I disagree.

There is a huge variety of ways in which Christians approach their scriptures, from (yes) the literal to the amazingly allegorical. In fact, I’d say that mystical, metaphorical interpretations of Christian scriptures have outweighed the literal approaches throughout history, in terms of legacy.  The literalist interpretations to which the Chicago leader I’ve mentioned is referring to are, in my opinion, radically new inventions of Evangelicals in America who, let’s not forget, are not the spokespeople for all Christians.

And so, in keeping with my series on Second Stories, the following is an interpretation of a biblical narrative that is anything but the sort of literalism so many pagans expect from Christians. It was written by my friend Laura and performed at this year’s Easter Vigil at the Episcopal Cathedral here in Chicago (which I attended and thought was lovely). A retelling of the creation story from Genesis, I think that this story might resonate with a lot of pagans — and might spark some nice theological discussion. The text is of a dialogue between a Creator and the Earth.

Hope you’re all enjoying the beginnings of Spring! The text is after the jump.

Earth:   Will you tell us a story?

Creator:     What story do you want to hear?

E:         Tell the one about when I was born.

C:                                I always tell you that story. Don’t you know it already?

E:         But I like to hear you tell it!

C:                    Okay. Remind me, how does it begin?

E:         You remember! It goes,

E:                     “In the beginning…”

C:                    Ah, yes, now I remember. In the beginning…

E:         Go on!

C:                    In the beginning…

E:         We’re waiting!

C:                    Yes, in the beginning, I was waiting. Before your beginning, you were an idea. Do you remember what it was like to be only an idea?

E:         I thought it was really dark, but I didn’t know for sure. Nothing happened, nothing moved. Like when it’s so dark you’re not sure if your eyes are open or closed. It was comfortable enough, but I wasn’t sure because the nothing was also everything I knew.

C:                    Yes, you were still in the dark, but only for a little while. Pretty soon, you started kicking. If I put you out of my mind for just a second, you pushed and shoved, trying to get my attention, even when you didn’t know what I was. Unbidden, unformed, you asserted yourself. I started to wonder whether I should let you out at all!

E:         It’s a good thing you did let me out!

C:                                Yes, it was good.

E:         Why was I kicking? Did I hurt you? I wasn’t angry…I just remember needing to move.

C:                    No, you didn’t hurt me. You were kicking because you were impatient. You wanted so badly to be created. I had to whisper to you, “Wait. You’re not ready. I’m not ready.” There was so much to prepare. But whether I was ready or not, you were coming!

E:         I remember how this part goes. All of a sudden, there was light everywhere!

C:                    Do you remember what comes before the light?

E:         Yes…I don’t like that part as much. Before the light.

C:                    It’s an important part. What was it like?

E:         Well, before the light came, it felt like the end of everything. I was being squeezed. I panicked. I had no idea what was going on. Everything was pushing me, down, down, down… Everything hurt and I didn’t know if it would ever end. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t breathe…

C:                    That’s right. It’s hard, scary work to be created.

E:        And then all of a sudden, it was over. Everything let go, and I felt lifted up. I was in a new place and there was light everywhere! Something was taken off my eyes. It was…what are these called again?

C:                    Eyelids.

E:         Yes! Eyelids! Those were new! It was like I had been doing this (puts hands over eyes) for forever and all of a sudden…(takes hands away) Wow! There was all this light and air and space to breathe and move in…I was free. There was this whole new world and this whole new way to see and a new myself…I had never seen me before…. I understood now…I was totally amazed, I had no idea what to do.

C:                    (Laughing) That’s right. You looked at yourself and looked at me and just stared. Your wonder was so wonderful, so good. You blinked and blinked and tried to understand where you were. Do you remember?

E:         Yeah. Things took shape and slowly I started telling them apart. I saw shadows and outlines, but I didn’t know what things were, what they meant, how deep they went, what they felt like. I needed to touch everything to make sure it was real.

C:                    Yes, you were curious when you first came. You wanted to put everything in your mouth.

