Random Saturday Stuffage

[anahata56]

First and most important, good thoughts and hugs and soup and potable water and electricity to all those in Texas who are in need of it. It's one of those situations where I find myself sitting and wringing my hands and wishing that I could just bring everyone here for the duration

Comments

[madfedor]

As you know, my personal spirituality is founded on balance. It is a cause of personal angst, but even more so a source of constant grief for those who know me. Wanting to acknowledge the other side, let alone understand it, is a task too many find well nigh impossible behind the barrier of emotional reaction.

Familiarity -- whether it is valid or not -- breeds intellectual laziness. Here, we are commenting on that aspect of Christian thought. That vast majority of Christians from whom we pagans want to hear just don't get our motivation for that desire. To them, it's familiar. It doesn't produce in them the emotional reactions we have, because it is familiar like the rantings of the crazy uncle still stuck in the past, complaining about things that no longer hold true.

Pagans have a complementary familiarity, worthy of the same critique. We see the crazies hogging the spotlight, we see our mutual history and we cannot stop wondering if the excesses of the past are just waiting in quiescence for the moment at which to burst forth again. The more strident of us -- a number in which I was included for too long -- are rightly chastised for paranoia. That doesn't invalidate the fear, but perspective such as you provide concerning the very real "moderate Christian community" exists in balance to that fear.

Ignorance is the true enemy. Fear born of ignorance is a symptom, not the target for a cure. Remedy the ignorance, and the reasons for fear will disappear.

[anahata56]

I not only believe that the moderate Christian community exists, I also believe that they have far more power than they are prepared to take on. This is tragic, to my way of thinking, not just because of what extremists could do to the likes of us, but also what they are capable of doing to other Christians. One would think that self-preservation would take over at some point (before the crazy uncle in the attic actually gets a hold of a pack of matches and burns the house down--to belabor the metaphor), but it doesn't appear to.

This boggles my mind.

In any case, another point made in the article rings true as well, and that is that the onus is on Christianity if reconciliation is to be achieved. And this isn't because they are at fault for the conflict so much as it is that, for many of us, there is no conflict. Personally, I don't care what they do, and it certainly won't be me attending town hall meetings trying to get the Christians oustered from my community. In fact, I don't know of any pagan who would--and not just because we're a minority, but because we know what it feels like to be on the business end of that kind of prejudice, and are loathe to perpetrate it ourselves. So because we have no real beef with Christians until our toes are stepped on by Christians, then it's up to the Christians to keep from stepping on toes. And this is not a problem for a huge majority of them--most of them are capable of sharing space without conflict. It's only a few that decide that they are the arbiters of spiritual integrity and make trouble for the rest of us....

And I say that, while I am not paranoid, I don't trust any Christian who isn't as prepared to slap down the interloper as I am--or who is not, in fact, more prepared. Because they share a label, and should be motivated not only by the existence of my rights, but also their own integrity and the actual meaning behind that label.

I can't make Christians behave like Christians, and I don't want to. But the fact remains that unless Christians are prepared to extend a hand to the non-hostile Pagan community and keep their nuttier brothers in check, there will be no reconciliation, no matter how badly the Pagan community may want it, and no matter how hard they work.