Etiquette and Religion, Revisited

Look, people are going to disagree in life.  And they are going to disagree even more about religion, which many consider a vital part of their identity, culturally and individually.  The problem is not disagreement, the problem is the oft-perceived idea that disagreement is a personal insult to oneself followed by the wielding of disagreement as a weapon as a result of that insult.  Disagreement is not a statement of unworthiness of another, or superiority of one’s self.  Really, its not.  

But maybe we need to learn to disagree with one another better.  This is where manners come into the picture.  I don’t think that having manners means leaving disagreement behind.  In all actuality, I think that part of having manners is being respectfully honest.  The honest truth about religion is that the only thing that determines “right” is belief.  It goes without saying that I believe I’m right (or at least more right than the next guy), or else I’d have different beliefs. It also goes without saying that people with diametrically different and even opposed beliefs believe that they are right as well.  This leaves us with the problem of having equal claim to “rightness”…and it means that we need to work on how we express ourselves in such a way that is compassionate and respectful to one another as people.

Two years ago, I felt compelled to write a list of “Interfaith Etiquette” guidelines.  Every once in a while, I feel compelled to post them again.  Heck, I even followed it up with a “Netiquette” version, specifically geared towards blog posting and discussion.  I’m going to repost the pertinent part to both of those  (again), but first, I want to direct your attention to this very excellent post over at Pagan Activist, which happens to be right in line with this train of thought.

Okay, now that you are back…without further ado (because we can all stand to be reminded from time to time):

Etiquette Guidelines for Interfaith Discussions

1.) If someone asks about your religious beliefs, share (respectfully and with compassion). If they don’t ask, don’t assume that sharing will be welcome and go out of your way to do so.

2.) If you feel compelled to ask someone else as a way to spark a discussion about their beliefs, back off if they aren’t interested.

3.) Make sure the setting is appropriate for the discussion so neither party will feel uncomfortable.

4.) Don’t act like your truth is everyone’s truth–it isn’t, because if it were, there wouldn’t be a conversation on the matter. When expressing your beliefs, use I-statements to express your personal beliefs.

5.) Refrain from using absolute or exclusive language, but don’t assume that absolute or exclusive statements are made with negative intent.

6.) If you are in a mutual discussion of beliefs, don’t use your theological opinion as a tool for condemnation or insult.

7.) Realize that the people who vocally use their beliefs about religion as an excuse to be a jerk are louder than those that don’t, if you want to be a good ambassador for your faith, act your ideals, and even share them, but don’t preach them.

8.) Language is imprecise–different religious and denominations have differing terminology; understand the limits of your religious literacy and ask for clarification if you are unsure of one’s meaning.

9.) Disagreement is not an automatic insult or attack. Try to refrain from taking offense to comments that may be well-intended, but poorly phrased.

10.) Courteously and constructively correct misinformation. Do not get drawn into an argument (as opposed to a debate). Be polite, even when the other person is not.

11.) If things start going badly, be the adult and back off. When this happens, don’t wait for the other person – do it first. If you are a person that has to have the last word, remember that walking away with dignity while the other person brays like an ass is its own last word.

A particular challenge in discussions about religious and spiritual beliefs is when they meet the internet.  In addition to blogging and other forms of social media, I’ve been a member and then a moderator,  and finally an administrator and co-owner of Pagan Forum for at least a decade now–I’ve had plenty of time to observe and engage in discussions of religion online.  Internet interaction, I think, calls for some extra guidelines…

Netiquette for Inter/Intrafaith Discussions

Responsibilities of the Writer: 

1)  Know your audience.  As a writer, you should know who your audience is–its just sort of common sense that one needs to know who they are writing to, and what interests and perspectives readers might have, in order to appropriately address topics.  But part of knowing your targeted or expected audience is also knowing that some of them might just be curious drop-ins…  If your goal is to foster thought and discussion solely within one’s community, that’s fine (though a consideration of how they could be taken by others might be a good idea)…but if your goal is to spark discussions across communities (either sub-groups within the same faith group, or between faith groups), then perhaps its a good idea to see what your words feel like from an outside perspective and model them appropriately.

