The Beginning

It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn.
Plato

My journey started over a half century ago in a land far away. Well, it's only about an 8 hour drive away. But, so much has changed, perhaps especially me, that it seems like a land far away. It was a land of Christian fundamentalism. It was a land of small towns, country folk and (quite often) poverty. It was a land of wild blackberries and hickory nuts and black walnuts to name a few. It was a land of rivers and streams, vines to swing on, trees to climb and fields to cross. It was a land that I loved. But, that part of my journey ended when I was 13.

Somewhere around 8 years old, there was a 'revival' at our church and I got 'saved'. I remember it taking a lot of guts to get off my butt and go forward. I wasn't sure about the whole getting saved thing, but, I didn't want to go to hell either. The experience certainly didn't have any profound changes on who I was. We moved around alot. At least now I could answer the inevitable question of "Have you been saved?" with a "yes".

I tried to be a good Christian. I read the bible from cover to cover and had a head full of memorized verses. But, Christianity never really worked for me. I found myself reading books about the occult and finding them to make more sense to me than the bible. I came to believe Christianity was a religion of fear, shame and hate. I have come to think of its god as an evil warrior god. I digress.

When I was 13, we moved to a land that was so foreign to me. It was certainly the biggest town I'd ever lived in. Everybody talked funny and made fun of me for the way I talked. It was the late 60's. It was a time of racial and civil unrest. It was a time of the Viet Nam war. It was a time of drugs, hippies and the Beatles. I've lived in this foreign land for the most of my life. I've had good years and I've had bad years.

It could be said that I started leaving Christianity in my teens. It probably took as much guts or more to leave Christianity than it did to become a Christian. But, leave it I did with a curse. I continued to read books on paganism and found the idea of being responsible for my own life very appealing to me. No Santa Claus god to ask for things. No savior god for when things took a bad turn. You know what I mean. "Dear God, if you'll just save me from this bad thing in my life, I'll (fill in the blank)."

Paganism's identity with the earth and nature was a huge factor in my decision to become a pagan. In retrospect, I would say I've been a pagan all my life. I was brain washed by Christianity for awhile and sometimes to this day struggle with the words of fear, shame and hatred that were drilled into me. But, those words are having less and less control on me as time goes by.

Becoming a pagan did have a profound affect on me. I was born again. I saw the world in a whole new way. But, I struggled with any concepty of deity until a few years later when I spoke with a Unity minister. She told me that "If I didn't like the god I had, get another one." Wow! It hadn't dawned on me that I could do such a thing even though I'd read books like The White Goddess by Robert Graves. I spent a lot of time soul searching and found that I believed in a Goddess. I was content with that and a little surprised to learn that I also believed in a Horned God.

So ended my sojourn as a Christian and my sojourn as a Pagan began.