I want someone who will admit that state-sponsored aggression towards the civilian populations of countries that do not suit U.S. economic or political convenience is by far the worst form of "terrorism" in this world today, and who refuses to perpetuate it any longer.
I want someone who is less concerned about the unchallenged military hegemony of the U.S., and more concerned with the actual prosperity of its citizens and its peaceful coexistence with other nations of the world.
I want someone who rejects the definition of "prosperity" as that of unchecked consumption, and takes immediate steps to implement the vast changes to U.S. economic and business regulation policies that are necessary to address the reality of the global warming crisis, seeking ways to encourage the development of "green" technologies and ecological alternatives. (I want someone who actually enforces the regulations on pollution, production and disposal that are already in place!)
I want someone who thinks "universal health care" and other social welfare programs are a no-brainer, who knows that every human being has the right to a life of dignity and liberty in which moral and personal decisions need not be compromised in order to meet the most basic needs of health and survival.
I want someone who works to boost the economy by investing in public works projects that will improve the basic quality of life for all citizens, rather than by giving more tax cuts to the rich.
I want someone who recognizes the degraded state of our public education system and immediately reinvests in (as well as reinvents) programs to ensure a quality education for children of all classes and races, encouraging more rigorous standards in math and the sciences, more thorough study of world history, literature, philosophy, and politics, and the fundamental importance of the creative arts and music education.
I want someone who will restore and preserve the civil rights and social liberties of every individual, in particular those most vulnerable to the repression of majority rule (i.e. women, religious and racial minorities, and the gay community).
I want someone who acknowledges the importance of a balance of powers among the three branches of the federal government, as well as a balance between federal and state governments, and scales back the concentration of power in the executive branch that has occurred over the last decade (or more).
I want someone who works for the transparency of and real democratic, grassroots influence in government on all levels.
I want someone who realizes the impact of mythology on the mind and how it shapes the way we conceive of what is and is not possible; I want someone who is willing to talk and act in terms of global citizenship and ecological responsibility, who takes on the seemingly hopeless task of replacing the "American Dream" suburban consumerist mythology of unstoppable Progress, with a mythology of interconnection, effective and honest communication, celebrated diversity within a shared community, and a simplicity and work ethic that restores hope and freedom to American citizens without such a heavy cost imposed on the lives and freedoms of others throughout the world or on the Earth itself.
God, even to myself I sound like a lunatic.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
A Quandary of Cats
As I promised one reader in the comments of the previous post on John Michael Greer's book, A World Full of Gods, I'm going to take some time to explore and elaborate on what I think is the main flaw in his reasoned argument against monotheism and in favor of polytheism. After tonight's post, though, I'm hoping to return to a more poetic-creative form of writing for a little while, not only because I sorely need to keep those writerly muscles in shape, but because I find myself growing increasingly cantankerous with all this political and religious polemic in the air. February in Pittsburgh tends to be a dreary month--the sun slants slightly higher and longer than before, but more sleet, rain and snow blow in from the west and cake the streets and buildings in treacherous gray sludge. Even on the occasional warmer days, the sludge and mud persist, and you get to thinking that those obnoxiously bright morning birds must be wrong. So, after this, enough with the nitpicking for a little while. I need to ready myself to receive spring as she deserves.
I agree with Nettle's statement on the previous post, that "one god" versus "many gods" is not just a disagreement about number, but indicates a fundamentally different way of defining "deity." I suspect this distinction is why I found Greer's book so very frustrating--he treated it as exactly that: merely a disagreement about number, and nothing more.
The most telling example is Greer's "Many Cats" analogy for deity. In this inventive tale, several neighbors all endeavor to cultivate relationships with a mysterious being they call Cat. The "monofelists" believe there is only one Cat, and because they disagree about its appearance (sometimes black, sometimes tabby, for instance) and its food preferences (one neighbor leaves out milk, another kibble, yet another canned food), each accuses the others of merely imagining things, feeding rats by mistake, or simply having a less than perfect understanding of how Cat truly looks and behaves. The "afelist" of the neighborhood doesn't think there's any such thing as a Cat at all, while the "polyfelist," who is portrayed as clearly the most reasonable and knowledgeable of the group, laughs and says there are actually several cats in the neighborhood, each with its own territory, food preferences and personality.