2)  Strive for accuracy and honesty.  Try to emphasize when something is a personal opinion (albeit a hopefully educated one) as opposed to a fact-based statement.  Particularly when discussing contentious topics (in which case, try to acknowledge if not address different opinions) or in environments where you could be construed as a subject matter expert or a representative of a particular view.  If you know you are biased on a particular topic, ante up and admit it.

3)  Write  with respect.  The bottom line here is to write with respect for one’s subject matter and one’s audience.  Sometimes that can be a quite difficult balance to achieve.  There are a number of ways to do this: cite sources, admit bias, use inclusive language, make ‘I’ statements, and overall…be kind–or at least as kind as possible if and when criticism is necessary.

4)  Make it readable.  I admit, I’m totally guilty of tl;dr at times…and UAWA (using abbreviations with abandon–and yes, I totally made that one up as a joke), incredibly bad humor, and overuse of ellipses and parentheses. Look, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be able to be read and understood without too much difficulty.  If most people struggle to read it, there isn’t much of a point to have written it!  Things like format (hello, paragraphs!), punctuation and spelling, syntax and grammar matter, as does clarity and specificity in language (terminology matters!).  And for the love of all that you consider holy, use paragraphs–I won’t even bother to try to decipher a total wall of text, it hurts my eye balls and my brain.

Responsibilities of the Reader:

1)  Know the audience of the writer.   Lets be honest here, writers write with a specific audience in mind.  So be mindful of whose internet home you are walking into.  Don’t jump down someone’s throat for disagreeing with you when you wandered into their site (this doesn’t mean you can’t disagree with them).  Religious beliefs are opinions, and a person that wanders into a community with different opinions from theirs should expect to disagree with them.  Don’t automatically take disagreement, even at a fundamental level of how your own beliefs are viewed, as a personal insult.

2)  Read with an open mind and an open heart.  Try to see things from the writer’s perspective and experience.  You don’t have to agree with them, but try to see where they are coming from and why that background could lead them to see things as they do.  Don’t take a general opinion as a personal attack, even if that is how they feel…often people have opinions that they have absolutely no real world experience with (and usually those opinions are the most offensive ones!).  A decent person can still have a shitty opinion, so try to refrain from passing judgement on a person, instead of their ideas and reasoning.

3)  Give some “benefit of the doubt” to the writer.  Writing well can be hard and writing well on hard topics can be even harder.  Sometimes people say things in a way that is not immediately clear what they mean, or they give insult where none is intended because the words they use are not understood in the same way they were meant to be delivered.  In light of an entire post, try not to take single comments out of context, unless they are an illustration of overall disagreement.  Unlike a face to face discussion, where a person has instant feedback and can see that a conversation is starting to go off track and clarify points or ask questions, internet discussions are dependent on when someone can get back to it (and a whole lot can go wrong in that time).  On the other hand, the key word here is some–some comments need to be challenged, whether it be for their sheer offensiveness, or because the author is someone that should know better (and if they don’t they need to be told), etc.

Responsibilities of the Responder/Commenter:

1)  If you didn’t read it all, don’t comment/respond…9 times out of 10 I’m willing to bet it will leave you breaking my next “rule”.

2)  Don’t be an ass.  A responder/commenter is both a reader and a writer and is responsible for behaving as both, the only additional duty you really have is to not be a jerk when you respond.  Ask yourself questions like “Will this contribute to the conversation?”, “Am I voicing a legitimate concern or critique that shows alternative points of view and furthers the discussion?”, “Do my comments get the author and other readers additional insight into the situation?” and “Would I say this to my mother/spouse/child/best friend?”.   If the answer to questions like those is “No”, then perhaps a rewording or rethinking of the comment is in order.

Monday Maxims: Shun & Despise Evil

The Delphic Maxims mention “evil” twice, first as something to be hated, and secondly as something to be abstained from.

But what, precisely is evil?

evil (adj.)
Old English yfel (Kentish evel) “bad, vicious, ill, wicked,” from Proto-Germanic *ubilaz (cf. Old Saxon ubil, Old Frisian and Middle Dutch evel, Dutch euvel, Old High German ubil, German übel, Gothic ubils), from PIE *upelo-, from root *wap- (cf. Hittite huwapp- “evil”).

