Interview Meme Part II
From Cadhla (for whom I must still think up 2 more questions).
1. What brought you to your faith?
Which aspect of my faith?
First of all, maybe I should give a quick outline to my faith: I'm a Pantheist, moderate polytheist, and I do Will/Energy work (read: magic) and other such things. I usually just summarize all that by saying "Pagan". How'd I get here? Well, in bits and pieces, really.
I was raised psudo-Episcopalian by two former Unitarian mystics, one of whom converted to Episcopalianism, and has recently been pondering what to do next, the other of whom has since converted to Capitalism.
I was raised Pantheistic, believing in Reincarnation, Tarot Cards, Ghosts, and Chi (they didn't say "Chi", that's just the best word for it). I was, for a couple years as a kid, an Acolyte with our church, but I realized not long after that I really didn't believe Jesus was the only child of God. After all, I'm a child of God, right? Isn't everybody?
I learned the word "Agnostic" at a Sci-Fi convention. I remember it was at the Red Lion, so it was either BayCon, or SiliCon. I decided that sounded about right for how I felt about God as He had been described to me, but I did feel certain about souls and other such stuff.
Then, sometime after highschool my Mom excitedly sent me email with a link to the definition of "Pantheism" and I realized that I don't doubt the existence of Divinity, I just use a different definition.
The moderate Polytheism came with time and experience. My first love was Helenic, and I got used to the idea, though I didn't myself believe it beyond "archetype subsets" - right up until I started meeting various Gods, and just came to accept that some people, with their very own unique personalities and skills, happen to not have bodies, and that's no reason not to be friends with them if they're nice to me.
As for the magical stuff, well, some of it I was raised with - I learned Shielding and basic Healing energy-work from my Mom. I learned Thought Forms, and basic Will-Working theory from my Dad, though he didn't call them that. I learned to read Tarot from both parents, but they made me study it on my own until I was 18. I was always interested in magic, but didn't get very far into it until a friend of mine became very sick, and I panicked, and had many dreams about it, until I finally asked some friends for help doing a Healing ritual for her, and I've been working on those skills ever since.
2. Have you ever had what you would call a truly religious experience?
Oh my, yes. Many. There's a sense of scale to it, though. There's Religious as in "I feel a being far greater than myself, and I feel moved by that being - loved." Which I have always felt, really. It's part of my sense of identity, and a part of my sense of worth, that I belong in this place, in this life. I have only to stop, calm myself, and reach out, and I feel this.
Then there's the "I'm getting the unequivocal sense that Stuff Exists that science refuses to address" which started when I was very young, with the Man in the Window:
The house my Mom lives in now is the same house I grew up in from birth. When I was young - younger than 4 I know, because my Dad was around still - I would sometimes see a man in the window that faces the north side of the house in my bedroom. He was short, and broad shouldered, wearing a tuxedo suit, a bowler hat, and opaque Lennon sunglasses. Sometimes he was kinda transparent down towards the bottom of the window, sometimes not. He never did anything but stare at me. The thing is, that window, on the outside, for a man to stand there looking that height, he'd have to be like 7 feet tall, or carry a stepladder, and we found evidence of neither.
I'd say it was one of several sleepwalking-halucinations (a whole other story) but my older sister saw him in the other bedroom window in her own time - Not that she ever mentioned it until much later. For her, it seems, he would open the window and lean in, and chatter with her - baby talk. She saw him as wearing the same kind of clothes, but very tall - of course that window would require that he be somehow bent in half, or else a dwarf in height, to have his torso straight to look at her, up against the sill. To top it all off, that window has been taped shut since before my parents moved in the house, and still is today.
My Mom's theory is that he chattered with her but not me because I was baptized when I saw him, and my sister was baptized much later than I. My Dad's theory is that this ghost-man was connected to him, and that may be why we never saw him again after Dad moved out - I saw only a faint phantom of him through the second-story window many years later in the apartment Dad shared with my Step-Mom.
We were worried, for a while what this would mean for my Brother, since he wasn't baptized (maybe he is now, I don't know), but my if my Brother has seen the Man in the Window, he's never mentioned it.
Sorry, tangent, I know.
I've also had countless other events of this category, though few are so dramatic. Many of the most recent ones are recorded in this journal, though most of them are viewable only by those in my "Pagan" lock, for the sake of whomever else I may mention in them.
3. Why a dream journal?
That's pretty easy to answer, actually. For as long as I can remember, I've had very vivid dreams that seemed to mean things. I was a sleepwalker for a while, and even had at least one episode of walking halucination when I was 4 or younger (again, because my Dad was still living with us). Because my dreams have been consistantly vivid and significant - not prophetic, but psychological, though I do get the odd message here and there - I've always made an effort to remember them, and often to record them. I finally got tired of random slips of paper and text files lying all over the place wherever I had put them, and started a single journal to record them all in that I could access from pretty much wherever I happen to be.
4. What do you feel most people get 'wrong' about you?
I'm not sure. There's a certain degree to which I respect the concept of perspective. How can they be wrong about their own oppinions? But I do find that some people think I'm deliberately talking down to them, or something, and that is nearly never the case with me. I just happened to have learned certain speech patterns from my Dad, who is very good at presenting any information as though he is an authority on the subject. Even if I'm not trying to pass myself off as an authority, since I'm using his tones of voice, I can sound like I am.
The other thing is that folks who only ever see me in a highly social context often think I'm that hyper all the time. No, being around lots of people apparently overstimulates me, which makes me kinda hyper. At home, when it's just me and my boyfriend, I'm pretty darn mellow, and even downright tired.
5. Which matters more -- truth or trust?
How can there be trust without truth? I cannot sepparate Truth from Trust, so I must presume that Truth matters more. I may know the truth and not trust you, but I cannot possibly trust you if you will not give me the truth.
