Making it personal

[River]

Damn, it has been a long road.

It seems like I have spent the greater portion of my adolescence religion-hopping. I have settled down now in Pantheism and it feels great. But because of my background in religions like christianity and wicca, I feel like I need something more tangible. I feel this deep need for someone to pray to and lean on. It's hard to lean on the universe, it seems too big and myself too small. I think it is this need that has had me moving around from belief to belief.

I'm sorry if none of this is making sense, i should be asleep by now, but I knew I could come to you folks and be all strung out and incomprehensible and you would understand.

My question is, how do you make pantheism personal in your daily life. I am the sort of person who had a deep desire to live and breath my spirituality every day and I know I have finally found the path that fits me, but I feel like I am lacking something. Maybe it's just a lack of resources. God knows, there are enough books about how christians should live their lives that you could build a house out of them, and the same goes for books and websites about wicca. But this is the onlyplace where I can talk to another group of pantheists.

How do you do it? Who do you talk to when you pray? (I assume we all know that by 'prey' i don't mean the particularly christian idea of prayer) How do you do it every day? How do you apply it?

I really hope this makes sense. I can't put it any more eloquently.

[catgrrl]

I think we have traveled a similar path in some respects. I too am formerly Christian and after floudering about, so to speak, for several years, started learning about paganism and Pantheism specifically. I got frustrated with the lack of available resources (I felt). I started buying more and more books with "magic" and "wiccan" in the titles b/c those were the best source of information for me about ritual, the sabbats, etc. I don't call myself a witch or wiccan, but have found these books to be valuable nonetheless.

I have not dedicated myself to a specific god or goddess, although I feel drawn to and inspired by Bast and Artemis and have been interested in the Greeks since I was a child. I kind of shape my path as I go along and don't confine myself to one thing specifically. I consider myself very open minded and willing to be inspired by any tradition that I can think of.

[Windsmith]

River,

I understand your frustration. I've begung creating - and recording - rituals for my Pagan Pantheist practice - one Sabbat, one Esbat, one day at a time. I keep telling myself that if I can keep it up for an entire year, then I'll have an entire ritual year to work with, but it seems endless. Sometimes adapting Wiccan and other Pagan rituals to a non-deistic outlook works; sometimes building something new from the ground up feels better. Either way, I sometimes envy my fellow Pagans, who don't have to adapt the rituals or write new ones.

What helps me "hook in" to a Cosmos so vast is to keep my focus on the individual within the All. I know that sounds more Animistic than Pantheistic, but I'm not viewing these individuals as deities, or even as "spirits;" I just find that I relate better to the components of All That Is, rather than trying (usually unsuccessfully) to conceptualize all of All That Is.

As an example, here is the blessing I say before meals: Thank you, all you plants and animals whose lives were taken to feed my body. Someday, my body will feed your descendents. Thank you, all of you whose work turned these plants and animals into food and brought them to me. May we continue to sustain each other. There is a complex web of interdependence at play, that works as a microcosm of the great Cosmic interdependence. By focusing on things I understand - plants are harvested; animals are butchered; farmers and bakers and truck-drivers and shelf-stockers and myself are all involved in the process that turns, say, cows into steaks or wheat into a bowl of cereal - I link myself to the greater interdependence that seems so far beyond me by the very act of "making it personal" and dealing with the smaller interdependence that's as close as my table.

Every day, I look at NASA's astronomy picture of the day (http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html), National Geographic's picture of the day (http://lava.nationalgeographic.com/pod), and the University of British Columbia's botany picture of the day (http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/potd/). They help me see certain major aspects of All That Is, but in pieces of a size I can handle. Slowly, over time, these pieces build a more comprehensive whole in my heart and mind.

For me (and, again I realize that this might seem counterintuitive in a religion which holds the entirety of existence as the sacred), what helps is focus. Think of other Pagan traditions. You're not expected to be an expert at everything. Maybe you're whiz-bang at candle magic. Maybe you're a knockout herbalist. Maybe you organize and priestess spectacular Sabbat rituals. Instead of trying to be a Jill-of-all-trades, you specialize in one or two areas you enjoy and excel at.

That may be a good option for Pantheists to look at. It's the one I'm looking at. For instance, I want to learn about traditional weather prediction - using lore (the scientifically-based kind) and observation of plant, animal, and cloud behavior to predict weather. That's going to require regular engagement with the world around me, as well as linking me to the Ancestors and their ways of knowing. It's a good hook-in to All That Is - again, on a more personal level.

Of course I can only speak to what works for me, but maybe something I've written here will spark some ideas for you.

[River]

Ah, you guys are so great. Thanks so much for your prompt responses. I found them very inspiring.

[Diotima]

Very good question!

I, too, think that learning about the Universe is very important. In my experience, learning things helps one to appreaciate the Universe more and is also essential for self-development. For instance, if you see a flying insect and think "There's a butterfly", you are much worse off than someone who sees "There's a peacock butterfly, Nymphalis Io, second generation of this summer, a relatively common species that has very interesting self-defence system." Knowing just a little about that one species enables to you understand some other aspects of the nature around you (for example, you might get some interesting hints of what kind of vegetation is at the area, as well as what kind of summer it has been weather-wise etc.), and helps you to develop your skills of observation and deduction- skills that are, as far as we know, uniquely human and therefore in my opinion something to be cherished.
I am quite careful about what I feed to my brain. Do I feed it just meaningless information about celebrities and latest sports results, or do I feed it information that helps me to improve my mind and enables me to understand the Universe a little better- that's the big question for me. I'm a great believer in the concept of responsibility: that, as beings who have been given so much by the Universe we have a cosmic responsibilty to make the best of what and who we are.

As a Pantheist I'm also aware of that I am a part of the Divine- a part of All That Is. I have my proper place in the web of existence, but I also have an opportunity to attempt to improve the Universe- to make it a little better place. The meaning of my life is not existence in itself, but the fact that I am a being equipped with power to change things, at least a little.
I believe that one can achieve this in many ways, and choosing one's path depends on many factors (place, skills, health etc.) In my case, it has among other things meant adopting a simple lifestyle.

Rituals and celebrations are not that big part of my faith. My altar is in the living room, reminding me of my faith every day. When I feel the need, I do a prayer ritual or consult Tarot. I try not to pray outside ritual, because I believe that prayer should be less about me chatting to the Universe and more of listening to what Universe has to teach me. I think that seeing the trouble of ritual improves quality of my prayers quite a lot!

[TygerTyger]

There are probably a lot of us in this world, brought up in the Christian tradition but find ourselves at sea and looking for an anchor to fix ourselves to. That was certainly me. I came to Pantheism through studying Spinoza’s ‘Ethics’ in my Philosophy class. It was a double subject, Spinoza or John Locke, and I was the only one who chose to write my paper on Spinoza, which greatly impressed my tutor.

I have never felt comfortable with the traditional trinity presented by the church, not with the displacement of women from the religious experience. Equally I had some questions for God about myself that could not be answered by reading Christian literature. It was not immediate but I’ve now come to a level of acceptance with those questions because I think I’ve found the answer within a Pantheistic philosophy.

With regards as to how I ‘live’ my Pantheism I don’t do it through ceremony. I pray to God. I think the teachings of Jesus are very difficult to live by honestly and I hold them in high regard, along with anyone who tries to follow his lessons rather than the churches dictates.

Coming to regard myself as one part of a much larger whole I find actually quite comforting. When I see a beautiful sunset I actually feel a part of it and as a consequence a part of God; that is the essence of my Pantheism.

I don’t think that I could make it more personal than that!