There is a crisis of faith that often accompanies the new Pagan as they begin to follow their new path. We all begin life with the religion of our parents. The faith of our parents is our birthright, and our obligation. We are often "confirmed" in their religion before we come of an age where we can properly make that decision for ourselves. This is not a condemnation. Just a recognition that this happens in every culture, in every religion (including Pagan faiths). It's a part of raising our children, to share with them our own worldview. What else are parents to do? We give our children what we know. There is no blame or hard feelings with the faith we are taught. But a single viewpoint on spiritual answers is frequently too narrow. By expanding the concept of Deity, the conflict of faith begins to disappear.
Most Crises of Faith occur as a “Crisis of God”. A seeker who was brought up in a Judeo-Christian monotheistic faith often has a conflict with the different concepts of God and Goddess. This conflict is resolved when the seeker realizes that God is not Pagan. Goddess is not Pagan. Divinity simply IS. There is a Divinity that is so vast that it pulses with the song of the Universe. It is aware of every molecule and atom of its infinite reach. It is the Universal Life Force, the Magical Energy that spins electrons around the atom and sends the seedling stretching from its shell. It is this awe-some, elusive awareness that we give the identity of Gods and Goddesses, in a yearning to connect with that universal essence.
In every culture, in every religion, in every faith, people describe their religion as a relationship to Divinity. It's that relationship between person and Divine that is the most important thing. Cultures sometimes describe Divinity to be masculine, or feminine, or both. Sometimes it's multiple faces to the same ultimate source, sometimes it's only ONE face to that source. But they all, universally, are describing the same breath-catching phenomenon... Divinity. It's a matter of personal individuality as to how you will describe your personal relationship to all that IS. Your personal search will lead you down the path that connects with Divine.
You will find Divinity wherever Divinity appears to you. S/He has your ultimate best interest in mind, always. And S/He doesn't quibble about names. The real question is: How can I find Divinity in my life? How can I reach out and touch that Universal Connection that has zapped so many people before? You've probably met people in your own life who seem totally comfortable in their church, in their connection to God. Have you ever envied them? The answer is that you need to find your own personal connection to Divinity.
I had my first "crisis-of-faith" when I was about 14 or so. I was a member of the Episcopal Church choir, and had been for several years. I had gone to Sunday school and had served the altar since childhood. My mother was the Church organist, which meant I went to church every Sunday, no matter what. It was such a regular feature of my life that I never even questioned it. However, at around age 14, I finally started to pay attention to the Service, and the prayers we said in rote each week. I began to get irritated by the fact that everyone said the prayers in an automatic, monotone voice. It had become so commonplace that it had lost all meaning for them. (Remember saying the “Pledge of Allegiance” in school? - that same meaningless monotone) I instinctively wanted my religion to mean something to me.
I was deemed old enough for confirmation, so I went to confirmation classes. I looked upon it as an opportunity to finally get the answers to the questions I’d been thinking to myself during the Sunday services. I began to dig beneath the monotone, looking for meaning. It seemed that I annoyed the Priest, because I was the only student in a class of six who actually took the bible home each week and studied the lessons, AND came back with questions. My classmates were irritated with me as well, since my questions would involve actually digging back into the scriptures, and I was asking some pretty tough theological questions. Our evening classes often ran late. I was not popular for that. Although my questions were never answered in a way that satisfied me, I was confirmed anyway. It was expected of me.
I was Confirmed by the bishop himself, and continued for the next several years to attend weekly Services (one by one the choir retired or died, and I became the church solist), but my weekly questions continued to compound. I kept pestering the Reverend about my questions (I was a teenager, after all!) and kept getting supremely dissatisfying answers. When I was about 16, I found the definition of Pantheist: "one who believes that God lives in all that lives". That suited me to a “T”. It actually took me awhile to realize that it meant that I was no longer a Christian. In my heart of hearts, I did not believe that Jesus was my ONLY path to communication with God.
As far as I was concerned, I communicated with God regularly in my trips into the woods. I saw God EVERYWHERE. I couldn't see how everyone else was missing it. I felt misunderstood, like I was the only one who saw the big picture. I began to feel uncomfortable and out-of-place at church. By age 17, I found the definition of Pagan, but back then, Pagan literature was still an underground thing that was difficult to come by. By luck, I found a good book on Wicca, and was exposed to the philosophy for the first time. I felt like everything I had been struggling with finally had a name.
