So it appears that Freya is jealous that I'm choreographing a piece about my religion that has nothing to do with her. Because now I'm choreographing a dance for her.

There's a film major on campus who is doing her senior project on Norse Myths. And I was interested. I was disappointed to discover that Freya is not a character in the film, but rather "The Vanir (a group of sexy goddesses)" is. So I was upset about that and prepared to write it off, even though I had a feeling my gods would want me to be involved somehow. Then I found out that the Vanir is going to be a group of goddesses--who dance. She's looking for dancers to play them. Perfect, right? So I asked her what the time commitment would be, and she said it wasn't a lot, but that because of that, whenever she had rehearsal, I HAD to be there. Also she asked if I knew anyone who might be interested in choreographing for her. Well, since I can't just say "yeah, I'll be there whenever you want" because clearly I can't skip my own senior project rehearsals for hers, I proposed a deal: I would choreograph for her if I could also dance and pick the rehearsal schedule. She agreed.

So now Freya is getting a dance. Just for her. Because clearly I'm not going to make it about the Vanir as a whole, since the Vanir are not all sexy goddesses. And besides that, Freya loves attention.

Safi had the first rehearsal for her senior project tonight. It was truly magical.

The first thing we did was to go around in a circle and we all introduced ourselves and said our favorite mythological creature. I don't know much about mythological creatures, but I do have a favorite mythological character, so I said Freya. That was the first thing that brought Her to the rehearsal.

Safi put on this piece of music that an artist who has a muscular deficiency disorder dances to everyday. There was a really good rhythm and there was a voice saying things about listening to your body, feeling the energy, finding the source of movement, moving off the inhale, moving off the exhale, moving from the emptiness between. There were sections of circles, staccato, chaos, lyrical, and stillness.

As I was moving, I started to think about Freya and began to dance as an offering to Her. But then things shifted. As I was listening to the music and feeling the dance of my hips, I began to feel like Freya. When we got to staccato (which, by the way, is something I'm not particularly good at), I began to feel how She feels when She's angry. When we got to chaos I felt Her frantic search for Odh, the frenzy that comes before a seidh vision. During the lyrical, I felt Her in Sessrumnir, basking in the love songs and beauty that rest there. And for stillness, I felt Her steadyness--the steadyness of love felt in darkness, felt eternally. I also felt her emptiness at love gone wrong, love so strong it can never feel complete. Somewhere along the line, I stopped being the one in control of the movements--and not even just during the chaos section when I was flailing. Even when I was moving slowly, controlled. She had me.

Somehow, I invoked her.

Hail Freya!

I haven't posted about my religion stuff in a while. And, actually, my life has been surprisingly religion-free lately, which has really been bothering me.

My dorm room gets absolutely no natural light, which makes it really hard to wake up in the morning. Because I have my first class at about 1:30 everyday, I would like to do some kind of meditation or daily practice at that time, but because it's impossible for me to wake up in a room where the difference between day and night is that it's brighter at night because there's a lamp, I haven't been doing that. I'm working on it.

There's a daily non--sectarian meditation in the college chapel at noon I might start going to. It's lead by my favorite religion professor, so I would certainly enjoy it.

But I'm still in transition to my new space. I haven't figured out my daily routines, or even my weekly routines here yet. I'm so used to being at Bard in winter that I can't figure out what to do with the flowers.I don't know when to do my rituals because I haven't figured out my schedule. And I haven't figured out my own energies and my own relationship to the space of being without him. Of constant longing with no intermittent reprieve. Lame.

Anyway, Freya forced me to do a ritual last night as I was trying to go to sleep. And I thank her immensely for it. It made me feel so much better to just remind myself what it is that I'm ignoring. And what's so dumb is that the thing that I'm ignoring is the only thing that can save me during this.

So anyway, needless to say I haven't been contemplating my thoughts on religion as much as I usually do. In fact, as I'm walking across campus, I've noticed a decided lack of things to think about because that is when I'm usually pondering existence. But now I'm just thinking about getting to where I'm going. It sucks. 

