Today I found the above two statues chained together outside a
Buddhist shop in Kyoto. It was the final piece in a jigsaw of
events that inspired this post. At the moment I a trying to create
a Pagan Moot in Kyoto.I believe there are pagans in Kyoto,
but hiding in the shadows somewhere. I know that slowly and
surely the moot will grow, but as I expected, I was the only
person at the first one. The big advantage about being
the only person at a moot is nobody disagreed with me.
But strangely the worse thing was that nobody disagreed
with me. The great thing about paganism is that everyone is
following their own path, so there is agreement and disagreement,
but many chances to learn from other peoples paths.
Recently one of my most spiritually aware friends had
her spiritual beliefs attacked by a fundamental christian.
He went as far a saying her beliefs were evil. She is
Japanese so has had little contact with fundamental christians.
This bullying made me angry, but the worst thing for
her was his unwillingness to try to understand her path. If I
speak honestly, I have no time for any of the monotheist
religions, I believe they are fundamentally bad.
But because of my friends openness to everything,
she asked me to teach her about Christianity. At first I did not
want to, but after thinking about it, I would rather be
open as she is, than closed as her bully was.
Also I have some good Christian and Islamic friends who
have strong beliefs about Jesus; so I decided to write
about Jesus for her and in respect for them. When I was
young I attended a Church of England school, so
I knew a lot, but I also researched in the Catholic and
King james (not so witch friendly) bibles.
I learnt a lot and one thing that surprised me
was except for the Resurrection there is only one
miracle that is in all four gospels. It is the feeding of the
five thousand, which as always struck me as
being a metaphor for sharing and if society
shares there would be no poverty. So I read
it in the gospel of John and tried to translate
it into Japanese. These events have
made it very clear to me that we can learn from
all spiritual paths. But without the freedom
to walk our own path we can become slaves to another
persons path, that may or may not be spiritual.
