Okay, every so often I write a comment in someone else's blog that is longer than the 4500 word limit LJ allows for a comment. And indeed, I understand why the limit: it is another person's journal. So when I make such a long comment, I must ask myself, "I am trying to hijack another person's blog? Or, I am trying to carry on a conversation via e-mail rather than simply making a comment?"
In the case of a continuing set of comments in
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
earthmystic blog, I had alot to say to
http://www.livejournal.com/users/earthmystic/84186.html I am placing a further comment here becuase...I have alot to say on the subject. So if this post doesn't make sense, it is continuation of a conversation, not the beginning:
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I actually agree with these two points:
But if I cannot be honest about what I don't like about Paganism, then my writing would just have the smell of PC-blandness.
and also:
Christianity-as-institution is just as hostile to Christ's message as it is to non-Christian religion.but what I would add to the first point: while you should strive for honesty, others with a different view are going to call you to account if what you say about pagan does not match, or even more so, seems to contradict their own experience of paganism.
Let me make a blanket statement, only to demonstrate my point: Christians are a violent people. (Neither to say I believe that nor to say you have ever said such a derogatory comment about pagans, but...) I might have reasons for making that statement based on what I've learn or studied. But a Nazarene, or a Mennonite, or a Quaker or even a member of the group you mentioned Pax Christi would have a very different view on the subject of religion and violence. Here's another one: Pagans do not practice animal sacrifice in the modern day world. Sounds reasonable: most Wiccans and Druid group absolutely forbid it. But there are Heathen groups who do, in fact, sacrifice animals. Galina Krasskova, author of Exploring the Northern Tradition wrote an article in Pangaia about modern Heathens who sacrifice animals.
As for the second, that Christianity-as-institution is hostile to Christ message: I see definitely see the point, but I suppose there are people out there, like myself, who question whether the roots of oppression within Christian are not simply because of the institutions (Church) but indeed part of the message (Gospel). The alleged universal application of the gospel itself with its inherent monotheism with which missionaries disrupted every culture they came in contact with, looks to me as ideological imperialism. For if one insists upon one God, what become of the rest? Typically they become devils. (Ireland is unique in that, in general, they were seen as sidhe/fairies and not devils. Brigid lives on through her sainted namesake and Lugh was supplanted by the Archangel Michael.)
Indeed, having been a Christian at one time (and in a Greek Orthodox seminary)I know there is good and bad in every religion/cultural cosmology. And indeed, knowing that Greek philosophers were talking about the Logos before that term was applied to Jesus in the Gospel of John, I sometimes wonder what would life be like if instead of Christian doctrines and Christian orthodoxies being spread during the first centuries of the Church, the philosophy of the Logos were spread. Many pagans and recons will balk at the traditional claim that every culture was preparing the way for Christ...for much the same reason as Jews do not call the Tanakh 'the Old Testament'. Such talk would seem to invalidate indigenous cultures and Judaism as being mere preparation for another religion. But if the essence was continually placed on meditation on the Logos, and not doctrinal orthodoxy, perhaps culture outside the Mediterranean would see a corollary in their own culture (note: some Chinese translation of John use Tao for Logos). Even if the missionaries continued to give Jesus of Nazareth an unique position in regards to the Logos, the 'natives' might not mind as long as in didn't mean wholesale sell-out of the deities they had been worshipping all along. We see evidence of that in Insular Christianity ('Celtic' Christianity), the Orthodox Church's mission to Alaskan natives under St. Herman and like-minded people and in the Jesus Sutras with the discovery of Taoist-Christian (Nestorian I would guess) Monasteries in China of the 7th to 11th centuries. But these examples are unfortunately the exception and not the rule. A world where each culture could discover the Logos/Tao they always knew, but had different names for...and then express through painting, music, sculpture, etc. But we live in this world of Catholics and Wiccans, Shi'ite Muslims and Mennonites, Hellenic Reconstructionists and Theravada Buddhists and not on Tolkein's Middle-Earth (I'm not a fan, but he was a serious Christian using Germanic mythology).
The faults of Christianity and the faults of paganism/polytheistic reconstruction will, like the poor "always be with us". But consider this, if you, as a Catholic and me as a Celtic Restorationist/Reconstructionist were to both read Jelaluddin Rumi and became equally enraptured by it, can other people say we are both converting to Islam? Well, they could, but they would miss the point. Perhaps, for mystics there is no religion, but the average Christian/Muslim/Wiccan/Reconstructionis
m is not a mystic. Best most of us can do is find which religion works for the aspiring mystic, and these days, that religion might be different for each potential mystic.
