Ask me...

Oh, you would pick the one without a route!

I've always been Pagan. I grew up in a family with a deep reverence for nature. I talked to plants and animals. I learned some family folk charms. I had flashes of memory from other lives, and I had mystical senses. While I studied some other religions, they didn't appeal to me. I actually got curious enough to attend Sunday school briefly, and learned a bunch more reasons why I am not a Christian. I discovered the contemporary Pagan community when I was about 16 and I've been increasingly involved with it ever since. My reaction to the discovery was a fairly well-known one: "Oh, there are other people doing what I'm doing, that's nifty."

I can pin down a few logical points, though. One is reincarnation. I look at the world around me, and everything in nature is cyclical: The rain falls, water evaporates, clouds form, and rain falls. Trees grow and set seed and die; the fallen log fosters new seedlings. Nothing in nature is static; nothing in nature is wasted. So the idea of souls cycling through different bodies matched my observations of how the world works, a lot better than the idea of souls pouring through Earth to land forever in Heaven or Hell.

The more I learn about the Earth, the more I am in awe of it. Spirituality is supposed to fill you with awe. I look at this amazing, vital web of life -- so intricate, so complex, so effective -- and I'm impressed by how perfectly it all works. It has buffers, checks and balances, fault tolerance, flexibility, specialization. It changes the environment for its own benefit; a sequoia forest actually influences local weather. Humans are just one species. The others push and shove, and sometimes they gain or lose ground, but overall we're the only species that has taken over drastically more than our fair share. Humanity acts like a cancer, and I don't think that's how we're supposed to be. Every species has its role; we're the one that thinks; so I believe that means we're supposed to use our brains for the benefit of the Earth as a whole. Not just our species, but our biosphere. It takes about a century for nature to make an inch of topsoil; an industrious human can make cubic yards of composted topsoil in a few weeks, and a lazy one can do it in a few months. If we bother. A creature's abilities define its role in the biosphere. By that rule, we should be living smart, not selfish.

So I guess you could say I came to Paganism by observing the world and how it works, and applying that pattern to other things, like tenets of belief. Why? The world works. Everything else is theory and opinion. If you can figure out how a working system functions, and copy that process, you're much closer to success.

... did that make any sense?

I do have an unfair advantage: I write about spirituality for a living.

For many things, yes, that's true. It's still interesting to pick a particular junction and trace the lines connecting to it.

I grew up in the house where I live now, but I haven't always lived here, so it does count as a "choice." This is farm country, but we're not farmers. We have about 2 1/2 acres of yard. When I was little, our garden was bigger than many of the yards I see in town! There are plenty of trees, including a small orchard, and lots of wildlife. I have a lot of happy memories from this house and yard.

We moved out the summer between 6th and 7th grade for me, because my parents got a pair of jobs in the same school system farther north. (I was not at all happy about that. It's a lousy school system.) They kept the house here and rented it out. I never did come to think of anywhere else as "home" -- I'd bonded to this place. I'm peculiar that way; I can be rooted or I can be nomadic, but in each life the trait tends to set early. I moved for the first time too late for it to activate the "nomadic" feature. So there's always been a kind of compass inside me, pointing homewards, pointing here. After college, I managed to get back into this house, and here I've stayed. Woe unto anyone who threatens my home.

The political climate is not conducive to my well-being; it's almost entirely Republican. (Illinois overall tends to go Democratic, though, because of Chicago.) There's a Green Party in my county now; it has all of six members. Ironically one of the candidates has a serious shot of winning his campaign, because he happens to come from a very popular local family. I think the locals usually vote Republican because they're told to; it certainly isn't in their economic self-interest, as Republican policies have nearly crushed the life out of America's middle and lower classes. The churches around here are the kind that tell people what to think, and so are a lot of other organizations. Questioning authority is frowned on; intelligence is frowned on. I kid you not, I was in a restaurant earlier this month, and I heard an adult man start mocking a friend for talking about higher math. Work-related higher math, no less. *headdesk* That's not an environment conducive to liberal ideals. Around here there are a lot of frogs you could boil alive without worrying that they'd jump out of the pot.

Fortunately we've managed to create some alternative culture.

>> I would think that living in a very traditional town might be easier if one had some roots there. <<

Easier than not having roots there, in that people cut you a little more slack. Harder because you have more at risk if things really turn ugly.

>>Do you find that you attract friends who are more liberal than average for your neighborhood?<<

Yes. Safety and sanity in numbers.

>> Also, are you openly pagan there?<<

Yes. I've had a newspaper article about me; that was fun.

>> Also, do you find that having community online, such as this blog, expands your social network in a positive way? <<

That helps tremendously.