It’s no secret that I was raised Southern Baptist, and am still in Recovery. My daddy is a pastor, and my mom, the perfect rural Alabama pastor’s wife told me just yesterday that the reason bad stuff happens to me and mine is because I’m depending on the moon and the stars instead of on God. Le sigh…

I make no secret of my spirituality to them. I don’t attempt to “convert” them, but neither am I in the broom closet. But I know that they think that it is just a matter of time until I come back to their path and start teaching Sunday School again.

Anyhoo, this being rural Alabama, there are “Get Saved Now, Get Right or Get Left” road signs every 10 or 15 feet.  I usually read them, and let them go over me like water off a duck’s back.  But today I saw one that stuck in my craw. Oddly, there shouldn’t have been anything about it to bother me. All it said was “Give Your  Troubles to the Lord”. That’s actually pretty innocuous. Why did it bother me? The phrase “the Lord”.

It was an epiphany. When I pray, I do not pray to the Lord and Lady. I can’t use those titles.  I’m really not trying to be argumentative, or “oh, I am such a victim of my raising”, but for so long, “the Lord” meant that guy who was going to send me to hell if I wasn’t perfect.

When I first started my pagan path, I came up with my own names for the duality of the deity. I won’t tell  you their names, because it’s personal, but I will say that I can not call them Lord and Lady, and that they (he, she, it, them we) are loving and accepting and much more a web of connection to all, than something “out there”, separate from myself and others.

I sent my Pagan Parenting Essay to Dr. Kendra Vaughan Hovey of the First Church of  Wicca in MA. She was collecting essays from folks telling their stories about how they came to find the pagan/wiccan faith, because there is a book compliation in the works, called "Out of the Broom Closet". My essay is a finalist! She sent me a contract yesterday!

I am 2 weeks away from graduating with a degree in Health Informatics. This has been a long road for me. I'm 35 years old, a mom of 2, wife, and have had lots of trouble deciding what I wanted to be when I grew up. I have music skills and crafty skills, but those skills just don't offer security, and let's face it, with a 10 1/2 year old, and 8 year old, a mortgage, security is what we need.

I think the job will be a great fit for my personality. I am a Scorpio, so really like my hidey holes. I am detail oriented and like to have a specific task to complete. The specific job that I want is "Coder of ER charts" at a hospital about 30 miles away. So I did a spell. Firstly, I left all my tools out on the back deck to charge under last night's full moon. This morning when I woke up, I went outside, cast my circle, lit my candles and thanked Mother moon for Her energy (I get up really early, so I could still see her). Normally, I don't like to bring any objects that haven't been cleansed or charged into my circle, but I felt this spell called for exaclty that. Here's what I did:

Yesterday afternoon I thought long and hard about what I wanted in and from a job. I want financial security, flexibility, so that if I need to drop everything and be mama, I can do that. I want to feel as though I am doing good things for others. I know that most wouldn't consider organizing and abstracting medical data to be beneficial to others, but we information nerds know the beauty in having pertinent data at the touch of a computer keyboard. I want a job that will not stagnate. Meaning, once I have my experience and expertise, I can move onto bigger things, ie, consulting, travel positions, etc...

The elements of my spell? It was actually really simple. I laid a dollar bill on my table, and laid my watch on top of that, lit a candle, spoke what I wanted, finished with "and it harm none" and sent the energy out with a big push.The dollar and the watch had not been cleansed, because, as I am going into the world, I wanted to prove to myself that 40 hours per week in the work force will not change who I am. I will be influenced, surely, but will remain me. The dollar was a symbol of financial security, the watch a symbol of using my time efficiently, the candle the light and heat of my hopes and dreams.

So mote it be.

My essay ( the first of 3) has been published on Witchvox, but I thought it was worth reprinting here.

When I first began to acknowledge to myself that I was indeed on a pagan path, I began to have vivid dreams about my children being in danger. Sometimes the imagery would be obvious. Once they were swimming in murky water filled with snakes that they couldn’t see, but that I knew were there. Other times, the meaning would be a little more hidden. I remember one dream where my mother was trying to get my daughter to teach Sunday school at her church.

It isn’t easy to step off the beaten path in the buckle of the Bible Belt.

My father is a Baptist minister. I grew up in a very Baptist, very strict household. I wasn’t allowed to wear shorts or make-up. We went to church three times a week, world without end. There were also countless “revivals”, “watch night services” vacation bible schools and fifth Sunday “dinner on the grounds”, and Friday night “singings” that had to be attended. I was a true believer in all of it.

I didn’t question any part, other than “had I truly taken all the steps I needed in order to be saved”. Granted, I do remember amusing myself as a child by looking at all of the pretty colors around the people in the church. But as I’d never heard of auras, this didn’t trouble me at all. This was my life until I was 20 years old. Then I began to question.

