Happy Winter Solstice

We little evolution monkeys jumped out of de
text book so we can dance to Christmas music.

So There I Was...

Last night I attended my first Winter Solstice event and you know what, I LOVED it! When you celebrate the Winter Solstice you connect with nature and the very essence of your being. When you celebrate Christmas, you connect with malls, maxed out credit cards, and happy go-lucky shoppers who will fight you to the death for a parking spot.

As I was talking to this Buddhist girl and enjoying the Solstice party, I realized just how far I've come since I broke away from my old life eight years ago. Now, I am free. Now, I have real peace in my heart. I hate to say it but it's mind-numbing and demoralizing to sit in a pew year after year and listen to sermons that always have the same central theme — you must do more and give more. In a Baptist church, I know full well why no one sits in the first three rows. It's not just to humiliate the late people. Nosiree, it's to avoid getting sprayed by the preacher as he goes on and on about tithing, repenting, not skipping services, and so on. I mean it, one day we arrived late at my sister's church and lo and behold, that meant walking up to the front row in the middle of the service. My wife was so mad that she kept monkey-pinching me, and every time she did it I would let out a squeal of pain, and the pastor just thought I was getting into the message. And man, he screamed LOUD about if I didn't get saved right then, I could get killed in an auto accident on the way home and go straight to hell. Shit, there I'd be all alone with Hitler, serial killers (except for Ted Bundy, who went to heaven), and a billion Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and all the other folks who were born into the wrong religion. So in addition to giving me a second shower, all of this really had the net effect of scaring the crap out of me, especially that part about the lake of fire. See, you burn and feel the pain, but you really don't die (maybe because you're already dead), and just whither in pain for billions and trillions of years. Yes, all this makes perfect sense to me, but I'm just glad I'm free of it.

So, the point being, the switch from nature-based religions to anthropocentric religion has really been horrible for Western humanity because we've lost touch with who we are. In the United States, we have millions upon millions of people who have no environmental ethic and no connection to the moon and stars and the beauty of nature. When I began questioning these things in 1997, my Sunday School teacher said I should "worship the Creator and not the Creation." But I'm not trying to worship nature, only connect with it — and become a part of it again. But in the world of conservative Christianity, any celebration of nature is still connected with Paganism, and that word still has bad connotations. When your grandma used to grab a switch from the yard and start whacking you silly for stepping in her flower bed, didn't she used to scream, "You naughty little Pagan?" Yeah, Pagans have a bad reputation, still. But our ancestors and indigenous people today have and had something special that we've lost. They have a sense of "connection" — the beautiful feeling of being a part of some massive organism that reaches out to the stars. It's really much more beautiful and satisfying than the fear-based religion I was raised in.

Don't be afraid to be free, and to study different religious ideas. Don't be afraid to break out. It will be the most rewarding step that you ever take.

The Yellow Canary