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samwisethewitch · 3 years

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Polytheism

Most pagan religions are polytheistic in nature, meaning they believe in multiple divine beings. This is one of the hardest parts of paganism for outsiders to understand. In a culture where strict monotheism is treated as the norm, it can be difficult to wrap your head around the idea of worshiping more than one god.

Ironically, monotheism — the belief in a single, all-powerful creator deity — is a relatively new invention. Zoroastrianism, the first monotheistic religion, is only about 4,000 years old. In the big scheme of things, that really is not a long time. Evidence for polytheistic religion dates back much, much farther (like, up to 40,000 years). We could argue that polytheism is the natural state of human spirituality.

Within pagan communities, polytheism is often described as a spectrum, with “hard polytheism” on one end and “soft polytheism” on the other. Hard polytheists believe that every deity is a distinct, separate, autonomous spiritual being. Soft polytheists believe that every deity is a part of a greater whole. As we’ve already discussed, extreme soft polytheism isn’t actually polytheism at all, but monism — the belief in a single divine source that manifests in different ways, including as different deities.

Hard polytheism is pretty straightforward. Norse paganism is an example of a hard polytheist system. Most Norse pagans believe that Odin is distinct from Thor, who is distinct from Freyja, who is distinct from Heimdall… you get the idea. Each of these gods has their own area of expertise over which they preside. If you’re dealing with a love matter, you’re probably going to seek out help from Freyja rather than Thor — unless you have a close, ongoing working relationship with Thor. (We’ll talk more about these types of close working relationships in a future post.)

Soft polytheism can be a little harder for people coming from a monotheist system to wrap their heads around. I think Jeremy Naydler describes it best in his book Temple of the Cosmos (here discussing Kemetic/Egyptian polytheism): “Shu and Tefnut are distinct essences dependent on Atum for their existence… The image often used in ancient Egyptian sacred texts concerning the gods in general is that they are the ‘limbs’ of the Godhead.” Shu and Tefnut, who are described in mythology as Atum’s children, are an extension of Atum’s creative power. However, they are also distinct beings with their own thoughts, feelings, and agendas. (It’s worth noting that we also have myths describing Atum’s birth. He is not a supreme being or a timeless force like the Abrahamic God.)

Monism is soft polytheism taken to its logical extreme. In her book, Wicca For Beginners, Thea Sabin describes it this way: “Think, for a moment, of a tree with a thick trunk that splits into two large branches. In turn, smaller branches grow from the large ones, and still smaller branches from the small ones, and so on. Deity is the trunk of the tree, and the God and Goddess are the two main branches. The smaller branches that fork off of the two big ones are the worlds gods and goddesses…”

If you’re not sure what the difference between soft polytheism and monism is, here’s a good litmus test: If you believe in the existence of a supreme divine force, you’re a monist. If not, you’re a polytheist.

Many pagans are somewhere in between hard and soft polytheism. For example, you may believe that Zeus and Jupiter are different versions of the same deity, filtered through the lens of Greek and Roman culture, respectively — but you believe that Thor is distinct and separate from Zeus/Jupiter, even though all three of them are gods of storms.

To make things even more complicated, there are some pagans (and some atheists, for that matter) who believe that the gods exist less as autonomous beings and more as archetypes within mankind’s collective consciousness. Their stories resonate with us because they serve as mirrors for different parts of ourselves. In this sense, we create the gods in our own image.

This belief is how we get “pop culture pantheons.” Some people work with fictional characters as archetypes in their spiritual practice. After all, if Sailor Moon is the ultimate representation of feminine power for you, what’s stopping you from putting her on your altar? Some pop culture pantheons have actually broken through into mainstream paganism — there are a lot of Wiccans who work with Merlin, believe me.

This interpretation is a bit different from polytheism, and could really be its own post (or several), so for the sake of keeping things short and sweet I’m not going to go any deeper into it. If this interests you, I recommend reading the work of Jungian psychologists like Clarissa Pinkola Estés and Robert A. Johnson. You may even want to check out The Satanic Bible by Anton LeVay for a particularly spicy take on the idea that we create our own gods and devils.

Just know that you can still practice paganism, even if you aren’t 100% sold on the idea that the gods literally exist.

Your take on polytheism doesn’t necessarily have to match up with the historical cultures you take inspiration from. For example, you may be a hardcore monist, but find that you’re drawn to work exclusively with the Norse gods. Or, you may be the hardest of hard polytheists, but find that the Kemetic gods are the ones who really speak to you. This is all totally okay! One of the benefits of paganism is that it allows for a lot of personalization.

Now that we’ve got the types of polytheism out of the way, let’s address the other big question that comes up when pagans discuss polytheism with monotheists: Does that mean you believe all those crazy myths are true? Once again, the answer depends on the pagan.

Just like some Christians are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is a factual historical account, there are some pagans who believe that their mythology is factually true. However, many pagans accept that these stories have fantastical or exaggerated elements, but still convey a spiritual truth.

There are multiple Norse myths about men being transformed into dragons by their lust for riches, the most famous of which is probably the story of the dwarf-turned-dragon Fafnir. (Yes, Tolkien did steal that plot point from Norse mythology. Sorry.) These stories aren’t really about the dragons, though — they’re about the corrupting power of greed. The stories are true in that they teach a valuable life lesson that resonated deeply with ancient Norse culture. But did dragons really roam the earth in ancient times? Probably not.