By this time I was married. My husband and I were offered jobs as paid choir members in the Episcopal Church, in one of the larger cities in Alabama. It was amazing to be around “church people” who drank alcohol and used swear words. Some were even openly homosexual.

It was so refreshing to combine spirituality with accepting others for themselves. My personal spiritual questions weren’t as frightening when I saw others on their own spiritual paths. Others who didn’t quite fit the mold of the ones I had thought would be the only ones in heaven.

I considered Wicca for the first time at this point, but found I was just too confused about life in general to settle on any one thing at that time. I just let circumstances take me where they would. I continued with my church job and my unorthodox spiritual views and didn’t trouble myself.

In 1997, I became a mother. My husband and I had her baptized in the Episcopal Church, where we were members at the time. I went to church because I thought I should and because, after all, shouldn’t children be brought up in church? But many times I would find myself passing the time looking at the auras of the priest and the choir members.

Something was missing. In 2000, we had our second child and dutifully had him baptized as well. But church was becoming less and less fulfilling to me. My children certainly were not getting anything out of it. And I often had to give them an alternative view to what they had been told in Sunday school.

Then one day my daughter mentioned ‘the devil” and I knew it was time to rethink our family’s approach to spiritual education. I finally just allowed myself and my children to stop going all together. I told myself I would “home church”.

My husband and I are hardly typical Alabamians in any case. My children have been taught from their earliest memories that “god” is the same thing everywhere; people just call “him” different names. And some people are happier thinking of god as a “she”.

Their catchphrase from the time they could talk was “we are all connected in the circle of life” from the Disney movie. They have always known that sometimes girls marry girls and boys marry boys; that just how “god” made them. Once, at age 4, my daughter started to pass by a tree, checked herself, and stopped to give it a gentle pat and a smile. So I slowly started to introduce pagan knowledge to them.

That’s when the dreams started.

It was one thing for me to endanger my own soul to eternal brimstone, but quite another for me to take my children with me. It’s scary enough being a spiritual searcher. It’s scary enough being a mom. But admitting to myself that I was pagan and letting my children see me hold stones to balance my chakras, and teaching my children about the properties of stones and herbs, well…

I started slowly. At first, I began to leave my Wicca/Witchcraft books on the coffee table, instead of hiding them away so my children wouldn’t see them. My daughter was 8 at the time and has never met a book she didn’t want to read, so this was quite a step.

Then I openly began to read Tarot for my closest friends. I told my children it was my “guess the future” game. I began to tell my children about how stones were very old and had lots of “god energy” in them and that we could use that energy to make good things happen.

I gave opals and topaz to them to protect against bad dreams and to help them learn to listen to their hearts. I showed them my runestones and told them how I combine them with some of the herbs from the garden to help me focus on something important. They heard me tell my pumpkin plants that I desperately wanted to grow: “Pumpkins, Pumpkins grow to me, you will be cherished, you will see. As I will so mote it be”.

The dreams have gone now. I have peace with showing them my path. And peace with letting them go to church with their daddy, who is still Episcopalian, but very accepting of his witchy wife. I even let them go to church with my parents if they wish to do so.

They are old enough now to understand that people find “god” in different ways, and that it’s best to leave everyone’s spirituality to their own hearts and souls.

Now when my children see me outside with my candles, lifting my arms up, throwing my head back and saying rhyming couplets, they just say, “Mom’s praying”.

Sometimes they even join me.

Of course, if you know me, you know that I'm being completely facetious with that title,as I do not believe in the devil. Most pagans do not. Don't get me wrong. I do believe that there is much evil. The evidence can be seen all around us. But I do not believe that one fallen angel is responsible for all of it.

I believe we humans have free will. I choose to work with "the Light side of the Force". Joy, Peace, Good Wishes, Hope for my brothers and sisters and such. The witches' rede "And it harm none, do as you will" is my golden rule. Really, if one thinks about it, everything falls under that phrase. And, wow, is that a difficult commandment to follow. Most non pagans assumes it means " do whatever you want". But it doesn't.

To be a pagan, to me at least, means that I am connected to all. All people, Animals, Plants, Stones, Trees, Fire, Water, Air. We all share the same spark of divinity. The essence of "god/dess" in the cat is no more or less than the essence in myself. So, it stands to reason that harming anything or anyone harms anything and everything else, as we are all connected.

Some would call me a fluffy bunny. I would disagree. I took my first step onto this spiritual path in 1993. I have a peace that I could have never imagined. The more I read, the more I realize and more fully understand what I believe and what I don't believe. What works for me and what doesn't. What seems like bells and whistles and what seems real.

No, I can't say a rhyme and make the wind blow. I can't use the power of my mind to start a fire. But I can see that Fire, Wind and I share the same spark of god/dess. And I can see that they are willing to help me, just as I am willing to help them. Because we are one and the same. Just different manifestations.