pantheist? non-theist? atheist?

"But as I continue developing my spiritual practice, the feelings it evokes reminds me that I am engaging in this ritual, in this reverence, for the very reason that I am not entirely an atheist. For me, I feel the Cosmos to be divine. I feel a divinity in its mystery, its vastness, its connectedness, in the very fact of its being. But I have yet to define for myself what this concept of the divine really means for me – and if the reverence and connectedness I feel can be called theism of any kind." Áine W., The Spinning of the Wheel

For such a long time I've identified with the term pantheism.  If you don't know, pantheism is the idea that the Divine is in everything, everything is Divine.  God or Deity or Whomever can be found in rocks, trees, stars, plastics, buildings, shoes.  Everything.  So I always said I was a pantheist.  Or I thought it, at the very least.  God, for me, was never personal, which is a large part of why I didn't continue with Christopaganism, or whatever I may have been calling it at the start of this blog.  The Christian god is supposed to be personal. And even in Paganism, with polytheism abound, choosing pantheons or choosing fitting gods from one culture or another always seemed like a large part of celebrating the Divine.  Gods have personalities; it makes them personable.  

But I never felt that.  Praying to Gaia felt no different than praying to Cernunnos. So when I stumbled across this term, pantheism, I ran with it.  It was awesome.  I felt... comfortable with the Divine, although I think the word comfortable is wrong here.  It felt sensible to me, at any rate.

As the years went by and I stepped away from the Pagan path (not to any other particular path except maybe secularism), I began losing pantheism.  It became muddied in my mind.  I would laughingly joke that I was an atheist pagan because god, for me, was all and nothing at the same time.  Could I really claim to be a pagan if my view of god was so broad that I lost any sense of the divine?  

I always hated trying to define my beliefs, because it always came down to, "Well, I'm a Pagan... kinda.  Maybe I'm an atheist... but not really.  It's complicated."  And it is complicated. Like Áine, in the quote above, I am still hammering out my definition of what god is and means to me.  It's something I'll probably still be hammering away at when I am on my deathbed, if I am still lucid.  But I like what Áine says, that the divinity of existence is in its vastness and (inter)connectedness.  

So. Pantheist? Non-theist? Atheist?

I'm a Pagan, and I view god through pantheist eyes.  God is the energy that moves the universe and moves through the universe.  God is impersonal, despite the fact that I sometimes give it a face and a name for my own comfort.  I feel the Divine whether I am lighting incense and saying a prayer, cleaning a stream, or hugging a tree, because the Divine is in all there is.  The Wiccan Goddess saying "all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals" describes my view of god, because the energy moving through the universe is love and acts of love bring us closer to experiencing the Divine.

why i love...

the fall

-Beautiful colours. The leaves are changing, turning a green summery world into a riot of oranges, yellows, and red. What's not to love?

-Cool weather. Temperatures are bearable again!! We can play outside without sweating through our T-shirts. And the cool weather also makes good hoodie and sweater weather.

-New beginnings. Who would have thought a witch, of all people, would see the Fall as a time for new beginnings? Well, I think a witch who has been in school for the majority of her life would. New teachers, new classes, new friends. And we are reminded of future new beginnings, as the year and wheel are reaching their "end."

-The food. I love fall (and winter) food. Stews, heavy casseroles, soups. Things which I make throughout the year, but as with the weather sentiment, I can enjoy these things in the fall without sweating through my clothes. Oh, and apple pie!

-The holidays. Mabon. Samhain. Thanksgiving. All are wonderful reasons to celebrate the fall.

-The bugs die! So this is near the end of the fall season, but it still counts. Cam is allergic to bug bites (mosquito bites swell at the source, and tick bites swell at the source and all about it), so to be able to go outside without worrying about "what's going to get him this time" is a huge relief.

-Miscellaneous: hay rides, scare crows, pumpkins and pumpkin pies and jack-o-lanterns, marching band, hot cocoa, crisp mornings, the first frost. And on and on and on.

