This week is supposed to be the week to blog about pagan values.  I have a bit of trouble with this although, yes, I am pagan and I certainly do have values.  It is the smacking those words together that makes me feel a bit more Sylvia Plath than I like to feel.

I don’t care much for the phrase “Christian values” nor again the phrase “Conservative values”….I like the word “values” to stand on it’s own.  I get a serious case of the ass when people try to co-opt traits I consider available to all.  But I do understand the need to take back the concept of HAVING values and yet BEING pagan.  Because you see, there are those out there who think being one of those “damned  to Hell” sorts means we have no values at all.  Or at least nothing worthy of the name.

And that pisses me off.  The very concept that worthwhile values come only from religion of any sort is anathema to me.  The idea that worthwhile values come only from the “right” religion makes me feel a bit like a Viking berserker, or perhaps a Byzantine iconoclast.  Because you see, that is what words are in the modern world—the approved “icons” we are allowed to worship and pay homage to without censure. So every group out there is busy as pirates grabbing all the best words for themselves.  Love, Faith, Charity, Honor, Loyalty, Patriot.  And they affix the adjectives to the words, “Christian”.  Nope, sorry, you don’t get the patent on the word just like that.

Now, I worship perhaps more frequently than many at the altar of the Oxford Dictionary;  words can be holy to me—they are our only chance to communicate and create change in so many situations.  So, when they are put into bondage by ideologues I get more than a bit pissed off.  It does make me want to break things; but how does one break a phrase?  Very easily.

These values , for instance, are not only “Christian” values: love, faith, charity.  They are simply VALUES that anyone at all, of any spiritual tradition may espouse.  I love—daily.  As a couple, we give 2 to 5% of our income to charity EVERY month.  Before doing the grocery shopping, by the way. I have won through my own skeptical nature to have faith in something that transcends this world, too.  I don’t get presumptuous enough to define exactly what that is—doing that kind of thing makes you go blind or crazy, if you ask me.

I also believe in personal honor and uprightness of behavior.  Some would say this is a pagan value, since it is close upon the Greek ideal of “arete” and some Christians would simply label it the sin of pride.  So perhaps I will let someone affix the label “pagan” to that value, as long as they don’t think it means that there are not honorable, upright Christians, Jews, and Muslims out there.

I am a pagan.  I have values.  I love, I give, I fight, I AM.  I will not be pigeon-holed by my religion, by my race, by my gender.  Words, especially words describing values, are meant to be sparkling jewels moving freely in the sunshine of reason, if you ask me.  Not stuck in dusty unread books.  Not bound by chains of ideology OR religious dogma.  Not bottled for public consumption like a soft drink to lull anyone into false security OR created anxiety.

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