Semi-hermit
![Thinking by blogging](http://paganvigil.com/catimages/thinking2.png)
In 2005 when I started blogging, I made the deliberate choice to separate my political stuff from my pagan stuff. I was tired of pagans not being libertarians and political types tolerating me for being pagan. That’s what pagans had become in mainstream politics. When we were acknowledged at all, we were just another special interest group to appease. Oh we might be cuter and more photogenic, but we were never serious.
My grandfather taught me to greet the sun. This morning, well before the before the grey of dawn, I was outside in the cold fog lighting my rocket stove. I went with the hot chocolate this morning.
To this day, there are three issues that drive me away from talking to my fellow pagans and into hermit mode. Climate change, social justice, and radical feminism. Somehow these have gotten wrapped up in paganism even though they have nothing to do with worship or praxis.
In the desert morning before the sky lightens, the horizon can be knife-sharp and miles away. Being wrapped in softness buried in cloud so deep you can barely make out the sun, that’s pretty awesome. It’s a Godtouch in it’s own way. I’d never notice except it’s so different from what happens usually.
I’ve studied Christianity enough to know that it’s atrocities weren’t ordered from on high, but were done at the command of humans. Humans committed the crimes on other humans. And then humans recorded it for posterity. It wasn’t done on Divine Command.
One of the great gifts my paganism grants me is the ability to let go of who I think I am and just let the world song flow through me. I can never do it for very long. This morning the fog helps carry me away.
That’s why it saddens me to see some pagans pulling the same tricks, right down to claiming that it’s part of the Divine Will.
This is WHY I am pagan. Not for the people, but for the Divine. I hear Their laughter and it’s filled with love. Love for Each Other, love for the World, and love for me and people everywhere.
Power with instead of power over. It’s a simple idea. And it’s one that certain pagans want to forget.