This is one of the most important skills for any pagan: finding the spiritual truth in a myth or story. If you read a myth about Artemis transforming a man into a deer because he spied on her while she was bathing, what does that tell you about Artemis? Next time you read or listen to a myth or folk tale, try to find the message at the core of the story. You may be surprised by how this changes your understanding of the mythology.

If you’re interested in paganism but aren’t sure where to start, it might be helpful to gauge where you fall on the polytheism spectrum. Are you a hard polytheist, a soft polytheist, or somewhere in between? Are you a monist? Do you believe the gods function more as archetypes? Write it down so you can look back on it later.

When we talk about specific pagan traditions in future posts, I’ll point out where they fall on the polytheism spectrum. If you’re looking for a path that is compatible with your own beliefs, this is one thing to keep in mind.

Finally, know that your beliefs about the gods might change as you continue to learn and grow. That’s a natural part of religious exploration, so don’t try to fight it!

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frenchfriesoverguys · 4 years

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my review of ‘warrior nun’

WARNING: spoilers

i got a degree in film and visual culture and no job with the pandemic so

all in all, i like this show. i think it has great potential. the main cast is likable and diverse, both racially, LGBT+ and personality wise. while i have my criticisms, i’ll start positive.

the two characters who are the most pronounced to me are shotgun mary and lilith. the reason being that they are the characters, at first, who have as much screen time and backstory as ava. with a show that has as much christian influence as this one, the names lilith and mary are important. in christian texts mary is the mother of christ and is a devout, holy woman. shotgun mary isn’t as religious as her namesake might suggest but it does foreshadow her delivering ava to the OCS and her in general being a good person. lilith’s name actually foreshadows her struggle with what is good and evil as the biblical lilith did. cleverly done. i’m excited to see lilith fully come into whatever power she has been given as well as see the relationship with sister mary grow.

ava herself is a thoroughly explored character as well. as much as we want to hate her for just wanting to have fun while there is this war going on, we can also understand where she is coming from. after being trapped in a bed with a murderous nun taking care of her for 12 years, it makes sense she would want to see the world. i also can see maybe a little romance between her and sister beatrice. she really hasn’t had a chance to live her own life before so exploring her sexuality would make sense. just a thought.

speaking of ava’s love life, what happened to JC? or any of the other characters in her little group? i’ll admit that i didn’t totally love zori but the other characters were really interesting and i, personally, would have loved to see them come back somehow. JC irritated me because they fully explored his character and set up their relationship, just to abandon it like it never happened. i kept expecting him to have importance in the last episode but nope. like he could have been a manipulation from adriel or have some importance to the main plot. imagine if adriel took form in his body or something like that so ava was battling her first love.

there really is no getting around the religious notions of this show as it is literally called ‘warrior nun’ so let’s just unpack here. the cardinal ascending to pope while using the OCS to do so, is directly criticizing the church for putting politics over religion or just people’s general well being. i like exploring the idea that the church uses fear and demons to control the masses as this is historically accurate. however, that entire idea gets overthrown by the twist at the end. i had no real love for vincent so realizing he was part of the big bad the entire time didn’t really phase me. but adriel was a bit of a let down in the overall plot. he doesn’t explain anything, just that he is evil and vincent is his follower. does he control the demons? are they really demons? what is this other realm? was the first warrior nun good or evil? the ending left more questions than answers. i suppose it is meant to question the reality of the OCS’ part in the narrative. are they a cause for good? i mean the cardinal, while not having a nefarious plot, was able to turn it into his own army for the church. this is where i struggle the most. is this show saying the church can be corrupted or is it saying it is? or is the show saying the church can be good or evil depending on who leads? the twist distorts any message i was reading from the plot. also by showing the crusades as something righteous and as an act of god, it erases the damage the crusades did to the people it came across.

side note: the merging of church and science was epic. science being thought of as an extension of faith as opposed to regression of faith was interesting. i’m also glad that they didn’t villianize the jillian salvius for being a powerful scientist. they set her up as the villian but she turned out to be so much better. although making her journey to greatness in her field about her desire to be a mother could reduce some of her epicness as once again in hollywood, a woman’s main drive is to be a mother. however, since she is the only woman on the show with that desire, it can be thought of as a choice rather than a reduction of her character.

for a show about nuns who are also badass warriors, it actually makes a lot of sense. if the world was overrun by demons, the church would 100% know about it. it makes the most sense out of all the works of fiction about demons in our world. with nobody in the public knowing of their existence, a powerful organization has to be keeping a lid on it. the church is the most logical explanation. however this does pose some problems; how is it possible only the catholic church knows of the demons? are there other religious organizations in hinduism or buddhism that combat demons in their areas? or is that a justification for the mass colonialism that the church started? the church does good but it has some negatives in mass scale, not just small infractions like ava’s murder. the show needs to talk about this.