I always found my solace in the woods around my home. Ever since I was able to leave the backyard on my own, I was always wandering around in the woods alone. The trees, birds, and animals were my playmates. Whenever I was yelled at or picked on (I was the youngest child, and often felt this way) I would escape to the woods. Therefore, as a teenager, I had found my deepest solace, my closest connection to Divine within the woods, with Nature. I felt God in the forest far more strongly and deeper than I ever felt him in the choir pew in church every Sunday. If I really needed to talk to God, I would wait until church was over, and escape to the woods. I never considered the time I spent there as "prayer"... it was just connecting. It was only later that I realized the importance of this distinction.
I had one problem with Wicca: Intellectually I could believe in a Goddess, (It made sense for balance) but I had a really tough time relating to Her in any real way. I had spent my entire life dealing with God. I knew God, or at least I felt comfortable with the idea of God. I liked the idea of Goddess, and felt sure that there must be some missing link in this spiritual gap I felt, but I had no clue how to make that connection. I didn’t know who She was or what to do with Her. And then it happened... that moment that we all crave... that moment of total union with Divinity. It happened quite unexpectedly. I was coming home with a friend from a busy late day of college classes and rehearsals, and we were driving home when we both noticed how a beautiful full moon had risen. We were driving through a public park when we decided to stop for a few moments to get out and look. We both settled ourselves under a large willow tree, gazed up at the moon, enjoying the warm evening, when WHAM. Something stepped in and Visited. Forever until I die I swear that the Lady Herself came to me under that Willow tree, and drove home some universal truths.
From that moment onward I have never doubted in Goddess. After all, She came to me personally and spoke to me. She told me, (this quivering little 18 year old) that I was to be her Priestess, and to help others. I nearly soiled my pants under that Willow tree. What the hell do *I* know? After studying Her for only a year, and not really believing in Her until NOW? But the force of this contact was not to be denied. After studying Wicca for a year or so as an intellectual thing, I now totally threw myself into my studies. The Will of the Goddess (Any Goddess or God) is not to be denied. Like it or not, I was given a mission. I suppose I could have tried to shrug that moonlit night aside and ignore it, but it was never really an option. It's now been over fifteen years since that night, and the mere memory of it is still intense enough to give me the shivers. It was no hallucination.
Now my problem changed. Now that I had met HER, in all of Her Glory, I had a really hard time relating at all to God. After all, I had believed in God my whole life, but I had never MET Him like I had just met Her. My practice of Wicca was still out of balance, because although I intellectually believed in God, I didn’t really know God. The same problem I had just been in with the Goddess. I didn't know what to do about God, so for awhile I just left him on the "back-burner" so to speak. He was always there, but I had a more important relationship to develop with Her. It actually took me several years of meditation before I established the same close relationship with God that I found in that one lightning instant with Goddess. It took me a long time to find the same comfort in Him, since he was so much more distant and had never touched me in the same way.
But I did reconnect with God. Finally, away from the pure radiance of Goddess that blinded me for awhile, I found the comfort of God that had sustained me through my childhood. I reconnected to the pure faith of a God that is greater than ourselves, and that loves us and will take care of us. I now feel more balanced in my reverence of the God and Goddess. As a result of my search, I have a keener appreciation of the unlimited magnitude of the force of Divinity, regardless of what names and genders we assign to it. As a Pagan, specifically as a Wiccan, I have struggled through the years to find a personal relationship to both God and Goddess. I have now, twenty years, developed a close and personal relationship with Divinity that I feel comfortable with.
Each Pagan must seek to find the Divinity that dwells within, for when has it ever been anywhere else? Reconciling our religion of birth to the religion of our choice is a process that can take a lifetime, or it can happen in a single moment of awareness. Being Pagan means taking responsibility to develop a relationship with the Gods. We have no dogma to define God for us. By staying focused on the unlimited nature of Divinity, we can see what all religions have in common, reconciling our childhood religions into our current practice, and resolving those lingering conflicts of faith.
~Flame RavenHawk
November 29, 2002