Anyway, I will get back to my religion soon. I can feel the ripples in my psyche forcing it on me. I even had a dream last night where a missionary came to my house and got my parents practicing religion and it made them so much happier. And I know that that was myself telling me that the ritual, that celebrating the All and giving to Freya, Odin, and Thor, is what makes me a whole human being. I can feel that wholeness I had achieved slipping away. I need to snatch it back.

In this here podunk town where Kassandra and I are spending the night, there's a mall. So we went there to entertain ourselves. Wow. I had totally forgotten how malls are totally pre-teen territory on friday nights. Man, pre-teens are awkward. I overheard a couple of girls talking about how they can't wear heels because all of their boyfriends are shorter than them...

Anyway, we decided to go to bookstore. As I was perusing, Kassandra was looking at the bargain books. She's super awesome, and found me two super awesome books that I proceeded to purchase.

Here is the first one:

And if you're complaining because this picture is too big, well, deal with it. This book is bigger than my torso. It's ENORMOUS. It's got a whole bunch of high quality full color images of space. Like nebulas and galaxies and galaxy clusters and all.

The other book I got is two books in one by Stephen Hawking. The Universe in a Nutshell and The Illustrated Brief History of Time.

I bought them because they will help me with my research for my Universe Story project, and also because they were super cheap. The cover price for this book is 50 pounds, which is about $100. And I got it for $20. You cannot complain about a high quality full color image book bigger than me for $20. The other one was $15, which isn't as amazing, but not bad.

Anyway, the guy at the counter tried to put them in a plastic bag that was smaller than the book. I said I didn't need one and he looked at me funny. But the bag would have just made it harder to carry this thing.

I'm so excited!

I've finished painting Freya and the wings. Here they are:

I went to the thrift store today where I found a pair of ceramic angel wings that had broken off of their angel. I got them for free. I also bought an angel with her head broken off for $1 who will now live on my altar.

Why do I want these things, you may ask? Well, for my shrine to Freya. I don't like any of the statues of her I've seen on the internet. Not one of them do justice to her in my opinion. But I really want a statue of her. So, considering her falcon cloak and the fact that she can fly, I've been thinking for a while now that a statue of an angel might just make a fantastic Freya, if I could just find the right one. I've been keeping my eyes peeled each time I go to the thrift store, but all the angels are babies or playing music or holding signs that say "peace" or doves or something very un-Freya like. Plus they have halos and that annoying "oh, I'm so pure and innocent" look on their faces. But today, I found the perfect one.

She has these beautiful ornate wings and a lovely dress on. She's holding a heart in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other. She's all white ceramic, but I'm going to paint her (I bought some glass paint as well). And the fact that she has no head means she has no halo or innocent face. She's beautiful.

As for the broken wings, they gave them to me because no one else will want them and there was no price tag. I'm going to pain them brown and put them on her shrine. I hope someday that her shrine will include the statue, my amber necklace, the angel/soon-to-be-falcon wings, two matching cats and a boar. I imagine the boar will be the hardest to find.

The people at the store teased me for getting a bunch of broken angels, but I love them. And Freya does, too. (She'll like them more once they're painted.)

I will post pictures once they are painted.

I don't want to be a closeted pagan anymore. Because as long as I'm here, my family will continue to say things that baffle me until I remember that they think I'm a Christian.

My parents know I'm very religious. They just think that means very Christian. So today at the thrift store, my mom bought me a movie about Jesus' life that's supposed to be inspirational and teach who the "real Jesus" is. I don't want to watch that movie. I know as much as I particularly care to know about Jesus' life, and any movie like that that is supposed to be inspirational is bound to make me feel like I'm being proselytized to. No thanks. I've read the Bible and I'm likely to read it again. I don't need Jesus movies.

And the other awkward thing that happened today: my Mom is lonely and wants to make friends. So she wants to start going to church. This is a good idea, I think. The thing is, she doesn't like picking a church. So she thinks my Dad and I should go to church on Sunday to try to pick her one. But I don't want to go to church, and the one week I'm here isn't going to find her the perfect church if she isn't willing to make the risk of going herself.

