So now that National Novel Writing Month is over I can get back into blogging. I’ve been sitting on this article for a couple of weeks because I wasn’t happy with the tone I was conveying. In writing about my beliefs I tend to compare how my beliefs have changed from growing up in a Catholic environment. The problem with this is that what I believe now tends to be in opposition to the beliefs I was raised with and it comes off in a negative, “the beliefs I was raised with are stupid” kind of way. With that in mind I’ve completely rewritten this particular blog so that it is more “This is what I believe in” rather than “This is why I’m not a Christian.”
I decided to split my personal beliefs into a few different posts. So let’s start with Deity.
One of my most basics beliefs as a Pagan is divine immanence: the belief that God is manifested in the material world. The divine is here on earth and is embodied in all of nature. I was raised with the belief in a transcendent God: God occupies Heaven and is mostly detached from the earth, with an exception of the Holy Spirit, which is believed to live in the hearts of Baptized and Confirmed Christians. I believe that the Divine exists within us all and since proof of the Divine is inherent in the wonders of Nature, Nature and the Divine must be one.
Growing up in a monotheistic religion has indeed shaped my view of Deity. It is hard for me to be Polytheistic. I still believe in one Divine energy, but I feel I am monotheistic in a different way than Christians. Whereas Christians see a split between the transcendent God, the immanent Holy Spirit and the human Christ, I see the Divine as one complete deity. The divine is everything and everything is divine. I also do not believe that the Divine takes a human form. The Bible states that God created man in his image, but I am of the belief that man created God in his image. The divine for me, is so vast and incomprehensible that to imagine the divine would be like trying to imagine the fourth dimension. To make things more comprehensible in my head I tend to personify the divine as a Goddess, because I find that form comforting, but I believe that the Divine is much grander than any shape I could imagine for it.
My Goddess is the Mother Earth. She is my home and my mother. It seems that some of the other major religions have this separation between God, earth, and humans. God made the earth specifically for humans, with humans coming off as arrogant, “we are God’s chosen creation.” In this view the earth seems more a thing than an entity in its own right. I believe the earth is powerful, mysterious, and unpredictable, and should be treated with the same respect as any god in the heavens. Our intelligence does not make humans more important than nature. It makes us more responsible. We are part of the universal divine energy and should treat the world and each other as such.