Speech stuff

Next week I'm taking Camden to COMO for a dr's appointment with a developmental pediatrician, where he'll be screened by a number of therapists/specialists (speech, occupational, physical, and so on). He's been diagnosed with apraxia, which is a neurological expressive speech disorder. With this appointment, I was really hoping to get him tested for food intolerances/sensitivities so we could determine whether or not a change of diet could be useful. Unfortunately, when I called today to see if I could set that up, they said that they would have to refer us to an allergist. Which is just as well, since I wouldn't be able to try a GF/CF diet until May, when I'm out of school and have time to prepare all his meals (including those he eats at school, since his school meals are almost entirely based off of grains and dairy). Anyway, despite the fact that they won't be able to test him for that, I will hopefully be getting more strategies and ideas to work with/pass along to his speech therapists here in KV.

I didn't know that living with his apraxia would be such hard work. I didn't realise that it would involve a lot of translation (I feel bad leaving him with people who don't know him, because he's just so hard to understand, and he gets frustrated and the person he's with gets frustrated). I didn't think he would have to fight so hard to make a sound that is easy for most people (thinking /k/ and /g/ here). I didn't think that I would be driven to tears multiple times a week, simply because I can't understand something that he's wanting to tell me. I didn't know that I would want to punch people (okay, certain person--unnamed) for telling me that he's not doing it because he's lazy (the apraxia dx was a huge in your face). I didn't realise how frustrating it would be to have to drill the same idea over and over and over every day, several times a day.

Of course, I also didn't know how my heart would soar with happiness and pride when he automatically uses the right word (saying I want instead of me want for example) or puts the right sounds together for the word that he wants. Or when his speech therapists tell me that he's their favourite patient. I didn't know that he would work so hard to be understood, by repeating what he says, trying to enunciate, saying it a different way, gesturing, etc.

We are far from the end of our journey with apraxia, but every day Camden makes improvement. He says I with increasing frequency, though not nearly as often as we would like. A year ago, he couldn't tell a story. He can now tell a short story about his day. A year ago, he used 1, 2 and 3 word sentences almost exclusively. Now his sentences can reach up to 6 or 7 or 8 words long, though he still uses a lot of shorter sentences. He does a lot more creative and imagination play now than he used to (though that might just be part of growing up/normal development?).

He makes my heart sing every day that I know him, and every day that I know him I love him more.

A story (not mine, obviously):

WELCOME TO HOLLAND


I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability
- to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand
it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip -
to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The
Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some
handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags
and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in
and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm
supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and
there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting,
filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different
place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new
language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have
met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than
Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you
look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and
Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all
bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your
life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had
planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of
that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy,
you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ...
about Holland.

by
Emily Perl Kingsley.
c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

Obligatory post on love

But first, my stance on Valentine's Day in general. I think it's ridiculous! Birthdays, Mother's and Father's Days, Just-because Days. These and those like them are the days when we can show how much we care about those we love. And I find "Singles Awareness Day" even more ridiculous. Not just ridiculous, but demeaning. Is the person who is, for whatever reason, single, so inept and downtrodden that they need an usurped "holiday" to draw attention to their "plight?" (Goodness, I'm really using a lot of dictionary-words today, aren't I?) And of course, Valentine's Day, like all secularized holidays, has been so trivialized (right down to the Twilight hearts that say "Bite me") that even if there was a purpose to it at some point in time, it has been all but forgotten now. Now, on to the show. :)

What I love:

-My family
-Books that make me cry (and, oh, how I hate them, also!)
-Good food
-Flower gardens
-Long walks in the woods
-Forgetting that I'm a "grown up" and being goofy with Camden... in public
-Camping next to a river, and the mornings when it is somewhat chilly and you can watch the river steam and hear the fish jump
-Marathon reading sessions, especially when it is a new book in a series
-Cooking for friends and sharing the meal with them
-Climbing trees
-Playing the marimba, making it sing
-Bonfires
-Old cemeteries where the history of the people buried there can only be guessed
-Watching Camden sleep
-Looking down on the soaring hawks
-Thrift stores/charity shops, antique malls, flea markets, and garage/yard sales. aka: pawing through other people's stuff! lol
-Fountain Dew (Mountain Dew as a fountain drink.)

I'm sure there are elsewhats, but those are what come to mind at the moment. Just reading this list makes me melt on the inside. So now that my insides are an ooey-gooey mess, I think I'll just end here.

Happy V-Day!