Paganism in the USA

Learning more, slowly, every deadline!

http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/407787_Column--Paganism--American-style.html

Christian SEX comedy? Ted Haggard? YGBK

First of all, you have to wrap your head around the idea of a comedy about abstinence.

Got it?

Now think of a comedy about abstinence with TED HAGGARD.

The guy who had drug-filled sex sessions with a male prostitute? The guy who was forced to resign his job at a megachurch?

The man who then began another church in that old church's hometown?

Dunno about you, but I got questions...let me know what you think!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-e-evans/a-modest-proposal_5_b_871789.html

The "Age of Aquarius": A New Age primer

Do you ever wonder why the notion of an Aquarian age of consciousness got such a grip on our national life in the 1960s-70s?

What about the belief, which many here in the United States affirm, that all religions lead to the same God?

How about an ethic of religious tolerance?

What about our Chinese menu, sometimes syncretistic approach to religious belief?

These notions come, in part, from the Western esoteric tradition that flowered here in the New Age movement.

In this commentary, I explore some of the roots of that movement --and how it still remains a force in our national life.

http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/400143_Column--New-Age-movement-left-its-mark.html

Intermission

As you know, I'm both fascinated and disturbed by the issues around how much one should share online -- and I'm convinced that how we share, and where we share it is important.

So I've made a decision, at least for now, to protect my privacy more vigilantly.

I'm going to stop posting personal updates here for a while, but check back for links to articles and other blogs for some of my work...I'll try to keep this updated regularly when something I write is published elsewhere.

Are you a Very Serious Doubter?

I've been thinking about a poem today -- Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach.

I might have quoted it here before. It is truly one of my favorites of the Victorian poems, though it doesn't rank as high with me as various Tennyson poems, and the intriguing, lovely poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

As I mowed the lawn, the last stanza, perhaps the poet and critic's most famous, sparked a few thoughts. I find that lawn-mowing, which is so repetitive, often has the effect of inciting a meditation on things I rarely think about. In the case of Arnold, it was "why were the Victorians so darned serious?"

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Lovely, isn't it? But quite a bummer. Yeah, you might feel that way at times -- but would you make a categorical statement about it?

Arnold was what one might call a VSD, or a Very Serious Doubter. As with many of his peers, many (though not all, by any means) of the smart men and women of his day, he chose to emphasize good works and morality on earth, and doubted a lot of what was said about a supernatural God.

One gets the feeling that many English writers, painters and poets were sensuous, intelligent, and creative -- but where the heck was their sense of farce? Did they leave that to the French?

The strange thing about Arnold, which I just discovered, is that apparently he was just the fellow you want at a dinner party with good friends -- but produced writings that give the effect of never having had, as Sheryl Crowe said, "a day of fun in his whole life."

And isn't that how you think of the Victorians?

I have friends and acquaintances, atheists, believers, and even hedonists, who take life's Big Questions just that seriously. And while I might learn something from all of them, they aren't the people with whom I want to have a glass of red and get a big tipsy.

Oddly enough, it is with them that I become like Shakespeare's Beatrice -- born to speak all mirth, and no matter.

Which, of course, pisses them off royally. They are, you see, Very Serious Believers, Hedonists and Doubters.

At which point, I just want to cry out -- send in the clowns.

How about you? Where do you fall on the spectrum? Would you have been first up to the stake, ready to die for your faith, or atheism? Or would you have been in the crowd, kissing some wench or manservant and hoping they wouldn't find you?

I know where I would be. And I hope that I see you, my friends, right beside me.

Is it all about "me?"

A few nights ago I was out running the track at our local elementary school. I was about a half mile away from the driveway when the sky darkened ominously and the wind picked up, and the tree branches began to move faster and faster. Lightning flickered to the north.

I quickened my pace. Then, recalling the recent and ghastly tornadoes in the Midwest, I raced across the grass, down the driveway and a road I normally don't use to the safety of my house. I went from "moderately fit" to "extremely fit" (NYTimes) in about a half a mile.

