I am trying really hard to not be insulted by the insinuation that I think asking "should abortion be legal" is like asking "which Ghostbuster is the most awesome."
It was an exaggerated comparison, but to me the question of whether abortion should be legal is not the kind of academic abstract debateable thing that people can easily agree to disagree on. Agreeing to disagree on whether they're okay? Fuck yeah. But the "agree to disagree" position is called pro-choice because it means that people who disagree are all allowed to do what they need to do.
I couldn't remain part of an organization that argued "Everybody should do what they need to do" is an intolerable approach to really serious political issues like abortion, and I'm baffled by people who can get past it.
The married gay Catholic guy spends way more money funding marriage equality than he has ever given to the Church. But then again, these organisations are never going to change if everyone who is a decent human being leaves.
And that guy is doing very good work, but unless decent human beings are willing to leave, they won't have any more influence than the LGBT community has over the USA Democratic Party. They know we're too scared to vote for anybody else to leave them, so we're not really worth appeasing. Sadly, there isn't a viable alternative to that political party. (But then again, for people who believe that they will burn in an actual literal hell FOREVER if they leave the Catholic Church, they may not see any alternative either.)
I realise that while you are a Pagan you are also an atheist, and because of this I suspect that you may have trouble understanding that ritual isn't just a matter of "trappings" and "beauty" and has actual value.
You're right that this makes it much harder for me to understand some things, because I don't experience any sublime supernatural forces.
I do want to note, though, that a religion stripped of faith down to only its ritual beauty is clearly still meaningful enough for me to practice even though I share none of the faith-based beliefs of the religion. So while a lot of atheists place zero value on ritual or the beauty of metaphor or narrative that various religions offer, I'm not one of them, or I wouldn't be continuing to practice a religion whose stories I believe are all myths (because being a myth doesn't have to mean being "just" a myth, which I figure you probably understand better than my atheist peeps tend to).
In light of that, this is something I can totally feel you on:
Talmud study is AWESOME but it isn't prayer and fasting and meditation and chanting.
Studying religion academically is kickass, but there is frequently something tangibly good about practicing one, and even with my bone-deep mistrust of faith I still continue practicing mine because the practices matter.
I don't especially enjoy knowing that I might be sitting next to someone whose politics I despise on Yom Kippur; but if we're both doing what we ought to be doing on Yom Kippur, I'm not going to know what their politics are because we're not going to be having conversations about it. And I don't want to sit in a room full of people that I know I agree with about all the really important real-world issues to do Yom Kippur if they aren't going to let me do Yom Kippur.
I want to thank you for getting into such depth about where you're coming from here, because it's helping me to better understand and articulate my own feelings on it better. For Wiccans, when we get together to practice, we're not just getting together to do The Thing, we're getting together with The People. Circling with someone is an expression of trust and respect, an acknowledgement that we are here for each other and that this space is safe for all of us.
This is something I had a conversation about today as a matter of fact. I stopped attending ritual with the group I'm part of because one regularly-attending member was anti-choice. She told me that she respected me and that we could agree to disagree, but what she didn't understand was that her position was the antithesis of "agree to disagree." What she didn't understand was that to a pro-choicer she was basically saying, "You're real smart and all and Imma let you finish, but you're not morally mature enough to decide when you'll become a mother and I wish the law didn't let you."
I couldn't circle with her, because it's an expression of trust and respect that I didn't sincerely feel we had between us. It's hard to be in circle with someone and ignore what kind of world they want to create, because Wiccan rituals are creative exercises in which we direct our thoughts and energies on common goals. There's a metaphorical (some say literal, but I don't have the faith for that) dissolution of boundaries between us so that we can pool our wills to create what we came to create.
That may be why I have such a hard time imagining sitting next to someone at church who would despise me if they knew too much about me (whether it's my orientation or whether I'd have an abortion or whatever), or attending services led by an organization that's actively opposed to the world I want to be in. I can't let down my guard.
If there were no (or at least less) expectation that the community was there to connect with each other as much as with God, I can see that turning out differently. For me, though, I've always been there to connect with the other worshippers and to share a common vision with them, and even when I was a theist... connecting to that sort of being came a distant second.
This is probably a blind spot that I have because I've never been a monotheist. I was a Wiccan and then I was an atheist Wiccan. It's a blind spot I appreciate you helping me find, because by their nature they can be pretty slippery.
Hilariously, this probably makes me one of the only Neo-Pagans who has ever been so thoroughly ethnocentrically blind about the dominant religions in her own damn culture. Kind of amusing that I even managed that.
