convictions...
It seems the older I get, the more pagan I become.
I started off Roman Catholic. Well, I've never been baptised, but I did pray to the Virgin Mary, and occasionally my grandma would bring me to a Catholic church. You see, my maternal grandparents are/were Roman Catholics (they don't go to church anymore, though) and my mum was until she backslided or whatever. She broke Catholic rules so... yeah. So a little part of my upbringing had me as a little Roman Catholic. Which wasn't all that bad. Catholicism is a very good thing. Just like all other religions, it's meant to bring you peace of mind and heart and soul.
Then at the end of primary school and the beginning of secondary school I considered Christianity. I considered being an Anglican, to be more precise. It seemed pretty close to Catholicism except you prayed to God instead of the Virgin Mary. So I thought about that for awhile. But my parents didn't really want me to go to church and so I never attended. You see, my dad is the sort of free thinker who is truly free. He respects the gods of every religion and has no qualms about praying to any of them wherever he is. I didn't understand it at the time, I thought it a little blasphemous.
And all along, even though I had thought that I wanted to become a Christian, I found myself not being able to accept certain things that I heard. For instance, I could not accept that Jesus Christ was the only way to eternal life, because I couldn't believe that Buddhists and Taoists and Jews and Muslims were all going to go to hell just because they didn't pray or believe in Christ. That was the part of all the preachings I heard that made me squirm and feel really uncomfortable. And that led to more and more questions, until I realised that I would never be able to become a true Christian, no matter how hard others (and I) tried to persuade me.
Once I had that resolved... wow you just can't imagine how free I felt. I felt so much better.
And these days, the more I read of myths and legends or even religions, I find myself connected more and more to old pagan beliefs. In these modern times when one thinks of "pagan" we think of strange voodoo cults and Wiccan and witchcraft and black magic, but in the olden days it wasn't like that at all. Perhaps there was some inexplicable mystery in their practices, but on the whole the olden pagan beliefs were... well, I don't even know how to describe it, but I find that I can understand it and accept it a lot better than anything else.
And I just finished reading The Priestess of Avalon, and I know it's just a fiction book, but what was written on religion actually made a whole lot of sense to me. In it it was said that there is only One, one power behind life and existence. But it's not like the One is only the Christian God or a Buddhist God or anything. The pagans accepted that there was One, and all those different gods/idols that they prayed to or worshipped was just different aspects of that One. They believed that as simple humans, they weren't capable of seeing that one power as a complete whole, and could only acknowledge different aspects, like the God of the Sun, God of the Sea, etc., and that it was when all these different gods were put together that the One was represented. Their use of idols and symbols just came from their belief that humans were not capable of understanding, worshipping and loving the One with nothing tangible there for them, that they needed something that could represent the power that they could hold on to and respect and love. So there was absolutely nothing demonic or dark behind their use of idols and symbols.
I could completely understand and embrace that. Some would now say that Marion Zimmer Bradley was unholy or blasphemous or perhaps even a witch or whatever, but I just find that she's understood. Understood religions and understood faith and understood what humans need and why faith is so important.
There's actually no real point of me writing all this out. It just makes me feel better to be able to lay out all this thinking, and find myself thoroughly convinced in the beauty of life and the belief in someone watching over us.
I started off Roman Catholic. Well, I've never been baptised, but I did pray to the Virgin Mary, and occasionally my grandma would bring me to a Catholic church. You see, my maternal grandparents are/were Roman Catholics (they don't go to church anymore, though) and my mum was until she backslided or whatever. She broke Catholic rules so... yeah. So a little part of my upbringing had me as a little Roman Catholic. Which wasn't all that bad. Catholicism is a very good thing. Just like all other religions, it's meant to bring you peace of mind and heart and soul.
Then at the end of primary school and the beginning of secondary school I considered Christianity. I considered being an Anglican, to be more precise. It seemed pretty close to Catholicism except you prayed to God instead of the Virgin Mary. So I thought about that for awhile. But my parents didn't really want me to go to church and so I never attended. You see, my dad is the sort of free thinker who is truly free. He respects the gods of every religion and has no qualms about praying to any of them wherever he is. I didn't understand it at the time, I thought it a little blasphemous.
And all along, even though I had thought that I wanted to become a Christian, I found myself not being able to accept certain things that I heard. For instance, I could not accept that Jesus Christ was the only way to eternal life, because I couldn't believe that Buddhists and Taoists and Jews and Muslims were all going to go to hell just because they didn't pray or believe in Christ. That was the part of all the preachings I heard that made me squirm and feel really uncomfortable. And that led to more and more questions, until I realised that I would never be able to become a true Christian, no matter how hard others (and I) tried to persuade me.
Once I had that resolved... wow you just can't imagine how free I felt. I felt so much better.
And these days, the more I read of myths and legends or even religions, I find myself connected more and more to old pagan beliefs. In these modern times when one thinks of "pagan" we think of strange voodoo cults and Wiccan and witchcraft and black magic, but in the olden days it wasn't like that at all. Perhaps there was some inexplicable mystery in their practices, but on the whole the olden pagan beliefs were... well, I don't even know how to describe it, but I find that I can understand it and accept it a lot better than anything else.
And I just finished reading The Priestess of Avalon, and I know it's just a fiction book, but what was written on religion actually made a whole lot of sense to me. In it it was said that there is only One, one power behind life and existence. But it's not like the One is only the Christian God or a Buddhist God or anything. The pagans accepted that there was One, and all those different gods/idols that they prayed to or worshipped was just different aspects of that One. They believed that as simple humans, they weren't capable of seeing that one power as a complete whole, and could only acknowledge different aspects, like the God of the Sun, God of the Sea, etc., and that it was when all these different gods were put together that the One was represented. Their use of idols and symbols just came from their belief that humans were not capable of understanding, worshipping and loving the One with nothing tangible there for them, that they needed something that could represent the power that they could hold on to and respect and love. So there was absolutely nothing demonic or dark behind their use of idols and symbols.
I could completely understand and embrace that. Some would now say that Marion Zimmer Bradley was unholy or blasphemous or perhaps even a witch or whatever, but I just find that she's understood. Understood religions and understood faith and understood what humans need and why faith is so important.
There's actually no real point of me writing all this out. It just makes me feel better to be able to lay out all this thinking, and find myself thoroughly convinced in the beauty of life and the belief in someone watching over us.