The Pagan Values Blogject

Perserverance, Compassion, and Courage….

Pax — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 07:15:08 +0000

Neo-Pagan Elder and Activist Starhawk demonstrates walking ones talk and the Virtues of today’s title in her post “Return to Oakland“.

Full Engagement

Pax — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 19:34:23 +0000

Teo Bishop, over at Bishop in the Grove offers a brief musing on the Pagan Value of being present in the world and on the complexities at play in modern life and adulthood.

Wrestling with Pride and Questions and where did the bloger/editor go?

Pax — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 19:57:22 +0000

So it is surprisingly difficult to write out the interplay between Pride as a virtue and Pagan Pride… I am attending a Pagan Pride event tomorrow and marching in the Orlando LGBT Pride parade… and will be trying to coordinate my notes and thoughts into something coherent in the next week or so… I’ve unpacked a lot of questions…

How do we engage and manifest our Pride in contemporary Paganisms ancient heritage? The values and virtues and ethics and philosophy and wisdom and love of science, the history and the art.

Are the ways in which the differences between Pagan Pride and Gay Pride are manifested signposts for our future development?

How does Pagan Pride manifest itself the rest of the year?

… these are a few of the questions I’ve been wrestling with and wondering about in the last month or so. I’ve also been trying to post ~something~ each day at my personal/mainblog Chrysalis… to jump start my writing and creativity after a long and difficult Summer. In the meantime I WILL be posting more regularly here… I suspect many of the posts will be links and excerpts with some sort essays and questions for discussion.

Thank you,

Pax / Geoffrey Stewart

Pagan Values & Pagan Pride

Pax — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 15:01:19 +0000

Dear Friends,

September and October mark the time of year when Contemporary Pagans celebrate Pagan Pride, either as affiliates of the Pagan Pride Project or in independant festivals. This year, a discussion about how to frame these events both for ourselves and with others, has led your Pagan Values Month host and ocassional blogger from here and there, to wonder about Pride…

“Pride is an inward directed (feeling) emotion that exemplifies either an inflated sense of one’s personal status or the specific, mostly-positive emotion that is a product of praise or independent self-reflection. Philosophers and social psychologists have noted that pride is a complex secondary emotion which requires the development of a sense of self and the mastery of relevant conceptual distinctions (e.g., that pride is distinct from happiness and joy) through language-based interaction with others.^[1] Some social psychologists identify it as linked to a signal of high social status.^[2] One definition of pride in the first sense comes from St. Augustine: “the love of one’s own excellence”.^[3] In this sense, the opposite of pride is either humility or guilt; the latter in particular being a sense of one’s own failure in contrast to Augustine’s notion of excellence.

Pride is sometimes viewed as excessive or as a vice, sometimes as proper or as a virtue. While some philosophers such as Aristotle (and George Bernard Shaw) consider pride a profound virtue, most world religions consider it a sin, such as the Old Testament of the Bible used by Christians and Jews, in Proverbs 11:2.”

~From Wikipedia entry on Pride, 10:50am 9/01/11

I find it interesting that Aristotle is mentioned as having thought Pride a Virtue, although given the general emphasis upon Excellence in Ancient Greek culture I don’t find it to surprising as a proper Pride in ones accomplishments would be understandable – as long as one avoided the dreaded hubris!

But if Pride is a Virtue, that begs the question…

“What are we proud of?”

What in our Pagan communities, what in our past, what activities and initiatives in the present, what makes us proud. What are we doing for the future that fills us with Pride? I hope you will join me in exploring these issues, dear Pagani.

Peace,

Pax

PS- if you feel moved to post or podcast your own thoughts on this topic, feel free to comment on this post and link to your own thoughts on the matter!

Thank you, thank you all!

Pax — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 23:27:23 +0000

Friends, Netizens, Pagani,

Thank you. Thank you for your attendance in the form of reading and sharing the contributions, and thank you for your participation as posters in this years event…

This Years Archives will remain a separate page for a few weeks as late entries, and some of the ripples of thought and conversation are tracked down and incorporated if it seems clear that the poster/podcaster was participating.

Peace, and Thank you all,
Pax / Geoffrey Stewart

After June

Pax — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 10:58:59 +0000

Hello out there,
Many of you have kindly subscribed to this blogject. I am busy editing the 2011 event page and working on my own post, so there hasn’t been much posted here lately. Moving into July and August I hope to rectify that by bringing on some additional authors/editors to make this project an ongoing resource highlighting articles and posts related to the Values, Virtues, and Ethics found within the Pagan faiths.

The possibility of adding a forums is being explored and we always welcome guest submissions from the community.

Peace, and thank you for subscribing and/or giving us some of your precious time,

Pax, your Editor

A brief, good, list…

Pax — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 05:36:55 +0000

Gayle in Connecticut, USA, shared the following on the 2011 Event Facebook Page…

Greetings Friends and Merry Meet!
I recently distilled my values down into 8 words. They are:
1. Harm None
2. Think Rationally
3. Advocate Justice
4. Inspire Love
I strive to live my life with these 8 words/values to guide my actions. I may not always succeed….but I’m definitely thinking before I act or say things.
Love and Bright Blessings to all.

I asked that I might repost here to add to the archives, she said yes… and here we are and here you go.

Peace,

Pax

Pagan Values: Perserverance and Courage

Pax — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 05:26:07 +0000

Patrick McCollum has posted a guest editorial at The Wild Hunt, discussing his intention to continue fighting for full Freedom of Religion and religious equality before the law in the state of California, in his ongoing civil rights work to see that the Five Faiths policy of the California Dept of Corrections, which only recognizes the legitimacy of 5 religious Traditions.

What other example of Perserverance and Courage can you come up with from within our many intertwined communities?

It begins….

Pax — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 06:21:01 +0000

Hey folks,

So the Event Page is up at The Pagan Values Blogject… I will be adding articles posted here or linked to the invitation posts (Or this one) in between my full-time job and a few other commitments, and the occasional

“Oh, hey, looky there! There’s a whole world ~outside~ of my computer screen!? Oooh Fresh Air and Sunshine!!”

breaks…

Then I will be searching for those posts tagged/categorized with the “Pagan” Values Event 2011 tag…

Peace,
Pax

“Pagan” Values Event 2011 (the official post/episode tag)

Pax — Mon, 30 May 2011 05:53:00 +0000

So, as some of you may have heard, the latest wave of back-and-forth discussions, soul-searching, kvetching, and debate over the use of the Word Pagan is going on right now…

As the creator of this blogject and the Pagan Values events, I guess you can see that I tend to favor the word Pagan, my definition of it is fairly practice-and-sources/influences based…. Thorn Coyle has, in many interviews and places, talked about the Venn Diagram nature of contemporary Paganism/Polytheism/What-ever-term-floats-your-boat…

I rather like the Venn Diagram analogy because it is my personal take that our many interlocking and overlapping circles of practice and influences and inspiration can come together to create a fabulous mandala that can support society and encourage its healthy transformation and growth… To the point where 10,000 years from now we are arguing about the differences in honoring the spirits of many different colonized worlds and whether we are really Cosmos based or should we name our spiritual base by birth-planet of origin…. Earth Based and TerraNova Based and Avani-5 based spirituality for example… (did I ever mention I can be a dreamer and optimist even as I wrestle with pessimism and doubt?)

At the same time I can understand the power and importance of accuracy in naming and words across many faith Traditions… so the official event post/episode tag for our 2011 event is..

“Pagan” Values Event 2011

Use it in good health and I look forward to your contributions!!

Peace,

Pax