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chiming
no subject
Date: 2011-08-01 06:35 am (UTC)From:It was an exaggerated comparison, but to me the question of whether abortion should be legal is not the kind of academic abstract debateable thing that people can easily agree to disagree on. Agreeing to disagree on whether they're okay? Fuck yeah. But the "agree to disagree" position is called pro-choice because it means that people who disagree are all allowed to do what they need to do.
I couldn't remain part of an organization that argued "Everybody should do what they need to do" is an intolerable approach to really serious political issues like abortion, and I'm baffled by people who can get past it.
The married gay Catholic guy spends way more money funding marriage equality than he has ever given to the Church. But then again, these organisations are never going to change if everyone who is a decent human being leaves.
And that guy is doing very good work, but unless decent human beings are willing to leave, they won't have any more influence than the LGBT community has over the USA Democratic Party. They know we're too scared to vote for anybody else to leave them, so we're not really worth appeasing. Sadly, there isn't a viable alternative to that political party. (But then again, for people who believe that they will burn in an actual literal hell FOREVER if they leave the Catholic Church, they may not see any alternative either.)
I realise that while you are a Pagan you are also an atheist, and because of this I suspect that you may have trouble understanding that ritual isn't just a matter of "trappings" and "beauty" and has actual value.
You're right that this makes it much harder for me to understand some things, because I don't experience any sublime supernatural forces.
I do want to note, though, that a religion stripped of faith down to only its ritual beauty is clearly still meaningful enough for me to practice even though I share none of the faith-based beliefs of the religion. So while a lot of atheists place zero value on ritual or the beauty of metaphor or narrative that various religions offer, I'm not one of them, or I wouldn't be continuing to practice a religion whose stories I believe are all myths (because being a myth doesn't have to mean being "just" a myth, which I figure you probably understand better than my atheist peeps tend to).
In light of that, this is something I can totally feel you on:
Talmud study is AWESOME but it isn't prayer and fasting and meditation and chanting.
Studying religion academically is kickass, but there is frequently something tangibly good about practicing one, and even with my bone-deep mistrust of faith I still continue practicing mine because the practices matter.
I don't especially enjoy knowing that I might be sitting next to someone whose politics I despise on Yom Kippur; but if we're both doing what we ought to be doing on Yom Kippur, I'm not going to know what their politics are because we're not going to be having conversations about it. And I don't want to sit in a room full of people that I know I agree with about all the really important real-world issues to do Yom Kippur if they aren't going to let me do Yom Kippur.
I want to thank you for getting into such depth about where you're coming from here, because it's helping me to better understand and articulate my own feelings on it better. For Wiccans, when we get together to practice, we're not just getting together to do The Thing, we're getting together with The People. Circling with someone is an expression of trust and respect, an acknowledgement that we are here for each other and that this space is safe for all of us.
This is something I had a conversation about today as a matter of fact. I stopped attending ritual with the group I'm part of because one regularly-attending member was anti-choice. She told me that she respected me and that we could agree to disagree, but what she didn't understand was that her position was the antithesis of "agree to disagree." What she didn't understand was that to a pro-choicer she was basically saying, "You're real smart and all and Imma let you finish, but you're not morally mature enough to decide when you'll become a mother and I wish the law didn't let you."
I couldn't circle with her, because it's an expression of trust and respect that I didn't sincerely feel we had between us. It's hard to be in circle with someone and ignore what kind of world they want to create, because Wiccan rituals are creative exercises in which we direct our thoughts and energies on common goals. There's a metaphorical (some say literal, but I don't have the faith for that) dissolution of boundaries between us so that we can pool our wills to create what we came to create.
That may be why I have such a hard time imagining sitting next to someone at church who would despise me if they knew too much about me (whether it's my orientation or whether I'd have an abortion or whatever), or attending services led by an organization that's actively opposed to the world I want to be in. I can't let down my guard.
If there were no (or at least less) expectation that the community was there to connect with each other as much as with God, I can see that turning out differently. For me, though, I've always been there to connect with the other worshippers and to share a common vision with them, and even when I was a theist... connecting to that sort of being came a distant second.
This is probably a blind spot that I have because I've never been a monotheist. I was a Wiccan and then I was an atheist Wiccan. It's a blind spot I appreciate you helping me find, because by their nature they can be pretty slippery.
Hilariously, this probably makes me one of the only Neo-Pagans who has ever been so thoroughly ethnocentrically blind about the dominant religions in her own damn culture. Kind of amusing that I even managed that.