E:         But there was so much everything! Sometimes there was too much and it was overwhelming. I just needed to close my eyes again and be back where I’d been before. I needed something around me that I knew. I was cold and alone and there was too much space sometimes in this new place. (Wraps arms around self)

C:                    I know. I was overwhelmed, too. I looked at you and thought, what have I done? What have I started? There were two of us. My idea was separate from me now and I couldn’t tell what it would become. I had a sense, but you had become your own. And that was a new feeling too. It was good.

E:         And that was just the beginning, wasn’t it?

C:                    Yes, that was only the beginning. And an ending too, the end of being alone. I didn’t belong to just myself anymore, I belonged to you. You changed me, you caused me joy and grief and you grew and changed and needed me. I shifted myself for you, this part of me that was also itself. What did I do?

E:         Mmm…

C:                    Above where you lay?

E:         Sun and moon!

C:                    That’s right. You never knew to sleep, you were so excited about the new, you couldn’t take care of yourself, you just wanted all of it all the time, always restless. So I made pieces of light and dark and set them to move above you and taught you the names – sun and moon and night and day – so you would know when to be awake and when to stop and rest.

E:         And I just kept growing, didn’t I?

C:                    Yes. What was it like to grow?

E:         So many new things! New things happening all the time, some of them that I did and some that just happened and I didn’t know how. Like all of a sudden I knew things and could do things. Other things were hard. Other things took a long time.

C:                    What things?

E:         Like oceans. The still places that move slowly. Oceans just happened, and I didn’t notice while they did. But when I found them I realized they went deep deep deep, down to the bottom, they touched everything. And then there were sparks happening all the time – every time I turned around, I made something else grow. I scattered possibility, rearranged, planted, pushed seeds into dirt and waited to watch what would come.

C:                    Mud! I had never thought to delight in mud.

E:         Mud was the best, mud was so good!

C:                    What else was good?

E:         I tasted fruit for the first time! Pineapple and oranges, sticky juice all over my face, dripping down my chin. My belly was full and it was good! You had given me everything I needed and I was so happy and content. But things kept moving. I felt footsteps, pawprints. A dragonfly landed on my nose and it tickled. I felt deer walking and the lions stalking them, their warm fur and hot breath rubbing along my spine. Fish! Slipping up and down along my skin, slimy and wet and wriggly. All these new sensations. So good!

C:                    So how does this story end?

E:         Silly. It doesn’t end. It begins. You’d been helping me make all these living, growing things. But I needed to create my own idea, just like you’d created me. So I took part of myself and shaped it. I handed it to you and watched you take it. I let it go. It felt so strange, losing part of my new world, and I was worried, but I knew we were doing something better than we’d ever done before. And I waited while you breathed on what I had given you and then…there they were. People. And they were me and you and something of their own that we didn’t know yet. We heard them speaking and they gave names to things and feelings so we would all know what they were. We didn’t know what they would do yet, but we were amazed. We just sat and watched them for a while. We were waiting. We waited together. And it was good.

C:                    It was good.

Just wanted to highlight the much-anticipated launch of the Pagan Newswire Collective‘s new earth and spirituality site, No Unsacred Place: Earth and Nature in Pagan Traditions.

The site features three of my favorite bloggers (including a certain co-ritualist of mine): the ever-insightful Cat Chapin-Bishop, the ever-intrepid Alison Leigh Lilly (who is heading the whole project — excellent!) and the ever-rah-rah-rockabilly Ruby Sara. Along with many other awesome writers and thinkers.

I’m really excited to see more themed group blogs sprouting up like this, an effort spearheaded by the PNC, and I’m sure that this new site will turn out to be a great example of one such effort.

So go czech it out!

You know I realize that I’m starting to sound like a broken record. I don’t particularly like being that guy who’s always having to raise flags whenever pagans do something dumb, but I guess somebody’s got to do it.

You see, it’s a widespread misconception that no one really knows the origins of April Fools Day. However, as explained by several scholarly studies like Gillian Owens’s “Norwegian Folkmyth and Avril Toulle”, the holiday has a pretty dark past, one that — given pagans virulent ire over days like St. Patrick’s Day — I’m surprised we don’t discuss more.

