Comments | snowgrouse: More ponderings on religion and The Big Religion Poll (crossposted to <strong class="lj-user"><a href="/read/user/lagopus">lagopus</a></strong>)

snowgrouse

More ponderings on religion and The Big Religion Poll (crossposted to lagopus)

Jun 15, 2006 05:45

I think the world in general needs more ecstatic joy and fun. Part of the reason why I'm Pagan is that for me, the worship involves ecstasy, drumming, singing, chanting, dancing, joy ( Read more... )

pagan, polls, bhakti, deep thought, religions

Comments 13

astrogirl2 June 15 2006, 03:03:28 UTC

Atheists, of course, can skip:).

*sniffles and scuffs foot forlornly in the dirt*

:)

snowgrouse June 15 2006, 03:21:06 UTC

Hey!:) Well, if you want to elaborate on how ecstasy is good and healthy in a completely secular sense, I'm game. :) Ice cream on a hot day, a mad little kitten purring loudly, a good fic that sweeps you up reading/writing it, fannish glee in Stark going berserk...8-) that's religious in the good sense for me!:)

astrogirl2 June 15 2006, 04:25:54 UTC

Well, I don't know about ecstasy... It seems like one of those really extreme words, and my tendency is to apply it only in the most extreme of circumstances. But pleasure, or even what you might call joy... Well, you know, one of the key points of atheism is the belief that this world is all that there is. There's no reward waiting in the afterlife, there's no transcendent kind of spiritual joy you're supposed to aspire to, or anything like that. And in that context, the beauties and pleasures of ordinary life, I think, take on a special significance, because they are beauty and pleasure. There aren't any other kinds. This is it, right here and now, and not to enjoy it, not to appreciate it, is the saddest kind of waste.

So, right this very moment, I'm sitting here in comfortable jammies with an absolutely lovely cup of tea of which I am savoring every sip. And I wouldn't call the experience "ecstasy" and I wouldn't call it "spiritual," but it is the sort of thing that makes life worth living.

Um, there, how was that? :)

snowgrouse June 15 2006, 04:35:19 UTC

Heh, that's exactly what most Neo-Paganism is to me and many others--enjoying the life *before* death:). Because if there can't be certainty of it, why not enjoy life as it is, and this world rather than get away from it onto some high plane? It is a waste, it really is. Not to mention harmful to others and the whole damn world if you don't care about it and think it's just some stupid illusion. That sort of thought really turns me off. I need something tangible to celebrate and that's it:). See my reply below to edithmatilda :). It's an organic thing, that's all there is to it in the end. I find it incredibly amusing that with Paganism, when people who come from "omg, this world sucks" faiths and ask what you *really* believe in, you can always say "do rocks exist? Do trees exist? Does air exist?"... and watch them go "buh?" :D Definitely something that's *not* debatable!

Thread 5

edithmatilda June 15 2006, 03:15:22 UTC

Small additional ramble ( ... )

edithmatilda June 15 2006, 03:17:22 UTC

Also, "Ticky box?" "My faith forbids it." cracked me up. Much thanks.

snowgrouse June 15 2006, 03:33:56 UTC

Hee, and thanks for the elaboration:).

Tree-hugging is of the good and so on. I personally like Paganism so much because it makes sense to find poetry and literally, divine yayness in the world itself. I'm agnostic about past lives and always open to change, so feck knows. The most important thing for me worldview-wise is to just... *be*, right here and right now, and try to enjoy it even if shitty stuff happens. And usually shit is because of Humans and not because of nature itself. I'm not surprised there are a few Pagans who firmly believe the earth would be better off if humans just went and died off, because Mommy Nature really ought to kick our arses after what we've done to her.

And oh yeah, Sufism totally pwnz. Need to study it more. I find it interesting that it's mingled with the same stuff that made up Buddhism and Tantra and appeared about the same time with them in the early Middle Ages in a big move towards poetic, ecstatic and this-world-enjoying and equalist stuff in spirituality. Good stuff.

edithmatilda June 15 2006, 07:22:34 UTC

I don't think I possess the ability to have guilt-free fun of any sort as I am too laden with vast belief about own undeservingness, but you'd have to pretty crazed to base a religion on it. And when you're at the point of "it's wrong because it is" you've gone a bit wrong. I enjoy the way that any form of intelligent thought within a religion is the only thing worse than atheism as far as its fundies are concerned. I met a site that called Christians with tattoos "so-called Christians" because God hates tattoos because he does. They are the Jesus equivalent of people who believe that speaking in dialect leads to rape and murder.

cavefelem June 15 2006, 09:56:36 UTC

My oaths forbid me to click ticky boxes!1

Thread 5

alicamel June 15 2006, 05:35:57 UTC

To clarify: the joy/ecstasy (I'm not sure ecstacy is the word I'd use, but I get what you mean) I felt in the Catho9lic church was more to do with the actual priest and people in that particualr church, and is probably not reflective of the Catholic church in general given my experiences of other Catholic churches. Also, it ws probably influenced by my deep love of ritual, bell ring and singing. I find them relaxing ( ... )

snowgrouse June 15 2006, 05:47:23 UTC

I'd count ritual itself as something ecstatic, in the sense that singing, bell-ringing, charismatic sermons and those sorts of things do speak directly to the subconscious and connect people with the deepest part of the mind/soul/whatever you want to call it, and are non-ordinary things and thus a slightly different level of consciousness. They're there because they work with the same stuff dreams work with: symbols and Deep Stuff. And that, if one wishes to believe so, also connects one to that which is divine ( ... )