To Have and To Hold

Greetings to you all.  Hopefully you are well and enjoying the summer.  As always, many weddings have come and gone this season and more will follow. For now though, I must discuss an unfortunate wedding-related event that recently consumed my thoughts: chauvinism. 

Let me set the scene:

A young woman and her mother sit close together planning the twenty-two year old’s wedding which will happen in about a month.  Much to accomplish on the pre-wedding to-do list for these two women who busily attend to each item on the list.  As they discuss the decorations and the menu and the song list, the mother lovingly offers this pearl of marital wisdom to her daughter:

“Honey, when you marry you will follow your husband’s family’s set of traditions.  On holidays, you will go to his family or you will follow their traditions in your own home.  When I married your father, we celebrated with his family as you know.  It wasn’t until your father’s parents both passed that we spent a holiday with my parents.  This is what you will do when you marry.”

I cannot express to you my outrage and my disbelief upon hearing this true to life story happening in today’s world.  First of all, why does the husband’s family tradition take priority?  In a marriage, the two people should decide together what their plans will be.  Saying that the woman should submit to the man’s way of doing things cuts off any discussion or relationship building between these two young people.  It deepens the notion that men rule the household and women have no authority or voice beyond what the man grants.  Secondly, just because the mom decided in her marriage to handle it this way does not mean that the daughter should follow.  Now, if the bride-to-be and husband-to-be decide together that this is how their marriage should be, then I cannot argue that because they made that decision together.  I think it’s wrong and I think it’s harmful to them as well as to any children who are then raised in this belief, but it thankfully is not my marriage.  Despite the fact that I believe in a couple’s right to live with this marital structure, perpetuating this kind of chauvinism in families does little to move us forward as a land of equality.

Now what does this have to do with Wicca or paganism?  Well, the above situation transpired between a devoutly Catholic mother and her daughter.  No surprise that chauvinism would be present in this family since their religion teaches gender hierarchy through excluding women from being priests and the recent attack on American nuns, right?  They also have a creation myth based on the idea that women are the reason humans fell from grace.  This isn’t a harsh on Catholics post, so I will stop there, but it is necessary to understand the full situation so we can then look at the pagan perspective in comparison.

In Wicca, the Lord and the Lady are frequently seen as equals.  In some popular creation myths, the Lady comes first and when the Lord shows up in the plot, there’s no shame or guilt or fall from grace to support either gender being superior.  The Lord and Lady each see to different elements of life on earth.  They walk in love sharing this world in a beautiful balance.  Their relationship myth shows a respect for one another and a unity of purpose for their life together.  Under this model for marriage each participant is valued and appreciated.  The married couple moves through life mutually choosing celebrations and traditions as a couple.  As a couple they discuss, they create, and at times they argue, but they build a life together based on mutual esteem and love.  Neither party makes the other feel lesser or like his/her opinions have no merit because the other party has superiority or dominion over the other. 

This is what the Wiccan creation myth teaches about marriage.  It is beautiful.  It is respect.  It is divinely inspired unity.

Therefore why on earth would anyone ever willingly give up his/her own self-determination just because he/she got married?  That makes no sense to me whatsoever.  It seems to demean the beauty of marriage.  It reduces the woman to chattel that live in the father’s home for so long and then get traded to the husband. If that’s not just backwards thinking I don’t know what is. Frankly, I want no part of it.  Thankfully, my husband doesn’t either.

To Sit in Solemn Silence

I adore camping.  I am incredibly fortunate to live in a state rife with opportunities for the camping minded to escape the press of city life.  Recently, my husband and I made our first pilgrimage into the wilderness to spend an extended weekend in the woods.  I went to the woods to think deliberately about a question posed by a favorite author of mine who asked that we discuss the difference/similarity of religion and magic. 

This was my intention.

This is not what happened.

