An Explanation Of Sorts

[poliphilo]

My posts are rarely exploratory. Usually I know the route I mean to take and where I hope to end up. Sometimes I'll happen upon an alternative path and- even more rarely- fetch up somewhere unexpected.  But I never find myself stopping short- out in open country as it were.

Except once or twice in the last few days. You know the posts I mean. They're all a bit gnomic. That's because I wasn't being quite honest, because I was editing too much out, because I was embarrassed to admit I didn't have a map.  They read like I'm laying down the law, but actually I'm asking questions. Real questions- ones I can't answer.

Here's where I'm at:
 
I was a priest. I gave it up. I'm not going back. I couldn't. I gave it up because I didn't believe- and that's still the case. Trouble is- over the past year or so- I've felt a Christian mindset creeping back up on me. I don't believe in the Christian God, I don't believe Jesus even ever existed, but I'm finding I totally believe in the Christian myth.  There never was a birth in a stable in Bethlehem- I'm almost certain of that- but the myth has me by the throat.  Myths are like poetry. They work in much the same way, by-passing the rational mind, by-passing explanation. I know Yeats's The Second Coming is a sublime poem and I know the Nativity is a sublime myth- but don't expect me to get to work on either with a scalpel because that's not how you treat the things you love.

So am I a Christian? I suppose it depends who's marking the papers. William Blake might accept me as one, but I don't think the Pope would. I am however, by the Church's own rules, still an Anglican priest. When I left (and whether I resigned or was sacked is a moot point) they may have put me on a black list somewhere, but they didn't defrock me- they didn't rescind my priesthood. I'm not in fact sure they could.

Just to complicate matters I am also a Pagan and a Witch.

Perhaps I don't need to make intellectual sense of all this. Perhaps...

And there I'm going to stop- still out in open country- with the Holy City of Sarras over the horizon and maybe not there at all.

I'll be away from LJ over Christmas. No reading, no writing. I think this could be a really good time to take a break.

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

You don't have to be Christian to celebrate Christmas and to honor, even reverence, the spirit that informs it. Yuletide is a cultural institution. It's ours because we claim it and identify with it, not because we accept or are accepted by some theological faction. I'm sure this is true of other nominally Christian things as well, even the Christ himself.

From all of us, a very Happy Christmas to you and yours.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I agree. Christmas belongs to everyone. The winter solstice has been the great feast of the northern hemisphere for as long as we have records. All the evidence suggests it was being celebrated at Stonehenge, New Grange and the other great prehistoric momuments.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Exactly!

We need a feast of joy and bright lights in the "bleak midwinter". It's this promise of rebirth and renewal that keeps us going 'til spring.