A Note on Culture

When I was in grade school one of my least favorite classes were
those on history. I would often cringe at the idea of doing history
homework and most of the time the cringe was all that really got
done. I learned fairly quickly that if I aced the tests the lower
homework scores (if there was any) were quickly countered and I
would pass the class. It's odd considering that a few years later in
life I would fall in love with the subject. However, it wasn't the
stories of the past that enchanted me. It was the cultures that so
often highlighted and colored the tales that lured me in. It wasn't
so much the people around the world that I was interested in so much
as it was the things they created with their own hands and then
gifted to the rest of the world.
Being pagan or metaphysically oriented on a spiritual journey is not
even half of what we could consider existence. The journey is only
the path we follow and the future it leads to with all of the
awakenings and knowledge that comes with the traveling. But there
are so many other things that lay just off to the side of that path
that set the landscape for the journey and color the way. And there
is just as much, if not more, wisdom and experience in the landscape
as there is in our personal paths.
There seems to be some sort of odd aristocracy that comes to mind
when one thinks of culturally educated people. In part, because the
notion of being "cultured" comes from the misconception that it
requires worldly experiences. It might have held truer in the past
but in this day in age we don't have to travel the world in order to
learn about it. And the learning is the key.
As I said before I hated learning about history in grade school. In
college however it was a different story. Perhaps it was because my
interests had changed and I had grown spiritually so it stood to
reason that my mind had to catch up with the rest of me. My very
first semester in college landed me in the classroom of Dr. Jack
Raymond who was teaching English Composition that year. The man had
a comical way of boring a hole right in your gut and leaving it
completely empty. Then he would inform you that the hole would never
be filled because it was nothing more than the desire to learn about
the world in which we live and experience it for ourselves. Then he
would follow that with giving you first hand examples of just how
uneducated you were.
The average person cannot tell you what a "ketch" is without
researching it first. They might not be able to tell you what
Burgundy tastes like. Chances are they have never heard Comptine
D'un Autre Ete - L'apres Midi before (unless their a Den member).
And odds are good that you could ask them if they have ever been to
a small town that lies within 20 miles of their home and they could
say, "Never even heard of it before."
These are the kinds of things I was confronted with by Dr. Raymond
and it was these same things that made me feel pretty foolish. What
was worse was when he asked us why we had not experienced or learned
about these things before, everyone had their own reasons but it all
summed up to interest levels and just pure laziness.
One of the definitions for "retarded is: "relatively slow in mental
or emotional or physical development". And during that summer there
in Dr. Raymond's class we all found out that we were pretty retarded.
Music, art, literature, wine, food, and the most simple and basic
daily practices of common people, these are the kinds of things we
see when we look up from the dirt path and look at the world around
us. All of them are easy enough to experience if we step outside our
own heads long enough to find them. But sadly enough most people
never learned how to step outside their own heads. From their point
of views to all the things they "have" to do they really don't see
just how retarded they make themselves. And they attempt to cover
that fault by talking about their path and only their path, their
life and only their life. But it only results in more foolishness
because now we have an active example of blind laziness and we can
clearly see where it leads.
So we don't follow them. It's foolish enough walking through the
forest of life with your head down but even worse when you follow
someone who is doing just that. If they fall off a cliff along the
way chances are you will fall with them because in all their great
wisdom and leadership they never told you to look around. They just
told you to look at them.
There is much more to a spiritual journey than the topics of the
path. Just as there is much more to the world than the dirt road
called life that runs through it. Paganism isn't always about magic,
spells, or any metaphysical topic. It's not always about the old
world and it's not always about the path. But it is always about the
life we all choose to lead and all the things that come with it.
It's up to you to decide just how much color will be added to that
life, just how much real wisdom and experience you have and can
share. Or you can choose to be like others and just make the claim
and pretend. But that would be retarded.

Angel Snowden - 2006