You see, April Fool’s Day started in the 1600s when the Christians began to take firmer hold of the northern reaches of the Norwegian coastline, where pre-Christian polytheist practices were still widespread. A French missionary, Avril Toulle (corrupted into “April Fool,” you see) was sent to re-convert the masses. Chaucer’s Canterberry Tales relate an English version of the story in which “Avril Doole” took it upon himself to dress up as the Devil and pop out from behind bushes and trees whenever he saw ancient Heathenry being practiced. Having frightened the pagans, he would then go on to berate them for their misconduct and force them to confess on the spot.

Avril’s reputation preceeded him, and as he made north into the colder reaches, folks began to anticipate a visit from the Devil-man, and so when Avril reached a certain town and began to pull his “prank,” the villagers all responded with wailing and displays of devout piety. At first Avril was pleased, thinking that he had finished his work reconverting the countryside; however, he soon found out that the villagers were in a state of distress because, so they told him, Rome had burnt down to the ground. Much to the villagers’ delight, Avril believed their lie (Rome was, of course, just fine) and rushed back to the St. Peter’s where, unfortunately, his devil costume was found and he was hung as a heretic.

And so, as you can see, there *is* a story here, one with elements similar to the St. Patrick story: A man comes to a distant land and begins routing out paganism. But there’s a twist, in that in this story it’s the proverbial “Snakes” that “win” as the villagers play Avril at his own game and successfully prank him.

After Avril’s departure from Norway, it became a tradition there to dress up in costumes and jump out at passersby during April. The practice moved to England where the Day of Avril Fool was set as April 1st and the tradition of lying to friends in order to upset them became a part of the festival, in rememberance of the villagers’ response to Avril. And thus we have the traditions today.

But I’ve got to ask everyone: Is it really right for us to celebrate a day that commemorates the actions of a missionary? Perhaps you’ll say that we’re remembering not the missionary, but the righteous pagans’ ingenious response to the threat of forced conversion — but to that I must ask, is it right to celebrate a jest that ended in a man’s death? I’m not saying that there are easy answers to this, I’m just wondering if it’s not a little hypocritical of all of us to get up in arms about certain commemorative days, but not others — when the litmus test seems to be whether or not we have taken the time to do our research.

You can find more information about the questionable origin of April Fool’s day here.

For example, in the case described in the book,  the city of Boca Raton banned the practice of Jewish familys leaving rocks on the headstones of their loved ones, framing the practice (which is carried out by Jews all over the world) as littering that created obstacles for the graveyard lawnmower. A judge ruled against the family members who objected to the ban because, in the judge’s opinion, the practice of leaving stones is not fundamental to the religion of Judaism. That is, the judge saw stone-leaving as secondary, merely ‘cultural’, not ‘religious’, not-so-central-to-the-faith –  and therefore not protected under the religion clauses. The judge was of the opinion that only practices specifically called for by religious law and holy texts are really “religious.”

Recently, influential evangelical David Barton, who was quoted on The Wild Hunt this week, has suggested that ‘paganism and witchcraft’ aren’t really religions, and that they are therefore not protected by the religions clause. I would like to suggest that, while Barton’s remarks came from a place of misunderstanding and hate, we may be able to take his remarks as a jumping off point into a broader discussion of paganism’s relationship to the law.

As Barton puts it, “The true historic meaning of “religion” excludes paganism and witchcraft … paganism and witchcraft were never intended to receive the protections of the Religion Clauses.“

Now, I think we can divide this comment into two parts. I agree with Barton that, to a large extent, the “historic” meaning of “religion” has indeed excluded paganism and witchcraft (though I reject that there is any “true” meaning of the word). Perhaps better “traditional” than “historical.” But ‘by definition’ paganism and witchcraft have been seen, until quite recently, as exterior to or even anti-religion. This has been because religion has been defined in terms of the Abrahamic traditions, as well as others like Buddhism, etc… — That is in terms of those qualities relied upon by the judge in the Boca Raton case: Law, scripture, etc. Paganism today doesn’t have any of these things; therefore, it makes a sort of sense to say that paganism isn’t a religion.  …in a way.

