I used to have a blog, Scattered & Random, which was short for Scattered Thoughts and Random Ideas (STARI). When I lost that blog, and it went inactive, it died and took with it all I'd written. Occasionally, I find stuff in the Way Back Machine, but never what I really want. As is the way of the internet, right?
But the idea of having a place to explore thoughts and ideas sticks. I've missed blogging regularly, and still check blogs from my 'previous life' (academia and people whose blogs I read then), and some I've found more recently. I need to find more - I long for those casual but meaningful conversations on wide ranging issues. Out of academia and into a far less stressful life now, what I find I miss most are the conversations about ideas, concepts and questions.
Such as: I stumbled onto a FB post a couple of days ago about a woman who'd left the Christian church because her experience was so negative and she saw violence and hatred justified 'in the name of the faith.' I was heartened to read that, even more to see that so many agreed with her. On Pinterest I saw a thing: Forget putting Christ back in Christmas; let's get Christ back into Christianity! I agreed with that too. So I'm glad to encounter others who share my own experience and outlook: I left the church I grew up in when I was about 12. My family got a bill from that church, and on the bottom of the note was: We accept Visa and MasterCard. I was stunned and angry: God sends bills? God takes plastic??!! My poor mother tried to explain and talk me down, but I was just horrified. That experience ended my life-long (all 12 years) of participation in church activities.
Decades later, I came across a quote: "Spirituality is about a connection with a divine; religion is about crowd control." Don't have any idea who said it, or how it's been modified, but it rings so true to my own experience and my professional training. Religion is used for control and manipulation so frequently, that we really can't say it's 'mis-used' - not when people around the world, from all kinds of religious communities, justify cruelty and violence and even indifference in the name of their god(s). If that was a rare occurrence, we might say it's a misuse of religion; but it's far too common for that.
So I consider myself a pagan, an animist who works to recognize the value and dignity of every manifestation of being: the trees, the rocks, the rivers and the oceans - all are interconnected and a part of a greater whole and deserve honor, respect and protection.
The 'whole' isn't just an eco-system, or even a planet - in my lifetime we've moved from a view of the universe as a relatively small Huge thing to our solar system as a tiny part of an enormous system - just take a hard look at JWST images, and our galaxy is so tiny! We can only 'see' 13.5 billion years - 10 years ago, that wasn't really possible, never mind the galactic paradigms of the 1950s! I clearly remember when somebody first found another planet in a different solar system, and how astonishing that was. I remember clearly when Jacques Cousteau first filmed the deep sea life forms, and revealed that photosynthesis was only ONE of the processes that converted energy into organic compounds. I remember my astonishment and wonder at the very idea of chemosynthesis and was transfixed. Hubble images were equally mesmerizing, and JWST? Well, that just blew me away. Still does. A friend once explained to me that we don't know how to see non-carbon based life forms - that there could be silicone life forms out there that we simply don't know how to look for. That seemed so logical to me, and I wonder if scientists have figured that out yet. I just read that chickens can see UV - and I wonder if that ability is in other animals - having lived with both cats and dogs, I know that both can sense things I can't. It makes sense to me that we don't all share the same capabilities, the same rods and cones... so if chickens can see UV, what else can? The world/universe/multiverse is so big, so wondrous, so amazing... how can we not be aware of how much we don't know? How can we not be fascinated by the unknown? Why are so many people so terrified by the unknown?
Paganism, for me, encourages an exploration of the closest and grandest 'wholes' around us. Crowd control offers some one else's answers for my (many) questions, and it offers security to so many. I can't help but question that taught need for security. And I resent like hell those who think that those of us outside their religion need to be controlled. Limited. Restricted. They are far more dangerous to everyone than I will ever be. They have every right to their beliefs: they do not have the right to impose their religion on others. Period.
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