Now, this allegory is, indeed, very helpful in illustrating Greer's personal conception of what deity is (or, in this case, what deities are), but rather than exploring the difference between monotheism and polytheism, it takes for granted a polytheistic worldview. What Greer fails to address is the possibility that, as he himself has pointed out earlier in the book, people actually experience deity in vastly different ways; in other words, the "monofelists" are assumed to be experiencing a limited or singular example of something that is inherently multiple and, furthermore, could easily be known as such with minimal effort. There is no way of illustrating from within his imaginary world, for instance, what an experience of deistic unity or transcendence might be like, and so the reader is left to assume (most likely without even realizing the bias) that such things cannot be aspects of deity, but are instead something else.
Greer's Many Cats analogy immediately strikes me as a very different version of the Blind Men & the Elephant metaphor, and perhaps a fairer comparison between monotheism and polytheism might be found in comparing these two different stories and how they conceive of the nature of deity as fundamentally different. In both situations, the foolishness of supposing that one person knows everything is apparent, but the nature of what is unknown and/or not personally experienced is vastly different. In the Cats story, there is nothing all that mysterious about the Cats themselves, and each person's ignorance lies in their unwillingness to listen to others. Greer seems to suggest that if "monofelists" simply treated others' experiences as being as valuable as their own, they would naturally reach the "polyfelist" conclusion. In the Blind Men story, however, our very ability to experience the Divine in its Fullness is what is limited. Our own limitations--not just those imagined of others, but those we ourselves experience and recognize--gives rise to our ignorance, so that even when we do listen to each other and give one another as much credence as we give ourselves, we can still only guess at what it is we think we know. Even if the Blind Men worked together to run their hands over the entire elephant, in other words, they would still be missing a certain kind of experience: in this case, the visual experience of seeing the elephant as a whole.
The difference between the two stories is in the supposed limitations, or lack of limitations, of human experience of Spirit. In the Many Cats example, the "polyfelist" is just as sure of her definitive knowledge of what Cats really are as Greer accuses "monofelists" as being. But it is still rather easy to imagine such a "polyfelist" having a moment of heightened experience in which she catches the briefest glimpse of the unity and interconnection of all beings--including Cats-- that transcends her previous understanding of each Cat as a separate being (and in fact, both Greer and Jordan Paper, author of The Deities Are Many, say that polytheists can and do have such "mystic" experiences). What if, upon mentioning such an experience to her "inclusive monofelist" neighbor, the "polyfelist" discovers that this kind of transcendence is precisely what the "monofelist" has been referring to all along?
So what kind of experience is this unity and transcendence, then, and what is being experienced? Does it not point to a kind of relationship to Spirit that belies the certainty of both the "monofelists" and the "polyfelist" as Greer portrays them? Is it not possible that unity and transcendence are just as likely to be attributes of deity as any other attribute of power, personality or presence? Greer describes the "retreat to a ground-of-being definition of God" as the result of monotheists backing themselves into a corner, but in my personal, direct experiences of this kind, it is precisely the opposite: it is a moment in which a new kind of experience transcends and unites the multifaceted and varied nature of previous experiences of deity, without denying or replacing them.
(Another, specifically Christian example of such a phenomenon is the experience that "everyone is Christ." This does not mean that people do not have unique personalities, individual and autonomous wills, or conflicts of interest, and that we should instead paste the "Face of Jesus" on top of everyone's true face and ignore all differences. Instead, it means just the opposite: recognizing the sacred uniqueness of every being, including ourselves, and as a corollary, respecting that uniqueness and individuality as itself a manifestation of a common, deeply-rooted Spirit. This might seem, again, to be mere dissembling or, even worse, to be downright illogical. Yet I have had personal, direct experiences of "seeing Christ" in other people.)
If Greer claims to respect such experiences as essential, even foundational, to one's religious life, then I do not see how he can so easily dismiss them as mere doctrinal semantics. He may, of course, have polytheistic explanations for these experiences--or even go so far as to claim that these experiences are themselves essentially polytheistic--but to me, this is as underhanded a strategy under the guise of "open dialogue" as that of monotheists who claim there's no such thing as a true polytheist.