But that is about as far as I can concede to Barton — and even then with (as you can see) many caveats. The real issues crop up with his assertion that paganism and witchcraft “were never intended to receive the protection” of the law. The problems here are manifest: First, it isn’t Barton’s job to decide what was or was not intended by the drafters of the constitution. Second, modern pagan communities could not have been imagined by the Founders since the relevant categories did not yet exist. That is, we’ve taken up the words pagan and witch and imbued them with new, positive (both in terms of “good” and in terms of “not negatively defined”) meanings, and so it is not appropriate to rely on the older, “traditional” definitions of those terms which make us all into anti-religionists, not when making legislation.

Having taken up these identities and put them into practice, we consider ourselves to be undertaking religious activities, and so feel that we should be protected constitutionally. BUT (Barton’s statement has prompted me to ask),  since we don’t have the sorts of legal or scriptural history expected and judged by the law (as highlighted in Sullivan’s work), do we still count as having a religion (or a group of religions)?

If, as in the case of the Boca Raton trial , whether or not a given practice is protected legally can come down to whether it is ‘fundamental’ to the religion in question… what exactly can any of us hold up as ‘fundamental’ to paganism? and what can we then demand be protected under the law? It seems to me  that, lacking these things, we need to be reconsidering our relationship to the legal definition of religion.

I think that, as long as pagans continue to approach the law as we are doing now — trying to speak of ourselves as a unified religion, which is not reflective of the reality of our communities, and suggesting that (in terms of definition) we’re a religion just like Christianity or Judaism — we are playing into a system that wasn’t designed for us.  (This is what Barton has suggested, but he means that paganism and witchcraft should be done away with. I’m taking all this in the opposite direction.)  The system was designed for law religions and book religions, not the sort of unorganized communities that make up contemporary paganism — communities in which an individual’s idiosyncratic interpretations and practices are honored and there is no orthodoxy nor orthopraxy. And I think that, as soon as we continue to play into this system, we are only making ourselves vulnerable to the sort of attacks that Barton and his ilk are making. The problem then becomes this: It’s not that we have to fight to get ourselves recognized as a religion in a setting where religion is defined as something we are not — rather, we’ve got to work toward changing the system and the law’s approach to issues of religious practice generally, into an approach that is more fundamentally accommodating to the realities of our experiences and our communities.

Many of you probably know already, but yesterday Jason Pitzl-Waters over at the Wild Hunt posted this article that touches upon a lot of the themes I’ll be trying to explore through the “Second Stories” posts over the next few weeks — recognition of wrongs committed, culpability, guilt and blame, awareness of Christian history, Christianity moving into the future, etc. If you haven’t seen it, please go check it out as I think that familiarity in this arena can only benefit us all. As many people have agreed in the comments section of that post, Jason has presented a very level-headed approach to the topic, which I commend him for.

Second — Speaking of blog comments, a new discussion has cropped up in the comments section under my post Neoplatonism at Cherry Hill from last week. Feel free to chime in if you’re interested further in Neoplatonism and pagans approaches to “re-paganizing” (?) Neoplatonic thought. Fun times.

Third — Check this out.

Lastly — (And this is just plain ‘ole tooting my own horn, BUT…)–  I’m excited to let you know that I’ve been accepted to my #1 choice graduate program, the M.A. (History of Religions/Theology) program at the University of Chicago Divinity School. So, that means I’ll be staying put in Chicago for the next few years and I’ll be able to keep doing what I love to do: Gettin’ down and nerdy in the library. Get excited — I am.

Keep it classy… somebody’s gotta do it, and it ain’t gonna be me.

This is in order to provide another point of view on Christianity (both historically and today) for pagans to ponder, in order that we may avoid the danger of a single story. Let me unpack a little…

You see, I’m disappointed in Neopagans. That’s because, for all the hot air that’s blown around about us all being the most diverse, the most accepting, the most loving community, we sure do sling a lot of shit at other people, especially at Christians. Now, yes — YES! — there are legitimate criticisms to be leveled at Christians of all stripes, surely. But what is illegitimate — and what I see so often from pagans — is when folks make blanket statements about Christianity that ignore the variety and diversity of Christians today. Things like, “All Christians hate gay people,” or “all Christians are pro-lifers,” or “Christians don’t do anything to make up for atrocities committed by churches in the past.”And what is worse is when pagans make these claims and then avoid actual engagement with Christians in a way that is productive rather than destructive (though usually there’s no engagement at all!)