In more positive news, we talked about being psychic. She was telling me about how she hates it when she knows someone is going to die (that's happened to her about three times, and me once). But she was also saying how she once asked a preacher about it, and he said it's from the devil. Another preacher told her it was a gift from God and pointed out that there are psychics in the Bible. So she says that while she always tried to supress it because people told her it was evil, she thinks I should work on it and see where I get to. So at least I know she's supportive in that vein, even if I know I'm likely to never be able to tell her about my paganism.

I've noticed the past few days just to what extent my self-esteem has blossomed in the last few months. At the beginning of the spring semester, I felt completely lost with Tander in Mexico. I felt alone, like I had no one to care for me. At the same time, I was trying desperately to be a heathen, but I was always feeling as if I wasn't doing it well enough. There was always something--I didn't know enough lore, I didn't want to be a "warrior," I wanted peace rather than frith, I'm not of northern European descent.

Sometime in that semester, I gave up on heathenry and began blazing my own path--based on the things about heathenry I liked and The Universe Story. Once I really got going with that, my self-esteem started getting a lot higher. I was no longer worried all the time about being right or wrong. I could listen to m intuition and my gods and do what seemed right to me. I could read things and actually started thinking about how various things I read relate to my religion and how that affects my morals and beliefs.

Kassandra's being gone let me be who I am as an individual rather than as a set of two. Learning about my own religion, what I truly believe on my own has let me explore who I am as an individual even more. Worrying about how whether I'm right or wrong made me feel the way my parents have always made me felt--that in a way, my choices aren't mine to make. That my feelings aren't mine to make. That I am subject to someone else's morals.

Now that I've freed myself from religion's rules and worries, I've noticed now that I'm home that I have a much easier time of not letting my parents get to me. When they tell me that I'm wrong or that my decisions aren't the ones I should be making, I can see that their ideas of what a good decision is are not the same as mine and leave it at that. I see that their motives are different than mine. And that makes me much happier about myself.

A few years ago, I never would have imagined that I could have good self-esteem. That I could feel whole and confident about myself without needing anyone else to validate my opinions.

I've run into some issues with my religion again. Well, not really that. It's that I want community again. I hate feeling so displaced, feeling as if there's not real point setting down roots because I won't be anywhere for long for at least another year. I want to join some kind of pagan group, or even just have some pagan friends I can talk to and occasionally practice with. I'm still too early in my path to be so alone. I need to learn from others, not just from books and words. I feel like I'll never get the sufficient depth in anything until I truly have other people to talk to.

I'm still interested in hoodoo. I want to learn scrying. Maybe someday I want to learn seidh. I don't know. I just want to learn from somebody. The Bard group isn't good enough and I don't know about traveling very far during school, plus I'm sure I'll get really busy. Perhaps I will get off my butt and try to find some kind of public ritual to go to, but I don't know. I just really want to find real life friends who understand this about me. I want to have a group I can share ideas with. I want friends who will give me ideas as much I have my own.

Argh!

I just feel like I'm coming so far, and I want other people to grow with.

I hate feeling like so much of my life is on hold. I hate how temporary it is now.

Does your religious/spiritual path effect the way you view sex?  Did your sexual ethics change when you found your pagan path?

This is an interesting question for me. My mother is an evangelical Christian, as I was growing up, my parents would say  "don't have sex. Sex is bad." All the time. They would give me a lecture on sexual morality every time a movie had a sex scene. It was pretty ridiculous. My negative attitudes toward sex grew so bad that in middle school, I remember meeting my science teacher's new husband and thinking "They have sex. They must be embarrassed to be here together." Yeah. It was that bad.

In high school, my friends helped a bit. My issues were also helped a bit by falling in love. I loved making out with him and doing sexual things (though sex didn't come until much later.) Still I was plagued by guilt about it. Then we went to college, and a particular friend of mine made me understand that sex isn't a bad thing. Before the year was out, my boyfriend and I were having sex. But still, every so often after sex, I would have these issues about being "pure." And I would cry to my boyfriend because I was an Eve and not a Mary. And he would say that I am pure because my sexual desire rests so purely on him because of my love for him. But that could never be enough because we weren't married and sex is bad.

