On her blog, A Forest Door, Dver has challenged Polytheists to write about their religious practices for the month of September. The blog post https://forestdoor.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/are-you-up-for-the-challenge/ and the John Beckett’s post which is referenced, are both worth reading.
It has been months since I last wrote a blog post, let alone a series of blog posts, but I felt like this was the perfect prompt to get writing again, no matter how raw I might feel.
Today I watched the movie The Martian. It was entertaining, and now David Bowie’s song Starman is on heavy rotation in my head. One of the characters, the mission director at NASA is speaking with another character at a critical moment. In this anxious moment, the mission director is asked if he believes in God. The director replies that his father was Hindu and his mother a Baptist, so he believes in several Gods.
I am heartened to see things like this, a matter-of-fact acknowledgement that some people are indeed Polytheistic. Hopefully, we will soon see that a Polytheistic religious approach is acceptable and commonplace in the greater cultural consciousness.
A few months ago, I was helping a customer whose family’s cars we were servicing in quick succession – so I was seeing a lot of her. Every time I saw her, she wore hijab. She was dressed beautifully, friendly, outgoing, and open. She was apologizing for being late to her appointment because her sons were so tired. She went on to explain that the fasting was so hard on them, poor dears. I knew it was Ramadan, so I asked a few questions about fasting, which she happily answered.
I learned a powerful lesson from her. She never apologized for her modest dress, her religious traditions and strictures, and she spoke as though everyone knew Muslim custom as ordinary and commonplace. I know that it isn’t always wise, nor appropriate to be so frank about one’s minority religious life, but I try my best to be like my customer – open and unashamed to be a Polytheist Pagan.