I was raised Catholic, though in name only. On good years my family went to church on Christmas and Easter. I believed in Jesus because good girls believed in Jesus, and I wanted to be a good girl. My faith dwindled when I went to confession at age 9 and the monsignor told me I was going to burn in hell because I yelled at my little brother. I attended CCD classes through eighth grade at my mom’s insistence, but after that I considered myself on parole.
I had a brief resurgence of faith in college, when I was surrounded by evangelical Christians, but that didn’t last long. I guess I officially abandoned Christianity when one of my self-proclaimed Christian friends told me that she couldn’t speak to me anymore unless I joined her ultra-conservative church. I took a good hard look at her and decided that if she was what Christianity had to offer, I wanted nothing to do with it.
Lately I’ve felt myself pulled toward Paganism. I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject (online only at this point, but I have my eye on a few books). The problem is that I despise organized religion. I pray on my own, in my own way. Still, I feel I can’t call myself Pagan unless I belong to a group. I guess the best term for me right now is “searching.”
Whynot will probably answer better, but you sure as heck don’t have to be part of a group to be pagan, just like you don’t have to go to church to be christian. There will be groups that tell you they only reveal their greatest secrets to members and that you’re not real if you’re on your own. Look for Scott Cunningham’s Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner (if you want to look at it from a Wiccan POV).
Of course, there are probably some types that don’t lend themselves to solitaries, since the term “pagan” is so poorly defined. Those that I’m familiar with, do just fine without the group. It’s harder sometimes, sure. Still, you can get enough knowledge on your own to better evaluate a group you’re interested.
Dangit, I’m in a hurry so this is probably rather incoherent. Sorry.
I grew up Catholic but was very lucky in that all the parishes I ever belonged to were liberal, or at least not rule-bound and moralistic. I never got the message that religion was about finding sinners to condemn.
In my teens, I ended up friends with a deacon at my church; one who was a very good example of how Christians ought to act. He wasn’t judgmental at all; in fact quite the opposite. He helped out with or ran some of the youth functions I was involved with and organized some retreats. I learned a lot hanging with him and the other priests.
Around that time, I read a book that had a tale about God and Satan which really cracked open my brain; I think the premise in that story sounded much more plausible than the other tales of the two I’d ever read and it was one of the things that started me down a path of independent thought when it come to religious matters because it reconciled the idea of a loving God with the problem of Satan and Hell.
Other things, briefly; Hermann Hesse; there is a great deal of sprituality threaded through his writing; the ‘obvious’ spirituality is just part of the message; an evening at a talk by an independent spiritual speaker in which he challenged people to walk to the stage to give themselves to God and I found myself rooted to my chair, fearing that I’d end up a nun and a subsequent spiritual experience in which the words 'Ego sum, noli timere ('it is I, be not afraid) persuaded me that I could hand myself over to God and not end up a nun :D, World Religions studies, especially Buddhism and B’hai, more retreats, being present at the death of my mother; other things that would take too long to enumerate.
Bottom line: absolute conviction that God exists; not convinced that a particular religion is the way. I identify as Catholic because it was where I gained my spirituality. It is part of my belief that humans are frail and flawed and manage to get things like religion messed up but that it’s generaly done for the best of intentions. I don’t think God holds it against us and I think the least we can do is afford each other a break.
I find I lose touch with my spirituality when the minutiae of life overtakes me and things which should remain in their small places begin to loom large. Times I am able to pull myself back from foolish and tiresome details, I am free and at peace and understand what we are meant to be. It’s hard to maintain, however.
I’ve found that I also have lost touch with spirituality when I’ve been in relationships; while my spouse and exes were spiritual to a degree, it wasn’t in a way that we did, or could, support each other in the kind of spiritual experience that I need.
Which is one reason I’m single. If I take up with someone, it has to be someone who thinks along the same lines the Dalai Lama does;
http://www.tibet.com/DL/nobelaccept.html
It’s what I believe and what I need in someone I spend a lot of time with. I don’t want to lose it again; it’s too important to me.
When I was younger my Mom took us to mass (Roman Catholic) and I remember it with fondness. As we got older, we moved to a new town and stuff happened… but I ended up going to several different churches over the years with friends and babysitters. Then I hit my teens and stopped going to mass though I’d go to youth group with some kids since there wasn’t much to do in that town and it was a nice evening out other than Guides and Pathfinders where I was always on the outside of the popular girls.
Then I started going to summer camp in my late teens which was run by a church (not sure what denomination at all) and from there met people who I did various things with (30 hour famine, Teens Encountering Christ, concerts/dances), there was lots more stuff to do since we moved to the big city.
TEC is where I noticed a disconnect with myself though. In high school I met several Pagans (my high school was Catholic) and started reading up on Wicca and such, then when I went on the retreat I spent a free hour talking about Wicca with another guy there.
In the end I just stopped going to church and I felt separated from my Christian friends because of it and various other things, and I was never really able to find myself with the Wiccans because, well, most of the ones I knew/know were fairly fluffy bunny (the ones who introduced me to Wicca re-converted to Christianity, another plays at it and is very superstitious and so is being taken advantage of by one woman). I even met a woman who called herself a Christian Wiccan but I don’t see how that can mesh well.
Basically I drifted away from my childhood faith, drifted around a bit and I still drift somewhere between one and the other in this sort of limbo where some days I pray to whoever will listen and others I am pulled sharply back to the Church. In some ways I miss that childish faith, the peace I found in it, but I’ve found I get that peace in several ways which is more of a peace with my place in the world and who I am (thus I find it in simple pleasures like a walk in the woods, cuddling with my son, making something with my hands or just meditating/doing yoga).
Sometimes I think that’s all spirituality and faith really is. Finding that peace, that inner serene knowledge of who we are and where we belong in the world. It’s not easy, it can be fleeting in the rush of our lives. That’s why rituals of worship are comforting. They connect us to that peace and if we have a regular time when we do that (mass, sabbats and esbats etc) it reinforces it.
Okay didn’t mean to ramble on. To answer the question simply: yes I’ve drifted and I still drift though I’ve considered seeking out others in the local pagan community or finding a church to join again and try to find my place and faith once more.
Something on losing touch with spirituality from a Jewish perspective (link to whole article). The context is a discussion of how some Hasidic rabbis interpreted the Biblical story of Jacob’s Ladder:
