True Power: What do you believe? Part Two

What do you believe about death?

What do you believe about life?

What do you believe about choices people make and their right to make them?

We spend a lot of time out of our lives being angry or upset at other people for choices they make that have little to do with us. The anger or upset usually comes from worrying about them, feeling fear that someone we love will do something that will hurt them, cause them pain and suffering, maybe even kill them.

Love always wants those we love to be happy, healthy, and safe. That's the nature of love, isn't it? We want the best for our loved ones. And when we observe them doing things that aren't in their best interest, we react. We feel fear, sadness, concern, anger. And because we don't have control over our loved ones' lives, these emotions can seem uncontrollable, too. Often, those uncontrollable emotions evolve into anger at those we love for the choices they've made.

In the Craft, as in many Nature-based spiritual paths, there are several potential explanations of why we're here and why we do the things we do. Common among most of them is that we, like all of nature, are born, die, and are reborn in some manner, over and over again. Perhaps the cycle is endless, but most teaching I've encountered says we continue until we've reached some pinnacle in our development that allows us to escape the cycle. Life presents us opportunities for growth. If we fail to "get it" the first time, life just keeps presenting the lesson until we do. I've seen that pattern play out as truth in my own life more often than I like to admit.

If we truly believe this way, how can we be angry when someone fails a lesson, even repeatedly? Understanding that people learn from experience and in their own time does nothing to lessen the sadness we feel watching them, or the fear for their safety (which is, at its root, fear for our own potential loss). But such understanding can keep us from tipping over into bitter anger that eats at our own spirit.

Anger hinders compassion. It masks the true emotions from which it arises and blocks love. Yet, it is only through love and compassion that we have any hope of helping those we love. By examining what we really believe about living, dying, and the choices we make in the process, we have the opportunity to examine our truest emotions. Looking at what we really feel in each situation lets us take responsibility for our feelings and deal with them appropriately. We learn to sit with our true feelings, to allow them to be without allowing them to consume us.

Anger has its place...but that place is much smaller and less frequent than it may seem. Spend time with yourself and your own beliefs about life, death, and personal choices. Whatever you believe, understanding and owning that belief will help you on your road to peace.

Faith, Hope, and Love

My daughter Amybeth wrote a note recently that must be shared. In her note, as in her life, she embodies the ideals of "kindness, compassion, tolerance, and civility" that I hold so dear. She also has a very fine way with words. :)

A thank you note...

So, recently, a very good friend of mine sent me a gift. She spent hard-earned cash and precious time out of her busy life to send me a quirky little piece of pottery that made her smile, and she knew I would appreciate its beauty. And on an absolutely perfect day in November, I opened a box that contained much more than a pretty piece of clay. That box held the most precious gifts in the world - Faith, Hope, and Love.

Michelle had faith that the package would arrive safely to its intended recipient. She hoped that I would enjoy her gift and that it would bring me as much joy as it gave her. And along with it, she sent her love - her love of adventure (how exciting to receive a package!) and her love of our friendship.

Opening that box filled me with gratitude and happiness, and humbled me beyond belief, that someone would think of me so fondly, even though we haven't seen each other in years.

Most of you know that my spiritual beliefs tend toward the "alternative," and you all have differing paths as well. I know that there are numerous points of contention among our collective denominations. However, whether we are LDS, Methodist, Nazarene, Baptist, Pagan, or Unitarian. I am consistently reminded of how similar our beliefs can be. And I'd like to say a prayer of gratitude to Diety for setting you all in my path.

And so, here's a little Faith, Hope, and Love from me me to you. I have the utmost faith that we will continue to respect each other's differences and cultivate our similarities. I hope that we will be walkiing, talking examples of kindness, compassion, tolerance, and civility to our communities, and I send my love to each and every one of you, each and every day.

~Amen and blessed be~

Poetry: Divine Mother

A cherished friend and heart sister wrote this poem recently. Her background is Christian and she has described her spiritual leanings fairly recently as a Christian-Buddhist-Pagan mix. Her words touched me deeply and I wanted to share them with you.

It is, I believe, the first stanza that captured me most. What courage lives in those three short lines..and what wonders await us when we set aside our narrow precepts and believe there could be more.