I find it amusing when Greer, towards the end of his book, accuses monotheists of digging their own graves, setting up the potential for disbelief in other gods so thoroughly that it was only a matter of time before their own deity came under fire as well. I have already written in this blog about my understanding of atheism as part of the process of the spiritual life, and I hold to my assertion that to challenge simplistic, overly-anthropomorphic views of Spirit is entirely healthy, even if one must tread dangerously close to utter nihilism or reductionist materialism. I am also reminded of several scholars of Christianity's early development, who note that, for polytheists of that time as well, monotheism was effectively a form of atheism, denying the existence of the gods and goddesses so poignantly loved and worshipped in polytheistic traditions. But then, according to most monotheists today, polytheism itself is a form of atheism in rejecting the underlying unity and coherence of the animating Spirit in favor of "disjointed" and fragmentary forms. Funny, that after millennia, we are all still wrestling around in Square One.
It seems clear to me that neither monotheists nor polytheists are atheists. especially now that, thanks to philosophical systems like materialism and humanism, we have such clear, self-proclaimed examples of what atheism and non-theism look like. Rather, monotheists and polytheists simply disagree about the definition of deity itself, what it should include and how it can be experienced by human beings. Any exploration of either view, in particular an exploration which seeks to compare one against the other, must recognize this most basic difference. Only then can we begin to approach these religious worldviews on their own terms, rather than in the terms of those imposed upon them from the outside.
And now, for your viewing pleasure
(because you stuck with me this far, dear reader),
I give you:
I agree with Nettle's statement on the previous post, that "one god" versus "many gods" is not just a disagreement about number, but indicates a fundamentally different way of defining "deity." I suspect this distinction is why I found Greer's book so very frustrating--he treated it as exactly that: merely a disagreement about number, and nothing more.
The most telling example is Greer's "Many Cats" analogy for deity. In this inventive tale, several neighbors all endeavor to cultivate relationships with a mysterious being they call Cat. The "monofelists" believe there is only one Cat, and because they disagree about its appearance (sometimes black, sometimes tabby, for instance) and its food preferences (one neighbor leaves out milk, another kibble, yet another canned food), each accuses the others of merely imagining things, feeding rats by mistake, or simply having a less than perfect understanding of how Cat truly looks and behaves. The "afelist" of the neighborhood doesn't think there's any such thing as a Cat at all, while the "polyfelist," who is portrayed as clearly the most reasonable and knowledgeable of the group, laughs and says there are actually several cats in the neighborhood, each with its own territory, food preferences and personality.
Now, this allegory is, indeed, very helpful in illustrating Greer's personal conception of what deity is (or, in this case, what deities are), but rather than exploring the difference between monotheism and polytheism, it takes for granted a polytheistic worldview. What Greer fails to address is the possibility that, as he himself has pointed out earlier in the book, people actually experience deity in vastly different ways; in other words, the "monofelists" are assumed to be experiencing a limited or singular example of something that is inherently multiple and, furthermore, could easily be known as such with minimal effort. There is no way of illustrating from within his imaginary world, for instance, what an experience of deistic unity or transcendence might be like, and so the reader is left to assume (most likely without even realizing the bias) that such things cannot be aspects of deity, but are instead something else.Greer's Many Cats analogy immediately strikes me as a very different version of the Blind Men & the Elephant metaphor, and perhaps a fairer comparison between monotheism and polytheism might be found in comparing these two different stories and how they conceive of the nature of deity as fundamentally different. In both situations, the foolishness of supposing that one person knows everything is apparent, but the nature of what is unknown and/or not personally experienced is vastly different. In the Cats story, there is nothing all that mysterious about the Cats themselves, and each person's ignorance lies in their unwillingness to listen to others. Greer seems to suggest that if "monofelists" simply treated others' experiences as being as valuable as their own, they would naturally reach the "polyfelist" conclusion. In the Blind Men story, however, our very ability to experience the Divine in its Fullness is what is limited. Our own limitations--not just those imagined of others, but those we ourselves experience and recognize--gives rise to our ignorance, so that even when we do listen to each other and give one another as much credence as we give ourselves, we can still only guess at what it is we think we know. Even if the Blind Men worked together to run their hands over the entire elephant, in other words, they would still be missing a certain kind of experience: in this case, the visual experience of seeing the elephant as a whole.