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buggie-hagen · 3 years

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The space asks - do them all!

oh my goodness. okay, will do:

constellations: personality

ursa major: what are the character traits that define you the most? Both quiet and loud, sad and joyful, hardworking and lazy. paradox defines me.

ursa minor: do you have hobbies or interests that no one knows about? an interest that no one knows about is anime and manga.

draco: what is the thing you like least about yourself? my weight.

lacerta: what is the thing you like most about yourself? my smile.

cepheus: do you vibe more with the term idiot, asshole or dumbass? asshole.

hercules: how are you with people? who is your favourite person? it’s interesting because part of me is social shy, but generally i am warm and friendly with people. my favorite person is two rock people who live in a mountain.

lepus: what is your biggest flaw? my self-hatred.

corvus: what are 5 things you appreciate about yourself? 1. my reading 2. my theology 3. my seelsorger stuff 4. my mild interest in Japanese culture 5. that i don’t think politically like others

orion: what element would you like to be able to bend? fire.

hydra: are you the villain? i’m my own worst villain.

cassiopeia: take a random personality quiz on the internet and give us your result. the more obnoxious the better. no.

centaurus: if you could fist fight one historical figure, which one would it be and how hard would you punch them? no.

gemini: which character (fictional or not) is your spirit animal? Jughead played by Cole Sprouse.

lupus: which one do you identify more with: thoughtful idiot or thoughtless brains? thoughtful idiot. i guess.

scutum: you acquire a death note. what are you going to do with it? my understanding of death note comes from the anime of that name. so, if i found such a notebook, i would burn it so it would not be used to harm people.

Do you side more with the idea of Deontological Ethics or Utilitarianism? I don’t know these very well. I would guess I would have issues with both of them.

stars: interests

aldebaran: what is your most obnoxious interest? David Archuleta.

algol: favourite planet? favourite space object? I like earth because it has water. I like the moon.

61 cygni: favourite time period? probably medieval Europe.

castor: favourite band/artist? Currently, Winter Aid.

pollux: draw the art cover of your favourite album/song. Not right now.

riegel: put your music on shuffle and give us the first five songs.

“Have I Told You” by Matthew Mole

“A Song About Love” by Jake Bugg

“Waiting” by Jake Bugg

“How Soon the Dawn” by Jake Bugg

“Take Yours, I’ll Take Mine” by Matthew Mole

betelgeuse: which video games gives you nostalgia for a place you have never been to? n/a

agena: what is your favourite moment from a game? n/a

deneb: you can turn one book into a movie,tv show or video game. which one are you picking? The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

atair: why is your favourite book, well, your favourite? do you have a favourite quote from it? Right now I don’t think I have a favorite book.

prokyon: grab the nearest book, to to page 145 and give us the first sentence. i am not around my books at this moment.

acrux: where and when do you like to read the most? I like to read at coffee shops, and ideally the morning, but usually the afternoon.

spica: when do you consider a movie “good”? When it can make me cry.

antares: think of a movie which means a lot to you, now describe the first scene that comes into your mind! That scene from Love, Simon where Simon’s mom says, “You get to exhale now, Simon.” https://youtu.be/1QUzRn7yH6I

proxima centauri: if you would have the chance to travel the world, which places or countries would you like to see? Scotland, Ireland, Norway, New Zealand, Japan, China, Germany, Israel. Kazakhstan. Mongolia.

algol: you have to assassinate someone. which weapon do you choose? i don’t want to answer this questin.

mimosa: what do you associate with your favourite colour? the ocean.

sirius a/b: what’s your favourite sound and smell? favorite sound is trombone. favorite smell is fresh baked bread.

space objects: experiences

quasar: do you feel alone? absolutely alone.

pulsar: when do you feel truly alive? when i’m laughing.

wormhole: what is the shadiest/most illegal thing you have ever done? date a guy who grew mushrooms in his basement. (back in my college days).

black hole: what has hurt you in the past that you don’t want others to go through? my stepfather’s alcoholism.

white dwarf: post a picture or video from your favourite trip! no.

nebula: what is an experience you would rather forget about? growing up.

star cluster: what is something you have gained, something you have lost and something you let go of during the past year? in the past year i have gained some more confidence, i have lost any high anthropology that lingered within me, and i have let go of the idea that someone i love would fall in love with me.

planet: have you ever lost something important, such as your passport, keys or a phone? all. the. time.

moon: “A man is made of memories. It is all we are.“ (Lawrence) what do you think this means? Do you agree? I think it means that who we are is shaped by our past experiences. I agree, with the exception of how faith can shape you and that comes from outside oneself and not from the memories.

comet: you have the chance to undo one thing or decision in your life, would you take it? If you are comfortable sharing: what did you change? I wish I had did my undergrad in geography.

asteroid: have you ever lost a friend? do you wish you would still be friends? yes and yes/no

meteor: have you ever eaten dirt? if yes: on a scale from 0 to 10 would you do it again? no.

rocketry: academia

saturn v: what are you currently studying/what do you wish to study? currently am studying theology. i always am. i wish i could study geology.

delta iv heavy: what is your favourite thing about your degree course? well my last degree I completed as Mastery of Divinity in May 2019. I frickin’ love theology.

heavy falcon: what is a subject you are highly interested in but you would never study yourself? astronomy, just don’t have the time.

sea dragon: if money, admissions and other factors would not be a problem, where and what would you like to study? In the past, I would have liked to study abroad. either in Scotland or Germany.

atlas v: favourite theorem or concept? communicatio idiomatum

soyuz: language(s) you would like to learn? Spanish, Irish, Norwegian, Japanese.

MECO: how do you take notes? Whatever my brain tells me to write down. I’m so good at it now I don’t know how I got here. I think I’m just good at distinguishing between what’s important and what’s not important.