“In OE., as in all the other early Teut. langs., exc. Scandinavian, this word is the most comprehensive adjectival expression of disapproval, dislike or disparagement” [OED]. Evil was the word the Anglo-Saxons used where we would use bad, cruel, unskillful, defective (adj.), or harm, crime, misfortune, disease (n.). The meaning “extreme moral wickedness” was in Old English, but did not become the main sense until 18c. Related: Evilly. Evil eye (Latin oculus malus) was Old English eage yfel. Evilchild is attested as an English surname from 13c.

source: Online Etymology Dictionary

According to Merriam-Webster, evil is an adjective to describe something as “morally reprehensible” or “causing harm”, and a noun for “the fact of suffering, misfortune, and wrong doing” or the something that causes it.  Extreme moral wickedness…or just the stuff we don’t like.  What is or is not evil seems awfully personal.

Back in November, I discussed Delphic Maxim #136, Gratify without harming, and touched on the idea of evil:

Evil tends to be an interesting subject in Pagan communities.  Views of what constitutes “evil” as a definition and as an action or behavior vary, but tend to emphasize the “I know it when I see it” subjectiveness of the idea of evil.  Of the many discussions (online and IRL) that I have encountered on the topic, my favorite definition comes from an essay on the Wiccan Rede from Proteus Coven–evil is a rip in the fabric of empathy.

All of this really leads me to sometimes think that either everything might be evil (either that, or nothing is)–after all, everything has the capacity to directly inflict harm and misfortune on someone, somewhere.  No one lives in a vacuum and even the most altruistic of acts is going to have a downside somewhere down the line (Newton’s Third Law–every action has an equal and opposite reaction, sometimes I think it applies to more than physics).  And if everything is evil, perhaps it all cancels out, and nothing is more evil than the next, except in the context of the beholder.

When I ran these two maxims through Google Translate, the result I got was “hate wickedness” and “abstain from wickedness”.  Wickedness certainly is implied in the dictionary definitions for “evil”, and indeed, definitions of “wickedness” include the description of “evil”.  But I like the word “wickedness” better than that of “evil”–it isn’t as loaded of a term.  When we think of evil in its usage, it often to carry an additional subtext–either as an absolute that is part of a moral dichotomy (good vs evil), or as some Supernatural Big Bad Being.  

Ultimately, I have to say that evil isn’t supernatural.  It isn’t a moral absolute, or the opposite of good.  Evil isn’t a specific action or person or event.  Evil can’t be defined.  But it does exist.  Evil happens, and it isn’t everything, or nothing.

Evil is a rip in the fabric of empathy.

Now…I guess I just need to take the time to discuss what the heck that means!!

What you can, As you are able

The Wild Hunt has an interesting (and good) piece on first responders and the role of faith (I recommend going and reading it).  The author makes mention of how other religions view the role of a first responder from their particular faith tradition and asks these questions of our own communities:

What is the role of Pagan theology in the mindset of the first responder? We don’t have referential texts to guide our sense of transformative justice or “Godliness” as it were. Is there any religiously-based ethic that drives Pagan first responders?

Yes.

Or perhaps, YES!  And I don’t think it stops with first resonders or first response situations.  Anyone that is religious (regardless of the religion) and works with people in a heath care setting, in the aftermath of tragedy, or in moments of personal crisis has probably developed a perspective on what they do and how or why they do it, that is in some way and shape informed by their religion or spirituality.

I was Pagan when got my first job a lifeguard.  After that, I was in the United States Navy for six years, and for four of them I was a Hospital Corpsman* (and for two of those years, one of my duties was being a victim’s advocate for sexual assault).  In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve never rushed into a burning building, I’ve never been shot at, I’ve not been in combat, and I’ve never delivered a baby on the side of the road in a snow storm.  But I have drilled and trained for events like them.  I have been on the ship’s fire party at a fire, I’ve been in full MOPP gear for hours on end (thankfully a false alarm), and I’ve pulled more than my fair share of people to safety (on and off duty) from the water.   I’ve held the living and the dying and I have cried, bled and sweat for both.  I’m not saying that to boast, or for credit of any sort (there are many  people out there that have seen and done far more than I have); rather I’m saying this for some perspective for what amounts to my personal ethic on the matter.    At the end of the day, I’m just a chick that had a job and an odd compulsion to run towards shit that other people would rather run away from.

