Crisis of Faith

Lately I just don't know what to do about A's spiritual upbringing.

I've been sort of grumpy lately about the local pagan scene because it's been pinging my personal "superstition meter" lately. I mean, on one hand it's cute to hear A sing "Hoof and Horn," but on the other hand, I could have just as easily been singing any number of curious little pagan songs; and I find myself wondering, "Do I really want to saddle A with ideas like 'Earth Mother is calling Her children home?' A) Doesn't a phrase like that confound our parents and our deity (or dieties); and B) if we're already home, how can we be called home?" And the major approaches of paganism seem to be

• "Everything's the Goddess" (which seems about as unbalanced as saying "Everything's God"); or,
• "Girl-Goddess meets Boy-God, and Their love makes the universe go 'round" (which strikes me as terribly heteronormative); or,
• "You can do spells to get parking spaces" (which seems to view the universe as a psychic mail-order catalogue); or,
• "I had a counselling session with my deity yesterday, and S/He told me that I needed to be less codependant," (which seems more like therapy and less like religion)

I wish I could find some local folks who seem to be more aware about the theological roots of paganism and more interested in its aspects of communion. At least I don't have to deal with Original Sin. Sigh.

I really can't say "We believe such-and-such," because M and I don't share faiths, and A's too young to have formulated a religious belief system, unless one counts Thomas the Tank Engine (and Friends) or Donald Duck (and Friends). Oh well; at least he thanks the strawberry plants for strawberries; and it makes me glad that he might see plants as other and not as object -- I guess when he's a little older I'll let him be the person who moves the pegs on the Portable Stonehenge.

And I'm going to get into trouble one of these days when he sings "Inane-a" as a Goddess name after hearing me in one of my particularly sarcastic moods.