pensive
trystan_laryssa scolded me. Darkside knows that I'm pagan. It's not that. In fact, he's the one who gave me the necklace, and I wear it as much for the fact that he gave it to me as anything else. It's that, as far as I know, his parents don't specifically know that I'm a pagan. And Darkside dreads the conversation that would ensue if/when his parents found out, especially his father.
I can handle honest and good-hearted Christian conservatism. Given that Darkside himself is Christian, and I was raised amongst a whole Meeting full of Liberal Quakers (whose take on Christianity is fairly conservative as a whole, actually), I sort of have to be able to handle this. It helps that my outlook is rather more Universalist than strict Pagan -- I view the Divine as a vast and unknowable whole, made revealed to humans through flashes of inspiration that coalesce into a multi-faceted pantheon. (I don't know if I'd be half so Universalist if I weren't multiple; as it is, being multiple, I sort of have to see it that way. If, in my mind, I am one soul but many faces, how can the god(s) not be so as well? I've had enough Comparative World Religions to see the same themes running through so many religions. "An it harm none, do as thou wilt." "Thou shalt not kill." Et cetera. ...Though those are the gentle faces -- there are so many warrior gods too.)
The words of Jesus Christ resonate as strongly as those of a whole lot of other prophets -- there's no doubt that the man was god-touched; if you've been god-touched, you can't not hear it when you read the words of someone else who has been. That's what those people who say "Read the Bible!" over and over again are getting at -- it's supposed that you've been god-touched, and touched by the same god, and it's supposed to burn in your brain with letters of fire when you read the words that still light up through multiple translations. But if you haven't been touched by that same god, or if you've been burned by that same god, it just doesn't work like that, and that's what these people miss. Or if you refuse to see the gods. Or something. I've read it, I grok it, and please, people -- "there is no other way but by me" -- ambiguously phrased. Very ambiguously. And what that says to me, in a form I can't ignore, is that either you become the living avatar of the god(s) who have chosen you like the mage in question did, or you accept the Working that the mage in question did, or some other way doing the same thing. Or you're going to be going that unique and dreadful personal hell that is fighting through life without a'tha, and while some people choose that, I would not wish it on anyone. A proper translation has to be done by someone who can carry the spirit through the words, or it is no translation at all.
Being Christian is compatible with being a number of other things. Naomi is Christian, having been tapped by Elohim. The rest of the Collective has been tapped by other gods. Majority rules, in this case, that the Collective is generally pagan, and that's the simplest way to describe us -- eclectic universalist neopagan. (Though the "neo" is suspect, as the other deities are Eris, Diana, and Aphrodite.)
But I'm not about to force Darkside into having that conversation with his parents, about why he is best friends with a pagan. He still has to live with his parents at the moment, until he can afford to move out, and that's not a boat that I'm at all comfortable rocking. It would be different if he disagreed with his parents on a vaster number of issues and wanted to say something to them, but was too intimidated to. That, I could respectfully aid -- I have had my fair share of quiet and firm conversations with parents on things, and the trick seems to be more polite and more stubborn than the parents. Having raised a child helps too.
Unless the fickle hand of fate reveals my religion to my bondmate's parents some other way, Darkside is the one who's going to have to bring up that topic with his parents. And while I may disagree with him not sharing, I respect his decision to not share that, and it's really his call.