SECO: what are your essentials for studying and note taking? coffee. excitement for the topic.

RCS: how do you stay focused and productive? coffee. when i can lower my anxiety levels i can focus better and be productive. basically, when i am successfully focused and productive i am methodical and categorical.

RP-1: favourite classes or subjects you took or are taking? music, Lutheran confessions, church history, geography, earth science.

gas-generator cycle: what are the topics you like learning about the most? Lutheran theology. Biblical languages (though very painful).

partial-flow staged combustion cycle: what are the topics that interest you the least? Math. Social justice ghouls.

full-flow staged combustion cycle: your biggest student-sin? as in something you feel guilty about? Back when I was in college I took a music class called Aural Skills and NEVER practiced my aural skills. I would do it now.

RS-25: what do you carry in your backpack? books, weekly planner, laptop, pens, headphones, omeprazole.

RD-270: Do you need silence to study? or do you like to listen to music? if so, what is your go-to study-playlist? both. one of my favorites to listen to is the YouTube station “Homework Radio”

Merlin: what does your study-space look like? usually a coffee shop these days. also my office where i have access to my desk and my library. back in seminary, I LOVED studying in the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago. So many cool places there to study.

Raptor: do you study at home or do you prefer to study at the library/in cafés? library/cafes. i never study and hardly ever read at home.

F-1: this is a free one. ask any question you’d like. what question do you have, dear one?

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pamphletstoinspire · 6 years

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Angry with God

My older sister Patricia died of spina bifida before I was born. My younger sister Linda died of spina bifida when I was 3. Given that I was raised in a traditional, stoic, Irish-Catholic family, my sisters and their deaths were never talked about. In fact, I didn’t even know they existed until I was 5 and found their names in our family Bible. “Who are these people?” I asked my mother.

“They are your sisters”—that was all she said.

As I grew, I thought about them a lot. Eventually, I began to ask my mother why God did this to our family. She said simply that some crosses were heavier to carry than others. Somehow that answer and the related resignation didn’t work for me. And so I began to become angry. Specifically, I began to become angry with God.

For most of my youth, I felt this anger was wrong, sinful. Yet it didn’t go away. I encountered more and more suffering that did not make sense. A friend lost both his parents by the eighth grade. A very good priest dropped dead of a heart attack. The brother of a friend died in Vietnam.

As I began my work as a psychologist, I would touch on spiritual matters with my clients. I found that I was not alone in my anger. Worse, I met people whose explanations for tragedy were heartbreaking.

One woman, for example, believed that her prayers for a dying daughter did not work because her prayers were “not worthy of God’s attention.” Even my own father, as he dealt with a series of strokes, told me they were “punishment for my sins.” As I heard such struggles, I felt more and more that, because of anger, I was bound to grow away from my faith. Then I read the Book of Job.

Job: Not Merely Silent Suffering

Given that the Catholicism of my youth did not include a great deal of biblical study, I knew very little about Job other than the phrase “the patience of Job.” When I read this marvelous book, I realized among other things that Job was hardly patient. In fact, like me, he was angry!

The story of Job begins with a bet. Satan is arguing with God, saying that faith is easy when everything is going well in one’s life, but that people tend to lose that faith when times are tough. He then brings up Job, pointing out that Job has great faith but is also very comfortable and successful. But suppose, suggests Satan, that Job falls on hard times: Will he then be so faithful? God gives Satan permission to take away everything of Job’s but not to harm him. Satan does this, but Job holds on to his faith. So Satan ups the ante by asking God to let him harm Job directly.

And so Job ends up homeless, penniless, and afflicted with horrible skin diseases. He begins to seek an explanation from God. In fact, Job demands an explanation!

Job’s friends show up and offer standard explanations for his troubles. “You must have sinned,” suggests one. “You haven’t prayed hard enough,” says another. And yet Job continues his outcry, ultimately demanding that God show up and explain himself.

And God shows up! Granted, God tends to put Job in his place and never really answers Job’s “Why?” question. But the important points are that God shows up and that he never punishes Job for his outcry.

But Why, Lord?

I think the Book of Job is there to encourage us to embrace our outcries, not suppress them; and to struggle with the “Why?” question, not dismiss it. And so, somewhat timidly, I began to allow myself that anger.

It soon became clear to me that I needed to explore my anger at several levels. The most immediate level was the “Why?” question that was a large part of my youth. As I began to read, I found out that the “Why?” question has in fact given rise to a specific area of theological study called theodicy. Specifically, theodicy examines the issue of how an all-good, all-loving God can permit evil.

As I explored my anger, I came across the book May I Hate God? by Pierre Wolff. Despite its provocative title, this is a very gentle-spirited book that reminds us that God is a loving parent; and that loving parents, upon learning that their child is angry with them, want to hear about the anger—not necessarily condone it, but hear about it. This opened up to me the awareness that, when I am angry with God, my tendency is to express that anger in the same way I do at a human level. I shut down and use the “silent treatment.”

Novelist Joseph Heller put it another way in his novel God Knows. King David is reflecting on whether he is angry with God and concludes, “I’m not angry with God. We’re just not speaking to one another.” So it was with me and the God of my understanding.

