The Quest

From the_wildhunt, we have fairly succinct coverage of the latest scuffle over feminist theology in the Catholic church. As the_wildhunt writes, "the truth is that reformist-minded Catholics on the left have found themselves ever-more isolated and minimized within a Church turned towards maintaining and strengthening its boundaries."

He also writes "Perhaps all these scholars, theologians, and authors would be better served by leaving Christianity behind, and embracing those traditions unafraid of feminine power and authority. Certainly modern Paganism could always use more theologians, creative thinkers, and ritualists. Better still, we don't have an Inquisition snooping about for heresy."

Now, I suspect it is not his intention, and it could probably be cured with a little bit better precision in the choice of words, but this is written in a way that seems to imply that if the Pope is being anti-feminist, that means the entire world of Christianity is anti-feminist. I think a gentle reminder is in order that there are big chunks of Christianity that have accepted feminist theology as a positive contribution to Christian thought, and who are unafraid of feminine power and authority. In my own denomination, the currently serving General Minister and President (the closest thing we have to a Pope, only minus most of the temporal authority) is a woman, as is our regional minister. The only two religious leaders that personally impacted me as I was growing up were my local pastor, and our associate regional minister who dealt with youth programs: both were women.

The point of this little rant is that while the Roman Catholic church may be doing its best to be unwelcoming to feminist theology, there are still places in Christianity where it is accepted and flourishing.

The Church Model For Environmental Groups: Sharon Astyk writes a lot of good stuff, and this particular article dovetails nicely with my interests and concerns.

Also, I just finished reading The Universe is a Green Dragon by Brian Swimme. This is a wonderful book that tells the story of creation in a way that retains the magic of the best mythological tales while fully incorporating modern science - in fact, modern science is an essential part of this vision of cosmology. An interesting footnote is that I was referred to it by two different sources: first, by a member of my church who said it was something that was read as part of a Sunday School class several years ago, and second, by a reference to it in The Spiral Dance.

I found the text to an interesting speech that was given by Phillip Carr-Gomm on the OBOD web site: Christianity and Druidry: A Meeting Point.

Happy New Year and Best Wishes for 2008 for everybody!

Today's meditation session was practicing the rhythmic breath. After starting with a cleansing breath, I did nothing but practice rhythmic breathing and think about my breathing for 5 minutes. Then I concluded with a cleansing breath. Breathing exercises as presented for meditational purposes are a little strange for me. I have spent a good portion of my life doing activities - playing wind instruments, competitive swimming, scuba diving, and more recently, choral singing - that required controlled breathing, so being conscious of how I breathe is hardly a new concept. On the other hand, while those activities require breath control, it is the type of control displayed by an air compressor. The breath control that meditation requires appears to be much more subtle. To use a somewhat clumsy analogy, it is the difference between a person gracefully waving a fan to cool the occupants of a room vs. a box fan set on high to accomplish the same task.

I think that tomorrow I will spend another session practicing rhythmic breath before moving on to the next skill.

Today is the Winter Solstice, the day with the shortest period of daylight in the year (here in the northern hemisphere), commemorated by Druids as Alban Arthuan, "The Light of Arthur", and by Christians (a few days late) with Christmas. The date of Christmas was co-opted by early Christians from pagan celebrations such as Saturnalia and Natalis Solis Invicti, "the birthday of the unconquered sun". Historically, the nativity might more likely have occurred in the spring; the reference to "shepherds watching their flocks by night" found in Luke 2:8 strongly implies this, because shepherds generally don't watch their flocks by night, except during lambing season (i.e., spring). Many other Christmas traditions also have thinly disguised pagan origins: the Christmas tree, the Yule log, holly and mistletoe, and the hanging of the greens immediately come to mind, and there may be others. In spite of the secular and commercial success of Christmas and the extraordinary emphasis placed on it by many Christians, Christmas is not the most important Christian holiday; that distinction belongs to Easter, and a good argument can be made that Pentecost and the Epiphany also are more significant than Christmas in the Christian tradition.

Happy Solstice, Merry Christmas, and Best Wishes for the New Year for everybody!

A rambling post on some topics, including some ideas that may not be fully formed.

Due to my busy-ness, my attention to my spiritual practice has suffered lately. So, I have no meditations to report about, I have not planned (and likely will not plan) a ritual to observe Alban Arthuan (otherwise known as the Winter Solstice), and generally little progress on any spiritual path right now. I did get a copy of The Druidry Handbook and have read it, and found it to be packed full of useful information and insights. I will be recalibrating my meditation practice a bit, and I have some further ideas running around in my head about how to best travel further down the path of Druidry.