Then I decided I was a pagan. Within a few days, I had a profound experience wherein I literally felt my guilt leave my body. There were still some remains, of course, that persisted every so often, but for the most part, I truly did see that sex is a good thing.

Now I worship Freya primarily. And so how could I not see sex in a positive light? I'm still highly monogamous, but that has everything to do with how much I love my boyfriend. But even so, ever since my relationship with Freya has been so close, I have come to find the moments after sex to be the best moments in existence, not a time to debase myself by saying I should be more pure than to have done it.

A transformation from a sex-hating monotheism to a polytheistic relationship with a love/sex goddess? How could my views of sex not have changed?

It seems that my religion might be turning itself upside down again. Well, not so much this time, more like a twist than a reversal.

I suppose this all starts a few weeks ago. I was walking to work, and as I crossed the bridge, all of a sudden, I found myself saying "Legba" over and over, just because I liked the way it felt in my mouth. So while I was at work, I did minimal research and read that Legba is a Voudoun diety (Iwa?) and figured I had read it somewhere and that was that.

Then lately, as I mentioned before, I have been honoring Freya much more than usual in my life, with the flower picking and all. I asked her to give me happiness with Boyfriend in spite of the impending distance. (Oh man, has she delivered on that one...will get to that in a moment.)

The other day, I saw mention of Erzulie (another Iwa). I didn't know anything about her, so I did a quick google and read about her on Wikipedia. And as I did, I noticed a considerable overlapping and similarity between her and Freya. That night, as I lay in bed, I found myself saying "Freda" over and over and that bugged me, because her name is "Freya" not "Freda." But I ran across Erzulie again and upon my second reading of the Wikipedia article, I noticed that her name is sometimes Erzulie Freda. Interesting....

Anyway, today, I spent a bunch of time reading about Voudoun and Hoodoo because Erzulie has piqued my interest. Freya has been trying to get me to start practicing some kind of magic for a while now. But the only kind of magic I knew of was Wiccan-esque magic and that just doesn't interest me in any way. It's too ceremonial and not practical enough, I suppose. So while I was reading about all that, I found that, other than Erzulie, Voudoun doesn't particularly interest me, but Hoodoo does. I also read references to various forms of Appalachian Folk Magic. So as all this has been processing in my head today, this is what I came up with:

Freya either asked Erzulie for help with me, or else is Erzulie (I'm not sure how I feel about this one...I'm a hard polytheist, but Freya definitely has a lot to do with it, more than I would guess of her just asking for help from another Goddess). Anyway, Freya/Erzulie want(s) me to read more about Appalachian Folk Magic and/or Hoodoo because it interests me far more than Wicca does, especially given that both (particularly Appalachian Folk Magic) come from where I come from. I feel most at home in the Appalachians. Furthermore, they seem more practical and less ceremonial than Wicca, which I've never been interested in because of the excessive ritual involved. So anyway, folk magic appears to be my big new field of study, as placed upon me by Freya/Erzulie. (I use the slash because I don't know how the two relate to it, really. Obviously more research is in order.)

In other religious news, I started reading Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler today, and so far it's basically just made me really glad to be a pagan. I actually had a religious experience reading part of it.

The other day while I was doing the weekly ritual I have been developing, I feel a deeply spiritual experience in a way I haven't felt in a while. I think the symbolism of the ritual and all is finally starting to get down into my psyche enough for me to just feel it rather than trying to remember it.

And finally, on Boyfriend and Freya. I've mentioned the flowers. I've been doing it for two and a half weeks now. Well, today when I got home and put flowers in her little vase, I asked her for happiness in my life. And now, here it is, 3:34 on a work night and I have to get up extra early tomorrow morning for my New York Times interview, and I'm so elated I can't fall asleep. Usually I'm annoyed when Boyfriend is asleep and I'm not, but today every time he tried to get me to be quiet or to stop stroking him or to stop kissing him, I've only become more enamored, more joyful. Eventually I decided to get up and do something useful with this uber-productive mood I am in besides bother him. I don't even feel like I need to spend every second with him anymore.

