changes but literally their entire existence, their afterlife, the fate of their soul is determined. There's not a lot of theological unity among Pagans, but I don't know of any who consider the salvation of their soul to be a key aspect of their conversion.

Sure, the point of conversion is an important time for a Pagan too. It's a moment of self-realization and epiphany, and it often comes with an amazing sense of freedom. But most Paganisms are mystery religions; most of us have other stories of personal epiphanies that are much more meaningful to us than our conversion. Not all of them are suitable for sharing, certainly, but some of them surely are.

There's a lot of talk about Pagans genericizing themselves into meaninglessness in order to "fit in" with the mainstream. And while I'm uncomfortable with the idea of public circles that look more like church meetings than anything else, I'm even more uncomfortable with the idea that the stories we tell about ourselves don't mean anything, either.

To-do list

Let's see...I've quit my job, finished my class registration, sent out resumes for fellowships, set up my hospital appointment so I can make sure I didn't break my foot falling down the stairs last week...don't I have something else to do? Surely I have something else...

I've got a blog. When did I update that last? Wait...what do you mean, April??

Ugh. I really didn't mean to go on hiatus there. (I never do, did you notice?) I just...well...haven't had that much to say. (I wonder if this makes me a bad Pagan. I mean, I tell people that I consider myself a very religious person, but that's mostly because I know my worldview gets filtered through something that most of the rest of the world considers insane, and that's the socially acceptable term for that kind of worldview. "Very religious." It doesn't seem to mean that I can think of something to say every day, and I sometimes wonder if it should.

Forget that parenthetical, then, and let's talk about Lugnasadh. It's coming up soon, you know. I've never quite known what to do about it as a holiday. I mean, I don't live in a farming community, so the harvest aspect of it doesn't seem to have a lot to do with me. (Well, except for the fact that I can get sweet corn 3/$1 at the farmer's market. Woohoo!) It's named for the god Lugh, who some people associate with Apollo, but aside from Greek and Celtic gods having pretty much nothing to do with each other I don't think that gets at the whole of it.

Lugh did everything. That was his thing; when he showed up at Nuada's court and asked if he could see the king, the gatekeepers asked him why the High King should bother with him. Lugh responded that he was a great warrior, but they told him they already had the best in the land. Lugh said that he was also a great harper, but no, they already had somebody for that. Poet? Yep. Goldsmith? Yeah. Sheep-shearer? Uh-huh. And so on down the list, until finally Lugh said, "Well, do you have anyone here who can do all these things?" And the gatekeepers admitted that they did not, and let Lugh in to meet the king.

I tend to not have formal rituals for most holidays, but to put into work some aspect of my own life that has to do with the mythology I associate with it. So for Lugnasadh, I tend to do a little bit of everything that I do -- I cook, I sew, I write, I code. Honestly, I'm having trouble with that right now. Even with a computer in front of you, there's only so much you can do when you're stuck on a couch with your foot in the air, waiting for a sprained muscle to heal.

And like a lot of women, I have this problem where I try to be all things to all people, and when I can't do it, I feel like a failure. I've been apologizing to my roommate for not cooking this week. See above, I can't even stand. But I'm home all day and she's not, so I feel like I should be contributing more, even though the best thing for me is to stay right here and heal.

So for this Lugnasadh, I'm going to honor the holiday by not doing everything. Maybe I'll write a little, just to keep up with the daily goal, and maybe if I feel up to it I'll cook some of that amazing sweet corn (in the microwave, so I don't accidentally pour boiling water all over my unbalanced self). But I don't need to do everything; we've already got somebody who does that.

Thanking Eve

I really did mean to post about how the Jehovah's Witnesses went. They showed up a couple of weeks ago -- just when I'd decided I didn't want to deal with them and was running off to buy groceries. But no, they were early. And once faced with a bald-faced assertion of God's Plan, I just can't walk away. No, I have to argue.

Truth told, it was quite civil (I never did mention which other religion I was...) even if most of the debate was not only pretty standard but downright cliche. I did manage to shovel in my college lit professor's argument about the Garden of Eden story, though, which I've always liked. I doubt it'll ever convince a Christian, but it makes the story a hell of a lot more compelling for someone with no investment in the idea of Original Sin, so I thought I'd share.

We were in a Gothics class, discussing the concept of veiling. The Veil is a big thing in Gothic novels; in the earliest ones, it's the point of the whole book. When you draw the veil aside and see what it is you've been scared of this whole time, the story's over. Or, a personal illustration my professor told: She was a kid, maybe five or six. Mom always let her play in Mom's room when Mom was getting ready for work -- which is a special treat when you're five or six, all those shiny pretty things you aren't allowed to touch when Mom isn't keeping an eye on you while she's putting on her mascara. Just, Mom said, don't open that box on Mom's nightstand. It's private.

What's that going to do to a six-year-old? Of course. One day Mom leaves the room for a minute, and the temptation is just too much. What might be inside? Candy? More pretty jewelry, or perfume, or makeup? Something good, obviously, or you wouldn't be told not to open it. My prof was always very good at describing her disappointment upon finding a box full of individually-wrapped balloons. And not very good balloons, either. All the same color! (Yes, this is indeed the Bluebeard story but with condoms. I loved my lit prof.)

Mom, of course, was mortified, and six-year-old lit prof still couldn't figure out why she'd gotten in trouble. All that fuss over a box of balloons. The moral of the story, of course, being that the only interesting thing about the box was the fact that she wasn't allowed to open it. If Mom had shown her what was inside when she asked, she's have been bored and gone away.

The parallel to Genesis is obvious, although unfortunately we have to lose the condoms. "Here," says God, "Have anything you want. Except this, a huge and impressive tree smack in the middle of everything else, which you can't touch because I said so." Well, what's that going to do to a newly-created sentient race? Note here that when you argue about this point with JWs, they remind you that God also said "lest ye die," and invoke him as a watchful-parent figure. This is, of course, a perfect opening for the condom story. I have never been brave enough to tell a condom story to visiting JWs; maybe someone else will be.

So of course Eve does what any kid does when faced with an overprotective parent, and God shrugs his shoulders in a remarkably calm way for the Old Testament version of that particular deity, and Adam and Eve go out into the wide world and start making curious kids of their own. All of which just doesn't sound like the story of The Entering of Evil Into The Heart of Man, not really. It's more like a coming-of-age story. One day God looks down and notices his kids are kind of outgrowing the Garden, it's not got much interesting in it after all, and darn it, they no longer accept Because I Said So as a reason. Time to buy them a microwave and some milk-crate furniture and let them out on their own.

Like I said, you'll probably never win over a JW with this argument -- it's just looking at the same story from a vastly different point of view, and it's point of view they're trying to convince you on. But then again, if you're arguing with JWs with the intent to win, you're doing it wrong.