One of the things that struck me most forcefully about The Druidry Handbook was the chapter on meditation. Christian practice heavily emphasizes the importance of prayer. However, it is decidedly unusual to find any advice on how to actually pray. Now, much of this is due to the fact that we are repeatedly told "its not important how you pray, it is important that you do it". That's true, but only up to a point. As an analogy, prayer (or meditation, for that matter) is somewhat like running: in general, anybody can do it, with no training. Even with no training, one will get better as one does it, simply due to the exercise. But at some point, it is immensely valuable to get some training to improve one's form and become a better runner. The same thing goes for prayer. Yes, anybody can do it. But wouldn't Christians be better served if churches didn't merely emphasize the importance of prayer, but emphasized how to get better at prayer?

The Druidry Handbook, which is intended for those new to Druidry, has more information on meditation (Druidry's central spiritual practice) in it than I have encountered about prayer (Christianity's central spiritual practice) in a lifetime of being Christian. There are Christians who have learned and developed very practical and deep prayer practices. I propose that we need to make learning about and applying these practices a much more central part of our traditions than it is now.

As far as my path, I have decided that I am going to explicitly identify as a "Christian Druid" and develop my spiritual practice accordingly. In practical terms, what this means (at this point, at least) is practicing the spiritual practices of Druidry (i.e., following the Earth Path, the Sun Path, and the Moon Path faithfully) and deepening my knowledge of them, and finding ways to bring them into a Christian context while remaining faithful to the spirit of both traditions.

The most interesting and challenging part of this synthesis appears at this point to be the Sun Path. Christianity has a curiously unbalanced liturgical year: it starts with Advent, proceeds through Christmas and the Epiphany, and not too long after that rolls into Ash Wednesday, Lent, Holy Week, and Easter. All those major events in the Christian liturgical year happen in a space of less than 5 months. There is a small pause, then Pentecost (which is a fairly minor event in most churches) ... and then there is a complete drought of seasonal celebration in the Christian context until the next Advent arrives, about 6 months after Pentecost. So Christianity has a well established cycle of seasonal celebration, but it only covers half the year.

On what appears to be a completely different subject, I got a season pass to the ski areas at Snoqualmie Pass this winter. So, I am now skiing regularly again for the first time in over a decade. I must have been a pretty proficient skier at one point, because I am picking it up again with minimal fuss. I have also been feeling very out of shape lately, and in particular had some back pains, and it is very gratifying for me that skiing appears to be doing more to get me back in shape than to beat me further down. Maybe my body isn't in such bad shape and old after all.

Now, meandering back to spiritual practice, I spent last night skiing experimenting with using skiing as a form of movement meditation. I actually think that this will be fairly useful. In spite of the fact that it wouldn't initially appear to be the best activity for movement meditation, it has several useful traits. First, if you are skiing, you almost by necessity have to be very conscious of all the parts of your body. Secondly, a ski slope is generally a fairly quiet and peaceful environment. Even when it is busy, the snow muffles sound to the point where wind and silence are the predominant features of the soundscape. Third, skiing has some very appealing aesthetic qualities (at least to me) when done well. Fourth, ski areas (in the western U.S. at least) are generally very lightly developed patches of what is still basically primeval wilderness, and generally, this is a major feature of the experience.

As a caveat, I would not recommend trying to use skiing as movement meditation to a novice skier. Skiing a run that one finds technically demanding is unlikely to be a meditative experience. I found that using skiing as movement meditation works best for me on slopes that I could descend without a lot of conscious thought about technique.

I have been way too busy lately, not getting enough sleep, and consequently my journal has suffered. I wrote a long post in LJ yesterday, but just as I went to post it, LJ apparently crashed, and so my post was eaten. So here, is a second try at it.

The Importance of Multiple Meanings
Essentially, it was a commentary on Chapter 9 of The Heart of Christianity, in which author Marcus Borg criticizes the tendency of some Christians to regard the narrative of humankind as sinners and Jesus as the instrument of God's forgiveness of humanity's sin as the only way of understanding the concept of salvation. As Borg points out, there are numerous understandings of salvation that the Bible itself presents, and most of them have little or nothing to do with personal sin.

I then compared and contrasted this to a post I read in the Archdruid Report in which John Michael Greer writes:
Knowing many stories is wisdom.
Knowing no stories is ignorance.
Knowing only one story is death.
In this post, he elaborates on the idea that if somebody only knows one narrative to explain their circumstances, then the response to any particular situation may or may not be appropriate to the situation.