Oh! I guess that wasn't the end of it. While not-sleeping, I took a shower. I've been thinking lately that I need to construct some kind spell or something to help me with my goal of being a professional dancer. As I was showering, this little verse came to me. I suppose it will be some part of this spell I work out. It's sort of fluffy sounding, but I like it. I'm unsure about the word "goddess," so that might change.

I am the water that cleanses.
I am the sun that shines.
I am the goddess who dances.
I am the bird who flies

My relationship to Freya has been shifting lately, in a good way. She's starting to become the most important deity for me, and Odin and Thor are falling back. Perhaps that's because I've been wearing an amber necklace and picking her flowers every day on my walk home. Perhaps it's because I am relating to her really well in my life lately.

But the shift started before all that. It was a few weeks ago, shortly after Odin told me the gods worship the All. I was meditating and worshiping. I tend to go around to each of my gods and say a prayer to them and talk to each about my life as it relates to them. When I got to Freya, she said she wanted to worship with me. All of a sudden, she and I were in a clearing in the woods, wrapped up in our meditation shawls and facing each other, holding our hands up to the sky. She and I were worshiping the All together, and we're doing it more and more. I can hold out my hands to her now, and she will place hers upon mine as we celebrate existence. It's pretty fantastic.

As she's becoming more important, I'm sort of thinking about how to categorize that relationship. I'm trying not to, just yet, but someone asked a question about patron deities the other day that got me thinking. Even though she is the one I am closest to, she is not a patron. She is a best friend who I worship with. We share life issues and console one another. We worship together. And she teaches me. So she is not my patron. But I am also not her servant. I am, to an extent, her servant, as I will do anything she asks of me. But I feel more like Odin's servant than anyone else's. For Odin I learn and read. For Odin I sacrifice and feel pain. Freya is a joy.

I'm feeling sort of odd.

I've been doing better about my meditating every day. And the other day, Freya and Odin took me on quite a ride all over the world, and I got to see the Midgard Serpent. That was weird. I'm still processing what it is they told me during all that. I haven't quite figured out why they shoved me down a volcano or turned me into a fish. I'm sure there's some kind of metaphorical thing. I know what they meant by the serpent who had a reflection.

Anyway, I'm feeling really centered today after my regular ritual. It's nice.

Boyfriend and I have had a few more religious conversations. I'm trying to get him to understand my religion in the context of his. He said that I would be a good religious teacher because I'm really good at asking questions to make people come up with the answer for themselves, but a really good answer they wouldn't normally have come up with. I appreciate him saying that. He really likes the trinity and thinks God has to be outside the universe, so all hope is lost in terms of his being a pantheist. This is okay with me. He kept trying to make the trinity into parts of pantheism, but it didn't work. It was sort of like God was the creator who made the Universe and the Holy Spirit is the divinity in the Universe ("that which binds" is what he called it") and then Jesus came to teach us about it or something. But I couldn't get him to understand that you can't really have God have a son in pantheism. It doesn't make any sense to have a person who is more divine than any other person because in pantheism everything and everyone must be equally divine. I'm not sure he's figured out yet exactly what pantheism means, and I'm sure that it confuses him that I worship deities as well. Oh well, that confuses a lot of people, really. Most people consider deities and pantheism to be mutually exclusive. But I don't think my gods are more divine than the rest of us. They live separately and have different powers and strengths than people, like how we have different strengths and powers than cats. Their purpose is somewhat different. They worship the All as well, but are more advanced in their understanding of it.

Done rambling.

Davin and I finally had the conversation about religion that I've been craving for over a year now. It was amazing.

It started with me asking him what he really, truly thinks of my religion. He started saying how he thinks it's good, and I told him that "it's good" is not an answer. I want him to tell me what he thinks of my particular beliefs, etc. Anyway, somehow I said that my pantheism is what I consider to be my overall religion, and the gods are there to help me find truth in the world. It was the first time he's realized that the pantheism wasn't secondary to the polytheism, and that, in fact, the religion could exist separate from the gods. And somewhere he said "If I were to ever follow your religion...." That pretty much floored me. I asked him why he would say that if he has no intention of ever following my religion.