Come .. open your heart to my voice.
Set aside narrow precepts.

Believe there could be more.

Come .. allow yourself to feel my touch.
Relax in my gentle breeze.
Breathe my scent after rain.

Come .. let me soothe your thoughts.
Know my peacefulness.
Recenter in my calm.

Come .. embrace my love.
Allow me in your world.
Rest in your mother's arms.


(Divine Mother - RJH 092909)

The Big RE-RE

Since I started this blog a few years ago, I’ve managed to attract a smattering of intelligent, thoughtful, regular readers and a fair number of equally delightful drop-ins. I am grateful for each of you and for each visit you make to my little choir loft. My posts have ranged from personal rants, to pedantic lectures in print, to sharing things I find on the web or photos from my ever-present camera. In everything, I’ve tried to have a positive impact, but I’ve never had a definitive goal or purpose for my blog. I’ve simply shared whatever has been on my mind and in my heart.

Lately, through introspection and fantastic conversations and examples with/of my 3AC writers’ group sisters, I’ve realized that I do have some specific goals for this blog that are very important to me, goals that reflect what I believe and how I live. I’ve also realized, through interactions with readers here at the Hymnal, that what I say here is heard and makes a difference. Since those goals I mentioned are all about making a difference, what better use for this blog could there be?

It appears, then, that it’s time for a big Re-Re: Revamp, Relocate, Redecorate, and Reintroduce. In the next few weeks, Heartsong’s Hymnal is going to get a complete overhaul, one that will allow me to keep singing about things that matter most to me. Your voices, the comments that make such beautiful music here, will have a more prominent place in the pages, more visible and more conducive to good conversation.

One of the things I will be doing is reintroducing myself. I may offer you more than you want to know. Feel free to put your fingers in your ears, squeeze your eyes shut, and sing, “La la la la la!” until the uncomfortable moments pass. It won’t hurt my feelings. ::grin:: On the other hand, if you’re going to sing with me, you deserve to know who I am. I hope you’ll feel free to share yourselves with me, too.

Updates are coming! Be patient, my friends…and thank you for adding your voices to the choir. I hope you’ll keep singing as we turn the page.

Five Minutes of Truth

A dear friend invited me to participate in a gathering wherein each participant would have five minutes to share their spiritual truth. No other guidelines were given, and each was to be listened to with respect and appreciation and without discussion. Unfortunately, through a communications snafu I missed the event, and I hope we follow through on plans to do it again.

I spent quite a bit of time preparing, thinking about my personal spiritual truth. The most difficult part was narrowing down something so broad to a five minute sharing. Perhaps not surprisingly, when I finally narrowed my focus to what I consider to the be the biggest "chunks" of truth, all the parts I would like to have included are really already covered by the big chunks.

I'm sharing my truth with you here. I think it's important for each of us to speak our truth, and for each of us to hear. We all know more than we give ourselves credit for. Knowing is our birthright. We've been deluded into believing that spiritual truth is given to us...by a priest, in a book, by rule and regulation...so much so that we've stopped listening to ourselves and to each other, listening to our intuitive, connected, knowing selves.

Thank you for hearing my truth. Now I want to know yours.

Five Minutes of Spiritual Truth

“God the Father” is a concept that was always just beyond my grasp. I tried so hard to pray, to turn my eyes heavenward, and was always left with the feeling that no one was home.

It wasn’t until I leveled my gaze, looking at eye level at everything around and inside me, that I met the Divine. I can’t remember who said it (wish it was me), but these are the words that best sum up my definition of the Divine: “Write on the face of everything, I Am the Living God.”

Meeting the Divine in everyone and everything, I have become aware of the dualistic nature of the universe…male and female, light and dark, rest and activity, active creation and passive receptivity.

