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I'm a little pissed right now. I shouldn't be. I mean, I'm pretty cynical when it comes to my fellow men, and I've found that you rarely go broke betting on the cruelty and stupidity and baseness of people. But I really don't like when innocents are hurt - and my friend is the very definition of innocent. Perhaps I should start from the beginning. I met this woman a couple months back, in the chats on AOL. She was very nice, kind, and genuinely interested in learning about Paganism. She's a Christian, and the wife of a Minister, but very open and understanding. Certain things have been happening in her life to alter her world-view, and she was looking for people that she could talk with, and sort things out. I have no idea how we met, and I often think that we probably shouldn't have. While I am a Pagan and I believe in magic, miracles, and all that neat stuff, I am *really* skeptical. There were times when she'd come to me, and ask me about things, what I thought about her experiences, or the claims of this or that person, and I wish I could have been more supportive, better able to confirm what she said, but, well, I tend to err on the safe side, and will go for the more rational explanation. Which, I don't think she always wanted to hear. But she is such a nice lady, that she overlooked my rampant skepticism, and we've been good friends ever since. Well, about a week or so ago, I introduced her to another one of my friends, who is very dear to me. My Christian friend had a question I couldn't answer, and I knew my other friend could, so I brought them together. Well, it turns out that they didn't just live in the same state - they were neighbors. They hit it off, and got to talking, and well, over the weekend, they decided to get together with a number of Pagans that my Christian friend had met over the internet. My Pagan friend is very shy off-line, and so I was excited that she was actually going to meet these people, and in the company of my good Christian friend. Well, they got together, and they hit it off in person too. I was really excited about that, because they're both great people, and I like when my friends become friends with my other friends. But things didn't go quite as well as I thought they had. My friends hit it off, but the others in the group were less than pleased to meet my Christian friend. When they found out that she was a Minister's wife, they started getting "bad vibes" from her. They gave her the cold shoulder, asked what a Christian was doing at a Wiccan meeting, and generally treated her like shit. This abuse didn't end there. When she got back on-line, she found a number of rude e-mails. They called her a "Pagan stalker" and other names, and when she asked these people into a private room to talk about it, they were so mean to her that she ended up crying. She feels like she was the butt of their joke. Like they brought her there to mock her, and worse. She wonders what she did wrong. Wonders why they hate her. They knew she was a Christian to begin with, and yet they still invited her there. These were people she had reached out to, people she had begun to consider friends. And they slapped her down. Why? Because she's a Christian. Where the hell is the tolerance, and respect for others' ways? Wiccans are always whining about how Christians never respect them, how they're being persecuted. Here was an honest, open, and kind lady, looking for friends. She isn't judgemental. She accepts the differences in people. And yet, they treated her like shit. Because she believes in Jesus Christ. Hell, I thought Wiccans claimed that all Gods were One God, but seen through many faces. Does that only apply to "our" Gods, and not theirs? I hope that that karma and 3-fold crap they always spout off about comes back to bite them in the ass hard. I know if I had been there, it sure as hell would have. The sad thing though, is that now she is beginning to
think all Pagans are like that. She's afraid to open herself
up to them, because in the chats, and now in real life, they
have constantly attacked and demeaned her. What do I say to
her? "We're not all like that. Some of us are decent too."
Well, I'm beginning to wonder about that. The more contact I
have with "Pagans" the more I want to distance myself from
them. Hell, even my Hellenic Recon community is getting on
my nerves lately. If I didn't believe so deeply in the Gods,
if I hadn't experienced the truth contained in the various
Pagan Ways, I would leave them behind without so much as a
second thought. But I have, and so I stay behind, and try to
work to make it a better, wiser, nobler, and kinder path.
And so this plea goes out to all my Pagan sisters and
brothers: if you want respect, treat others with respect. If
you want them to tolerate your uniqueness, tolerate theirs.
If you hurt my friends again, I will hunt you down, and
visciously beat you to death with your fucking
glitter-encrusted wand, you fluffy bunny white light
bigotted Wiccan puke. |
