Holidays - Learning from Non-Pagan Celebrations

When I was staying at my family’s for the Easter holidays, I realized two things – one I talked about in my last post on gospel songs and paganism. The other is that we can learn a lot about each other by attending spiritual services of other faiths, and also enrich our own pagan practice.

My family has always been Christian, although not overtly so – my great-grandma would pray the rosary every week, but privately, and my gran also prays by herself each night. Since my dad passed on three years ago, however, my mum quite often attends services with my little brother (8) and me. As I don’t live at home anymore this usually this happens three to four times a year around the holidays, i.e. Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and potentially the service held in summer at a local site in the mountains.

So today I’d like to talk about the last Easter service I went to and what I learned from it.

First of all, I find that attending a Christian mass once every so often is a good and easy way to remind me of the core tenets of Christianity. Not that I’d forget that Easter commemorates the occasion of Jesus rising from the dead, obviously. Instead, the sermon reminds me not only of what is celebrated, but also of what it means for believing Christians. For Easter, this would be a sense of hope pervading all aspects of their life, and a belief that they, too, will rise one day to be with their God. Hearing sermons like these and understanding what it is that Easter means for Christians helps me to see parallels to my own pagan faith. 

the altar of the church my mum attends

This brings me to my second point, i.e. that once I see that the sense of hope Christians feel at Easter is similar to the hope and joy I experience during the spring equinox ritual, I might be able to better explain to friends and relatives what it is that I celebrate and believe in. So when I can show that while I do not believe in Jesus, I do focus on hope and the good things in life (that is, not on courting the devil and eating little children), we might have some common ground – and if we cannot agree, maybe we can at least peacefully co-exist, knowing that the other’s beliefs are not too far from one’s own in a sense.

The third and main aspect that really struck me during this year’s Easter service is that in my own pagan practice, I really do miss the sense of community. On the one hand I’m quite happy to be a solitary practitioner, since my schedule is quite messy at the moment and I don’t think I could find time for a regular meet-up; and I also want to explore more of paganism in general before settling for a certain group’s way of doing things.

But on the other hand, I really do miss feeling a community spirit. In my mum’s church, the congregation gathers in a circle in front of the altar for the holy communion, and you can partake of both the wine and bread (my dad’s Catholic church, where I used to go to when I was young, only had the priest consume the wine, so this is a really interesting experience for me). After everyone has partaken of the bread and wine, you take your neighbour by the hand and the circle is blessed by the priest or priestess. This sharing of bread and wine, to me, is closer to Jesus’ original idea than the Catholic practice that I grew up with, and it also reminds me of the fact that you’re not alone, but celebrating your faith together with others. 

 

Also, I simply love singing with others to praise God. While I’m quite happy with my own singing voice, it just doesn’t compare to a whole church packed with people singing well-known gospels.

And finally, I miss having a proper ritual structure. I do like to experiment with how I do ritual. However, I find that once you have a set structure you can concentrate better on what the words and gestures mean to you personally instead of fretting about getting the next ritual step right. Also, a fixed structure gives me a sort of comfort, because no matter where you enter a church of a certain denomination, the structure will be the same (or very similar, at least) and you can feel instantly at home.

So how can I adapt the things I miss into my practice?

I talked about the gospel songs last week, so I’m not going to go into detail here. As to the community aspect, I’m planning on asking a Wiccan friend of mine if we could celebrate some of the sabbats together. While I’m not Wiccan myself, I guess our core beliefs are close enough for us to get a meaningful ritual structure that we could work with. Another friend has asked me whether I’d do a little pagan ceremony on our annual Walpurgisnacht trip up the local hill (Walpurgisnacht is the night between April 30^th and May 1^st, i.e. the German version of Bealtaine), so if all present are fine with it, I might share some bread and mead with the group.

And as to the ritual structure, I don’t have a perfect solution just yet, but since the structure I used for my spring equinox ritual worked really well, I might use it again for the next sabbats and see if I want to stick to it.

As a conclusion, joining my Christian relatives in church is a good way for me to see what they believe in and celebrate on their holy days, and it also gets me to reflect about the current state of my own faith and how I can make my celebrations be even more to my liking.

Do you have other thoughts about attending mass (or the services of other faiths, depending on what faith your relatives adhere to) together with your family? Do you do it at all, and if not, why? 

Blessed be,

Harzgeist

Church – Leaving or Staying?

A couple weeks ago, a dear friend of mine told me that she had finally decided to leave the church. She has been a practicing Wiccan for several years now and she feels that finally, it is the right time to leave behind Christianity for good and enter a phase of her life in which she will be openly pagan. For her, this is a very important step. A mutual friend is organizing a “leave the church” party for her to commemorate this rite of passage. 

This got me thinking about why I am still officially a member of the Catholic church and if I shouldn’t leave the church behind with her. After all, about 15,000 people from the diocese that my city belongs to have decided to leave the church in 2010. So why shouldn’t I be one of them?

To be honest, I have more than enough reasons to leave:
First, I simply do not believe in the Christian god, so there’s no real point of me in belonging to a church that praises Him. After all, I’d also leave other clubs when I don’t agree anymore with their tenets.
Second, I don’t agree with how the Catholic church especially handles some issues, for example the participation of women in the service or celibacy. Don’t get me wrong here, I have nothing against people who decide that they want to lead a celibate life; I just don’t feel it’s right to make it obligatory for every priest, especially when the numbers of those who want to take their vows are plummeting.
And third, I’m reluctant to finance said institution by paying church taxes, since the largest amount of the money is not used for charitable causes, but for the priests’ salary.

However, while I admire my friend as well as the 15,000 others for doing what feels right to them and for not caring what society will think about it, I still feel reluctant to leave the church.
For one, I don’t have to pay said taxes yet, as I’m still a student. So my stance on the issue might well change when I’m entering the working life at some point in the future.

And more importantly for me, as much as I disagree with Catholicism, it is the faith in which I was born and raised, so in a way it formed who I am today. Moreover, I’m wondering if I would actually benefit from leaving. After all, since Paganism isn’t a recognized religion in Germany, I doubt that I could put “Celtic Reconstructionist” or even “pagan” on my passport where it says “religious affiliation” (and I wonder if that would be a wise choice anyway, as some application forms, e.g. the one that assigns you a place for your teacher’s training, still require you to enter your religion).

And finally, Catholicism is my family’s faith. My dad was a more or less devout person, and my great-grandma used to pray for our family every night. In this sense, Catholicism is still our family faith, and I feel that as a member of my family, it is important to honour this even if I don’t belong to the faith any longer. In a way, this is what honouring your ancestors means for me: not just to honour the rites of our pagan ancestors, but also – and more importantly – to honour those of my family who have just passed on, as well as the rites of my elders.

So how do you handle this? Are you still part of a Christian church, or have you left long ago? And what are your reasons for leaving or staying?