Everything I need to know can be learned from the world around me. Nature teaches cycles of birth, life, and death every day. I watch the world reborn each year in spring, tiny life emerging from every piece of earth, every branch, every nest, cave, and burrow. I watch it grow strong and multiply, reproducing in the timeless dance of pollination, germination, and lusty, uninhibited sex. I watch everything around me grow into the mature lushness of June, the abundance of July, the fatigue of August, the slowing of September, and the dying process, beautiful in its own right, of October and November. I see the world, dead again at last, cold and seemingly barren through winter, resting, only to be reborn again in spring. Nature never tries to artificially prolong life. Trees don’t appear the least bit unhappy about autumn. The know when it’s time to rest. Walk through a grove of trees in late august and you can feel the exhaustion, hear the chorus of, “I’m still working but, Lord, ain’t I tired!”

When my father died on a December day a few years ago, he had seen his spring. He had grown into a strong, productive summer, spread seed, set fruit. He had pressed on through fall, growing more tired every day. When his winter came, he looked like a winter tree, bare of all the youthful green abundance, graceful bare branches ready for a well-deserved rest.

I don’t know what form his next spring will take (or has taken), but I know there will be a spring. Maybe it will be another physical manifestation, or maybe his second spring is in me and my brothers who sprang from and carry his seed. I don’t have to have all the details right now. I just know spring comes around every year. Nature’s lessons and the living god are visible in both micro and macro all the time.

I don’t like to speak of the Divine by personal name. I prefer “The All.” When I put a human name on the Divine, I automatically think in human terms. It’s too easy to end up with a gender and specific personality traits – jealous, vengeful, loving, angry, forgiving, exacting – effectively creating god in my image.

I believe there is “a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts,” a collective consciousness and transcendent aspect of the All. I do not owe obedience, fear, or allegiance to this consciousness. It’s not the Four-O god of my youth – omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and out-there somewhere. I am part of it. I don’t really know or need to know if I’m a cell or an organ or a whole system. It’s enough to know that I’m an integral part of the body of god. I am not god, but god doesn’t exist without me, just as my heart is not me, but I’m not much without my heart – or my liver, lungs, vagina, brain, colon, eyes, arms, legs.

I am sacred. Every part of me is sacred. Every loving human act is sacred. And my purpose in life as a part of the body of god is to discover and be the best me I can be. Whatever gifts I have, they fill a need in the larger body. If there is a mandate in my spiritual truth it is this: Do good. Increase love. Grow peace. Promote truth. Act with kindness. Do what you were born to do. Be the best you can be and promote the health of the larger body. Period. That’s enough.

I can affect change in the world. I am as intimately connected to the rest of my god body as my heart and mind are connected to the rest of my physical body. My thoughts affect my physical body in ways science is still learning and marveling over. My thoughts and actions also affect the larger body, the collective. Every act and thought creates ripples. Directed thought and action backed by will and intent can have concentrated effect, make stronger ripples. That’s magic, and I am magical. Knowing that power, I am accountable for how I use it. Every action, every thought counts.

Awareness and Gratitude are doorways to ecstatic union with the transcendent, collective aspect of the All. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." In my world, it’s everything. Awareness of the miraculous nature of All that Is raises gratitude in me greater than any “be ye thankful” admonition could possibly generate.

Gratitude and thanks are not the same. Thanks is an expression, a response. Gratitude is the daughter of Awareness and together they create a sense of humble wonder, a way of walking through the world with one word on my lips – yes – open to receive, to know, to experience.

Former U. N. Secretary Dag Hammerskjold penned words that have become my celebratory prayer and life affirmation, and pretty well sum up my chosen approach to life. “For all that has been – thanks. For all that will be – yes.”

Of Heaven and Earth

On the way to work a couple of days ago, I heard Brad Paisley and Dolly Parton on the radio singing, "When I Get Where I'm Going" (written by George Teren and Rivers Rutherford)...

Yeah when I get where I'm goin

There'll be only happy tears

I will shed the sins and struggles

I have carried all these years

And I'll leave my heart wide open

I will love and have no fear

Yeah when I get where I'm going

Don't cry for me down here.

It's a well-written song, beautifully performed by Paisley and Parton. But even while I was enjoying the music, I found myself thinking, "Why have I never felt that way?"

Even when I was trying to walk a Christian path, I was never focused on "where I'm going." I always felt like I was already there. Here. This is where I'm going, where I am.

