Circles, Cycles and Pulses: Pagan Values Blogging Month

Summer Solstice

Summer Solstice 2009: Summer Solstice Fishing Extravaganza!

Summer Solstice 2010: The Season of Light Nights

Summer Solstice 2011: Wanting to Be Up and Doing

This post is an entry in the 3rd Annual Pagan Values Blogging event, which I also wrote this years' Full Journey Moon post (self evidently titled June is Pagan Values Blogging Month) for.

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As I've been living into the solar power so palpable during this Summer Solstice season I am reminded of one of the core elements in my personal pagan values system: the fact that all of creation moves in circles, cycles and pulses. When I think about the things I disagree with Christian theology about the first is a need for a savior (I think I can do that within my own relationship with the divine, thank you very much). The second, and perhaps more important to me (though probably not to most Christians who would argue my first point), is the knowledge that time is cyclical with no set beginning, ending or singular event that never has been before and never will be again. Time isn't a straight line and neither is virtue, or anything else. It's all circles inside of circles, pulses and waves. Every coin has two sides, and neither is more important than the other.

One night last week I found myself listening to the Christian radio station and heard a pastor speak very passionately about evil. He sounded to me like a big brother warning his younger siblings about their father's strange and not altogether sensible rules and harsh punishments. He wasn't fire and brimstone like so many preachers, but truly heartsore and worried that we might fall into evil. It all seemed so foreign to me because, to be perfectly honest, I don't believe in evil. This is not to say I don't believe in Really Bad Things, or even Really Horrific Things That Defy Rational Explanation and Might Very Well Be Called Evil. I just don't believe in some supernatural power that causes evil. The Worried Pastor said he didn't know why a good god allowed evil to exist and that was just something we'd find out when we got to heaven. I know, though, to my own satisfaction at least, why there are things in this world that people call evil: imbalance.

Every impulse and action in creation has an opposite impulse or action and neither are Good or Evil, though some may be Beneficial and Harmful. Most just Are, though. Like wet and dry, neither is bad though both are harmful in their extreme. That same night I heard Worried Pastor I switched over to NPR and heard a story of Sudanese soldiers going door to door in the Nuba region of the country and killing members of any tribal group that had supported the South during the civil war. That is a pretty awful action, and one that I will never defend, but I still don't see it as evil. I see it as an imbalance in the impulses community affiliation vs. universal humanistic care and the impulses of protecting one's resources vs. sharing. It isn't wrong to lock your doors to keep intruders out, but it is certainly very harmful to kill neighboring people who compete for your food sources. Both come from the same impulse to protect what you need to survive.

One of the reasons I rejected Buddhism during my late teens was because I don't believe all life is suffering, and I also don't believe that detachment is the way to relieve what suffering does exist. Even at that young age I saw that the play between joy and sorrow was where the real meaty part of life is. It will be winter just as surely as it is now summer and cultivating an emotional detachment from that change seemed counter productive to me. As I began exploring paganism the image of a Medieval or pre-Christian woman, blonde and buxom, laughing and pouring mugs of beer for her husband and friends came to me. A woman who is not afraid of enjoying the good things in life while they are here, and bearing through the hard times that are just as likely to come soon. A couple years later I claimed that I gave up vegetarianism to become a hedonist. I think I gave up Buddhism for the same reason.

Community and self. Summer and winter. Festivities and solitude. Heat and cold. Joy and sorrow. Darkness and light. Growth and decay. Giving and receiving. Rain and sunshine. Fear and security. Death and birth. These are the peaks and valleys of the sine waves of life. We ride them like roller coasters as we move through our days and years. When the waves are too steep - the selfishness too selfish or the heat too hot - we find ourselves out of balance and off kilter. But when the waves are too shallow there isn't enough momentum to keep us moving forward. You can't draw a picture with a white crayon on white paper and you can't live a life of all growth and no decay, or all giving and no receiving.

The reason I love Annette Hinshaw's Earth Time, Moon Time calendar so much is that the very foundation of it is this idea of cycles at various levels. The cycle seen at the year level that starts with the Death Moon and Birth Moon and goes all the way around to the Harvest Moon and the Sorting Moon is the same cycle that happens at many other levels. It is the cosmic cycle of the creation that the Hindus think of as yugas or eras. It is also the cycle of the human life span, or of the lifespan of a business, or a garden year, the lifespan of a frog, a butterfly or a mayfly. It is smaller cycles, too, like cycles of digestion and breathing and photosynthesis. All these cycles within cycles, pulses within pulses are the engines that drive the brilliant and beautiful motion of the myriad things. This is deep wisdom and Annette Hinshaw has brought it to a beautiful and simple, hands on and practical calendar.

I hope that Worried Pastor figures it out so he can stop worrying. Evil isn't here against god's wishes, or to lure us into eternal damnation. The yin and yang of creation is here to keep us moving in dynamic cycles, circles and pulses. This time of year, when we have just seen the crest of the summer wave and are sliding our way down into the darker part of the year, is a perfect time to remember that core tenet of my pagan values. Circles, cycles and pulses literally make the world go 'round.



Read more entries in the 3rd Annual Pagan Values Blogging event HERE.

