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Earth Angel ¹

I guess my siblings and I were raised as somewhat unusal Protestants, in that we were raised with a belief in Guardian Angels.

To ward off the “boogie man” - and assorted other beasties that stalk children at night - our mother used to draw a picture of our “Guardian Angel” and tape it to the wall beside our bed at night. “See? there’s a picture of your guardian angel. Nothing is going to happen to you while she’s looking over you.” Many, many nights I’d fall asleep looking at that picture. When I became a mother, I used to do the same with my daughter.

When mom got lung cancer, and all her electrolytes went out of balance, she’d be talking out of her head, and she used to be afraid to fall asleep. So to help her, I drew a picture of her guardian angel too, and posted it by her bed at the hospital. It helped her, too.

In her last year she used to talk about her Guardian Angel, a lot. She said his name was “Sing” - well, it wasn’t really his name, that was just the name he gave her because humans couldn’t pronounce his name. She used to tell us all about the conversations she had with Sing, all the while, dad shaking his head behind his paper. We all just humored her, our mom had always been “weird” - this was just yet another way for our mother to express her weirdness. If it brought her peace - why not?

Recently I had an opportunity to go over her medical records. Our brother decided to file suit with the State of Florida with the Engle Trust Fund, against the tobacco companies, and I had to search through them to find references to her smoking before 1996. I found something very interesting in those records.

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If coming “out” as a Christian to my pagan friends was a shocker, coming “out” as a Christian to my Christian friends who knew I was pagan, was a bit of an anti-climax. Most of them took it in stride, with ne’er a word spoken. They just noted “that’s a nice cross you’re wearing, Janet” or some such, and just nod, and go on their merry way.

My family was a different matter. The hardest person to tell was my daughter, actually.

Bless her heart. It had to have been hard for her, growing up with a pagan momma. I’d come home from work, and she would have taken down all my pagan stuffs and shoved them in a box, because she had friends coming over and she didn’t want them to know. And really, how can a teenager go through her rebel stage, if her mom’s dancing naked around a bonfire?

She found a way of course, and that was going the opposite direction - by becoming more conservative. I thought I’d have to hire an intervention team when she went to work for Republican lobbyists in her first year of college.

So I hemmed and hawed a bit, trying to figure out the best way to go about telling her that I was converting back to Christianity. I finally nailed down the perfect solution.

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…and I’m about four years old. My dad’s bringing me back from Sunday School; I’m not old enough to go to the “Big Church” yet.

Banging my bobby socked/Mary Jane’d feet on the car cushions, I ask my dad “Jesus sounds really nice. When do I get to meet him?”

Dad laughed and laughed. “Honey, Jesus died about 2,000 years ago!” And the expression on my face made him laugh even harder.

“Sheesh, Dad! You’re getting me up early on a Sunday morning to go learn about some dead guy??”

When he stopped laughing long enough, I’m sure he explained in some foreign four-year-old language, how he died, but was risen from the dead, blah blah blah. I’m sure you know the story. I didn’t get it, wouldn’t get it for sometime, but that didn’t mean they stopped taking me to Sunday school to learn about some dead guy.

Think about it. We teach our kids to sing “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so” LONG before they can read, or understand the concept of “being dead.” “Being dead” -to me, at four years old - meant those doodle bugs in my back yard curled up into a little ball and stopped moving. But you know, sometimes they uncurled and scooted off once they thought I’d gone away, so maybe that’s all Jesus did, too. What did I know? I was just a kid.

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The process of converting back to Christianity from being a pagan, is often a slow and tedious one. Fortunately, I’ve had the help from a few friends, to guide me along the way. There’s my friend Joy, who converted back to Christianity about the same time I did. There’s Jen, who converted awhile back now, and whose experiences I’ve quietly learned from through her journal. And about a month after my conversion, the Lord saw fit to send me a good man to chat with, whom we’ll call Larry, who is smart, handsome, funny, and a very devout Catholic, besides being sexy as hell. They’ve all played a big part in pointing out potential stumbling blocks in my path.

Regardless, there are still some decisions that one must make on their own. There’s a lot of purging that goes on during the conversion process, and you have to make the decisions on what to keep, what to give away, and what to toss into the fire. Can you say, “Do these fairy wings make me look too fat too pagan?” Sure, I knew you could.

Take books, for example. Boy, do pagans love to collect books. Deciding which ones to keep is a bit like going through your clothes during spring cleaning. Does this “fit” anymore? does it have sentimental value? Have I even looked at it in the past year? Most of them, just didn’t fit anymore, so I found homes for them. A buck a book - quite a few people took me up on the offer, and the couple of dozen or so I had left over, I gave to my “other daughter” - one of my daughter’s friends who was pagan - with my own little comments written in them. “This one is a piece of shit, read for entertainment purposes only.” “This author is pretty good, but check sources.”

But there are somethings which are not things, but practices, and which take a bit more thought in deciding whether or not to keep them. It’s like putting them on a scale - just where IS that line that seperates a thing from being a “pagan practice” as opposed to “folkloric practice” or “traditional” or “human.”

For instance: Is reading erotica permitted? What about Beltaine? Can I still celebrate May Day without putting my soul in jeopardy? How about masterbation, is that still allowed? If not and I’ll go blind, can I do it until I need glasses?

Do I have to reign back my men in kilts fetish? oh Lord, and what about all this kinky BDSM stuff. Am I not allowed to spank anyone/ be spanked anymore?

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It’s a Sunday, and I’m SUPPOSED to go to Mass.

Not that I’m Catholic, mind you, I’m just a Catholic wanna-be. I was raised Methodist, but my best friend and neighbor was Catholic, and I went to mass with her almost as much as I went to Church. When I made the decision to return to Christianity, I figured - well, Methodism couldn’t keep me, maybe Catholicism, could.

It’s a beautiful religion, and mass is very moving. The inner dramatist in me, really loves all the pomp and circumstance. When I read up on Catholic doctrine, I’m pretty astonishished on how much I agree with it. I’ve still got some things I need to resolve about it in my head though, before I cross the Tiber.

“Crossing the Tiber” is a lovely euphanism Catholics use for non-Catholics when they become Catholic. It’s a rather royal turn on words, that kinda make you feel like Caesar invading Rome. The fact of the matter is, I feel more like a pledge in her freshman year of college, trying to figure out which Sorority to rush. (more…)

Wait.

Can I even SAY “fuck” anymore, now that I’m a Christian again?

hmmm. Let me think about this for a minute. I’m pretty sure there’s something in the Bible about not taking the Lord’s name in vain…. but I don’t recall anything taught to me in Sunday School about not saying “fuck.” So I guess it’s ok.

Converting back to being a Christian after being a Pagan, especially in such a public manner by announcing it on my website, is a bit like being a celebrity spokesperson for Jenny Craig. Everybody’s watching you, just waiting for that moment when you slip up and misbehave. Worse yet, they wait to see if you’re really going to “stick with it” or if it’s just some new phase you’re going through. (more…)