{"id":3155,"date":"2010-02-01T01:10:47","date_gmt":"2010-02-01T06:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=3214"},"modified":"2010-02-01T19:57:37","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T00:57:37","slug":"rebel-rede-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2010\/02\/01\/rebel-rede-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebel Rede"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daily Divine Devotion<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Devotion can be defined as either “feelings of ardent love” <\/em> or a <\/em>“commitment to some purpose” (retrieved January 20, 2010 from http:\/\/wordnetweb.princeton.edu\/<\/a>). The word devotion or devotional is often used in a religious context, especially within Christianity.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Wikipedia (http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/<\/a>), in Christianity a Bible study is the study of the Bible by ordinary people as a personal religious or spiritual practice. Some denominations may call this devotion or devotional acts. A Bible study or devotional time can be done in a group or practiced alone. What does this have to do with Paganism? Everything! Despite popular opinion we can learn a lot from Christians and their devotional practices. As a Pagan do you have feelings of ardent love towards your Goddess\/God? Do you have a commitment to a higher purpose? If you answered yes, how do you show your love to your Divine or how do you strengthen your commitment to your craft? The answer lies in the word devotion. Picture an Oak tree. How does an Oak become a huge strong tree out of a tiny seed? All plants take a combination of water, sunlight, and food to grow. These three elements all work together to create the energy and steps necessary for a plant to grow. In relation to your spiritual growth, sunlight can be thought of as the Divine (whether masculine, feminine, plural, or singular). We need the guidance of our Goddesses\/Gods in order to grow and to reach our full potential. We also need practice, just like a plant needs water. As the saying goes practice makes perfect. Pagans and Wiccans are not born with ability to read tarot cards or perform spells. The skills needed and used within the Craft take years to obtain and perfect. No witch is ever done growing or learning. If you want to continue to grow spiritually it will take practice, effort, and time. It is when we combine our energies with the Divine that we create the spiritual food necessary for our growth! It is not enough to only perform ritual on the Sabbats or the full moons. Your Goddess\/God does like only being talked to once a month, or only when you need a spell to work. We should be spending time everyday with our Divine, and in practice. You may not have time to perform a full ritual everyday or might not be a possibility to draw up a circle while at work. This is where some Christians have it right. Christians may only go to church once a week on Sunday, but that does mean they are not spending devotional time with their God everyday. For Christians a daily devotional time might include a time of prayer and the reading of a few scripture passages. For Pagans we also can spend time in prayer with our Gods. Take five minutes a day to work with energy, to write a spell, to read a tarot card, to just say thank you to the universe and the Divine for being alive! A daily devotion with your Divine is a necessary ingredient for spiritual growth. It is through practice, dedication, and devotion to ourselves, our Gods, and our Craft, that we become better Pagans. More importantly better people! Maybe someday Wikipedia will be updated to read, “In Paganism a Craft study is the study of the Craft, the Divine, and spirituality by ordinary people as a personal religious and daily spiritual practice.”<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daily Divine Devotion Devotion can be defined as either “feelings of ardent love” or a “commitment to some purpose” (retrieved January 20, 2010 from http:\/\/wordnetweb.princeton.edu\/). The word devotion or devotional is often used in a religious context, especially within Christianity. According to Wikipedia (http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/), in Christianity a Bible study is the study of the Bible by ordinary people as a personal religious or spiritual practice. Some denominations may call this devotion or devotional acts. A Bible study or devotional time can be done in a group or practiced alone. What does this have to do with Paganism? Everything! Despite popular opinion we can learn a lot from Christians and their devotional practices. As a Pagan do you have feelings of ardent love towards your Goddess\/God? Do you have a commitment to a higher purpose? If you answered yes, how do you show your love to your Divine or how do you strengthen your commitment to your craft? The answer lies in the word devotion. Picture an Oak tree. How does an Oak become a huge strong tree out of a tiny seed? All plants take a combination of water, sunlight, and food to grow. These three elements all work together to create the energy and steps necessary for a plant to grow. In relation to your spiritual growth, sunlight can be thought of as the Divine (whether masculine, feminine, plural, or singular). We need the guidance of our Goddesses\/Gods in order to grow and to reach our full potential. We also need practice, just like a plant needs water. As the saying goes practice makes perfect. Pagans and Wiccans are not born with ability to read tarot cards or perform spells. The skills needed and used within the Craft take years to obtain and perfect. No witch is ever done growing or learning. If you want to continue to grow spiritually it will take practice, effort, and time. It is when we combine our energies with the Divine that we create the spiritual food necessary for our growth! It is not enough to only perform ritual on the Sabbats or the full moons. Your Goddess\/God does like only being talked to once a month, or only when you need a spell to work. We should be spending time everyday with our Divine, and in practice. You may not have time to perform a full ritual everyday or might not be a possibility to draw up a circle while at work. This is where some Christians have it right. Christians may only go to church once a week on Sunday, but that does mean they are not spending devotional time with their God everyday. For Christians a daily devotional time might include a time of prayer and the reading of a few scripture passages. For Pagans we also can spend time in prayer with our Gods. Take five minutes a day to work with energy, to write a spell, to read a tarot card, to just say thank you to the universe and the Divine for being alive! A daily devotion with your Divine is a necessary ingredient for spiritual growth. It is through practice, dedication, and devotion to ourselves, our Gods, and our Craft, that we become better Pagans. More importantly better people! Maybe someday Wikipedia will be updated to read, “In Paganism a Craft study is the study of the Craft, the Divine, and spirituality by ordinary people as a personal religious and daily spiritual practice.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3097,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155\/revisions\/3097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}