Tying this back together, if the only meaning of salvation that one understands is forgiveness for sin, this is likely to be of no use to a person whose highest need is not forgiveness for wrongdoing, but, say, liberation from oppression. To cite a popular example, if someone is a victim in a domestic violence situation, it is far more important to give them the tools to escape that situation than it is to forgive them their sins (or even teach them to forgive others). This release from oppression is every bit as Biblical an understanding of salvation as the forgiveness of sins (just think about the story of Moses and the Exodus), yet this fact is completely lost in the narrow interpretation of Christianity that is currently prevalent. To be sure, we all need forgiveness for our wrongdoing and to forgive others for wrongs committed against us at some point in our lives, but to say that this is the central (or worse, only) meaning of salvation is terribly limiting and renders Christianity meaningless and/or useless for a great many people.

I have only touched on two meanings of salvation in this discussion (liberation from oppression, and forgiveness of sin), but there are many more, some of which Borg discusses much more eloquently than I do. I actually finally finished reading The Heart of Christianity yesterday, but the last chapters in some ways are the best part, and I would highly recommend this book to anybody who seeks a better understanding of Christianity. I particularly would recommend it to those who were raised Christian but who have been wounded by and subsequently rejected Christianity. It may or may not persuade you to give Christianity another try (I don't really care if it does or not, and my point is not to say that you should), but it may open your eyes to a different way of seeing Christian faith that may seem more humane and less hypocritical.
 

Hebrew Bible: Isaiah 7:10-16
Psalm: 80:1-7, 17-19
Epistle: Romans 1:1-7
Gospel: Matthew 1:18-25

Scripture for Lectio Divina: "Grace to you and peace from God" (Romans 1:7b)

Hebrew Bible: Isaiah 35:1-10
Psalm: 146:5-10; also Luke 1:47-55 (The Magnificat)
Epistle: James 5:7-10
Gospel: Matthew 11:2-11

Scripture for Lectio Divina: "The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the ophan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin." (Psalm 146:9)

Hebrew Bible: Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm: 72:1-7, 18-19
Epistle: Romans 15:4-13
Gospel: Matthew 3:1-12

Scripture for Lectio Divina: "Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." (Matthew 3:10)

A list of books that I have found useful on my spiritual journeys with some random comments:

Christianity & Christian Mysticism

• The Heart of Christianity by Marcus J. Borg - An excellent book which seeks to reclaim Christian heritage from fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals that have made Christianity synonomous with "hypocritical, hateful, and exclusive" in the public mind.
• The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck, MD
• A History of God by Karen Armstrong
• When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold S. Kushner
• The Book of Job (in the Bible)

Mary Magadalene & Sacred Feminine

• The Woman with the Alabaster Jar by Margaret Starbird
• The Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Jean-Yves Leloup
• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown - I have the special illustrated edition, which is very helpful because it includes illustrations of all of the art that is referenced in the book, which makes it much easier to understand the connections. The book is clearly fiction, and it would be hard to categorize it as "great literature"; yet, like great literature, it provided me much valuable insight into the nature of western religious history and the consequences of the general understanding of that history.
• The Templar Revelation by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince - Explores in greater detail much of the history behind The Da Vinci Code. Due to the nature of the subject matter, much of it is and probably always will be more speculation than history; however, keeping in mind that "history is written by the winners", many of the ideas behind the theories are at least plausible. 

Druidry

• The Druidry Handbook by John Michael Greer

Other Pagan

• Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions by Joyce & River Higginbotham
• The Spiral Dance by Starhawk
• Pagans & Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience by Gus diZerega - A very good book that seeks to encourage Pagans and Christians to engage in conversation, find commonality, and learn from each other rather than sustaining a culture of mutual suspicion. My one quibble with this is that the author mainly addresses a fairly conservative evangelical form of Christianity, thus making the task of reconciliation look more difficult than it may need to be.
• The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley - The only telling of the King Arthur legends that I have found at all compelling, it is a very beautiful book that drives home the point that (among other things) the Christian God and the Goddess (and gods) of the pagans may all represent the same thing.

Ecology & Natural History

• This Place on Earth: Home and the Practice of Permanence by Alan Thein Durning
• Chocco by Ernest Callenbach (a short story from the anthology Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias ed. by Kim Stanley Robinson)
• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
• The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler
• Fire Mountains of the West by Stephen L. Harris
  

Today I memorized this short ritual, which is the first piece of the larger Sphere of Protection Ritual. I like how one can use whatever names for divinity seem appropriate to the ritual practicioner. I intend to play around with this a bit, but for now I have two sets of names that I will use.