In any case, Wolff’s book helped me to accept my anger. But I still struggled with the “Why?” question. Other thinkers offered helpful insights. Viktor Frankl did not answer this question, but he observed that, while we don’t always have a choice over what happens to us, we always have a choice regarding how we face it. Similarly, Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his well-regarded When Bad Things Happen to Good People, offered what for me was a novel idea—that perhaps God wasn’t responsible for some of the bad things that happened to us.

At first, Kushner’s notion was comforting. Maybe God wasn’t behind my sisters’ illnesses or children with cancer or senseless random shootings. Maybe those things just happened. Somehow that thought made me fear God less. Yet the thought that perhaps God wasn’t behind all bad things that happened created another question articulated by Annie Dillard, who wrote in For the Time Being, “If God does not cause everything that happens, does God cause anything that happens? Is God completely out of the loop?”

My anger at God brought me to wrestle with some important issues. It challenged me to reexamine my image of God. Did I see God as punitive, misreading the Old Testament? Did I see him as loving, as in many New Testament stories? Did I see him as uninvolved, caring for the big picture and leaving the details to us, as the Oh, God! films suggest?

My anger also brought me face-to-face with my struggles about prayer. Does God answer prayers? Clearly not all prayers. It’s been said that there are many unanswered prayers at deathbeds. If God doesn’t answer all prayers, to follow Dillard, does he answer any prayers?

These struggles have been productive, prodding me toward a more mature understanding of God, as well as a more clear appreciation for prayer. But I still come face-to-face with my anger.

A Personal Encounter with God

Over the past few years, I have read the entire Bible three times. It has been a truly enlightening experience. I saw clearly that Job wasn’t the only one to argue with God. Abraham did it; Moses did it; even Jesus did it! I was in good company.

I saw, too, that David’s Psalms were at times outcries. Within the poetry, one can hear the oppressed poet yelling out to God, “Do something!”

I’ve learned from my many clients who sit and try to understand tragedies in their lives. In asking these great teachers, “Are you angry with God?” I’ve heard many instructive answers. One woman wrestling with a lifethreatening illness said, “Of course I’m angry with God! But he’s God. He can take it!” Another very spiritual young woman observed, “No, I’m not angry. But I sure would like to have a peek at his operations manual.”

Harold Kushner recently published a piece on the Book of Job titled The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happened to a Good Person. It is a literate and scholarly book that offered me a new note of comfort. Kushner suggests that Job is comforted and consoled not so much by God’s explanation but by the encounter itself. Job deeply experienced God’s presence and took comfort in that meaningful experience. I found a note of personal truth in this thought. I realized that, yes, I’ve had meaningful encounters with God in nature or in the world of great art or in the sound of my grandchildren’s laughter.

But I realized that I have also encountered God in my anger in a way that has been profound. As I voice that anger, I feel God in a manner as profound as, albeit different from, my experience of God in nature.

The story of this journey of anger has a more recent turn to it, one with which I am still dealing. I recently saw an episode of The West Wing, a program from the early 2000s starring Martin Sheen as a fictional president. Prior to this episode, the president had lost a much-loved secretary in a senseless car accident. After the funeral, he stands alone in the National Cathedral and unleashes an anger that shocked me. As an example, his character refers to God as a “vengeful thug.”

I felt I’d long validated the importance of anger in my relationship with God, yet I found myself uncomfortable with the intensity of President Bartlett’s anger. But, upon reflection, I understood it. My anger is more than annoyance or disappointment—at times it is rage. Yet, out of fear, I withhold that rage and instead, like David in Heller’s novel, stop talking to my God or at least temper my feelings. Yet, when I allow myself to approach that rage, I find God waiting for me.

And so I come face-to-face with the God of my understanding. Is that God a vengeful parent who will not tolerate my anger and will punish me for speaking up? Such was the God of my youth. Or is the God of my understanding a loving God willing to wrestle with me, willing to accept my vented rage in the name of open, ongoing dialogue and genuine encounter? And do I have the courage to fully embrace this understanding of God and remain in dialogue in the midst of my rage?

The great Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote, “God stands in a passionate relationship with Man.” Anyone who has lived in a longterm, passionate relationship learns that passion is a package deal. You can’t have the joy and ecstasy unless you also accept and embrace the anger and alienation. I’ve dealt with several couples who say they don’t fight. But they are in my office because their relationship is stagnant. Without the struggle, there is no passionate intimacy.

The Path of Relationship

I realize at this point that, for me to have a joyful, peaceful, vibrant relationship with the God of my understanding, I must also embrace the rage. Not just annoyance, but rage!

And so, as I struggle, I return to reflect on my mother’s faith in the face of tragedy. I see that her faith was not some passive, shoulder-shrugging, “Oh well, it could be worse” type of faith. Throughout her life, she believed not only in the power of prayer but also in the persistence of that prayer. Like the woman in the parable seeking justice, she would not quietly plead or go away. Rather, she would “storm heaven with prayers.” Nor did she let tragic loss engender cynicism: on her deathbed and with absolute certainty and joyful anticipation, she said, “I’m going to see my girls.”

And yet I know my path is one of wrestling and arguing. It occurs to me that perhaps within the mystical body of Christ, we both play a part. People like my mother indeed inspire me to not lose hope and to continue to believe that understanding God’s mysterious way is possible.