Later I heard that indeed funnel clouds had been seen in Northeastern Philadelphia and that there was a tornado watch in the Poconos.

When did we here in the Northeast have to watch out for tornadoes? When were entire communities in the Midwest torn apart by them?

Why are we having catastrophic floods on the Mississippi every seven or eight years? What's going to happen when the 25 feet of snow in the Rockies melts? Yes, there have been historical events -- decades or centuries ago.

But the point is that catastrophic weather is becoming the new norm.

As time has gone on, I've noticed that even my climate skeptic friends (many, but not all) have begun to believe in the evidence.

What I haven't seen is most of us make significant lifestyle changes. That includes me, local climate Cassandra. Building our greener house will have an impact, but it won't be huge.

What is it that keeps our eyes focused on our own problems, even when our way of life, health and happiness may be threatened?

Is it because as humans we're narcissists, unable to reach beyond our issues to think of the common good?

It has occurred to me that we are innately selfish. And I find narcissism, an extension of selfishness, a fascinating personality disorder. For years I've observed someone (a public figure) tear apart organizations and divide people because (my analysis) he lacks empathy. See the Mayo Clinic's definition of narcissistic personality disorder here. As a species, many of us do seem to lack empathy -- all you have to do is look what happened on Wall Street with the mortgage crisis to realize that some folks didn't give a hoot what happened to the people they were supposed to be helping.

But I don't think all of us are narcissists. And certainly, while self-interest is adaptive, selfishness isn't. With climate change, we face the possibility that the genie we have unleashed has gotten out of our hands.

We can't expect our elected officials to be our consciences -- they are reflections of ourselves. We can't seem to get international agreements. And in America our Congress, by and large, can't seem to get creative about a pro-business and pro-environment model.

Why don't we have the outcry over climate change that we have over, say Medicare? Is it only our older citizens who are capable of raising hell?

I don't think so. As a mother, I have a stake in the future for my children, and for yours.

And yet, no one talks about the ongoing impact. We attend our baseball games 20 miles away, drive our old or big cars, worry about children's fights and relational crises. And we do nothing.

Yet you better bet they are wondering what to do in Joplin, and New Orleans, and Alabama. With any luck, we'll start figuring it out here, too -- before we have to.

In the meantime -- run, baby, run.

Seeing again, for the first time

This morning my son and I drove out to Phoenixville from our little Glenmoore village. A sprawling community, it embraces not only a formerly gritty, now diverse town (that retains a lot of its working-class members), but also a number of swanky developments. That's where some of my daughter's kindergarten pals lived -- and if you've seen one of these developments, you've seen most of 'em.

I knew Phoenixville near the cemetery, where those not caught up in its gentrification lived (I had visited parishioners there), Phoenixville the suburb, and Phoenixville, home of middle-class professionals and hipsters.

In fact, though I have been to the town many times, I regularly get lost leaving it. And today, I got lost once more.

But until I hit the "bridge out" sign on its backroads today, I didn't know Phoenixville, with its tree farms, and horse corrals and winding back roads. I hadn't seen the farms, the tiny roads that hadn't been paved since Roosevelt was President, or the red-roofed 19th-century houses. Familiar with some of the beauty on the other side of bisecting Route 113, I hadn't taken the time before to explore these Chester County lanes.

Running, or biking on the roads we drove down today might yield some of those moments of tranquility my soul craves with regularity.

It got me thinking of what else I'm missing. What is it that I don't take the time to see, intent on getting from Point B to Point A in the shortest number of minutes? What people do I race past, because the person next to them is more important to me? When do I pay attention? When do I hide? When don't I care enough to be present?

We're always pushing towards the future -- when the present has so many riches. I'm glad I got lost on the way to our future. Otherwise, I never would have stopped, and seen the "now" -- and remembered it for next time.