{"id":32931,"date":"2026-04-27T02:21:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T06:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/?p=32931"},"modified":"2026-04-27T02:21:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T06:21:46","slug":"codys-column-how-to-un-6-21-3-11-yourself-from-christianity-as-a-pagan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2026\/04\/27\/codys-column-how-to-un-6-21-3-11-yourself-from-christianity-as-a-pagan\/","title":{"rendered":"Cody’s Column: How to Un 6-21-3-11 Yourself from Christianity as a Pagan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greetings!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“The Earth does not belong to us.\u00a0 We belong to the Earth.”\u00a0 -Chief Seattle<\/p>\n

\"\"
Photo taken by me at the Frye Museum in Seattle, named after Chief Seattle who is in the portrait.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you grew up in the United States, you likely had education about the Indigenous People, but who told you about them?\u00a0 Did your school invite the elders in to tell the stories?\u00a0 Did anyone make a land acknowledgement ever?<\/p>\n

\"\"
Upper Skagit ancestral land along the Skagit River<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You likely had education about the kings and queens of Europe.\u00a0 How were the original inhabitants of Europe treated in those histories?\u00a0 Did you hear about the peoples and languages, customs and traditions of early Pagans?<\/p>\n

\"\"
Pagans were seen as weeds, invasive and needed to be eradicated by the elites who held power.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Let’s switch to popular culture then for reference.\u00a0 Halloween was my first introduction to witches, demons, monsters, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, god-like superheroes, ninjas, and fantasy characters.\u00a0 You could be these characters and folks wouldn’t bat an eye.\u00a0 School sanctioned fun.\u00a0 Even the church kids participated, well most of them.\u00a0 They would even give you candy for visiting them after dinner.\u00a0 What an interesting part of culture growing up?\u00a0 \u00a0Acceptance for being different, even if we were crudely attempting to embody these legends.<\/p>\n

\"\"
He is my friend<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Maybe you never grew up in a church going dominant culture?\u00a0 Here is what it was like… Driving through town seeing 5 to 10 different church buildings was not uncommon as I grew up.\u00a0 Being invited to youth groups doing fun activities for the price of sitting in on a talk about Jesus, not so bad, I guess.\u00a0 High School and peer pressure, this is when the sunny side gets serious.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He can’t stand it, neither can the church folk.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Hopefully the weather is mild there, or you will never be able to walk barefoot on a sunny day.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A building of stone with no whispers of the Earth from which it was hewn next to a tree of life.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.\u00a0 It was a free pass to eternal life!\u00a0 But what to do until then?\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Then what again?\u00a0 Oh, eternal life!\u00a0 Where?\u00a0 Heaven, not Earth, wait, why not Earth?\u00a0 It is dirty and full of sinners who need to hear about eternal life apart from Earth.\u00a0 Wait…didn’t Father God make Earth and me and you?\u00a0 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?<\/p>\n

\"\"
Even our bones mimic the frequency of the cosmos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My former youth pastor told me that having sex before marriage was like gluing two pieces of paper together.\u00a0 Let them dry and try to pull them apart only to see them rip and stick to each other.\u00a0 He was right, just not about sex before marriage.\u00a0 He was talking about knowing God before knowing myself.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Knowing myself would come later, after meeting the most wonderful woman I’ve ever met, my children, my career, and my community.<\/p>\n

\"\"
What do you see?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was during Covid that the wheels came off.\u00a0 Strange things were happening, I was losing touch with reality or gaining a new perspective from all that I had let go of.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"
I could see the bell but not hear its sound<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"
She was always here in plain sight<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I began to focus on my breath.\u00a0 One at a time.\u00a0 Hold it…1, 2, 3, 4, exhale…1, 2, 3, 4, inhale…1, 2, 3, 4.\u00a0 I imagined a pale blue dot out in the blackness of space.\u00a0 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…<\/p>\n

\"\"
The stones that still hold stories, water that holds life, fire that transforms, and words of my ancestors coming through their mythologies.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The title of this article is a code, not a difficult one.\u00a0 The path that leads from here is however, very difficult.\u00a0 More difficult even than I have words to express.\u00a0 There is joy.\u00a0 Heartache.\u00a0 Longing.\u00a0 Injustice.\u00a0 Peace.\u00a0 Confusion.\u00a0 Uncertainty.\u00a0 Wisdom.\u00a0 Anyone who reads this likely has suffering to sit with, yours or someone you care about.\u00a0 Then there are forests, rivers, oceans, clouds, rain, mountains, rivers, and forests again.\u00a0 We even have a moon, and stars.\u00a0 Sunsets.\u00a0 Sunrises.\u00a0 Seasons.\u00a0 People of different languages, skin colors, beliefs, habits, and spiritual connections.\u00a0 Animals of all kinds, birds that sing, fish, mysterious bones of magnificently large creatures(dragons), fungal networks, microbes in our gut.\u00a0 Plants of all kinds, flowers, herbs that heal and poison.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Sounds!\u00a0 All the time, reminding us that we too are a frequency, a pattern of all this.\u00a0 Then there is mystery, unknown, speculation, curiosity, whispered darkness, a humming emptiness and fullness at the same time.\u00a0 We get glimpses beyond time, but we are asked still what will we do while we are here?<\/p>\n