But perhaps people like me—the questioners, the wrestlers—help others not to lapse into passive, depressed resignation. Perhaps in encouraging others to “fight back,” we help them experience real encounters with God. Perhaps we wrestlers help others to hope that our pain and anguish do matter. And perhaps together we can link arms and sing those words of Job offered not as an answer but in hopeful expectation: “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!”

Richard B. Patterson, Phd, is a clinical psychologist and freelance writer from El Paso, Texas.

#angry with god

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savrenim · 7 years

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Hi! I love your works! What got you into writing and theater? How and where did you start? Just very curious because you are so good! Thank you!

Vaguely long answer (extremely long way too long I’m so sorry I think this is the most I’ve talked about myself on tumblr in years) under the cut because I ramble a lot about my own life and these two things have been stupidly important in my life?

Writing!

So I was a very solitary kid because ew what was being outside, that’s boring, which meant I spent every single day from about fourth grade, when I was finally allowed do this, to eighth grade, during recess and lunch, in the library reading. (Same in high school, except we had different periods and breaks and by that time I was in enough AP classes that it was usually homework I was doing.) I read so much as a kid. Then there were also the classroom libraries that were just, like, two shelves of books that you could read during class if you were done with your exercises, those I’d read every single book on the shelf since, like, second grade, although each grade new classroom new shelf so new books, but by third or fourth grade I was on my third read-through of everything on that grade’s shelf and was so bored of books that I’d read already and decided then and there that if there were no new books for me to read, I was going to write my own book to read.

I don’t think the .docs exist anymore of this really shitty story that I started in third grade that I’m pretty sure were about three triplets who were princesses and the Chosen Ones and had all sorts of magical powers but it was a world where everyone had different types of powers but theirs were more powerful because they were Special with a Capitol S…I think one could manipulate all water, one could make force fields (which, of course, she could use to fly, you can do anything with forcefields if you try hard enough) and I forget what the other one could do, probably control energy/electricity? It was somewhere between 30 and 50 pages of Times New Roman, 12 pt font, double spaced. The Princesses had to run away from someone trying to assassinate them and take over the kingdom and train and learn to use their powers and the only thing I remember is that their powers kept getting more and more ridiculous as the story went on as I got more and more creative with applications of them (like the water one made a boat out of water and they escaped in the ocean sitting in this water boat as it propelled along like that scene from The Incredibles except the boat was all water instead of Mom and Dash), it was a mess but it was a beautiful mess and now it is gone forever probably because I think my mother’s computer has crashed and been replaced a couple times since then. RIP.

I’ve never really stopped writing, like. I wrote a shit-ton of fanfiction in high school because I found a show that I really liked the world background and felt like not enough of the characters were explored so I just hit the ground running, I think there’s, like, 550k or so of fanfic I wrote on an account that I have buried at the bottom of fanfiction.net and will never reveal to anyone ever. There’s a draft of a novel from high school too, this one, like, 95k, and I still have it. I may or may not have been re-working it as a part of a 7-novel biblical apocalypse in space idea that I had for a while, but that all got put on hold when I started it feels more like a memory. Um. Since high school, I did NaNo four or five times and have vague half-drafts sitting around from a bunch of those, too? Then there’s an immense amount that Wayfinder has played into my writing, which will be covered in the theater section, but I’ve probably written somewhere around 200k for Wayfinder, and then I’ve participated at this point in 102 Wayfinder games, I’ve kept a list, and those feel like living in a novel for anywhere from two to five hours and are just…all life-changing in terms of gaining perspective. But yeah, there are a dozen half-finished drafts of this and that that I’ve got on my computer that maybe one day will become something, maybe won’t, they keep me warm on a cloudy day type deal.

I remember when I first entered college four and a half years ago I was really proud because I’d passed the landmark of having written 1 million words of fiction so far in my life. I’m probably around a million and a half now? I stopped counting. But I was obsessed at the time with the 10,000 hours rule which when applied to writing was the 1 million words rule so I officially thought I maybe Wasn’t Crap™ after that.

But, yeah, writing has always been a huge part of my life, and a mostly private part of my life? It was just something I did in my free time for me and if I ever shared it, it was fanfiction, and in high school that meant it was anonymous in that it was under a pseudonym and disconnected from me as a person in every other aspect and thus very compartmentalized. Never something I had to worry about confrontation or being judged about. As a kid I always wanted to be a novelist, like, do science and math and then publish cool science fiction on the side. I still want to do that, write and publish and original novel. Although it’s less of a life goal and more, like, if it happens it happens. I was worried for so long about getting a manuscript accepted by an agent or editor but as I’ve gotten older and older I’ve started hating capitalism more and more and would want anything I write to be available for free online, and my friend @ink-splotch has been talking to me and giving me advice about what self-publishing is like, (also go read her books) (they are the best in the world and I’ve gotten a ridiculous amount of inspiration from just aaaah the writing style and the world mechanics and the casual folklore and treatment of side characters), but, like. Yeah. Maybe I’ll publish one day. I’m considering writing a sequel to it feels more like a memory and writing it as an original novel because the main things that the sequel deals with are the consequences of “what does a Seer mean in terms of modern physics” (as in our modern type modern, maybe even a bit in our future) and, of course, our favorite cast of characters still appears but it’s not terribly important that they be the specific historical characters and there’s a lot of issues surrounding “any story about these historical characters is a story that is intrinsically exalting slave owners” that at this point, like, if I’m writing a story that’s no longer set in the historical setting, why should I stick so solidly to the names of people that at this point have evolved very much beyond their historical counterparts and will probably eventually evolve past the direct musical interpretation too, when I could just change names and then have it be my own original fiction that could either stand on its own or be read as a direct sequel, and then it’s not connected to the atrocities that Hamilton characters are connected to, and also just I really do want to try my hand at original fiction again. So that might be on the horizon.