Life is a gift. When you can give it, do so with humility; when you must take it, do so with mercy.  And when you can do neither, offer all of the comfort and dignity that you can muster, for the person whose hand you are holding.  

For the most part, the above has been an idea that has come after the fact.  I never particularly thought about my theological or philosophical opinions about life and death or living and dying when I was on the job.  There really isn’t time for religion when you are doing CPR or even just stitching someone up.  You do what has to be done because its what has to be done.  You’ve trained enough to assess the situation and do what has to be done because its become second nature.  And when you come across something that you haven’t trained for, you do what you can to the best of your ability until someone with more training comes along.  In the moment, the only thing you think about is the moment.

Instead, my spiritual practices have been what I’ve found useful–grounding and centering to get through everything from adrenaline and fatigue to despair and elation with a cool head, cleansing to let go of the events of the day before going home to family or out with friends, or a blessing before heading in and a moment of thanks upon coming out.  And like the training of what to do for a broken bone or an electrical fire, they are only really useful because they’ve been practiced to the point that they are instinctive.  Paganism might not have an authoritative text to offer a theological perspective on service before self, or the nature of healing, or the value of life…instead we have a plethora of ideas and ideals on those matters.  What I think our religious traditions can offer though, is a set of practices (common to contemporary Paganism) that can be incredibly valuable to the Pagan that does disaster work, or is a medic, or a police officer, etc.

*If you aren’t familiar with the term, the closest analog would be “medic”…but being a corpsman is  more than being a medic (since most of us equate the term with paramedic).  A corpsman is doctor and nurse on ships at sea without them, they are the paramedic and the ER technician and the CNA and LPN at the hospital, they are the person the draws your blood,  shoots your x-rays, that conducts your lab tests,  passes out condoms, keeps your records, gives shots, delivers babies, acts as the FDA inspector and the Orkin Man, fixes broken bones, teaches first aid and CPR…and the list goes on.  There is no civilian equivalent to the Hospital Corpsman, and really, there is no equivalent to the Hospital Corpsman in either the Air Force or the Army, which both divy up the role of a corpsman into many different jobs (if you are wondering why I didn’t mention the Marines, its because Hospital Corpsman are their medics).

Extra note: The title for this post comes from something a patient of mine once told me…he’d been a Hospital Corpsman in Korea and Vietnam and he wasn’t doing so well…he was also one of my favorite patients.  I asked him one day, what made a good corpsman, and his answer what that “What makes a good corpsman is what makes a good person–the only thing that counts, whether you are in the field or on the ward, in wartime or in peace, at work or at home, is that you do what you can, the best that you are able, for as long as you are needed.”

 

real is irrelevent

There I was, working on tomorrow’s blog post, since I’ve been a bit off-schedule and getting quite behind on my (online) box full of drafts (not to mention my offline box full of stuff to make into drafts), when I decided to procrastinate a bit by checking on new blog posts…

And then I happened across this little gem–I had planned just to leave a comment, but the durn comment was so darn long, I figured I’d just turn it into a post on its own!

Someone in my UU discussion group shared this story today about a student who suffered from doubt over whether Kwan-Yin/Kannon/Tara actually exists. In frustration, he asked his teacher for help.  The lama closed his eyes for a few moments, then replied:

“She knows she’s not real.”

I wonder how this might apply to Pagan deities.

~John Halsted @ The Allergic Pagan

There are so many layers to a statement like that.  I could probably approach this on so many levels it would take me a month to go through them all!  But, I think I’ll limit it (today) to the idea of “real” as applied to gods, and whether or not it even matters (admittedly, a subject I’ve broached  a time or two or ten).

(from a UU campaign a couple years ago)

I’ve noticed that the idea of whether or not something is “real” isn’t even a big deal to a child. My daughter is 6, and the “reality” of the existence (or non-existence) of beings as varied as Tinkerbell, Santa Claus, Mama O’shen (her name for the Ocean-as-Deity), or Persephone is inconsequential and irrelevant in comparison to what we get from their story and what it tells us about our human experience and our interaction with the cosmos at large. My daughter can discuss and interact, for hours, all sorts of things with any of them, and it never even crosses her mind to wonder if they are there or not. And indeed, if you would ask her directly, she would tell you that they are not real, but that real does not matter, because it is their story that is important.