Well, there are gay Christians and Christian allies. Whole churches of ‘em. There are pro-choice, pro-women Christians and Christian organizations. And there are Christian groups working today towards making amends with those who have suffered — and who are suffering — at the hands of Christians. But it seems that the culture of anti-Christian rhetoric in paganism ignores these individuals and these groups, and their significance in the makeup of global Christianity.

I’ve seen pagans accuse all Christians of holding certain theological tenants that are not representative of the majority, or even a large minority, of Christians. I’ve seen pagans go on and on about Christian history in  ways that are duplicitous or contradictory, or flatly false (“The Romans were tolerant of the early Christians!”). I’ve even seen pagans claim that Christians who challenge their myopic definitions of Christianity are “not really Christians” or are “equivocating” regarding what “real Christians do” and what they “have to believe.”

AND SO, in order to undermine false understandings of the breadth and depth of Christian experiences, and to work against the rising tide of anti-Christian bigotry among pagans, I’m going to start occasionally updating with collections of links to projects and organizations created by Christians (and other Abrahamic monotheists) that provide Second Stories. Second Stories are second points of view, second ways of looking at Christianity and monotheistic traditions that shed light on the presence of inclusive practices, affirming theology, and justice-oriented work being done.

((ADDENDUM: See this post from Witch, Please! Link now working.))

To start, I’d just like to point out some of the Christian organizations, or organizations including a large number of Christians, that are pro-choice and working towards the health of and reproductive justice for women. I’ll be updating this list as I have more time and find more examples. Feel free to add more links in the comments.

“Pro-Choice Christians Are Everywhere.”

The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

Check out this pdf from the Planned Parenthood of New York City Religious Leaders Task Force.

Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Justice.

“Abortion Ban Degrades and Devalues Women.” — From a Rabbi’s perspective: “This law as it has been enacted unquestionably diminishes the inviolable status and worth that ought to be granted women as moral agents created in the image of God. Regardless of the outcomes of the challenges to this law in the courts, the parameters of our public debate regarding abortion ought to be reestablished.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about Cherry Hill Seminary recently, for a variety of reasons. I almost applied there, for one thing! But more to the point at the moment is a conversation I had a few months ago at a meeting of the Hyde Park Pagan Potluck*: We were discussing the possibility (or rather, the impossibility) of pagan education, and whether or not such a thing is possible when pagan theology and practice is so nebulously (and often contradictorily) defined. Eventually we came to the topic of pagan seminaries, of which the best example is Cherry Hill. Without clear boundaries as to what constitutes contemporary paganism, its theology, history, and practice, how is it possible to create meaningful syllabi for study?  (At the moment I won’t go into my problems with “Pagan Studies” as a field. Regardless, if no one is clear on what exactly makes up paganism, how can one study “Pagan Ministry”?)

The last thing that has been on my mind recently about Cherry Hill was Dr. Catherine Hoff Kraemer’s remarks during the New Media panel at this year’s Pantheacon, which was made available to me and to you through the courtesy of T. Thorn Coyle, here.

What’s got my mental gears a-grindin’ today is this: By its very nature as an academic institution, Cherry Hill has had to find a working answer to the question of “What is Paganism?” In so doing, the seminary is also a normativizing force, suggesting bit-by-bit what exactly defines pagan theology.

And that’s fine. What I find frustrating (distasteful?) is that, by virtue of their endorsement of Sam Webster’s Neoplatonic theurgy intensive, their answer to this question seems to be, at least in part: “Neoplatonism.”

And this answer brings with it all the baggage that Neoplatonism entails. This is baggage that, if presented in other contexts, entails beliefs that seem anathema to many pagans’ ideas of what pagan theology is all about. For example, Neoplatonism is monotheistic, and the implication that pagan theology is monotheistic would certainly send shivers down many pagans’ spines. (Not to mention that Neoplatonism was in largest part developed by Abrahamic monotheists, to the horror of anti-Christian pagans.)