The difference between the two stories is in the supposed limitations, or lack of limitations, of human experience of Spirit. In the Many Cats example, the "polyfelist" is just as sure of her definitive knowledge of what Cats really are as Greer accuses "monofelists" as being. But it is still rather easy to imagine such a "polyfelist" having a moment of heightened experience in which she catches the briefest glimpse of the unity and interconnection of all beings--including Cats-- that transcends her previous understanding of each Cat as a separate being (and in fact, both Greer and Jordan Paper, author of The Deities Are Many, say that polytheists can and do have such "mystic" experiences). What if, upon mentioning such an experience to her "inclusive monofelist" neighbor, the "polyfelist" discovers that this kind of transcendence is precisely what the "monofelist" has been referring to all along?
So what kind of experience is this unity and transcendence, then, and what is being experienced? Does it not point to a kind of relationship to Spirit that belies the certainty of both the "monofelists" and the "polyfelist" as Greer portrays them? Is it not possible that unity and transcendence are just as likely to be attributes of deity as any other attribute of power, personality or presence? Greer describes the "retreat to a ground-of-being definition of God" as the result of monotheists backing themselves into a corner, but in my personal, direct experiences of this kind, it is precisely the opposite: it is a moment in which a new kind of experience transcends and unites the multifaceted and varied nature of previous experiences of deity, without denying or replacing them.
(Another, specifically Christian example of such a phenomenon is the experience that "everyone is Christ." This does not mean that people do not have unique personalities, individual and autonomous wills, or conflicts of interest, and that we should instead paste the "Face of Jesus" on top of everyone's true face and ignore all differences. Instead, it means just the opposite: recognizing the sacred uniqueness of every being, including ourselves, and as a corollary, respecting that uniqueness and individuality as itself a manifestation of a common, deeply-rooted Spirit. This might seem, again, to be mere dissembling or, even worse, to be downright illogical. Yet I have had personal, direct experiences of "seeing Christ" in other people.)
If Greer claims to respect such experiences as essential, even foundational, to one's religious life, then I do not see how he can so easily dismiss them as mere doctrinal semantics. He may, of course, have polytheistic explanations for these experiences--or even go so far as to claim that these experiences are themselves essentially polytheistic--but to me, this is as underhanded a strategy under the guise of "open dialogue" as that of monotheists who claim there's no such thing as a true polytheist.
I find it amusing when Greer, towards the end of his book, accuses monotheists of digging their own graves, setting up the potential for disbelief in other gods so thoroughly that it was only a matter of time before their own deity came under fire as well. I have already written in this blog about my understanding of atheism as part of the process of the spiritual life, and I hold to my assertion that to challenge simplistic, overly-anthropomorphic views of Spirit is entirely healthy, even if one must tread dangerously close to utter nihilism or reductionist materialism. I am also reminded of several scholars of Christianity's early development, who note that, for polytheists of that time as well, monotheism was effectively a form of atheism, denying the existence of the gods and goddesses so poignantly loved and worshipped in polytheistic traditions. But then, according to most monotheists today, polytheism itself is a form of atheism in rejecting the underlying unity and coherence of the animating Spirit in favor of "disjointed" and fragmentary forms. Funny, that after millennia, we are all still wrestling around in Square One.
It seems clear to me that neither monotheists nor polytheists are atheists. especially now that, thanks to philosophical systems like materialism and humanism, we have such clear, self-proclaimed examples of what atheism and non-theism look like. Rather, monotheists and polytheists simply disagree about the definition of deity itself, what it should include and how it can be experienced by human beings. Any exploration of either view, in particular an exploration which seeks to compare one against the other, must recognize this most basic difference. Only then can we begin to approach these religious worldviews on their own terms, rather than in the terms of those imposed upon them from the outside.
And now, for your viewing pleasure
(because you stuck with me this far, dear reader),
I give you:
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The Disillusioned Apprentice
One reason I have been largely silent in this blog over the course of this month is I have been, admittedly, undergoing a kind of disillusionment regarding the Archdruid of AODA, John Michael Greer. Of course, any time you feel that pull, that telling tug, to join a particular community, you want to believe the leaders and respected elders of that community are kindred spirits, reasonable and accepting, patient with new members and yet knowledgeable enough to engage those who want to continue their development and growth.