He said that he would never set out to follow my religion, but through reconciling his beliefs with mine, he can see how he would get somewhere closer to it. That made me happy. So then we started talking about the relationship of the gods/God to the All. I told him that in my religion, the gods are a part of the All, and they worship it themselves. He said that God can't worship something, and so I asked him what the relationship is. He came up, after a lot of talking about a verse in the Bible about how the "word is God" and trying to figure out what words mean for existence, that God is the All. I told him that that doesn't make sense because the All does not consciously or with foresight do anything. It creates as it goes. In a way, the creation creates the creator rather than the creator creating the creation. And anyway, I asked him if God is the All, what's the point in making a distinction? In order to make that distinction. God would need to be either inside or outside the All. He decided to sleep on it. I figure he'll go the panentheistic direction because he is not yet prepared for anything to be larger than God.

I'm so proud of him for making this breakthrough and actually beginning to analyze his beliefs. And I'm so happy we had this conversation and he enjoyed it. I feel so much closer to him now.

 Life moves in cycles.  Seasons, births, deaths, the moon, all cycles of waxing and waning.  Even personal aspects of our lives are in constant cycles of change.  There are times we feel full of energy and other times when getting out of bed is a chore.  Our spiritual lives and even our relationships with the divine experience times of waxing and waning.  Describe a time when you felt disconnected or distanced from your religion.  How did you rekindle your spiritual flame?


This one is kinda hard for me because in a lot of ways, I haven't felt disconnected from it in the year and a half since I first converted to paganism. But my religion has changed dramatically over that time. And the time I felt the most disconnected from it was not so much that my life got so busy that I totally forgot how to worship, but rather when my beliefs crashed out from under me and I found myself starving for the connection I had felt. That was when I lost Asatru.

For a week or so I couldn't figure out what I believed. I tried making up my own religion, I tried worshiping my gods outside the confines of a religion, I tried not thinking about religion. I even tried worshiping other gods besides my own. But none of these made me feel the least bit happy or fulfilled. What brought me back was an accident, really. I had an assignment for a class to read The Universe Story. That book kindled in me a spiritual flame unlike any I had felt before. We had to do a creative assignment for the class based on the book, so I created a religion. I follow that religion now, not to the letter and adding my own gods in, but that book, placed perfectly in my life when I was so lost, rekindled my flame.

Other, more minor times, when I feel disconnected from my gods, I just meditate or pray more, and they usually arrive.

We had a nice solstice. As per my religion project, we were celebrating, in addition to the solstice, we were celebrating the beginning of life from the first living cell through sexual reproduction.

So we woke up and ate some omelets and then went to go berry picking. The place we went to go to was supposed to be 1 1/2 hours away, but there was a lot of inexplicable traffic, so it took us two hours to get there. Then it was closed, and there was some random woman sitting there who told us where another place was. So we went to this other farm and picked a bucketful of each strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries. They're the tastiest berries I ever picked. It was really wonderful to stand in the sun and pick that which the plants made out of eat, eating deliciousness as we went. It took us two hours to get home, and Davin and I got into a spat on the way because I was stressed out from being lost. But it was okay.

We got home and Tander had cooked us a vegan dinner to celebrate the advent of photosynthesis. It was roasted vegetables and pasta. It was delicious. Then we played Uno and this weird game of Boyfriend's called Miniature Tanks. It was fun.

Then we went to celebrate sexual reproduction, so we made strawberry shortcake and we each read out loud a section from a romance novel or some such. Dani's was about a whore and a cowboy. Tander's was a nondescript poem. Mine was clearly written by a virgin and included such wonderful things as "her breasts were of a size I could not fit them all in my mouth." And that they were shaped like ice cream cones.

Then I did my ritual. I meditated and then thanked all my gods for the last year since I swore my oath to them. It was lovely.