Um, writing. Yeah. I’m really only used to doing it for me. To be honest, it’s ridiculously weird to me the following that it feels more like a memory has gotten, and kind of uncomfortable at times? I mean, I wouldn’t change anything, I’m really grateful for the massive response and how much it’s mattered to various people, it’s not mine anymore, it’s a collective experience this attitude almost definitely also comes from my experiences at Wayfinder and mostly it’s just really weird to me how big of a part of my life this has become? Like, when I look back on 2016 and 2017 and maybe 2018 decades from now, they’re going to be the years when I was first doing math and physics research and publishing papers in scientific journals and applying to grad school and working on my cool shiny space thesis but also the years that I was writing it feels more like a memory, like, literally, there are pages and pages of handwritten scenes scrawled in my personal journals right next to mathematical calculations and notes and research and grad school lists. This fic has kind of really changed my life. It’s been a huge part of what I think about on a day-to-day basis, I’ve put an immense amount of time and energy and resources into it, I’ve learned so much about a bunch of subjects that were never relevant to my life before, I’ve made friends, I’ve started talking to people, also just, like, bouncing ideas around and going back and forth about the musical Hamilton and writing plans and writing techniques and James Madison has been one of the reasons I’ve gotten really close with a person that I consider to maybe be my best friend today. Even this blog has gone from “my Wayfinder friends and maybe a few campers follow me” to “holy shit a whole bunch of people that I don’t know, like, an entire order of magnitude more than the people that I do know, follow me now,” and it was just really…unexpected. I started writing it feels more like a memory for me. It was an experiment, it was just curiosity of trying to reproduce the sense of inevitability and growing doom caused by Aaron Burr’s dual role as narrator and character, it was never supposed to become…this.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really grateful, I think it changed me for the better, and this isn’t me going “I wish everyone would unfollow me so I could go back to being a hermit,” I’m just kind of…still in shock. That it’s grown bigger than me. And that maybe if I keep doing this writing thing, life won’t go back to normal, this is the new normal.

Anyways that was probably way more deep and introspective than you asked for, let’s move on to

Theater!

My father is a tenured professor at UCLA in the math department, he got a joint math-physics PhD from Princeton, he taught me how to do algebra over the summers before I learned to read, you can see where I got my math genes from.

My mother, who is an accountant and a damn good one too so also does a shit-ton of math, was really really into musical theater before she settled down to do taxes, and did a bunch of theater and singing, like, she was a Madonna impersonator once and totally toured Japan with an Elvis impersonator giving shows, she and my father met at a singing competition that she won and I don’t think my father ever got over it, she and my dad are divorced now but the person she’s currently with and has been her ~soulmate~ for forever she met because they were in a production of Lancelot and he was playing Lancelot and she was playing Guinevere.

(It’s really funny because actually the woman that I’m in love with and that if I believed in soulmates would defs be my soulmate, it’s scary how in sync we always are it’s like we can legit read each other’s minds, literally, and we consistently call each other at exactly the same time not having planned it and finish each other’s sentences and have been on the same page about everything for as long as we’ve known each other and also literally dated the same dudes vaguely in reverse order before we went “wait what if screw guys, we were dating instead” and she maybe hopefully will become my fiancé when I’m in a stable enough position financially to ask, I also met her through theater camp after we kept being cast in roles in which we were romantically connected to one another until we went “what if we did this in real life too.” So I guess it too runs in the family.)

I was in choir from, like, first grade on all the way through high school, religious choir in 1st-8th and then “we perform cool arrangements” choir in high school. My father coached me in signing lessons so I could be in the school-wide talent show in first grade. I was a total ham, I loved the spotlight. I took piano lessons for a little while? So I can sight-read. But, like, the theater side of things, I was in every single musical I was allowed to be from 7th grade, where they first let you into the drama program, through the three years I was in high school before I technically dropped out of high school. I ran lights and soundboard for a bunch of events in college because wheeee work-study jobs, so I was in on the technical side of theater too for a bit.

The real theater thing that I’ve actually been really involved in and really active in has been a summer camp called “The Wayfinder Experience”. It’s…I call it “gay theater camp” a lot because it really is, like, the amount that it is a safe space for LGBT kids is ridiculous, I’m pretty sure there are more non-straight and non-cis people in the community than not, and Wayfinder is just…absolutely unique in what they do. I found them when I was 15, a counselor from AstroCamp that I was absolutely enamored with went “you should really come to Wayfinder, I think you’d love it,” and I did mostly because I was absolutely enamored with them, and it changed my life.