June is Pagan Values Blogging Month

The Full Journey Moon

Full Journey Moon 2009: A Journey for the Journey Moon

Journey Moon 2010: The Journey Moon

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"We must not be afraid to discuss the values and virtues and ethics we have discovered in our contemporary Pagan faiths. There are enough books on rituals and spells and prayers to last us a few generations… lets start writing works on confronting poverty and hunger from Pagan perspectives. Let us set aside the fear of prejudice, and the once glamorous but now tattered and worn mantle of the outsider and the rebel, and take pride in ourselves and our faiths, in our works and lives and worship and in our Pagan communities and our larger communities." - Pax, author of Crysalis

June 2011 is the 3rd Annual Pagan Values Blogging Month, a great project that aims to get pagans of all stripes to be both thoughtful and vocal about the things they care most about. Some bloggers have chosen to confront broad topics of historical pagan values, or the values and ethics of movements, traditions or denominations within contemporary paganism. From both a practical and ethical standpoint, I can not begin to discuss such broad and impersonal topics but can only speak as to my own beliefs and values. I am a pagan, but I am also a Quaker and Quakers put great emphasis on speaking only as far as your leading takes you; to not go beyond the measure of light that we have been given. I can only speak about my own values and beliefs, but I hope to be able to discuss how my background in both pagan and Quaker thought and worship have informed my values.

June 2011: What do I value?

My personal value s are inspired and informed by my dual identity as both pagan and Quaker. I see the core of my values as a two sided coin with relationships on one side and self actualization on the other. The interaction of these two forces creates a motion that we physical beings live within, a motion and a force that does the work of building, rebuilding and healing our world.

As a pagan I see the root of my spirituality as a deep connection between myself and a mother goddess spirit, who in turn has a deep connection with every other person, animal, plant, and non living thing on the planet. The Mother loves me like her special child, but she loves you, that guy over there, this tree, my dog, the soil, thunderclouds, bushtits, spiny lobsters and wildfires just as much. I am bound fast to all the myriad things in that strong and vast web of loving connection. It is easy to forget our connection to the goddess and the rest of creation, but by constantly seeking knowledge, experience and wisdom we can become better citizens of this interconnected web.

Quakers see a similar web of connection through what they call the Light of Christ present in each person. By recognizing that God works through all people, all people must be listened to, cared for and treated as an agent of the divine. Coming out of that realization Quakers see personal authenticity and individual seeking as important components of a spiritually rich life. We can not listen to the voice of god if we are busy with unimportant things and practicing the fine art of discernment is highly valued in Quaker communities.

When I first started meditating on the question of what do I value the very first thing that came to mind was education. I spend vast amounts of time in my own personal life learning things so I can be a smarter, wiser and better person. I read voraciously, practice skills of observation and discernment, enjoy sharing what I know with others. I created a vision statement for myself last fall and used the phrase “I am an ambassador of the universal divine on a journey to explore life on earth and share what I discover.” It is my job to constantly work to get better, smarter, bigger, happier, and wiser. Quakers and other Christians call this becoming more Christlike. Some pagans call this becoming a priestess. Psychologists call it getting closer to self actualization and Havi might call it destuckification or biggification and Rob might call it cultivating pronoia. Whatever we call it, it is of the utmost importance to me.

In fact, I am prone to thinking it is more important than it is. I tend to value intelligence over genuineness, cleverness over bigheartedness and worldliness over simple faith. All virtues can become vices if taken to an extreme and I am grateful that I have been presented with a number of lessons to remind me that humility is a worthy virtue as well.

Many of those lessons come through experiences with community. Quakers believe that a true leading from god will be verified by the discernment of the community. My pagan theology says that nothing is truly virtuous unless it benefits the community, and nothing can be evil if it has benefit to some member of the community. Ed Espe Brown, the author of the Tassajara Bread Book and an early spiritual mentor of mine, wrote once that living in community is like living in a rock tumbler. He feels his time at Tassajara Zen Community was a time when he was rubbed against other people and his sharp edges were worn away into smoothness. I’ve met people who don’t have strong communities and I think of them as like the 40 foot long gypsum crystals in the Naica mine in Mexico. They are beautiful and perfect in their own way, but fragile, sharp and brittle. Tumbled rocks, rocks that have rubbed against other rocks in the community of a stream or a rock tumbler, are just as beautiful but with a sense that they have been tested and hold up against the forces of life. A community of seekers, acting authentically and with caring, can be that testing ground and polisher for a person. 

Relationships and biggification. Self actualization and community. The inward focus and the outward push. Like yin and yang or male and female, the pull between these seemingly opposing forces creates motion that propels us forward. In the end, I believe we will be judged by our actions but the impulse behind our actions is vitally important. All of the other things I value like safe and clean food, protection of the natural environment, equal rights for all people, the reduction of pollution and waste, the increase of beauty and truth are rooted in this interplay between an inward seeking and an outward connection. We must actively care for our communities, both human and non-human, and we must base that care in the interplay of inward and outward, benevolent altruism and informed self interest. What is good for the web is good for me, and what is good for me is good for the web. 

Right now our web is sick and hurting. There are bright spots of self actualization, healing and beauty but there are more places of bleakness, brokenness and despair. I believe that we are here, in the physical, mental and spiritual form we are in because God needs this form to do some specific work. There are things that can only be done with our human bodies, human minds and human hearts and we must find out what those things are and do them. The dual impulses of becoming more authentically ourselves and becoming more authentically in community is the way forward to find that work and successfully do it.