First, the names provided in the example:
- Hu the Mighty, Great Druid God
- Celi the Hidden One, Spirit of Life
- Ceridwen the Wise, Keeper of the Cauldron
- Niwalen of the Flowers, Child of Earth
- Awen

Second, names derived from Judeo-Christian Tradition
- El, God Eternal
- Jesus, the Annointed One
- Shekhinah, Holy Wisdom
- Mary, Beloved of God
- Holy Spirit of God

My daily meditations are going well (only three days in, so not enough to really critique, but a start, nonethless). The technique I am using is becoming a little more natural, and I have already had the experience of finding meanings and insights that are not necessarily obvious, so I feel that I am gaining something.

I located a booklet of advent devotionals for my family and me to use during Advent. Hopefully, I can make Advent as valuable an experience for my child(ren) as my parents did for me when I was growing up. Locating the devotional book itself was slightly frustrating; ordinary bookstores don't carry that sort of thing, and the form of Christianity that one finds in "Christian" bookstores doesn't really lend itself to what I want, either. In fact, the experience confirmed for me what I have felt for some time: if I want serious spiritual insight or inspiration, many Christian bookstores are best avoided at all costs.

Now that I have Advent figured out for this year, I need to plan a Winter Solstice celebration/observance.

Accomplishments:
1) Daily meditations yesterday and today
2) Spending time in nature yesterday and today
3) Started rehearsing with church choir on Thursday. This is the first time that I have ever done any formal vocal music training, so it is the start of working on the Music Spiral (even though my primary focus will be the Poetry Spiral, I won't pass up the opportunity to accomplish things in other areas).
4) I have one small potted tree that I am going to plant in the backyard with my daughter after it completes its service as her Christmas Tree. I am going to select an appropriate tree to be planted in the Woodland Labyrinth at church and plant one there, as well.
5) I am in the process of identifying a combination of Druidic and Christian seasonal celebrations/observations to celebrate the yearly cycle with. So far, I have: Advent, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Lent, Spring Equinox, Easter, Pentecost, Summer Solstice, and Fall Equinox. I am still working out the rituals for most of them that I will do, and how I will go about that.

My meditations are somewhat unfocused so far. I am hoping that better focus comes with time. My time in nature was very enjoyable and calming; I am lucky in that I have a number of good sites to spend time in nature that are convenient to where I live, even though I live in a fairly solidly urban area.

Druidic Accomplishments for Today: Nothing Significant to Report. My goal is for this to not be my default entry.

There are a significant number of books to be read as part of the First Degree Curriculum, so I have the following on my reading list:

Earth Path
1) Fire and Ice: The Cascade Volcanoes by Steven Harris
2) Passionate Slugs & Hollywood Frogs: an uncommon field guide to Northwest backyards by Patricia Lichen
3) Cascade-Olympic Natural History by Daniel Mathews

Sun Path
1) Celebrate the Solstice: honoring the Earth's seasonal rhythms through festival and ceremony by Richard Heinberg

Moon Path
1) A Way of Self-Knowledge by Rudolf Steiner
2) Sweat Your Prayers: Movement as Spiritual Practice by Gabrielle Roth

Poetry Spiral
1) Rhyme's Reason: a guide to English verse by John Hollander
2) Poemcrazy: freeing your life with words by Susan Wooldridge

 I have now downloaded the complete First Degree Curriculum, the First Degree Recommended Reading, A Druid Meditation Primer, and the article describing The Sphere of Protection: A Ritual of Protection and Elemental Working. First impression: when taken seriously, this is not a study path for the faint-hearted. The curriculum looks to be fairly demanding, but looks like it may also yield up rewards in terms of spiritual growth that more than justify the effort.

I have decided that for now my Livejournal will serve to hold my Druid journal, with appropriately tagged entries. I may shift this at some point in the future.

I intend to locate a copy of The Druidry Handbook and see if it seems to contain enough material to make it worth purchasing.

And I need to spend some time studying the curriculum to work out in better detail when I will make time to complete the various requirements and my regular meditations. I have much work to do, and little that I have figured out so far.