--Ember--
1. What brought you to your faith?
Which aspect of my faith?
First of all, maybe I should give a quick outline to my faith: I'm a Pantheist, moderate polytheist, and I do Will/Energy work (read: magic) and other such things. I usually just summarize all that by saying "Pagan". How'd I get here? Well, in bits and pieces, really.
I was raised psudo-Episcopalian by two former Unitarian mystics, one of whom converted to Episcopalianism, and has recently been pondering what to do next, the other of whom has since converted to Capitalism.
I was raised Pantheistic, believing in Reincarnation, Tarot Cards, Ghosts, and Chi (they didn't say "Chi", that's just the best word for it). I was, for a couple years as a kid, an Acolyte with our church, but I realized not long after that I really didn't believe Jesus was the only child of God. After all, I'm a child of God, right? Isn't everybody?
I learned the word "Agnostic" at a Sci-Fi convention. I remember it was at the Red Lion, so it was either BayCon, or SiliCon. I decided that sounded about right for how I felt about God as He had been described to me, but I did feel certain about souls and other such stuff.
Then, sometime after highschool my Mom excitedly sent me email with a link to the definition of "Pantheism" and I realized that I don't doubt the existence of Divinity, I just use a different definition.
The moderate Polytheism came with time and experience. My first love was Helenic, and I got used to the idea, though I didn't myself believe it beyond "archetype subsets" - right up until I started meeting various Gods, and just came to accept that some people, with their very own unique personalities and skills, happen to not have bodies, and that's no reason not to be friends with them if they're nice to me.
As for the magical stuff, well, some of it I was raised with - I learned Shielding and basic Healing energy-work from my Mom. I learned Thought Forms, and basic Will-Working theory from my Dad, though he didn't call them that. I learned to read Tarot from both parents, but they made me study it on my own until I was 18. I was always interested in magic, but didn't get very far into it until a friend of mine became very sick, and I panicked, and had many dreams about it, until I finally asked some friends for help doing a Healing ritual for her, and I've been working on those skills ever since.
2. Have you ever had what you would call a truly religious experience?
Oh my, yes. Many. There's a sense of scale to it, though. There's Religious as in "I feel a being far greater than myself, and I feel moved by that being - loved." Which I have always felt, really. It's part of my sense of identity, and a part of my sense of worth, that I belong in this place, in this life. I have only to stop, calm myself, and reach out, and I feel this.
Then there's the "I'm getting the unequivocal sense that Stuff Exists that science refuses to address" which started when I was very young, with the Man in the Window:
The house my Mom lives in now is the same house I grew up in from birth. When I was young - younger than 4 I know, because my Dad was around still - I would sometimes see a man in the window that faces the north side of the house in my bedroom. He was short, and broad shouldered, wearing a tuxedo suit, a bowler hat, and opaque Lennon sunglasses. Sometimes he was kinda transparent down towards the bottom of the window, sometimes not. He never did anything but stare at me. The thing is, that window, on the outside, for a man to stand there looking that height, he'd have to be like 7 feet tall, or carry a stepladder, and we found evidence of neither.
I'd say it was one of several sleepwalking-halucinations (a whole other story) but my older sister saw him in the other bedroom window in her own time - Not that she ever mentioned it until much later. For her, it seems, he would open the window and lean in, and chatter with her - baby talk. She saw him as wearing the same kind of clothes, but very tall - of course that window would require that he be somehow bent in half, or else a dwarf in height, to have his torso straight to look at her, up against the sill. To top it all off, that window has been taped shut since before my parents moved in the house, and still is today.
My Mom's theory is that he chattered with her but not me because I was baptized when I saw him, and my sister was baptized much later than I. My Dad's theory is that this ghost-man was connected to him, and that may be why we never saw him again after Dad moved out - I saw only a faint phantom of him through the second-story window many years later in the apartment Dad shared with my Step-Mom.
We were worried, for a while what this would mean for my Brother, since he wasn't baptized (maybe he is now, I don't know), but my if my Brother has seen the Man in the Window, he's never mentioned it.
Sorry, tangent, I know.
I've also had countless other events of this category, though few are so dramatic. Many of the most recent ones are recorded in this journal, though most of them are viewable only by those in my "Pagan" lock, for the sake of whomever else I may mention in them.
3. Why a dream journal?
That's pretty easy to answer, actually. For as long as I can remember, I've had very vivid dreams that seemed to mean things. I was a sleepwalker for a while, and even had at least one episode of walking halucination when I was 4 or younger (again, because my Dad was still living with us). Because my dreams have been consistantly vivid and significant - not prophetic, but psychological, though I do get the odd message here and there - I've always made an effort to remember them, and often to record them. I finally got tired of random slips of paper and text files lying all over the place wherever I had put them, and started a single journal to record them all in that I could access from pretty much wherever I happen to be.
4. What do you feel most people get 'wrong' about you?
I'm not sure. There's a certain degree to which I respect the concept of perspective. How can they be wrong about their own oppinions? But I do find that some people think I'm deliberately talking down to them, or something, and that is nearly never the case with me. I just happened to have learned certain speech patterns from my Dad, who is very good at presenting any information as though he is an authority on the subject. Even if I'm not trying to pass myself off as an authority, since I'm using his tones of voice, I can sound like I am.
The other thing is that folks who only ever see me in a highly social context often think I'm that hyper all the time. No, being around lots of people apparently overstimulates me, which makes me kinda hyper. At home, when it's just me and my boyfriend, I'm pretty darn mellow, and even downright tired.
5. Which matters more -- truth or trust?
How can there be trust without truth? I cannot sepparate Truth from Trust, so I must presume that Truth matters more. I may know the truth and not trust you, but I cannot possibly trust you if you will not give me the truth.
--Ember--