There’s a good article in The Guardian today about the nasty psychological effects of being exposed to constant propaganda about the rapture and being “left behind”. Trigger warning if you’ve been exposed to that kind of bad theology. Thankfully I left the evangelical nonsense before the trend for making these movies happened.
Continue readingPersonal stories
Stories of people who have changed paths or are leaving their religion.
“a little bit of a weird outcome”
From six-year-old Tibetan monk to teenage Ibiza raver: a Spanish boy’s incredible journey. Osel Hita Torres joined a monastery after the Dalai Lama declared him a reincarnated spiritual leader, but at 18 he broke free and moved to Ibiza. A new TV series tells his story.
Ashifa Kassam
Escape from Scientology
TW: Scientology, religious trauma. ‘At 52, I abandoned everything, every friend, every family member’: the top official who escaped Scientology (The Guardian)
When he was certain that he wasn’t being followed, he caught the tube to the National Portrait Gallery, where he sat on the grass outside and let his heart rate slow to its regular beat. “I went OK, now what? What am I going to do? For the first time that I could remember, I wasn’t answerable to anyone.”
‘At 52, I abandoned everything, every friend, every family member’: the top official who escaped Scientology (The Guardian)
Repost: My spiritual journey
I came to terms with being gay in 1996. At the time I was an evangelical Christian and tried to keep my faith for two and a half years. It didn’t work. I realized that even if I accepted I was gay, my upbringing had taught me to hate myself and see myself as worthless so I needed a change.
Part 2: My First Witchcraft Book
I made many new friends to support me. The friend group I got involved with consisted of a lot of witches and Pagans. I asked one of them for a book recommendation. They recommended Cunningham’s book. I fell in love. Magic resonated with me. And the God and Goddess were full of love and acceptance.
From a series of Mastodon toots by Jarred the Wyrd-Worker detailing his spiritual journey. (Read the rest on Mastodon)
A change of perspective
There was a guy in one of my classes — let’s call him Jonathan — who was openly gay. I had never knowingly interacted with, or even seen, anyone gay before. … He just stood and sang, a capella. It was honestly beautiful in its own right — Jonathan has a great voice. But, as he sang, all my feelings coalesced into an understanding. He was singing about what Black folks experienced and still experience in America — something I had never been taught. He was also, I think, singing about his own experience as a gay man — something I had also never been taught.
— Read more at Rochelle, “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child”. NonNumberChar, Medium
Reblog: Marking the seasons
A really nice post about discovering that you can enjoy the cycles of the seasons without needing to believe in the gods: you can be an AtheoPagan.
I realized I could do anything that I wanted to do. For someone raised in an oppressive religion, this thought is life changing. And what did I want to do? Two things topped my agenda. First, I wanted to read anything and everything I’d missed in all those years. That project is still ongoing. And second, I wanted to mark the passage of time through the seasons.
GUEST POST: A Memorable Mabon on the AtheoPaganism blog
Knocking on doors
Fascinating article in The Guardian about two guys who started out atheist comedians and ended up becoming Christians with a priestly vocation. I’m including it here because it shows how changing paths is a very gradual process, not usually a sudden change, and that sometimes these changes are quite insidious and hard to resist.
I like the metaphor of rooms in your life that change when the Divine enters them.
Content warning for people who have recently left Christianity: you may find the article distressing.
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Changing Paths 