Then we had sex. It was really good.

The end.

Thor's been coming out lately. I've been hearing thunder when it isn't raining, and I've been seeing the outline of a hammer everywhere, the shape of a puddle, the blue space through the clouds. It's not something I usually look for or see. But then I came home and realized it. I always need him most when I'm here. My parents fight and it makes me hate myself. I need Thor for emotional protection. And he was so thoughtful as to bring himself out and remind me to think of him before I even got here and told him I needed him. So I've been praying to him. He's nice.

I've finished collecting the offerings I want to keep on my altar for each of the deities I'm closest to. I already had a valknut and some birch. Boyfriend and I made a hammer last time I visited him. And now I finally have things for Freya, Lofn and Sjofn. Tander bought me an amethyst necklace in Mexico, and I always associated amethyst with love, so that's going to Sjofn. She also bought me some amber in Campeche, which is one of the best places in the world to get amber, so that's obviously going to Freya. And Boyfriend called me today and said he got a skeleton key from his Dad that he's going to give me for Lofn. Yay!

And there's one more weird thing. Both days since I've been home when I've meditated, once I get to where I'm going, I feel overwhelmed and can't breathe. So I have to quickly get myself back to the ground and I'm out of breath. I can't figure out what's going on with that.

Today my college had this sort of get-together for "religious and spiritual student" to discuss the "spiritual life on campus," ie, to talk about why there is none.

Anyway, I went, and there were four of us. It was a guy who has an academic interest in Buddhism but wants to start a Quaker meeting at school (Lizzy, you know him. It's Will from your dorm (does he actually live there or just hang out there?)). And there was me, a pagan pantheist ex-Christian, an episcopalian girl, and a kind-of Jew. Then there were three professors, the Buddhist Study professor, an art history professor, and a lit professor. The lit professor got on my nerves because of how she talked. It was very fast and she sort of stuttered her breath in this weird way when she was thinking.

So they started out having us introduce ourselves and then we got to talking about why it is that none of us feel like there's a religious community, except for the episcopalian, who goes to Catholic mass on campus. Will and I talked the most and it seemed like he and I sort of agreed about it. I talked about how I didn't like the circle because it was so Wiccan-centric that all we talked about was magic and never really discussed what we believe and why. He talked about why he likes Quaker meetings. The professors were sort of over-academicizing it. Like while I was talking about the circle, I said something like "I wish we would talk about things like what it means to be a pagan." So then the professors thought it would be good to start a sort of discussion forum series with topics like that. Not necessarily limited to paganism since we were all interested in starting a sort of inter-faith dialogue. But it seemed like the topics, like charity or what it means to be religious or something would sort of end up and the anthropological discussions and skip the sort of community, anecdotal, human element. What we're all really wanting, it seems, is a place to voice our beliefs to other people who have their own and say why we believe them and see what they believe and why.

Anyway, afterward, Will came up to me and asked me what pantheism is. I told him and we ended up talking for nearly an hour about the sort of thing we both seemed to want. He talked about his beliefs and understandings--he feels a call to ritual and he feels spiritual things when he walks around, but his inner skeptics won't let him have that. I talked about how pantheism fills that sort of confusion for me and just lets things be wonderful (or not wonderful) as they are. I feel like maybe I helped him clear things up in his mind, and I certainly had some things cleared up in my mind as well. Like why I hate post-modernism (it focuses on the differentiation and ignores the communion. We need a balance.)

The scheduled thing was interesting, but ultimately unproductive. If, perhaps, there were some way for there to be a group of students to get together and talk about their beliefs, it would be awesome. Perhaps some sort of club of people of different religions, where each week a different person could tell the club about what they believe and why maybe? But that sounds like it could get too confrontational and perhaps force people to share things they wouldn't, otherwise. It just seems like, as of now, everything religious on this campus is related to a particular religion. And most of the spiritual kids on campus aren't. Somehow we need to forge a community of spiritual but not religious kids who want to talk about it together or something. Maybe. Because talking with Will this evening was fantastic, and I wish I could do that kind of thing more often.