When I first joined AODA over a year ago and began its self-guided home study course for the First Degree, I was thrilled to find a community that seemed so in touch with all those things I had valued in my own spiritual life up until that point, while at the same time providing both the wise instruction and varied experience of its older members to help me pursue both familiar and new work even further. The clincher, though, was its accepting embrace of monotheistic and pan(en)theistic, as well as polytheistic, approaches to the concept of Spirit. Unlike the impression of strict, almost angry insistence on polytheism that I sensed from ADF and the Celtic Reconstructionists, AODA--and in particular, its Archdruid--seemed to take a truly tolerant attitude towards practitioners who found meaning and value in Christian ideas and beliefs. More than this, I found several members of the AODA who actively and effectively worked to blend their Catholic heritage with their Druidic work. The thought of kindred souls who had delved as deeply into the Christian Mysteries as I hoped to and had found a path, through Christianity, that joined so wonderfully with the Druidic emphasis on nature, sacred experience and creative work was quite encouraging!
Recently, however, I read Greer's book, A World Full of Gods: An Inquiry into Polytheism, and much to my dismay and continued frustration, found it to be full of the very same misconceptions about Christianity and monotheism that I had turned me off to other Pagan communities. This book proved to be not so much an inquiry into polytheism and its role in the spiritual life, as an opportunity for yet another disillusioned polytheist to present his argument for why monotheism was a monolithic, homogeneous religious movement that, throughout its entire history, had supposedly embodied the worst of Medieval ignorance, fear and superstition, compounded by Victorian-Era sexual prudery and repressive social etiquette. This view of monotheism was presented without regard to the complex, multifaceted and often spiritually fruitful reality of the actual living faith of both historical and modern believers. When Greer does discuss polytheism directly, it is only to point out how its most important aspects (personal experiences of the sacred, the use of mythology as meaning-making, the role of giving and mutual love between mankind and deity, etc.) apparently are nowhere to be found in monotheism.
Ever since reading this book, I have been reeling between indignation and the overwhelming urge to go page by page and correct his vast number of misunderstandings and misrepresentations. The latter, of course, is always my response when someone makes sweeping claims about a tradition or social group that I myself have experienced firsthand and know personally to be more subtle and complicated than they suppose. It helps to mitigate this urge when I remind myself that much of his "enlightened" polytheistic theology I had come to understand on my own, long before discovering modern Druidry, through the contemplation and struggle to incorporate specifically Christian myths and doctrines into my own spiritual life. It also helps to remember that I have already addressed some of these misunderstandings in my series, Modern Myths about Christianity, the title of which is not meant to be ironic, but to point out how the "evils of monotheism" tale is as much a particular mythical construct (with, as usual, occasional seeds of truth) as the myth of Progress or the fundamentalist obsession with the mythology of monotheistic hegemony.
My indignation, meanwhile, is really just a self-defense response to the painful shock that someone so obviously well-studied in certain aspects of Paganism and magic, someone I had come to trust as fair and sincere in his purported tolerance for all approaches to Divinity, could so blatantly fail to give as much unbiased study to traditions he does not agree with as he gives to those with which he does. What in polytheism he calls paradox and mystery, within monotheism suddenly become illogical impositions of dogma. While the modern Pagan movement is, he rightly claims, a response to certain dissatisfying aspects of modern Judeo-Christian culture, the historical development of monotheism itself is portrayed as an insidious plot by the powerful to repress a spiritual tradition that had, until then, left no spiritual need unfulfilled. There is no chance, according to Greer, that the Christian habit of theological contemplation was a genuine response to a real need for more unifying, if more challenging, approaches to the numinous in its varied manifestations; there is no chance that the mythology of Judeo-Christian culture can be as satisfying, inspiring or metaphorical as the mythology of ancient paganism; and it would be absolutely ridiculous, apparently, to claim that Christians, Jews and Muslims have honest-to-goodness real experiences of a meaningfully personal, "ground of being" God, however paradoxical or "illogical" such an experience might seem, and furthermore that these experiences, not merely coldly reasoned doctrine, have led monotheists to an understanding of deity that is, in its essence, markedly different from the polytheist's definition.