As a child, I went to the Baptist church. I sang the Sunday School songs and colored the pictures of angels. Even then, the notion that this life is merely a trial to be endured on our way to our "real home" left me cold. Later, when my mother moved us from Baptist to Jehovah's Witness, the idea of a "new earth" made a little more sense, but not so much that I ever felt like I was just marking time, suffering and hoping to make the grade to get there.

Why is that? I am a southern American and our culture is saturated with Judeo-Christian (mostly fundamental Protestant Christian) references to streets of gold and mansions on the hills of our heavenly home. How is it that I never, not once, bought into that vision of our future or longed for the day when I would shed my earthly bonds and fly heavenward? I don't recall ever feeling burdened by sin and struggle, nor have I ever looked homeward toward angels.

Some will undoubtedly see my lack of heavenly focus as evidence that my heart is hardened and I'm lost to the sin and struggle. But I gotta tell you, my heart doesn't feel hard. My heart feels joy and pain. I feel bad when I do something that doesn't uphold my values. I hurt when I hurt others. I'm not evil. I'm not mean. I'm not cruel. No, I definitely don't buy the depraved sinner theory.

I don't know why I have always known that living this life is more important than focusing on some future state of supposed perfection. Maybe I've lived enough turns of the wheel to have figured that out. Maybe not. Whatever the reason, it's allowed me to find delicious joy and beauty every single day. When I'm in pain, when I'm struggling, the next beautiful thing is right here, right now, not something to hope for after I've suffered until I'm dead.

Regardless of why I've always believed this way, one thing that's crystal clear is my life is richer, fuller, more joyful, and more blessed because of it. Gratitude doesn't always require an explanation.

Interfaith Heroes - Great Stories

I love to share with you things I stumble across on the web.  Today, the find is "Interfaith Heroes" - a section of a website called Read the Spirit. The site features, "...true stories of men and women who risked crossing religious boundaries to heal communities and, in many cases, to save lives."  Martin Luther King, Jr., Thich Naht Hanh, The Dalai Lama, Corrie Ten Boom, and many more are profiled here. More stories can be found in the book, Interfaith Heroes 2 and its predecessor, Interfaith Heroes.

We make heroes out of atheletes, business leaders, politicians, and cartoon characters. In a world so hungry for acts of courage, so in need of dialog and bridges to understanding, acceptance, and peace, I'm grateful for these true heroes. May their stories inspire courage in all of us.

Gay Rights - Newsweek Poll Results

I don't get it.

More Americans than ever, a pretty clear majority if a recent Newsweek poll is any indicator, are in favor of granting gays and lesbians virtually all the legal rights associated with marriage, but not allowing them to get married. Read the full poll results to see the numbers.

Actually, I do get it.

It's the same issue I've railed about in previous posts. We have allowed the word marriage to be defined in a religious context. That definition has become so ubiquitous that people who favor granting gay and lesbian couples all the legal rights associated with marriage through civil union can't take the final step and say, "Yeah, let them get married."

Let them inherit property...have visitation rights...adopt or use assisted fertility and have children...make them eligible for dependent insurance benefits...just don't let them get married. All the legal rights and responsibilities currently granted through legal marriage are fine; only the moral definition of marriage, a definition rooted in religion, is still holding up the show.

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And a really bad precedent.

What about divorce and remarriage? Many Christian sects teach that divorce is against God's law except in cases of adultery, and some teach that it's wrong in any case. Shall we decide then, that divorce is illegal? What if we held a vote and your marriage to your current or perspective spouse hung in the balance while other people decided if it was moral or immoral?

How about procreation? There are those who teach that marriage and sex are primarily for procreation. Why don't we vote on whether birth control is moral enough for America? And while we're at it, let's make marriage between partners who can't have children illegal, too, since they can't fulfil the true purpose of marriage.

So if you're a post-menopausal woman and meet the love of your life, you can have a civil union but don't try for a wedding, 'cause we're not standing for it. If you've been divorced and meet someone new, go ahead and live together and we'll sanction it legally so you can have insurance and stuff, but we reserve the right to maintain our moral superiority and smug self-righteousness intact by not calling it marriage because America is a Christian nation.

Wait a minute...what did I just say? America is a Christian nation? When did we get a state religion? When did we ratify a Constitutional Amendment and adopt an American morality?