Perhaps we grown-ups spend too much time in our heads justifying our experiences and the time we spend having them, instead of just experiencing. Does it even matter that the gods are real or not? In the past 20 years, I’ve been a polytheist and a pantheist and an ambivalent agnostic…and its been my observation that either the gods don’t care, or I don’t, because my interactions with them haven’t varied based on the changes in those beliefs. They have, at times, changed–deepened, become more (or less) ecstatic, etc, over the years…but (if I am very honest and disgustingly introspective) these changes have been in relation to what I have needed, and what I have gone searching for, rather than as a result of my theological opinion in the existence and nature of deity.

To be honest, while I find such pondering to be intellectually interesting (though somewhat fruitless)…I really find them to be ultimately meaningless to my spiritual and religious beliefs and practices. Quite frankly, I don’t care that the gods exist or not. I have gotten to a point where my beliefs and experiences are not cheapened or enriched by either position. I do what I do, which includes prayer, offerings, reverence in worship, etc, not because I have faith in the literal existence in an eternal being (supernatural or otherwise), but because it works. It centers me, it enriches my experience of the world around me, it connects me to something bigger and greater than myself, and it allows me to bring those things home to my family, my home, and my community.

I don’t need for Sedna to be real to experience her, I don’t need to worship a literal Persephone to feel the relevance of her mythos, and the fact that Neptune might not actually be a eternally powerful divine dude that lives in the ocean doesn’t lessen my thankfulness to him for surviving another hurricane.   I don’t engage with the gods because of what they can do for me, or what I can do for them.  I engage with the gods because the act of doing so is my sacrifice, my symbol of my humility to those ideas and powers and forces that are greater than my tiny and cosmically insignificant self.  

It doesn’t matter if they are “real” or not, it matters that we find meaning in our interactions with them. It matters that those interactions better ourselves and our world.

Pagan Blog Project: Grokking it

Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man.

Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlen

Perhaps one of my favorite made-up words, grok was coined by science fiction writer Robert Heinlen in Stranger in a Strange Land.  If you haven’t ever read the book, you should pick up a copy next time you hit up the library.  I won’t promise that you will love it (it was okay), but its a (modern) classic, and you should give it a go.  Anyhoo…when you grok something, it means that you intuitively understand it so deeply, so profoundly, that you become part of it and it becomes part of you on both a figurative and a literal level.  The ultimate end result of “grokking” is to become something that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Check out this week’s posts!

Paganisms are mostly experiential religions.  Orthopraxy (right practice) is generally emphasized over orthodoxy (right belief). We Pagans vary a bit in whom or what we choose to worship, though the vast majority of Pagans seem to view deity as  polytheistic, and/or earth-based, and/or Goddess-centric.  There is also a bit of variety in how we connect in our individual Paganisms–with the self, and/or with the earth, and/or with deity, and how that connection informs our experiences.

Ultimately, what we believe informs what experiences we seek to have, and the outcome of those experiences further inform our beliefs.  But this isn’t a closed, stagnant circle–I talked before about how I think that each of us are ‘cauldrons of consciousness‘, and that “I think it is here, in the place between the firing of neurons, the flow of electrons, the transmission of neurotransmitters, and the conceptualization of the experience that our experiences with the Divine occur, whether it be in the making of magic or the encountering of deity.”

How and what we grok is a product of this bit of mystery.  Our preconceptions, our ideas, our logic, is changed by what happens between the firing of our neurons, what happens between the transmission and reception of neurotransmitters, between the experience itself and our internalization and conceptualization of that experience.   Those experiences become part of our Paganism and part of ourselves and our souls.  They embed themselves in our psyche, in our consciousness, and ultimately, becomes how we grok the self, the earth, the divine.  What each of us groks (or not, and how) is highly individualized…and equally valid and authentic of an experience, whether we are polytheists, dirt worshippers, Goddess devotees, or something else all together.