Cody’s Column: How to Un 6-21-3-11 Yourself from Christianity as a Pagan

Greetings!

 

“The Earth does not belong to us.  We belong to the Earth.”  -Chief Seattle

 

If you grew up in the United States, you likely had education about the Indigenous People, but who told you about them?  Did your school invite the elders in to tell the stories?  Did anyone make a land acknowledgement ever?

You likely had education about the kings and queens of Europe.  How were the original inhabitants of Europe treated in those histories?  Did you hear about the peoples and languages, customs and traditions of early Pagans?

Let’s switch to popular culture then for reference.  Halloween was my first introduction to witches, demons, monsters, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, god-like superheroes, ninjas, and fantasy characters.  You could be these characters and folks wouldn’t bat an eye.  School sanctioned fun.  Even the church kids participated, well most of them.  They would even give you candy for visiting them after dinner.  What an interesting part of culture growing up?   Acceptance for being different, even if we were crudely attempting to embody these legends.

Maybe you never grew up in a church going dominant culture?  Here is what it was like… Driving through town seeing 5 to 10 different church buildings was not uncommon as I grew up.  Being invited to youth groups doing fun activities for the price of sitting in on a talk about Jesus, not so bad, I guess.  High School and peer pressure, this is when the sunny side gets serious.  They told me I was living in something called sin, actions that kept me apart from a Father God, who also happened to create everything, be all seeing, knowing, and somehow loving, except for sin.  He can’t stand it, neither can the church folk.  They hate it in themselves, hate it in you, hate it in the world, so much so that they want to leave and live with Father God and his son Jesus somewhere in heaven where the streets are made of gold.  Hopefully the weather is mild there, or you will never be able to walk barefoot on a sunny day.

You could ask Jesus to come into your heart, and he would tell Father God that you are good, and Father God would accept you as his own again.  It was a free pass to eternal life!  But what to do until then?  Good deeds I guess, faith, tithing, prayer, reading the same book over and over, dressing nice for church folk, selective music, something called worship that is just a morning concert, study groups, maybe a mission trip, lunches, Christian school?, college groups, conferences, selective movies, books, social events, abstinence before marriage, avoiding sin, confessing sin when it happens anyway, speaking in tongues of angles, visiting the church building a lot, working to help the homeless (this was probably the most informative!), staying away from drugs and alcohol, voting for folks who vow to uphold Christian values(we see how well that worked), owning multiple bibles, listening to weekly talks about those bibles, quoting bible verses, accountability groups, turning to talk to the person next to you for less than five minutes during service, eating bread that is the body of the guy who saved you and drinking a tiny bit of his blood, maybe doing some outdoors things?, getting married in a traditional Christian wedding, having a traditional Christian funeral.  Then what again?  Oh, eternal life!  Where?  Heaven, not Earth, wait, why not Earth?  It is dirty and full of sinners who need to hear about eternal life apart from Earth.  Wait…didn’t Father God make Earth and me and you?  Yes, but his son was better and is making a better place you will like it there, worship music, bowing, confessing Father God’s name, his son’s blood, did we mention the streets are made of gold?

My former youth pastor told me that having sex before marriage was like gluing two pieces of paper together.  Let them dry and try to pull them apart only to see them rip and stick to each other.  He was right, just not about sex before marriage.  He was talking about knowing God before knowing myself.  I received all kinds of approved methods for knowing God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit, it wasn’t really clear, just that there were three that are one.  Knowing myself would come later, after meeting the most wonderful woman I’ve ever met, my children, my career, and my community.

It was during Covid that the wheels came off.  Strange things were happening, I was losing touch with reality or gaining a new perspective from all that I had let go of.  Church because that community was toxic, the bible because it left out so much, my career because they didn’t want the kids to learn about growing their own food, nearly my wife because I did not have the skills to be present, Jesus because he plays the long game and I needed help with the short game, Father God because he was always so judgmental, my country because all the leaders did was argue, go to war, and watch prices go up, and last but not least my purpose because I did not know myself very well.

I did not know I had BiPolar Type 1, ADHD, depression, anxiety, substance abuse problems, intimacy issues, poor self-talk, nonchalant spiritual hygiene, poor diet, sleep apnea, and low interpersonal effective communication.  I did know that I was in debt, at the end of my strained ability to see anything but chaos and quickly losing my family.  I had glued myself to a vision of reality that relied on pastors, a savior that wasn’t me, an Earth that I was willing to leave behind, and so much toxic masculinity rooted in fear it choked even the simple concept of Divine Feminine from sprouting in my darkened heart.

I began to focus on my breath.  One at a time.  Hold it…1, 2, 3, 4, exhale…1, 2, 3, 4, inhale…1, 2, 3, 4.  I imagined a pale blue dot out in the blackness of space.  Everything I had ever experienced happened there, everyone I had ever known lived there, memories began coming back as I drifted toward home…Earth…where I was born…where I wanted to be with my family…to work on my farm…to know the land…and my neighbors…to begin asking questions…learning about my ancestors…

The title of this article is a code, not a difficult one.  The path that leads from here is however, very difficult.  More difficult even than I have words to express.  There is joy.  Heartache.  Longing.  Injustice.  Peace.  Confusion.  Uncertainty.  Wisdom.  Anyone who reads this likely has suffering to sit with, yours or someone you care about.  Then there are forests, rivers, oceans, clouds, rain, mountains, rivers, and forests again.  We even have a moon, and stars.  Sunsets.  Sunrises.  Seasons.  People of different languages, skin colors, beliefs, habits, and spiritual connections.  Animals of all kinds, birds that sing, fish, mysterious bones of magnificently large creatures(dragons), fungal networks, microbes in our gut.  Plants of all kinds, flowers, herbs that heal and poison.  You can collect their seeds and grow your own food in cycle with the cosmos that hum overhead in the darkness and remind you that you are on the pale blue dot.  Sounds!  All the time, reminding us that we too are a frequency, a pattern of all this.  Then there is mystery, unknown, speculation, curiosity, whispered darkness, a humming emptiness and fullness at the same time.  We get glimpses beyond time, but we are asked still what will we do while we are here?

My first question is do you want to come back to our pale blue dot?  Second, does this planet charm you?  Third, do its mysteries intrigue you?

 

What is left to say that I haven’t asked?

 

Do you know yourself?

 

I am a husband, father, farmer, and friend. I live on the banks of the Magic Skagit River, ancestral lands of the Upper Skagit people. I practice rune reading, tarot, land magic, and work with many spirit guides. My life began Pagan, but I veered off into the Christian church in college. I found my way back to my Pagan and ancestral roots in 2005 and have journeyed along this path since then.