As I sat in my comfy camp chair with a low flame campfire casting a tangerine glow on the surrounding ground, I observed a sliver of light peeking through the towering pines.  I knew that we’d planned this trip during the days leading up to the full moon, but oh my!  How breathtaking to witness the moon gaining her girth in a setting removed from all electric power.  As I sat there in quiet contemplation, I actually started weeping.  The light of the moon cast a shadow as I walked away from the firelight.  The bold brilliance caught me off-guard.  For the last few months, it’s been cloudy around the full moon.  We were deprived the joy of witnessing the supermoon even!  This waxing moon however demanded my attention as it made its gentle path across the heavens.  My mind enrapt attention failed to register how anyone could possibly not be moved by such observation.  It occurred to me that pre-industrial age humans must have been awed watching this glowing orb as it changed each night and journeyed across the sky.  How could they not?  Is it any wonder that they created stories about this mysterious object that at times appeared in the daylight and at others not at all?  What a wondrous moment of solitude gazing at a simple rock radiating splendor.  I was stupefied.

Each night I eagerly awaited the moon’s return to see how it had changed from the previous night.  The magnificence enthralled and calmed me.  It caused me to ponder other ideas and to sit in reflective quietude.

“Thus, for the people living today in the forests of the Piraparana`, the entire natural world is saturated with meaning and cosmological significance.  Every rock and animals are but distinct physical manifestations of the same essential spiritual essence.” Page 79, Wade Davis The Wayfinders

I recently finished reading The Wayfinders  for this month’s book club discussion.  In the book he describes different cultures that have amazing creation myth stories that influence every aspect of their lives.  Because of views like the one in the above passage, these humans would never think to kill another living thing without permission from their deities.  They kill for livelihood and they kill with reverence. 

“Meat is not the right of the hunter but a gift from the spirit world.  To kill without permission is to risk death by a spirit guardian…” page 81

This view applies to plants as well as animals.  As a result, these tribes develop a method to manage what resources they have so as not to live out of balance with the natural world.  They observe what is around them and create beautiful stories of their origins and what will happen should they offend the cosmic rules they establish.  They respect the world around them as a living, breathing entity worthy of respect and care and at times caution.  Reading this book reminded me of my own natural world ponderings around the fire.  The beauty of the world around us was and is awe-inspiring.  Learning to live in a world while recalling that it is indeed finite should give anyone pause.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t.  For example the campground neighbors we had one night were not what I would describe as those who see the earth as having anything spiritual about it.  These individuals, when given the need to pack up, opted to chop down a young birch tree to retrieve their hanging lantern when they could have cut the rope instead.  This is not to say that I haven’t made my mistakes interacting with nature mind you, but it shocked me that chopping the tree was preferable to cutting the rope. 

Furthermore, in Davis’ book he describes the atrocities of imperialism and assimilation of cultures.  We are all familiar with what was done to the tribes of North American Indians or the Aborigines of Australia.  However, it is still happening.  These humans who have survived according to their beliefs and cultures are still fighting the march of progress as it encroaches closer to their world.  Instead of learning from the past, Western development continues on both small and large scale to grab all it can and squeeze the stone until it bleeds.  I’m left asking what will sate this progress? What will it take to stop civilization from taking just because it can? 

Wonder.  I have concluded that when we lose that sense of wonder about nature is when we lose that last bit of innocence.  When we no longer gaze at the moon and feel moved by its beauty we move into a realm where it becomes easier to consume without thought.  We begin to objectify our surroundings and eventually that leads to a lack of respect for humans who don’t.  Clearly it is absurd to a rational mind to think that the milk of life from the Amazon mother flows in the river.  Therefore let rational people build a dam or cut down the trees on the banks or fish for that one species that is so tasty or even let’s just take these savages and move them to a location where we can educate them so they don’t have to live like this any longer. 

I value science and progress.  I love my Nook that allows me to read any book I want and also surf the internet.  I like having a truck so when the winter winds and storms blow I don’t have to walk through it to get to work.  However, I hope I never lose the sense of wonder that moved me to weep as I reveled in the moonlight.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.  We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Albert Einstein