Hebrew Bible: Isaiah 2:1-5
Psalm: 122
Epistle: Romans 13:11-14
Gospel: Matthew 24:36-44

Scripture to be memorized for Lectio Divina: "He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." (Isaiah 2:4)

Up until now, my spiritual studies have been somewhat unfocused. I have reached a point where that needs to change. So, I am now resolved to pursue two disciplines:

1) I am going to make a weekly discipline of reading the Lectionary. This has a couple of subparts:
    a) Read all Lectionary lessons for the week (and for additional holy days that have Lectionary lessons).
    b) Select one passage from the lessons for the week, memorize it, and use it in the practice of Lectio Divina.

One of my goals has been to become more scripturally literate, and making a regular study of the Lectionary seems to me to be a good way to work on this. The Lectionary has a three year cycle. Serendipitously, the first year of the cycle starts with the first Sunday of Advent, which is this coming Sunday, so I get to start at the logical starting point.  

2) I am going to pursue initiation as Druid Apprentice in the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA). This discipline involves numerous requirements set out in the First Degree Curriculum.

I have been interested in studying an earth-based spiritual path in more depth for sometime, but one problem has been choosing one that seemed appropriate. I have settled on AODA for two main reasons: one, John Michael Greer is the Grand Archdruid of this order, and I have been deeply impressed by his writings in The Archdruid Report. Secondly, AODA seems to be much more comfortable with Christianity than some other traditions.

The Switch Has Been Flipped: It's Too Late For Solutions: This article points out that there are no solutions anymore, just options.

Big Melt Meets Big Empty: This article suggests that we may be past the tipping point on climate change.

More Discontinuities: This article demonstrates how many people still just don't get Peak Oil.

Waiting for the Other Shoe: This article chronicles the fact that we may be witnessing the first stages of economic meltdown, even as we speak. 

I am currently reading The Woman with the Alabaster Jar by Margaret Starbird. The book is essentially a rehash of the Grail heresy (also known as the Albigensian or Cathar heresy). This is the idea that was popularized most recently in The Da Vinci Code; namely, that Jesus of Nazareth was married to Mary Magdalene, had a child by her, and the heirs of that union formed the basis of a royal bloodline that exists to this day.

Much energy and many words have been expended by others defending and attacking this theory. I'm not sure there is much point to that, though. Like much of the Bible, the important thing is not whether this story relates factual events, but what the story means. In other words, what is the essential truth that is conveyed that might relate to our own lives?

The central theme of both The Woman with the Alabaster Jar and The Da Vinci Code is that the principle of the divine or sacred feminine has been suppressed by orthodox Christianity, and that this suppression has been at the root of all sorts of problems and disfunction in western societies. Therefore, it is imperative that the sacred feminine be restored post haste to a place of honor in our cultural religious imagination. I agree with this premise, and I think that the strength with which this heresy has endured through history and the degree to which it captures our imaginations today is reflective of the power of this imperative.

Voltaire once stated "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." In the spirit of Voltaire, I would say, "If the Divine Feminine did not exist, it would be necessary to invent her." Regardless of the factual truth of the Grail heresy, the symbolism and mythology that surrounds it, or something like it, is necessary for Christianity to be something besides a wounded, incomplete religion.

I would also say that much of neo-Paganism is, in some respects, a direct response to the oppression of the feminine found in much of Christianity. Where the Grail heresy tries to reform Christianity from the inside, by restoring the missing feminine, neo-Paganism tends to reject the whole Christian theological edifice as being fatally flawed. It may well be that the neo-Pagans are right. There is a very strong and repressive part of the Christian community that seeks to maintain the feminine in bondage, if not deny her very existence and legitimacy. It is my hope that this repression can be removed as a defining feature of Christianity, but it may well be that that effort will fail, and that the true hope for healthy religion will have to be found outside the matrix of Christianity.

(Posted in response to this post (What have I got against Christianity?) by shantidove.

I'm going to have to be argumentative because I don't think either of the two beliefs you have posted is intrinsic to being Christian. I will say, right out of the gate, that many Christians would agree that you are correct, those beliefs are intrinsic to Christianity, but I disagree with them when they say it just as vigorously.

( My Response to shantidove's two objections )

For the record: In my church, the requirement to join (and therefore be considered "a Christian") is that you are baptized and have publicly made the following confession of faith: "I believe Jesus Christ is the son of the Living God and I accept him as my Lord and Savior". That's it. No requirement to believe the Bible is "The Word of God". No requirement to believe that "Christ died for our sins". And my denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is not some odd fringe of Christianity - it is one of the seven mainline protestant denominations that for a very long time (up until the 1960s or so) were the de facto establishment churches of the USA.