At The Beginning, There Was Willow
When I was young, I didn't know any wiccans, the community I grew up in was a little shut off from the rest of the world and everyone believed the same thing, the same way. Witchcraft (because where I lived it was referred to as that or devil worship) was talked about like a thing of the past, something that the good people of the christian faith had stamped out with the help of and to the glory of god. There was never anything in my childhood, and even most of my teen years to suggest that it still existed. It wasn't until I went to college that I met a wiccan; I was curious about it but never asked about it for the following reasons: I didn't know if it was rude to ask her, I wasn't really seeking religion, and she always seemed miserable.
So about 2 years ago I went out of state to visit a good friend, and while we were there we decided to meet an online friend who lived in the same city (I figured since my husband and I had talked to him for years and we were with friends why not meet him). I already knew he was wiccan but didn't really talk about it. What struck me so much when I met Willow, was there was something so youthful yet mature about him. Then I met his roommates, and they were the same. There was just an ease with them all, we talked like we had known each other forever. When we came home, I had decided to read about wicca to understand understand their beliefs. And it just so happened that when I got home my next door neighbor, Luna, had bought a book for about the same reason. And that was where I began. Willow and his friends had shown me a glimpse of something I had been looking for; a piece to the puzzle of my life.
A History In The Church
I don't hate christians, or the christian faith, I just never felt I fit in it. I tried very hard (since as I had been taught, that was all there was) to understand it, and to feel the emotions in it that the people around me described. I don't have the bible memorized, but have read it all the way through 3 times. I would pray every night before I went to bed, begging not to go to hell and asking what I was doing wrong, starting at around age 8 and on to age 17.
I'm sure I went to the altar for salvation many times before this specific experience, but this is the first attempt to be saved that I can remember. My father's church was out in the middle of nowhere, there wasn't an actual house within 6 miles of the place in any direction. Every Sunday (and Wednesday) we would arrive early so my dad could get set up, and I would run off and disappear into the woods or the creek. The church bell would ring and I would come racing inside with something from outside in my pockets. On this particular Sunday night I had brought in a rock from the creek and a flower, and being 8-years-old, was not listening to the sermon but looking out the window watching birds and looking for deer because they used to wander by our church often. I felt an intense need for something, a connection to something bigger than myself, (for a kid it was a pretty intense feeling) when my father opened up the altar for anyone who wanted to come pray. So I trotted myself up to the altar and placed the rock and flower on it and began praying (and yes, fervently praying to god and jesus because that's all I knew about at the time) it was quiet and repetitive prayer. Then my mother knelt beside me, and I guess she thought because I was saying the same thing over and over again that I didn't know what to do. Her and other people from the church began leading me in prayer, but that's not were it started, I was a kid and there didn't seem to be anything wrong with being told what to say and how. When it was done I got up to head outside, I just felt like I had to be outside, I left the rock and flower on the altar when my father called me back and told me to take them with me. I said no, they weren't mine anymore; I know now why that upset him so much but at the time I didn't see why he got upset over it. I got a speech about how we don't give presents to god, and we don't leave sacrifices and trash on the altar. My little heart was shattered, I had just had the most profound religious experience (that an 8-year-old can have) and now everyone told me I did it wrong.
Now don't get me wrong. My dad is a wonderful man, a great speaker, and very loving; he was correcting me because for christians there is a certain way to do things for it to be right. He wanted me to know how to pray right and respect god right. So on the way home my parents told me how to pray and what praying was like and what the presence of god in your heart felt like. And I tried, but it never felt the same, it felt like going through the motions. I returned to the altar many times over the next few years, the first few times I think trying to apologize for doing it wrong the first time. Around the age of 15 I stopped going to the altar at all, because when I did everyone assumed I must have done something really wrong and my mother would question about why I needed forgiveness. (My mother, as well, is wonderful and loving, but she is a jedi-guilt master. I might talk about my parents more later. But understand that I know that everything they said and did was because they loved me and wanted me to have the relationship with god that they had.)
By the time I went to college I was agnostic. I had decided that there were 3 options about god;
1 he didn't exist,
2 he did exist but he didn't like me,
3 I hadn't found what was really out there.
So I took option 3 and recognized that there was something bigger in the world and universe than people and for a long time I didn't even care to know what it was. I was learning new things, meeting new people, and coming face to face with issues I never even knew existed. More holes were torn in the doctrine I was raised in, more questions raised about the logic of one omnipotent god that made people one way, gave them one life, and made it easy for some to follow his ways, while others had to struggle with the way they had been made but still had to do what he said and live miserably or they would go to an eternal torment. So yes, in those first few years on my own I was a resentful of my upbringing (how original).
Living With And Loving Christians
So here is where I sit on christianity; I know why they do what they do, I know why most of them can't accept wicca. In their minds, anything not christian is a trick by the devil, and wicca is like a gateway drug. In time they feel we will slowly be asked to do one evil thing, then something more evil, and next thing you know the nice wiccan is slitting virgin's throats and drinking the blood while consorting with the devil himself. There isn't much room in the christian faith to tolerate other religions. When they pass out pamphlets and witness to me, what they are doing is saying "I know you don't like it, but I really don't want your soul to be tortured for all eternity so would you just sit still and listen to reason". They can't help it, that is the way they believe, it's what has brought them hope and stability and it's their right to believe it. There are a lot of groups that take it much to far, and many groups that go about it hatefully, and that is unfortunate because their message is supposed to be one of love and forgiveness. It can get frustrating for me as a wiccan, because I can believe what I believe and still see my husband and parent's religion as valid. It can get tiresome to feel like the only flexible one all the time while other religions (not just christianity) can be ridgid and pushy. So I try to remember something my father told me once, "It's not the religion the person is in, it's the person in the religion" meaning, no matter what religion a person claims, you take them as the person they are not the group of people they worship with. Anyone can be a good person, a smart and logical person, no matter what faith they are from.
There's no sense feeling upset because other religions won't accept us and go "ok then, as long as it's all nice and positive" that's just the way religion is, and that's what makes it such a volatile subject.