Wayfinder is technically a LARPing camp, I guess, but they’re so much more than that. What they do revolves around these “Adventure Games” that are run, but there’s a huge amount of improv workshops and community-building exercises and spending time in nature and ridiculous games like Blood Rush which the best I can describe it is “Vampire Murder Football” but everyone hangs out, gets to be silly, gets to play all these really cool different things during workshops, but then also there will be a writer for any given week of camp that has prepared a whole world with its own mythology and history and geopolitical landscape and religions and important conflicts, we range in genres from high fantasy to cyberpunk to apocalypse settings to Westerns to just…anything that anyone can imagine. And the gamewriter will, over the course of the week, lead workshops where they tell everyone about this world they wrote and cast people as characters in it and everyone will do character development workshops where they flesh out their own backstories and make connections to other characters and are led through exercises that is everything from “how does your character walk” to “what are slang words that your little friend group uses” to “what do you dream about at night”. And then for game, the Sets and Props department turns the entire campus into an area in the world that the gamewriter designed, and everyone gets a full costume designed for them from the costuming department and then just for, like, three to five hours, we all enter the world that we’ve been learning about all week and just…act. Improvise. Like, there’s “flow,” or quasi-planned events that staff members who are cast as characters that generally have some power to shake and move things (i.e. politicians, respected scientists, mad wizards, evil Lords of the Dead) will be told “okay about an hour after game starts if these things happen do this or move things in this direction,” but otherwise it is the campers who are kind of deciding the fate of the world by their actions and their choices that they make fully in character.

So yeah. It’s like living in a novel. And I’ve gotten to do it 102 times at this point, for the first summer as a camper and then pretty much immediately I got hired as a staff member. I’m every once in a while a Workshop staff, aka leading forty-to-sixty kids in theater games and improv games and run-around games outside etc etc, I’m usually costuming staff which means wheeee so much sewing and organizing from our pre-existing costuming, although I’ve done Sets and Props a fair amount of the time too. I also was involved in the founding of the Frontier Adventures, which is an off-season year round program that every other month on Saturday runs a full day event and all proceeds go to the Hero Fund where kids who can’t afford to go to camp can get to go for free and so I was doing, like, directing and hiring and renting the land and organizing the schedule and just running those events for the last two years. I retired for the 2016-2017 season to concentrate on applying to grad school.

And then, of course, I’ve done a lot of gamewriting for Wayfinder. I’ve written and run four pretty serious games that I’m stupidly proud of—The Old Land, Octagon House, Requiem, and The Wishing Well. Writing a game is like nothing else in the world. It’s kind of like writing a novel, it’s certainly as much work as writing a novel, except you get to watch your novel come to life. You have to know your world inside and out—in the world background workshops, you’re going to have fifty kids throwing questions at you that are anywhere from “how’s the gay thing going” to “so you know your werewolf world has seven different moons for the seven different tribes of werewolves, and the sixth moon has an irregular orbit, first of all I’m assuming this is a rocky planet because it holds life so it can be at most four times the size/density of Earth but then also all of these moons are large enough such that their gravity makes them spherical, what does that do to the tides? As well as are tidal forces strong enough to affect volcano patterns on this planet, like it does on Jupiter’s moon Io? Also how in the world does the sixth moon have an irregular orbit, was it created more recently than the others or tugged into the gravitational well of the planet within the last few millennia, or—“ to, you know, more answerable questions like “how does [this part of the mythology] affect [this geopolitical issue].”

But it also just—it makes storytelling such a collaborative process. You write something, you dream up a whole world and the unique incredible people who live in it and the thousands of stories that make up their lives and the bursting potential of where a story can go, and then you hand it over, you give it to a community that you know and you trust and you’ve just met, you gift each of your characters to someone new, and then you watch as their bring your world to life. Your story isn’t your story. It’s the story of everyone who has experienced everything along with you. And it’s so incredible to be on the other end of it too, to be gifted a character and given the fate of the entire universe that rests on the decisions that you and your friends make in the moment. You live and you die and you laugh and you sacrifice everything and you find bravery within yourself that you never had before, and when you come out of it, you’ve…you’ve got fifty or sixty new best friends that maybe you haven’t known them in the real world for so long but you’ve bled (not usually real blood, we’re a summer camp for kids, after all) and sweat and cried and changed the world next to them, over and over, and it forms bonds of trust and a community in the real world unlike anything else.

So, yeah. Wayfinder has been a huge part of my life and my worldview and my experiences for the last…six years now? They’re my community, they’re my best friends, it was where I turned when I was scared and hurting and didn’t know where I was or how I was ever going to get through life and it was just…everything. And it sort of still is. So yeah. Gay theater camp. It’s the best.

I learned about Hamilton through Wayfinder, actually. I was Patient 2, but, like, I learned about it one day after Patient 0 learned off of an add on Amazon.com, Patient 0 showed it to Patient 1 who the next day when I was driving him and two other staff members to the cleanup for a Frontier showed it to me and then I infected, like, 100 campers within the next two months so I feel like I really deserve the title Patient 0 but technically I’m Patient 2.

I kind of really miss doing musical theater, like, theater on a stage type deal for an audience, I’m just way too busy now with math and physics things to consider that. But, yeah, theater, it’s great, it was a huge part of my childhood and then gay theater camp was the biggest influence on me during my formative years.

Hope that answers your questions!

#my life #my fic #anon #personal #gay theater camp #Wayfinder #The Wayfinder Experience #in which Sidus answers a question with way more personal details than probably intended #read this if you want to learn a shit-ton about who I am as a person I guess #long post

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pamphletstoinspire · 7 years