Throughout his discussion of monotheism, Greer conveniently ignores two vitally important aspects of monotheism (at least the monotheism in which I was raised): mystery, and humility. He returns again and again to the objection that monotheists are inevitably caught in the trap of self-exception through claims that they know definitively "what God really is" while all other religious traditions, including other monotheist traditions, are wrong. All self-excepting monotheists can't be right, he points out, and so none of them are. He ignores the possibility that some monotheists, myself included, are equally unsure about their own idea of God and are quite willing to admit the possibility that they haven't got a clue, which is one reason they are so eager to seek out and listen to other viewpoints from other traditions--not out of some misguided political correctness, but because of an honest curiosity to explore the mystery of the spiritual life with sincere humility. When faced with the possibility of liberal, tolerant monotheists willing to give polytheistic and atheistic spiritual traditions, as well as other monotheistic traditions, an equal place at the discussion table, he dismisses them with accusations of "creative" pussyfooting and backpedalling.
Such reasoning frustrates me, not only because similarly tolerant, liberal views within the Pagan community are treated as natural, serious and laudable, but because dismissing tolerant monotheists marginalizes such individuals and ensures that monotheistic traditions will be increasingly defined solely by literal-minded, intolerant fundamentalists--not only hanging Pagans out to dry, but depriving less-than-extremist Jews, Christians and Muslims of any sanctuary or recourse within their own traditions. I have always tried to be a living example of how Christianity, in particular, can live up to its values of love, self-giving, and moral integrity for the sake of the well-being and growth of others and a commitment to the Divine. To see myself and my views dismissed as merely "creative" dissembling, as if I were a struggling child receiving a patronizing pat on the head--as if, furthermore, the impetus to creativity and new ideas in response to complicated and often contradictory moral obligations is a sign of a wishy-washy intellect unwilling to default to the easy and "obvious" solutions of polytheism, rather than an indication of meaningful growth to overcome very real conflicts that polytheism seems, at best, only to reframe in deified terms--well.... as I said, quite frankly, it hurts. It hurts to see oneself marginalized not only by Christians in the name of literal-minded dogma, but by Pagans in the name of the very tolerance they aren't deigning, in this case, to demonstrate.
It also leaves me wondering just how much I can trust the Archdruid and other elders of my Order to provide the kind of welcome and guidance I had until now always utterly believed of them. I have recently completed and "passed" my First Degree examination and have been accepted and initiated as a Druid Apprentice in the AODA. It is, perhaps, both ironic and appropriate that I now find myself honestly wondering about the kind of leadership within the Order itself, and how I might step into that role in the future, for better or worse. I have not, of course, completely given up on nor rejected Greer as a invaluable teacher with much wisdom, insight and experience to share (I have just started his newest book, The Druid Magic Handbook: Ritual Magic Rooted in the Living Earth, which has already proved to be interesting and encouraging, even if it is in no way uniquely polytheistic!). Instead, I find that I have discovered an area--the possibility of a fruitful and tolerant monotheism--into which his expertise, experience and, therefore, authority simply do not reach. In some ways, indeed, I am extremely grateful for the realization that I may yet have something new and unique to offer to the Druid community. I only worry (though, happily, not very much) that I may not be given a fair hearing when that time comes...
When I first joined AODA over a year ago and began its self-guided home study course for the First Degree, I was thrilled to find a community that seemed so in touch with all those things I had valued in my own spiritual life up until that point, while at the same time providing both the wise instruction and varied experience of its older members to help me pursue both familiar and new work even further. The clincher, though, was its accepting embrace of monotheistic and pan(en)theistic, as well as polytheistic, approaches to the concept of Spirit. Unlike the impression of strict, almost angry insistence on polytheism that I sensed from ADF and the Celtic Reconstructionists, AODA--and in particular, its Archdruid--seemed to take a truly tolerant attitude towards practitioners who found meaning and value in Christian ideas and beliefs. More than this, I found several members of the AODA who actively and effectively worked to blend their Catholic heritage with their Druidic work. The thought of kindred souls who had delved as deeply into the Christian Mysteries as I hoped to and had found a path, through Christianity, that joined so wonderfully with the Druidic emphasis on nature, sacred experience and creative work was quite encouraging!
