The only way to make sense out of change...

...is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

- Alan Watts

Dear (some) Christians,

Change is scary, I know. In an instant the world you know can become something new, and your first reaction can be fear, and it's byproduct hate. I try not to hold it against you, I do, but sometimes you make it so hard. 

June 26th, 2015 was a historical day. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) declared marriage equality, ruling that same-sex marriage is now legal in all 50 states. Your knee-jerk reaction was to pull out your smiting sticks and go waving them about in anger. It saddens me because it means you missed the message of SCOTUS completely. I would like to share with you my favorite quote.

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right." 

You talk about how “they” will be the ruin of traditional marriage. I’m sorry but traditional marriage has been on the decline for years now (I made a post about it a while back) and it has nothing to do with those seeking marriage equality. Divorce is down, it's true, but how many of you believers in "traditional marriage" are on your second, or third, or more, "traditional marriage?" I'm not faulting you, you have your reasons and there is nothing wrong with it, I'm simply pointing out that "traditional" has evolved over the years to include divorce, maybe it should now evolve to include love.

Yes, love. That's what this whole thing is all about. The right to have their love recognized by the government. The right to be seen as people. By saying they have no right to get married you are saying they are less, they are not worthy of the same rights as you, they are not people.
Can you imagine how that would feel?

I can. I had a family member tell me I had no right to get married. Not because I wanted to marry someone of the same sex, simply because I worship a different god. Their claim was that "Marriage is a covenant between a man, a woman, and GOD" therefore, since I saw the divine a little different, what did I need to get married for anyway.

They were saying I was less because I was different. I will never see that person the same way, and it broke my heart a little they could be so nonchalantly cruel to me, someone they "loved."

I digress.

I'm not asking you to go dancing in the streets and to show up at every single wedding with a bouquet of flowers for the lucky grooms, or brides, or bride and groom. I'm not asking you to marry someone of the same sex. I'm not asking you to abandon your faith.

Luke 6:35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 

If you think us wicked, the LGBTQ+ community and their supporters, then maybe this is all just a test for you. Maybe your god wants to see you be kind to those of us you deem your "enemy" in his name, rather than condemn us in his name.

Something... pink this way comes?

It was February 8th and DH and I had an unpleasant and daunting day ahead of us, we were to drive up to be with his family while his aunt was taken off life support. There was just one little thing I had to do before I woke him up to get ready for the day.

Yup. Pregnant for the first time. Not quite how I was expecting the day to start. I'd been peeing on sticks for so long I didn't possibly think this one would come up positive when none of the others had. Surprise. I, still in a bit of shock, shoved the positive test in DH's face as a wake up call and after convincing him that it was not a joke we went about our day as planned, with one unscheduled stop so I could pick up a new journal.

It was a strange day to say the least. I knew that DH's aunt would not make some magical miracle recovery. She was such an amazing woman and for the last 10 years had accepted me fully and treated me as if I were one of her own, offering me unconditional love, a shoulder to cry on when the loss of my own mother caught up to me, someone to vent to about anything, and teaching me so much about every aspect of life from cooking to fishing. I also knew she was tired, and had refused round two of a "treatment" that nearly killed her the first time, but I found comfort in my faith.

Paganism teaches us that the universe is about balance. Where there is life there is also death, and thankfully death is never the end.

Fast forward 3 months.

We have found out our little bundle is a girl, and she'll be making her debut in the first weeks of October. We've managed to get through the first trimester without any major freak outs, but each day I find myself afraid of something new.

The major fear that has overrun my thoughts lately, and the main reason for this post?

Pagan Parenting.

DH is agnostic and after a lengthy discussion he agreed that raising our daughter in my faith would be the right decision for our family. The problem I fear comes from the extended family.

Like most Pagans I was raised in a Christian family. We did the church thing every Sunday, and Wednesday, and sometimes Saturdays, faithfully. I went to church camp, did community work, and tried so very hard to be the good Christian girl I knew my family wanted me to be, and found myself battling depression when I felt I couldn't meet their expectations. My mother got sick, I got angry, and things got worse until I found that first book on Wicca.

Suddenly what I always felt and believed at my core had a name. Suddenly I wasn't staring at a lifetime of trying to force myself into a faith that just didn't fit. Suddenly I was free... to hide my faith from everyone I knew. Being anything but die-hard Christian is hard in the Bible Belt. As I got closer to graduating and getting out of my tiny home town I became more comfortable in my path and began, well, really just NOT hiding. I didn't come out of the broom closet crystals blazing, but I wore my pentacle openly and actually drew one on a "self portrait collage" assignment in art class.

Of course my grandma pulled my pentacle off my neck and told me to be careful lest a cross be burned in my front yard, and my principal tried to make me take my collage down, but I wasn't deterred.

So all of DH's family, and most of my family, knows that I'm Pagan. I don't hide anymore, and even post Pagan related things on Facebook, but it's not really something that we ever talk about, aside from the random "So is that a Wicca thing?" question.

Therein lies the problem. We're going to have to talk about it. We're going to have to have several discussions on the fact my daughter will not be raised Christian and what this means for us as a whole family. I have a feeling this is going to suck.

How do I explain to them that while I respect their faith and understand their good intentions when it comes to my child's own spiritual path I don't want her indoctrinated into a religion before she understands what it means.

Yes, I realize that I just said that I want to raise her in my faith, and that's the thing. My faith, not my religion. What does that mean exactly?

• I don't ever want her to hate someone because they are different. It doesn't matter who they love, how they pray, or to whom they pray. What matters is doing everything that you can to be a good person.

• I don't want her to be ashamed of herself, or her body. I want her to have a healthy self image and realize her self worth. There are too many broken girls out there willing to share their body with anybody in the mistaken hope that it means they will be loved, even if just for the night, I don't want one of them to be mine.

• I want to give her the tools to be confident enough to make her own decisions. I want her to have the strength to look me in the eye and tell me Paganism isn't for her if she knows it's not the path she's supposed to walk. I want her to find her spiritual home, not because she was told she was going to hell if she didn't believe but because she knows in her soul it is where she is supposed to be. 

I hope my family understands that I'm trying to raise her to be a strong person. I hope they see past the titles of religion and into the heart of why I'm doing what I'm doing. I hope they don't let their good intentions get in the way of being our support system. They were each given the opportunity to raise their children the way they saw fit, and I only ask for that same courtesy.