Oh...that's right...we didn't. My bad.

No. It's bad, but it isn't mine...and I'm not going to stop talking about it until we get over it.

I am a good citizen of the world when I ...

...support the rights and work for the benefit of everyone.

This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in. -Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President (1858-1919)

Well said, Mr. President...well said...change "country" to "world" and you're dead on target.

Marriage, the Law, and Doing the Right Thing Twice

Did you happen to catch Keith Olberman's Special Commentary on the passage of Prop 8 in California? It's passionate, articulate, bordering on brilliant. I can't figure out how to share it directly in this blog so please click on the link to watch.

I cannot be silent on this issue. Like Mr. Olberman, I'm not gay nor is anyone in my immediate family. But this isn't just a gay issue. It's a human issue, universal and timeless. And unless we keep the momentum headed toward positive change, it will remain a universally unfair, unjust, and just plain wrong issue.

My stance on this issue is simple and straightforward:

Marriage should be defined by federal law, consistant in all states and territories, and should consist of a set of binding legal agreements to which applicants agree and are held accountable. The government should not get involved in defining the relationship or who can participate. As long as all parties meet the legal requirements (primarily age and the ability to contract), government has no responsibility and no right to place any further restrictions on the arrangement.

If faith-based organizations want to further define the relationship according to their beliefs, so be it. As precedent, the Catholic church has long refused to recognize marriages that don't meet the requirements of the faith, even when those marriages are perfectly legal from a civil perspective. The consequences of the Church's approval or disapproval are only relevant to the practitioner from a personal, spiritual standpoint. Any religious institution should be free to use whatever moral compass they possess to decide if they and their god(s) approve of the union, but they should have no say in the legal aspects.

Here's how I get there:

Legal marriage in the United States is first and foremost a property agreement. Under our current system of employer-sponsored health care benefits, it also provides a consistent framework for determining who can be considered a dependent for the purposes of insurance coverage. It establishes a next-of-kin relationship wherein spouses have first and final say in certain health care decisions, hospital visitation rights, and so forth. And there are tax provisions for married couples to lessen the tax impact on two income families.

Nothing about legal marriage as it is currently defined has anything to do with relationship, love, comittment, or morality. It has to do with legal rights and contracts. And nothing about those legal rights and contracts has anything to do with the gender or orientation of the participants. People of the same gender are just as capable of fulfilling all the obligations inherent in legal marriage as are one-man-one-woman couples.

Where we've gone astray is allowing the religious definition of marriage - specifically the mainstream Christian definition - to creep into the legal definition. We have abandoned the constitutional principal of separation of church and state and given that power over to religion. Shame on us!

Interestingly, that influence seems only to have gone so far as to restrict who is allowed to participate. It hasn't done anything at all to enforce the other ideals of Christian marriage. The government doesn't care one bit whether people who apply for a marriage license have been married before, as long as they've fulfilled the legal obligation to divorce. There is no government mandate that individuals share the same faith, that they love, honor, cherish, or respect one another. Marriages of convenience or for economic considerations are common. The only absolute requirements are that the couple be of legal age, not currently married to someone else, and that there be one man and one woman.

The age requirement makes sense from a legal standpoint; binding contracts require that parties be of legal age. Not being married to someone else is debatable, but the argument can be made that allowing multiple partners would require rewriting estate law among others, so I'll concede that one temporarily even though it, too, is a moral judgement. The one for which I can find no sustainable argument whatsoever is gender.

Why? Why does the government care who enters into the agreement? Why do we insist on denying the legal rights of marriage to anyone who is willing and capable of agreeing to the terms of the contract? We let anyone with decent credit and income buy a house, a contract that lasts longer than most marriages. When you strip away the moral fru-fru attached to marriage, what's left is no different than any other contract. If you can buy a house without a genital check, why can't you enter into a marriage contract without one? From a legal standpoint, the government has no business checking genitals for a contract that has to do with property and taxes.

