by Kamille Pierog

Created on: August 27, 2008

I was raised in an extremely religious household, meaning extremely open about religion, all kinds. I can never truly remember being told that I had to be one or the other. When I was old enough to finally understand the reason for baptism, all of my siblings are baptized, I asked my father what i was baptized, Lutheran, Peybestrian? He sat me down and explained that I was not baptized at all. He had decided for me that I was not to be baptized. His belief was that when I was old enough to understand religion I could choose the religion that best suited me.

I'm not sure whether or not he meant pagan, perhaps he meant more along Christian lines,as all my family is. Nonetheless, he educated me to the best of his ability about all religions. Well, maybe not all, but at least the ones that he knew about.

My father does not go to church, in fact the only time I have seen him step into a church has been for weddings or funerals. He has a strong belief in God and would call himself a Christian. He reads a portion of the Bible every morning and prays frequently, for guidance, at the end of a day, when he has his morning coffee and for every meal.

It is this sense of religion that filled me growing up, not religion but rather spirituality. He taught me to have a strong sense of spirituality, not of religion. He taught me to see the differences and similarities between different religions. He taught me to be forward thinking about it.

As I got older my father I would debate the merits of religion, the interesting facts we had individually picked up over the years. We were always questioning and challenging.

It is perhaps this sense of spiritual freedom that drew me to Paganism. I was not forced into making a decision, in fact my father had always made it apparent that my choice of religion was my own and really no ones business. If I chose to share it with others I could, but it was my own to choose.

Perhaps my sense of Paganism was very frail over the years, as a teenager picking up things here and there, never calling myself a Pagan. It stuck wiht me though into adulthood. I realized that for me Paganism gave me a sense of freedom in myself that no other religion seemed to offer my spirit. In Paganism I feel as though I am not failing at being either extremely devout or sincerely "just interested". It is mine to do as I please.

I don't have to dress up or even shower for that matter. Nor do I have to go to Church every Sunday pretending to like the people that I don't, just because I'm in the House of God. I can sit in my pajama's on my deck and look out across the field and drink my coffee in the morning while my son destroys the house inside.

I can listen to the dawn of the morning and the rising of the sun. I can feel the wind beckoning to me, the bee's singing their sweet song. I can thank the Earth in all that it gives. I can raise my face, close my eyes and breath in the rain, or the sun. I can say thank-you for me day, my night and my very existence. I can kneel in between rows of peas and dig into the earth and say thank-you, feeling the presence of something greater than myself.
Paganism allows me to be me!

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