Recently, however, I read Greer's book, A World Full of Gods: An Inquiry into Polytheism, and much to my dismay and continued frustration, found it to be full of the very same misconceptions about Christianity and monotheism that I had turned me off to other Pagan communities. This book proved to be not so much an inquiry into polytheism and its role in the spiritual life, as an opportunity for yet another disillusioned polytheist to present his argument for why monotheism was a monolithic, homogeneous religious movement that, throughout its entire history, had supposedly embodied the worst of Medieval ignorance, fear and superstition, compounded by Victorian-Era sexual prudery and repressive social etiquette. This view of monotheism was presented without regard to the complex, multifaceted and often spiritually fruitful reality of the actual living faith of both historical and modern believers. When Greer does discuss polytheism directly, it is only to point out how its most important aspects (personal experiences of the sacred, the use of mythology as meaning-making, the role of giving and mutual love between mankind and deity, etc.) apparently are nowhere to be found in monotheism.Ever since reading this book, I have been reeling between indignation and the overwhelming urge to go page by page and correct his vast number of misunderstandings and misrepresentations. The latter, of course, is always my response when someone makes sweeping claims about a tradition or social group that I myself have experienced firsthand and know personally to be more subtle and complicated than they suppose. It helps to mitigate this urge when I remind myself that much of his "enlightened" polytheistic theology I had come to understand on my own, long before discovering modern Druidry, through the contemplation and struggle to incorporate specifically Christian myths and doctrines into my own spiritual life. It also helps to remember that I have already addressed some of these misunderstandings in my series, Modern Myths about Christianity, the title of which is not meant to be ironic, but to point out how the "evils of monotheism" tale is as much a particular mythical construct (with, as usual, occasional seeds of truth) as the myth of Progress or the fundamentalist obsession with the mythology of monotheistic hegemony.
My indignation, meanwhile, is really just a self-defense response to the painful shock that someone so obviously well-studied in certain aspects of Paganism and magic, someone I had come to trust as fair and sincere in his purported tolerance for all approaches to Divinity, could so blatantly fail to give as much unbiased study to traditions he does not agree with as he gives to those with which he does. What in polytheism he calls paradox and mystery, within monotheism suddenly become illogical impositions of dogma. While the modern Pagan movement is, he rightly claims, a response to certain dissatisfying aspects of modern Judeo-Christian culture, the historical development of monotheism itself is portrayed as an insidious plot by the powerful to repress a spiritual tradition that had, until then, left no spiritual need unfulfilled. There is no chance, according to Greer, that the Christian habit of theological contemplation was a genuine response to a real need for more unifying, if more challenging, approaches to the numinous in its varied manifestations; there is no chance that the mythology of Judeo-Christian culture can be as satisfying, inspiring or metaphorical as the mythology of ancient paganism; and it would be absolutely ridiculous, apparently, to claim that Christians, Jews and Muslims have honest-to-goodness real experiences of a meaningfully personal, "ground of being" God, however paradoxical or "illogical" such an experience might seem, and furthermore that these experiences, not merely coldly reasoned doctrine, have led monotheists to an understanding of deity that is, in its essence, markedly different from the polytheist's definition.
Throughout his discussion of monotheism, Greer conveniently ignores two vitally important aspects of monotheism (at least the monotheism in which I was raised): mystery, and humility. He returns again and again to the objection that monotheists are inevitably caught in the trap of self-exception through claims that they know definitively "what God really is" while all other religious traditions, including other monotheist traditions, are wrong. All self-excepting monotheists can't be right, he points out, and so none of them are. He ignores the possibility that some monotheists, myself included, are equally unsure about their own idea of God and are quite willing to admit the possibility that they haven't got a clue, which is one reason they are so eager to seek out and listen to other viewpoints from other traditions--not out of some misguided political correctness, but because of an honest curiosity to explore the mystery of the spiritual life with sincere humility. When faced with the possibility of liberal, tolerant monotheists willing to give polytheistic and atheistic spiritual traditions, as well as other monotheistic traditions, an equal place at the discussion table, he dismisses them with accusations of "creative" pussyfooting and backpedalling.
