Pagans Among Us

Sermon, UU Church of Columbia
Presented by R. Tom Dixon III on March 3, 1996

I remember the first time I stepped into this church. It was last April. I had just moved to town from Little Rock, AK. It was a beautiful spring day. I remember flowers blooming, song birds practicing a choral arrangement, squirrels playing hide-and-go-seek, and sun on my face and wind in my hair.

I had the usual jitters of being in a new place, but everyone was friendly. Folks were chatting about local politics, discussing freedom of religion, and somewhere in the background was the smell of freshly brewed coffee. I knew I had found a new home.

I opened up a little, and asked around about a local CUUPS chapter. One young lady I asked informed me that she was on the Worship Committee and that Pagans had no place in this church or the UU denomination. Being a cofounder and past president of the Little Rock CUUPS chapter, I had heard the comment before, and was not surprised at her attitude. For some UUs, Pagans in the church can be a scary thought.

This morning I will explore Pagan attitudes and beliefs. I will compare this to UU attitudes and beliefs, with an occasional quote from Emerson. If Unitarian Universalism has a saint, it is Ralph Waldo Emerson. We will find, I think, that there have been Pagans among us for quite some time.

Let's start with basic definitions. The word pagan is taken from the Latin paganus, which means country-dweller. Early Christianity was primarily a religion of the cities. The country folk, the pagani of the Roman Empire, still practiced older religions, tied closely to the seasonal and agricultural cycles. The word paganus was associated with the religious practices of those rural peoples.

As Christianity decided that it was the One True Religion (R), anything else was considered a deception of the Evil One. Thus the Pagan faiths became linked with Satan, as were Judaism and, still later, Islam, the Eastern spiritualities, and (some would hold) the Democratic party.

In general, Pagan beliefs are nature-based. We believe that all of creation, and not just humans, are offspring of the divine; humans are simply another part of nature. As such, we owe nature the respect we owe a brother or sister. Nature is the manifestation of the Divine. That feeling has been present in UU traditions for some time now. Thoreau writes,

"The most alive is the wilderness ... Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps."

Emerson echoes these sentiments:

"In the woods, we return to reason and faith ... Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space, ... I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part and parcel of God ... I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages."

Pagan rituals and celebrations tend to be centered around the cycles of the seasons and of the moon; they celebrate our connections to and dependence on the natural world.

Pagans see Life and Death as two sides to the same coin. Neither is good or evil, both just are. And, like the cycles of the seasons, the most basic aspects of the human life-cycle are marked with rites of passage which aid us in these transitions and reaffirm our links with all of humanity. Birth, the coming into adulthood, menopause or old age, and death all have their special ceremonies.

Pagans, like UUs, tend toward multi-valued logic systems, though Pagans come by this for a slightly different reason. Pagans may hold to an entire Pantheon of Goddesses and Gods; they may understand that Isis and Astarte may be most meaningful to one as Jungian aspects of the unconscious; while another may value Bride and Cerridwen as actual Entities. Any of these approaches are equally valid -- they may be simultaneous. And yes, there are agnostics and atheists within the Pagan movement.

This understanding carries over into the Pagan attitude toward religion and life as a whole: everyone has their own truth, and that is to be respected. Proselytizing, or attempting to convert others, is a breach of respect. Pagans will talk you to death about their practices if you ask them to, but they won't leave tracts on your car insisting you have to join them.

Religious freedom is perhaps even more of an issue with Pagans than it is with UUs. I know that's saying a lot, but stop and consider: you have, within Paganism, religions that have gone through a thousand years or more of often malign disinformation: their Gods associated with Ultimate Evil, their practices exaggerated and characterized as perverse, and their followers promised torture and death if they did not convert to the mainstream. Now, finally, a country says that will not happen here -- though it in fact still does. Pagans have very personal reasons for wanting to see religious freedom become a true reality.