As important as this issue is to gays and lesbians who wish to enter into legal marriage, it's even more important in the bigger picture. If we allow religious beliefs to shape government policy, we will eventually be a religious state. Notice I said we. America is a democracy and we are responsible for blurring the line between church and state. If, in fact, the majority of people support something so clearly unconstitutional, we have lost our own compass. We're giving up our rights as we wander blindly, thoughtlessly accepting what has seemingly always been. Every erosion of that all-important separation erodes the ability of each of us to choose our spiritual path and live it without fear.

I support the right of every adult in this country to marry whomever they choose. If I believed it morally wrong for same sex couples to marry, I would still support their right to do so. It harms no one and the disapproval of it is based solely on religious beliefs which, under the Constitution of the United States, are not to be imposed by governement. In protecting the rights of gays and lesbians to marry, we're protecting our own rights to worship and live as we choose.

It's doing the right thing twice, a double good too important to be quiet about.

Diversity, tolerance, and heads in the sand...

Originally published on Chattanooga-Pagans Yahoo! Group, December 7, 2007:

In my opinion, our culture is missing a big opportunity. We've gotten heavily focused on handling diverstity by trying to pretend it doesn't exist. I've heard people at work, mostly atheists, agnostics, and pagans (rarely Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc.), say that religion should be a private matter and people have no business bringing it into the workplace. While there are always those who take things to inappropriate extremes, in general I can't see how this can be true. If our spiritual paths, our religions, are central to our lives, part of our daily walk, how can we leave them at home? How can we effectively bring our whole selves to the task at hand when we have to leave part of ourselves on a shelf somewhere? Perhaps a better focus would be to focus on the inappropriate behavior of some individuals. If a co-worker shares his or her faith with me in an appropriate way - meaning they don't interfere with my work or my personal time or refuse to stop when I tell them to - I'm not harmed in any way. If I believe the person is crossing the line, I have the responsibility to say so, directly to them, respectfully but clearly. If they don't respect my wishes at that point, I've got a gripe. But the gripe is with that behavior, not with the fact that the person displays their religion at work. The same with prayer; if a group of people share a prayer in my presence, so what? Prayer is a highly personal thing. Maybe I can use that time to say a prayer of my own, or even join in theirs.

I have heard the phrase, "Freedom of religion is absolute." I don't know exactly what the originator of the phrase was thinking, but I know what that means to me. I am the person absolutely and finally responsible for my own spiritual walk and my relationship to Diety. No one can take that responsibility from me. No one can take away my right to exercise that responsibility as I believe appropriate. They can make it difficult by attempting to control my outward behavior, even to the point of killing me if I don't comply. But I always have the right to continue if doing so is more important to me than the consequences of my actions. Martyrs of every walk ever walked have proven this over and over. No matter what everyone around me is doing, I have all the power of choice at my command. It's a lot harder for me to become offended by the actions of those around me when I think of it this way. It also forces me to look at my feelings about my choices. If I feel uncomfortable about the choice I make (to leave a room when a devotional is disturbing to me, for instance), whose fault is it? It was my choice; I guess I'll have to shoulder the blame for how I feel about it.

It's time we all revisited the idea of cultural and religious diversity. We make a big fuss about "tolerance," but we're not tolerating something if we have to pretend it doesn't exist.

What do I believe?

Being a modern neo-pagan, without the convenience of a pre-packaged kit of thou shalls and thou shalt nots, I have worked hard to develop a statement of belief. It's always been more about the process than the result. I don't 'require' a mission statement for my life, but the exploration, the questioning, the searching that have gone and are still going into the process of this statement of belief have been very enlightening. Never a dull moment!

So...where am I in the quest? Right now, I have a working thesis of what I believe. I call it that because I am loathe to think of it as a static, now-we-have-the-answers kind of thing. Faith, belief, knowledge, wisdom - all have to remain fluid or they risk becoming just another set of outdated ideas, clung to out of some misplaced loyalty to what may have been truth (or not) at one time. Getting 'the answer' would mean that I might miss 'the next answer'...the better, truer, more important answer. If I get 'the answer', I might stop peeling back the layers before I reach the source. That would be tragic!

Here's where I stand today.

