“Are you interested in answering the three questions I like asking everyone I meet?” he wants to know.
I was a Jesus Freak, a passionate theologian, and a Southern Baptist minister. I worked hard to convert pagans. The pagans won.
Discovering magic as a witch with an intimate knowledge of western christianity I explore the juxtaposition of these two faiths. Christianity and paganism alike are undergoing dramatic changes with parallel trends, conflicting challenges, and a growing concern for interfaith dialogue.
I'm writing in a hobbit hole, off the grid, on a mountain side in Northern Washington. The setting couldn't be more perfect. There's still some snow covering the ground at our elevation, steep sagebrush hills framing the horizon, a shimmering mountain lake reflecting the setting sun. I want to write about joyful things or find beauty in difficult things, but the only words that are coming to me are “I am so exhausted.”
...I am writing again (obviously). But the simple act of sitting down and letting my fingers dance across the keyboard took months of struggle. Last year I would panic at the mere thought of writing. I thought I’d never publish another word, ever again.
Writing isn’t something I can do casually. Some writers can kick back and type out page after page in a single afternoon, but I’m not like that. For me, writing is a gut-wrenching, soul-baring practice. I cannot write without reaching deep inside of me. Often I end up encountering aspects of myself from which I would rather hide. Writing peels away my defenses and confronts me with the secrets I keep from myself.
...I’m lying in bed with my lover when the power goes out. The only light in the room is now coming from the moon’s reflection on the snow outside the glass doors. We look at each other, wondering if we caused the outage. We were running a lot of appliances in our room here at Yosemite Falls lodge, we may have blown a fuse.
...
So it begins. My Facebook feed has officially become at PantheaCon feed, interrupted only by an occasional Bernie - Hillary banter. Today l join a couple thousand folks at one of the most well known and diverse Pagan festivals.
I arrived a day early and already ran into more old and new friends than I can count. But it wasn't always like that. PantheaCon was my first large Pagan event and I went by myself, knowing hardly anything about the convention. In retrospect, here's a few things I'd do differently (or not), if I were a new Pagan coming to PantheaCon.
...
In the days of the emperor Arcadius, long after the rest of the region had been thoroughly Christianized, the city of Gaza remained proudly, defiantly, faithful to the Old Ways, its eight temples daily thronged with worshipers.
At the heart and center of pagan Gaza stood the Marneion, the marble-clad temple of Zeus Marnas, famed for its size and beauty. Though latterly identified with the Greek Zeus, the god of this temple (Aramaic Mâr-nâ, “our Lord”) was none other than the old Canaanite Thunderer, Ba'al Hadad himself, god of that place for more than 3000 years.
So few Christians were there among the Gazans that, when the city's newly-appointed bishop, Porphyrius, arrived to take charge, he could find only a handful in a city of several hundred thousand inhabitants.
In those days, when a new bishop rode into his city for the first time, it was customary to give him a triumphal welcome, the road before him strewn with branches and palm fronds, the air perfumed with incense. On March 21, 395, however, the people of Gaza gave Porphyrius a satirical entry instead. They strewed the road before him with thorns, fouled the air with burning cowpies, and met him with jeers instead of the expected hymns.
Porphyrius burned hot with anger, but the emperor would brook no interference with the city or its ways. Gaza was a wealthy city, and paid its taxes faithfully, fattening the imperial treasury with its annual revenues.
Porphyrius soon ingratiated himself with the empress, predicting that she would soon bear a son. When she did so, after the child's baptism, he was finally given the permission he had long sought to destroy the temples of Gaza.
Imperial troops entered the city on May 12 in the year 400. The plunder and rapine continued unabated for twelve days and nights. When they were finished, pagan Gaza was no more.