Like UUs, Pagans see the female and male as equally divine. Both men and women are found in the clergy; in some cases, this has been true for thousands of years. The Goddess-centered religions have been particularly healing to many women coming out of more recently mainstream faiths.

As with Unitarian Universalism, Paganism has been a haven for the Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual community. In olden times, it was thought that human gender and sexuality had a power all their own. The homosexual and bisexual, then, had within them a unique balance of that power that brought to the community valuable gifts and insights. The spirit behind this idea is still a part of modern Paganism: people of all orientations are finding great healing within the Pagan movement.

Most Pagans, like most Unitarian Universalists, tend to be voracious readers. Pagans take their inspiration from any source at all. Not only are stories, songs, poems, and mythologies revered, but nature and modern science are sources of inspiration as well.

Like UUs, Pagans have little problem with modern science. Consider that Astronomy was invented to more accurately predict the seasonal celebrations that were already in place. For the most part, science only says in one way what Pagans have already said in another.

Like UUs, most Pagans attempt to raise their children in their own faith while teaching them as much about others. The parent's job is helping the child unfold her or his own path; when the child is old enough, he or she decides what religion, if any, to follow. To quote a friend, "the goal ... of raising a child without dogma is to allow them to accept the ineffable as a proper idiom of belief."

Consider UU RE programs. Most contain some, if not all, of the following: the worship circle, the circle dance, the chant, the song, the seasonal celebration, and the amalgam of religious ideas from every country and every age. These are also the heart of Paganism. For us, worship is a fluid thing it is the art form which braids our beliefs, our aesthetics, our heritage, our knowledge of symbology, and our very sense of community into a sort of performance art. If you come to a purely Pagan worship service, you are likely to see singing, dancing, chanting, drumming, and even shouting. It is celebratory, and multi-sensual. For people who are more accustomed to an academic setting, this can be very disorienting.

This is one aspect of Paganism that causes more confusion for Unitarian Universalists of other paths. Paganism is an experiential-based religion. It is not what one says or abstractly believes, but what one does or experiences, what works, that is considered important. This right-brained aspect of the Pagan movement often makes it hard to talk about these spiritualities adequately, if at all. What can you say about a group of religions where a dance can be a prayer of thanksgiving, or a simple act like cleaning house can put one in communion with ones Gods? I think Thoreau had a good grasp of it when he said,

"Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after."

I believe it is this disparity, this uncomfortableness with the ineffable within Unitarian Universalism that is the reason I was told a year ago that Pagans had no place here. People join UUism forgetting that it will force them to stretch their own personal boundaries.

The same pain was here for the gay/lesbian movement a few years ago. It was here during the UU participation in the antislavery movement. It will be here every time a new group finds its spirit able to soar in UUism. Being a "UU whatever" puts a person on the fringe of any spiritual path one may walk whether it is Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism or Paganism. We are a people who say we welcome diversity with that comes learning to stretch ones own mind and being. Change means opening the unknown, and it is rarely a planned journey.

I am Pagan, and I am UU.

I am the son of the Transcendentalists, the son of Emerson and Thoreau. I see the stars at night with the same respect, the same awe, and the same wonder. I reject no true heart. I value and count as a friend those who dance to the beat of a different drummer. I am also the son of Channing, of Hosea Ballou, and of Thomas Starr King. I am the Ba'al Shem Tov calling my elders to come dance in the woods, but they can't see that I am the child they raised. They are stuck on words, staring at books in small, poorly lit rooms, in uncomfortable chairs, and they think it is me that makes them uncomfortable.

All I ask is that you take the time to ask me what it is that I believe, and why I do the things I do. And then I ask that you listen. And if there is room for me to dance in this sanctuary, I will leave you room to sit. And if there is no room for me to dance, then you are welcome to walk with me in the woods, anytime.

Blessed be, my friends

CREDITS: Much of the preceding text was taken from the works of Jen Dixon, Shava Nerad and Jerrie Hildebrand