1. I am a neo-pagan practicing an eclectic Wiccan path. I've come to the conclusion that it is a Wiccan path, though that wasn't an easy conclusion to reach. There are so many disparate answers to the question of what is Wicca and how it differs from everything else. It seems to boil down to just a few things: Recognition of both God and Goddess, celebration of the Sabbats and Esbats, the embracing of natural magic, and acceptance of the Wiccan Rede ('An it harm none, do what thou wilt.") It seems that most else is left up to individual interpretation. There are common ritual forms and ritual etiquette, though none of them are carved in stone. All in all, Wicca fits me as well as any other description and I'm happy to bear the name.

2. I am a panentheist. I believe that God and Goddess are terms we use for a creative force that exists both in us and outside us. We are part of that force and thus, in essence, we are part of the Divine. There are times when I call on Divinity within. There are other times when I look to the larger expression of that Divinity, to the Old Ones, the All, the Creative Force of the Universe... the huge, collective mass of all that force. I do not feel separate from the Divine - I am Divine.

3. I call on Divinity both within and without through the many faces and personas they have taken (or we have given) throughout time. I call both male and female, God and Goddess. I can no longer imagine walking a spiritual path that marginalizes or eliminates one gender from the concept of Divinity.

4. I do not believe that the body is bad the spirit is good, or any other false and oversimplified categorization that tries to separate the physical parts of our existence from the emotional, psychological, intellectual, sexual, and spiritual parts. There are no parts. There is just the whole - integrated, interdependent, and sacred. My sexuality is just as divine as my spirituality...they are one and the same, expressed differently to fit the circumstances.

5. I believe in the rule of three - that what we put into the universe comes back to us threefold. Whether the "three" is literal or simply expresses that energy expended comes back to us increased - for good or for bad - is immaterial to me. I've seen the truth of the concept every day of my life. The same concept appears in other mythos, and I remember well from my Bible study days, "You reap what you sow." The famous Golden Rule: "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you," is most often interpreted as a way in which to treat others. I believe it's more about ourselves - it's telling us that the way we treat others is what we can expect in return. In fact, the Golden Rule is really a pretty lousy guide for how to treat other people. Why not treat them as they would have done unto them?

6. I believe that every one of us is ultimately responsible for his or her own behavior, decisions, ethics, morals, and actions. I cannot relinquish that responsibility. It is mine and mine alone. For that reason, I cannot grant spiritual authority to anyone else. I respect elders in the Craft and in other belief systems. I learn from them. I turn to them for guidance. Ultimately, though, the decisions are mine to make. No matter how learned, wise, or experienced the teacher, they cannot shield me from that responsibility, nor can I follow unquestioningly. They are responsible for what and how they teach. I am responsible for what and how I learn and what I do with the knowledge. It is my job to sift through the words and rhetoric and find the nuggets of truth that live there, to apply them in my life, and to pass them on when opportunity arises.

7. My path is more about now than then. I am interested in "the old religion" because there are truths to be found there that have been distorted through time. I am interested in "the old ways" because they reflect a lifestyle that was by necessity more in tune with the rhythms and cycles of Nature. The test of the validity of my path, though, is how it informs my life, here, now, today. How do I apply the knowledge? How do I make my own life more responsive to the heartbeat and breath of Nature? How do I honor the Divine in a world that has so little honor? How do I live in balance in a world of artificial daylight, year-round climate control, and unceasing productivity? That is the test of my path and the quest of my journey.

8. I believe that one of the reasons I am here is to help remove barriers to understanding and acceptance. As a step in that direction, I do not hide my path. I know that Wicca was kept secret for many years, and that "to keep silent" is part and parcel of the Craft. I also know that, as a well-respected corporate professional, I have an opportunity to put a face on paganism and Wicca that isn't always seen. I have a chance to be the well-liked team member, the trusted business partner, the ethical employee - and a practicing Wiccan. I'm not 'in your face' about my religion any more than I would want others to be in mine. But I don't hide it. I rarely name it, though. I will talk to anyone about what I believe, how I celebrate, and the ethical standards that guide my daily steps. Typically, especially among Christians, we find a surpising amount of common ground. By not naming my path immediately, I usually postpone the slamming door of the mind and leave a pathway open for understanding and acceptance. Of course, if asked, I will answer honestly, and I have been asked several times, "Are you Wiccan?" I answer truthfully and let the chips fall where they will. So far, so good.