But that’s not what gets at me, really. The thing I find more intriguing is that Neoplatonism as a philosophical stance is nothing less than anti-Earth. I say so because of the Neoplatonic tradition’s assertion that the Earth, the “material,” is that which is furthest away from God (the source of existence), and that it is thus the basest, lowest thing, and that it is the Earth itself which is to be relinquished in favor of the “more spiritual,” “higher” realms.

I’ve heard some pagan Neoplatonists suggest that Neoplatonism really reveres the Earth, that, being furthest in the cosmic “chain of existence” from God-the-Source, the Earth constitutes something along the lines of the “culmination” of the glory of God. In my opinion, this is an inaccurate reading of the tradition. Don’t believe me? Go read a few of the classic Neoplatonic treatises – Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, Al-Kindi’s (?) The Theology of Aristotle, or Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia. There you’ll hear a constant refrain: ‘Leave the material Earth, seek the transcendent Spiritual. The Spiritual and the Earth are incompatible; they are the opposites of each other…’

And so I find it hard to swallow that Cherry Hill, which lists honoring “the sacredness of the Earth” among its values is offering an intensive on “Practical Neoplatonism.” Which is it? Is the Earth sacred, or not? Or are there other ways of synthesizing Neoplatonism’s archi-theology of transcendental monotheism with contemporary paganism’s general (and Cherry Hill’s explicit) stated goals of Earth-centrism?**

Since Cherry Hill is in the business of defining what makes up pagan theology, what do you think about them implying that Neoplatonism is compatible with pagan theology? What do you think of Wicca’s relationship to Neoplatonism (see: this)? Does Wicca’s Neoplatonic foundation say something about the direction that the relationship between Wicca and non-Wiccan forms of paganism might take? should take? What about Thelema? What about Chaos Magick?

*HPPP organized by Ruby Sara and yours truly, every month on Chicago’s South Side! Come on out if you’re local! Email me for the deets. – cartweel at gmail.com

**And no, pointing out that according to some Neoplatonic cosmologies the planet Earth is literally at the center of the universe does not do the trick.

I’ve always jokingly said that I’m just nocturnal. Whenever I haven’t got somewhere to be in the mornings, I find myself staying up later and later into the evenings, until it becomes like this when I couldn’t even get to sleep before 3 AM if I wanted to.

We used to live in a pretty big house out in the country, and I remember sneaking downstairs (though I’m sure my parents weren’t unawares, really) and watching cartoons all night every weekend, challenging myself to stay up past midnight, past 1 AM, past — gasp! — 2, 3, 4, and even once, one glorious saturday morning, staying up and meeting the sun as it rose up over the hedge-apple row. I remember slowly opening the front door (it must have been around 5:30) and walking out onto the concrete sidewalk that went out to the driveway — the ground was too cold for my bare feet and I wanted to rush back inside, but everything was so beautiful: The Sun rising in the east, over the hedgerow (“Don’t go there — snakes”) and butterflies in the field that sloped down along the long drive to the highway. There was corn in the field out to the west that year, and even though I wouldn’t dare go out into the corn rows at night for fear of monsters and axe-murderers, there in the morning light and the cold, crisp air the smell of the still-green ears rushed into my lungs like a drug.

On the nights when my resolve wasn’t so firm, I’d lay down a blanket on the floor in front of the TV and nod off to whatever I’d found on the Satellite, to be found in the morning and shooed off by my mother, or by the sound of my grandparents driving up the lane ready to take me to church.

Those were the times when I saw my first episode of Star Trek. It was the TOS episode “The Apple,” the one with the lizard-headed cave and the orange-skinned “humanoid primitives.” It was also when I saw reruns of Tales from the Crypt and Back to the Future.

It was also the first time (to the horror of my parents, I’m sure) that I saw string bikinis (thanks to Starz’s late-nite lineup–I was scandalized), fuzzy soft-core, and B horror flicks and Audrie Hepburn and — AND — Tom Cruise’s pre-Scientology wonder-thighs and the gay fantasy nerd wet dream that is the film Legend.

