Where does God reside?

One of the complaints that I have heard from people about my path is that there is a Wiccan belief that the Divine resides in us all.  Many Christians will tell me how it is sacrilegious to believe that the Spirit of God resides within each of us.  How untrue this is!  The Bible gives many references to the Holy Spirit living within each of us.

I am reminded of an old song that I was taught in Sunday School when I was growing up, the refrain of which is:

The Church is not a building
The Church is not a steeple
The Church is not a resting place
The Church is the people

Going back to the Old Testament in Ezekiel the Bible states "And I will put my Spirit within you" (Ezekiel 36:25-27).  In 1 Corinthians we are told that "God's Spirit dwells in you" (1 Corinthians 3:15-17).

Romans 8:11 takes this a step further and tells us that the only way we may live is the have the Spirit dwelling within us.

Given this confirmation from the Bible how is it wrong to believe that the Divine lives in each of us?  The Holy Spirit is a part of the Trinity therefore Divine!  To be baptized is to invite the Holy Spirit to reside in you.

I recognize the Divine within myself.  Does that make me Divine?  No, far from it.  And I have yet to meet a Pagan who states that they are the Divine because the Divine lives in them.  They are part of the Divine.  Just as all Christians are one in the body of Christ, Pagans are one with the Divine.

I will happily allow the Divine to live within me and to commune with my Spirit.  As those intertwine I only become closer to my Divine family and closer to all those who are also entwined with my Divine family.

What's the Difference: part 2.

One of the few people I am out of the broom closet with is my best friend.  I shouldn't say I am in the broom closet because I am not exactly.  I don't hide who I am, but I don't advertise either.  The author of the book The Path of a Christian Witch recommends that we keep our path secret, not because it is wrong but because it is looked upon negatively in both the Christian and the Wiccan communities.  I can understand but I do not pretend that I will agree.  I do not preach my path to anyone.  I do hope that I live it.  I digress.... back to my best friend.

My best friend has been so since I was about 14, meaning that she has held this dubious distinction for over half my life.  We are oil and water in many ways and are only now discovering exactly how much our friendship has shaped the other.  As with many people in my life, she is Catholic.  She isn't just Catholic, she is about as die hard Catholic as they come.  This is a woman who wears a veil to church!  I may not claim to understand, but she is who she is and I love and accept and would not have her any other way.

When she finally discovered my true path in my religious life she said to me, "I understand exactly where you are coming from but why pick a name for it that is so contentious to everyone else?"  This is why I love her.  She asks the good thought provoking questions.  Why is it?  She was prepared to accept everything except the name.  What is it about the name?  Wicca at its soul is simply finding the Divine in nature.  It is about accepting the supreme duality, that God is neither male or female or God is both male and female.  Wicca has something my Protestant upbringing did not: equality.  You see, in the Protestant church there is no Mary who is regarded as sacred.  She exists but you do not pray to her.  You do not recognize that she plays a vital role in the story of the Divine.  Without Mary, there is no Christianity!  The Catholic church has this equality but there are so many other aspects of Catholicism I just do not agree with.  So why the name?  It is the best description I can come up with for my path.  It accurately describes the community I have found.

She had a few other questions then:
1. How do you tie these together?
2. What about spells?
3. What about the belief that you can tap into God's powers?
4. Do you believe in a separate Goddess?

These are wonderful questions.  Answering her allowed me to clarify and solidify my own thoughts so that I could easily describe what I believe.

How do I tie these together?

I believe the best way to show someone what I believe in the most absolutely elegantly stated way is a piece written by St. Francis of Assisi called the Canticle of the Sun:

Most high, all powerful, all good Lord!
All praise is yours, all glory, all honor, and all blessing.

To you, alone, Most High, do they belong.
No mortal lips are worthy to pronounce your name.

Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures,
especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and you give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars;
in the heavens you have made them bright, precious and beautiful.

Be praised, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
and clouds and storms, and all the weather,
through which you give your creatures sustenance.

Be praised, My Lord, through Sister Water;
she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure.

Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
through whom you brighten the night.
He is beautiful and cheerful, and powerful and strong.

Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth,
who feeds us and rules us,
and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

Be praised, my Lord, through those who forgive for love of you;
through those who endure sickness and trial.

Happy those who endure in peace,
for by you, Most High, they will be crowned.

Be praised, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,
from whose embrace no living person can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin!
Happy those she finds doing your most holy will.
The second death can do no harm to them.

Praise and bless my Lord, and give thanks,

and serve him with great humility.

(from Wikipedia: Canticle of the Sun)

I have a wonderful book of this that I read to my children on a regular basis called Brother Sun Sister Moon which they adore.  The interpretation in this book calls the Lord the Mother and Father of all Creation.  Such a wonderful description of how the natural elements and Christianity fit together!

What about spells and the belief that I can tap into the Divine's power?

I combine these two because they are so close.  I always have an issue with the question of the Divine's power.  You see, even in Christianity we are taught that our bodies are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit:

19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's. (1 Corinthians 6)

The Christian belief that the Divine resides in each of us is echoed in Wicca.  In Wicca you never demand something from the Divine, you ask nicely.  You give offerings and make requests.  Demands are rarely met and frowned upon.  You are not the Divine, but you can ask of the Divine.  You direct your energy to asking the Divine and into what you seek.  What a fool I would be to think that I could possibly handle the same power that the Divine can handle!  I am not a Goddess.  I am pretty strong, both emotionally and spiritually, but that is a going a bit far.  I can handle what the Divine entrusts to me, the energy and power to ask and to trust.  