\"\"
Be wyrd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My first question is do you want to come back to our pale blue dot?\u00a0 Second, does this planet charm you?\u00a0 Third, do its mysteries intrigue you?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What is left to say that I haven’t asked?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do you know yourself?<\/p>\n

\"\"
I could see the bell but not hear its sound<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greetings!   “The Earth does not belong to us.\u00a0 We belong to the Earth.”\u00a0 -Chief Seattle   If you grew up in the United States, you likely had education about the Indigenous People, but who told you about them?\u00a0 Did your school invite the elders in to tell the stories?\u00a0 Did anyone make a land acknowledgement ever? You likely had education about the kings and queens of Europe.\u00a0 How were the original inhabitants of Europe treated in those histories?\u00a0 Did you hear about the peoples and languages, customs and traditions of early Pagans? Let’s switch to popular culture then for reference.\u00a0 Halloween was my first introduction to witches, demons, monsters, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, god-like superheroes, ninjas, and fantasy characters.\u00a0 You could be these characters and folks wouldn’t bat an eye.\u00a0 School sanctioned fun.\u00a0 Even the church kids participated, well most of them.\u00a0 They would even give you candy for visiting them after dinner.\u00a0 What an interesting part of culture growing up?\u00a0 \u00a0Acceptance for being different, even if we were crudely attempting to embody these legends. Maybe you never grew up in a church going dominant culture?\u00a0 Here is what it was like… Driving through town seeing 5 to 10 different church buildings was not uncommon as I grew up.\u00a0 Being invited to youth groups doing fun activities for the price of sitting in on a talk about Jesus, not so bad, I guess.\u00a0 High School and peer pressure, this is when the sunny side gets serious.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He can’t stand it, neither can the church folk.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It was a free pass to eternal life!\u00a0 But what to do until then?\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Then what again?\u00a0 Oh, eternal life!\u00a0 Where?\u00a0 Heaven, not Earth, wait, why not Earth?\u00a0 It is dirty and full of sinners who need to hear about eternal life apart from Earth.\u00a0 Wait…didn’t Father God make Earth and me and you?\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Let them dry and try to pull them apart only to see them rip and stick to each other.\u00a0 He was right, just not about sex before marriage.\u00a0 He was talking about knowing God before knowing myself.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Strange things were happening, I was losing touch with reality or gaining a new perspective from all that I had let go of.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 One at a time.\u00a0 Hold it…1, 2, 3, 4, exhale…1, 2, 3, 4, inhale…1, 2, 3, 4.\u00a0 I imagined a pale blue dot out in the blackness of space.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The path that leads from here is however, very difficult.\u00a0 More difficult even than I have words to express.\u00a0 There is joy.\u00a0 Heartache.\u00a0 Longing.\u00a0 Injustice.\u00a0 Peace.\u00a0 Confusion.\u00a0 Uncertainty.\u00a0 Wisdom.\u00a0 Anyone who reads this likely has suffering to sit with, yours or someone you care about.\u00a0 Then there are forests, rivers, oceans, clouds, rain, mountains, rivers, and forests again.\u00a0 We even have a moon, and stars.\u00a0 Sunsets.\u00a0 Sunrises.\u00a0 Seasons.\u00a0 People of different languages, skin colors, beliefs, habits, and spiritual connections.\u00a0 Animals of all kinds, birds that sing, fish, mysterious bones of magnificently large creatures(dragons), fungal networks, microbes in our gut.\u00a0 Plants of all kinds, flowers, herbs that heal and poison.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Sounds!\u00a0 All the time, reminding us that we too are a frequency, a pattern of all this.\u00a0 Then there is mystery, unknown, speculation, curiosity, whispered darkness, a humming emptiness and fullness at the same time.\u00a0 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?\u00a0 Second, does this planet charm you?\u00a0 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.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":295,"featured_media":32932,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15155,10004],"tags":[13689],"class_list":["post-32931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gods-goddesses","category-monthly-columns","tag-belonging-to-the-earth"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32931","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\/295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32931"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32944,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32931\/revisions\/32944"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}