…I suppose I could go on about this for a great long while, but there wouldn’t be much point to it. I’ve just noticed the daylight coming in the window now, just like that day when I was 8. I’m not what you’d call a “Morning Person,” but I do love these few moments when I’m still awake and the world around me is just waking up. Hmm… Anyway, it’d be nice if my nocturnal nature didn’t kick in the week before finals!

Have a nice week. Light a candle for Japan.

St. Petr Ginz was 16 when he died.

Petr Ginz died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz on Sept. 28th, 1944. Petr, a Czechoslovak Jew, was a visual artist and writer as well as an avid learner. At Terezín, the concentration camp where he was kept before being transferred to Auschwitz, Ginz was editor-in-chief of Vedem, a journal produced by a group of child artists. Ginz’s diary, which has been compared to that of Anne Frank, has been published in Spanish, Catalan, Esperanto (of which Ginz was a speaker), and recently in English as “The Diary of Petr Ginz 1941-1942″.

Ginz’s story was made famous in 2003 amid coverage of the Columbia shuttle disaster. Col. Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut, had sought to take an object related to the Holocaust with him on his space flight on Columbia, and was presented with a special reproduction of Ginz’s “Moon Landscape,” a drawing created at Terezín that depicts a fantastic view of Earth from the Moon (below).

After the explosion of the Columbia shuttle, the Jewish community was wracked by the parallel tragic deaths of two of its own, Ginz and Ramon, both men who had demonstrated so much ability and promise. The tragedy was especially poignant given that the shuttle breakup had occurred on the anniversary of Petr’s birthday, Feb. 1st.

Though not Jewish, I too have been moved by Ginz’s story. His is a story of adversity in the midst of horror, a story that proves that there can be calm and beauty even in dark times. And yet… and yet… do we dishonor Ginz and other victims of genocide by weaving a silver lining into each of their stories? Perhaps this is a necessary human mechanism, to keep us all from going mad: Something so horrific could not be possible, there must be some lesson to be gleaned!

And yet…

No, I do not think it is dishonoring if we take the good with the bad — or rather, the mote of hope buried deep in the pit of ashes. And so I honor Ginz and the other child artists in the death camps, in this oh-so-small way, and leave you (and myself) to simply contemplate the earth seen from space, the earth that is so green and good and yet which, paradoxically, houses evil.

Vedem, the title of the Terezín youths’ journal, means We Lead. Let the memory of Ginz’s verdant life and black death lead us to contemplation and action to end the suffering of children and all people, and toward the end of genocide.

Lastly, a poem published in Vedem by another child at Terezín, Orce (AKA Zdenek Ornest 1929-1990) who, you’ll notice, survived.

The Thaw

Silently, lightly, slowly it drifts down

Onto the black and bleeding earth,

From somewhere up high, steadily descending

Whirling in the air on a tender breeze.

Covering all and glittering strangely,

As if to envelop this aged rot

And as in a dream, suddenly everything

Becomes once again what it once used to be.

Hidden is the filth that blankets the world

Hidden the darkness that blinds us all

Hidden the hunger that makes us retch,

Hidden the paid that breaks our backs.

Just for a while we breathe again freely

Drugged by the glitter, by the world all in white

I look out the window, the steady snow falling

And suddenly everything’s water again.

I hate the fact that historically this word has such gendered connotations. But – as with all concepts from the ancient world that we try to resurrect – we’ll have to do the best we can to overcome that bias. I’m also not very keen on the fact that having pietas also involved a man’s commitment to country – but we are talking about the Romans, after all. Of course, the concept has had a life since the Romans. Groups with roots in the Mediterranean world have all developed their take on pietas and, down through the centuries, Anglophone culture has inherited a Christian sense of the word “piety” that emphasizes psychological humility.

I’d like to go back to the drawing board and construct a new kind of piety, but a piety re-grounded in the aspect of “pietas” that emphasizes ritual propriety. Of course, propriety is all a matter of taste, and “Taste is not stable and peaceful, but a means of strategy and competition.” I’m not trying to lay down rules and regulations for how you should interact in your rituals under the auspices of your gods. But, I would like to see pagans and new polytheists enter into deeper conversations regarding ritual conduct and the theological implications inherent therein, and then to go about including their conclusions regarding ritual conduct into their ritual practices. My wish is that this piece of writing can inform some of those conversations.