This all leads to my answer on spells.  Do I do spells?  Absolutely, but rarely.  Only when I feel I need that much power behind what I am asking.  What is a spell?  A spell is nothing more than a prayer that has been turned into a ritual.  The energy put into turing the prayer into the ritual, finding the exact right wording, the exact right herbs and ingredients contains so much more power than a prayer.  It is focusing and directing my energy in such a way to ask the Divine for assistance that takes the prayer to a new, higher level.  I cannot direct the energy of the Divine but I can ask in a very structured and respectful manner for the Divine to direct their own energies to help me.

Do I believe in a separate Goddess?

Yes and no.  I believe the Goddess is part of the Trinity as the Holy Spirit.  You see, the Bible never defines the gender of the Holy Spirit.  scripture4all.org has a translation of the Bible from the Hebrew.  Hebrew has very distinct masculine and feminine words, from what I understand.  These define the Spirit as being feminine. A very nice video was done showing some of these is at PROOF Female HOLY SPIRIT.  While I disagree with the name, I like the idea.  You cannot prove the Holy Spirit is female because you cannot prove the Holy Spirit exists any more than you can prove that God exists.  I believe the Holy Spirit is the feminine aspect of God.  Is this controversial? Sure.  Am I wrong? I have no idea. Am I going to go to hell if I am?  No.  Why not?  Because we all have one thing in common, right or wrong, it doesn't matter what I did or believed here on Earth.  I will only ever get into Heaven by God's grace.  If I am wrong, when God/dess confronts and judges me my answer is, "Forgive me."

I believe that the Holy Spirit takes on the form of the Maiden, Mother, and Crone.  She is the Maiden when She helps God to create the Earth.  She is the Mother when She helps Mary to conceive the baby Jesus.  She is the Crone following His death.  I believe that the Spirit is a Mother-figure to us all.

How do I answer that witchcraft is evil and forbidden in the Bible? (this is my own)

From scripture4all again:

It is a bit small but this is the most quoted verse from Exodus 22:18.  Personally I don't know what a one-being-enchantress is.  And until God/dess can explain that one to me, I will happily continue to fervently pray and ask for help.  Again, it is only by God/dess' grace that anything good will happen anyway.  So let me be wrong, but at least I will know I believed, my belief caused me to do good, and I strove to harm none while I was a member of this wonderful creation!

What's The Difference?

Very few people know I follow a Wiccan path because generally when someone close to me finds out it leads to heartache and misery for me.  I have had people tell me I worship the Devil, that I am going to Hell, and I am the worst form of evil there is.  But to me, there is very little difference in a Christian Path versus a Christian Wiccan path.  Allow me to explain with a true story:

A women I know prays to a figure, who is fully recognized not to be God, on an amulet every time she gets into her car.  She does this on the way to work, on the way to do errands, on her way to fun.  If she gets into the car she prays. One day, she and her family got into the car to go to the beach and she was talking to her daughter and did not pray because she was distracted.  Tragically, on the drive to the beach, a truck collided with their car, severally injuring her daughter and killing her three year old grandson.  While discussing this incident, the woman stated that she wonders if she had just remembered to pray would her grandson be alive.

Within this sad story is a truth, this woman believes enough to pray to this entity every time she gets into her car.  She is not praying to God.  She utilizes a coin of this person in her car to protect her and her family from harm.  Is this woman doing magic?  If you mentioned this question to her she would be offended and not speak to you.  You see, this woman is a devout Catholic whom prays to St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, and utilizes a St. Christopher's medallion in her vehicle, like many Catholics.  However, the fundamentals are the same.

Catholics are, in my opinion, using the same elements that I call Wicca daily.  During certain times, offerings are given to Mary or other Saints.  They believe Mary, Mother of Jesus, is Queen of Heaven.  They celebrate feast days for the Saints.  They ritually cleanse spaces with incense and believe the aroma to be pleasing to God.  They believe in the miracles of Jesus.  And most of all they believe in transubstantiation.  This is one of the dividing points between Catholics and Protestants.  Catholics believe that when a priest prays over the bread and wine of communion it becomes the body and blood of Christ.  That is one powerful piece of magic the priest is doing!

Comparing Wicca to the Protestant churches is a bit harder because they do not believe many of the things that Catholics believe.  However, they would never condemn a Catholic for their faith, so why condemn me for mine?

In my path, Wicca just states that I see a King and Queen of heaven.  I see the beauty of these two beings in all nature around me.  I believe that it is right and good to give these elements back to the King and Queen as sacrifices.  I believe that there are elements of nature that can help us.  I believe there is one God, his Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

I find a very hard time figuring out where the dividing line is with the dogma.  Why is Catholicism embraced and adored while Wiccan's are shunned?  What am I doing that is so wrong, yet for a Catholic to do the same Rite it is correct?  I believe that seeing the light and goodness in all around me is a gift from God and one that anyone can receive.  You do not need to be Catholic, Protestant, or Wiccan, you just need to want peace and happiness and to treat everything with the respect it deserves as part of the Divine.