Such reasoning frustrates me, not only because similarly tolerant, liberal views within the Pagan community are treated as natural, serious and laudable, but because dismissing tolerant monotheists marginalizes such individuals and ensures that monotheistic traditions will be increasingly defined solely by literal-minded, intolerant fundamentalists--not only hanging Pagans out to dry, but depriving less-than-extremist Jews, Christians and Muslims of any sanctuary or recourse within their own traditions. I have always tried to be a living example of how Christianity, in particular, can live up to its values of love, self-giving, and moral integrity for the sake of the well-being and growth of others and a commitment to the Divine. To see myself and my views dismissed as merely "creative" dissembling, as if I were a struggling child receiving a patronizing pat on the head--as if, furthermore, the impetus to creativity and new ideas in response to complicated and often contradictory moral obligations is a sign of a wishy-washy intellect unwilling to default to the easy and "obvious" solutions of polytheism, rather than an indication of meaningful growth to overcome very real conflicts that polytheism seems, at best, only to reframe in deified terms--well.... as I said, quite frankly, it hurts. It hurts to see oneself marginalized not only by Christians in the name of literal-minded dogma, but by Pagans in the name of the very tolerance they aren't deigning, in this case, to demonstrate.
It also leaves me wondering just how much I can trust the Archdruid and other elders of my Order to provide the kind of welcome and guidance I had until now always utterly believed of them. I have recently completed and "passed" my First Degree examination and have been accepted and initiated as a Druid Apprentice in the AODA. It is, perhaps, both ironic and appropriate that I now find myself honestly wondering about the kind of leadership within the Order itself, and how I might step into that role in the future, for better or worse. I have not, of course, completely given up on nor rejected Greer as a invaluable teacher with much wisdom, insight and experience to share (I have just started his newest book, The Druid Magic Handbook: Ritual Magic Rooted in the Living Earth, which has already proved to be interesting and encouraging, even if it is in no way uniquely polytheistic!). Instead, I find that I have discovered an area--the possibility of a fruitful and tolerant monotheism--into which his expertise, experience and, therefore, authority simply do not reach. In some ways, indeed, I am extremely grateful for the realization that I may yet have something new and unique to offer to the Druid community. I only worry (though, happily, not very much) that I may not be given a fair hearing when that time comes...
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Monday, February 4, 2008
Best of 100
In honor of my 100th post to this blog, I thought I'd look back over all my previous posts and highlight some of particular interest. Rest assured, I'm always striving to make the next hundred even better than the last. For now, enjoy, and thanks, as always, for reading!
Five Most Interesting Posts:
based on reader feedback
Five Most Popular Posts:
based on search results and referrals
Five "Writer's Choice" Posts:
my personal favorites
Five Most Interesting Posts:
based on reader feedback
- To Love a God: Struggling with Morality in Polytheism
(18 comments) - Is Christ Special?
(14 comments) - Why Druidry?
(13 comments) - A Swiftly Tilting Planet
(12 comments) - Exposing Idolatry*
(11 comments) *satirical content
Five Most Popular Posts:
based on search results and referrals
- The Swan Maiden's Story
- Metaphors for Love & Death
- Cereology, Ufology & Other -Ologies
- Impromptu Book Altars
- A Druid Rosary
Five "Writer's Choice" Posts:
my personal favorites
Friday, February 1, 2008
That Is Not Spring
Two more poems of my own (in honor of the Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading), focusing on the realities of early February here in Western Pennsylvania, where this morning I walked to work past ice-coated and bare, unbudded tree limbs while the local woods hunches down, suspicious of the wind, and shrugs up its only shabby coat of dead, colorless leaves... The days are longer, the lights are lit--but we still have a ways to go.
Unweathered Song
What rock could withstand such air,
the diamond cut and cold of snow on stone?
Yet nestled here and there,
the chickadees note dawn in beak and bone.
Snowfall Warmed in Afternoon Sunlight
Hung muted faery tongues upon the wind,
muscles freed from voice and sense to dance
an unmeasured tune like bells, white glinting bells
strung silent as on unseen strings and tell
the flexing air of winter's long-invisible expanse,
of night, of creaking ponds of ice, and of its end.
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