So, I’d like to define piety as respectful and harmonious conduct in the presence of gods. Thus, I see two sides to piety: ritual piety and personal piety.

In order to discuss the relationship between ritual piety and personal piety, first it will be useful to outline a distinction I first encountered in J. Van Baal’s article on “Offering, sacrifice, and gift,” which has done a lot to shape my ideas about domestic polytheism and ritual. The distinction I’m referring to is between “high-intensity” ritual situations and “low-intensity” situations.

Say that you’re a rice paddy farmer in medieval Japan. Life is going well, the crops are coming in, and your family is well fed and healthy. Every day when you wake up, you greet your family’s ancestor shrine and leave an offering of a handful of rice or fruit, and then go on about your day. This daily offering (accompanied only by a short prayer mumbled quickly, but with genuine gratitude) is given in thanks for your ancestors’ assistance in making sure that all remains well. Throughout your day, you make sure to present visitors to the ancestors enshrined in your home, say certain phrases before meals, and observe other taboos called for by your ritual relationship to your ancestor shrine.

All of this is “low-intensity” ritual. Your offerings and conduct are meant to maintain right (rite) relationship with the spirits and powers who effect your life.

Now imagine that you (still a rice farmer) have a daughter who becomes seriously ill. You have exhausted all available medical options (say you have run out of all available forms of medicine, and a hospital is too far to risk a journey), and so you call in a few friends from your religious community and (perhaps) a ritual specialist in order to perform a healing ceremony – or perhaps you perform the ceremony yourself. This ceremony requires the recitation of certain texts, the burning of offerings and incense, and the collection and use of specific ritual tools and costume.

This would describe a “high-intensity” ritual. This is not the every-day stuff, but arises out of specific need. Other examples of “high-intensity” situations could include rituals to try and get a job (desperately needed) or find a lost object, or keep hostile people away. But large devotional or seasonal rituals could also be considered “high-intensity,” for although these rituals would involve no other “end” than the maintenance of right relationship with a deity or deities, such an occasion would still require more intense effort and work to accomplish.

Both “high-“ and “low-intensity” ritual is necessary, I think, and all at the appropriate time. Not all meals are dinner parties, but sometimes it’s important to break out the nice silverware. And, of course, we’re talking about a spectrum and some actions might cross the imaginary line that this distinction forces.

((Aside: I think a major problem with Neopagan ritual praxis today is that many pagans have lost sight of any “low-intensity” practice, and all kinds of religious acts, even the most simple, when attempted, take on the trappings of “high-intensity” ritual “workings.” Prayer, which is the epitome of “low-intensity” ritual, is almost gone from Wiccanate ritual, while “working magic” is emphasized even when not called for. This is an imbalance.))

The reason I bring this up is this: We can think of ritual piety as piety (right/rite conduct) during high intensity ritual, and personal piety as piety during low intensity ritual (which includes daily life in general).

Ritual piety would include many things, but essentially it’s what you say or do, how, and when. In high-intensity ritual, perhaps you decide never to turn your back toward an altar, or clap before making a formal invocation. Now, perhaps you’re worshipping Dionysos and so ritual piety would include getting as drunk as possible and falling to the ground making baudy jokes! I’m not making judgments here, and I myself have done exactly that!

Personal piety would include many things as well, and sometimes the same things. Personal piety could be praying daily, or always wearing a certain necklace in honor of some god or goddess, or (less formally) clapping or bowing when passing an altar. Again, piety should match the circumstance.

So why? Why bring all of this up? I bring it up because, I have been in a mind to say recently, piety is the stuff of religion. Piety is relational, and describes our relationships to the entities we interact with in life, both human and non-human. Therefore, how can we – ostensibly those whose aim it is to create new religious traditions built from the collapsed bricks of old temples – hope to accomplish any of our goals if we do not inculcate a sense (senses!) of piety or rite conduct? Liturgy always* comes before theology, creating it. How could we possibly begin to develop theologies if we do not first develop our liturgy, where the driving force behind liturgy is piety?

(*: Perhaps I should say that liturgy always should come before theology.)