Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child

I, Sister Ia, was baptized Roman Catholic, and long considered myself among the ranks of the "recovering Christians". I have been a practicing pagan since 1983. Paganism is a beautiful earth-centered tradition that has at its core celebration of the many facets of divinity. When I found my first pagan circle it was like a breath of fresh air. Suddenly there was a place for me where I was not a mere handmaid. Where divinity had a face that was like mine. Sometimes it was female! The usual Christian church has only two faces for the female - breeder and harlot. I just cannot identify with that church. But the spiritual wound is that the message of Jesus is so far separated from the spiteful preachings of fundamentalists of whatever stripe. Over the years I still felt myself pulled to the words of Jesus despite the preachings that had made me drop away from the church. As I came to see that I could be Christian through my own interpretations of biblical revelation without stifling my own spiritual growth, I also came to realize the fundamentalism that was starting to poison the pagan community. There are those in the pagan community who are challenged if you even reference a Jesus parable. I cannot judge this... many of us who came to paganism did so after being deeply wounded spiritually by the Christian Church. But at some point, for our own self-interest, to heal our own wounds, we have to forgive. I firmly believe that it is possible to be Pagan and Christian, just as it is possible to be Buddhist and Christian. Jesus had other sheep that were not of the Jewish fold. His sacrifice on the cross was for ALL humans, not just Jewish humans. Today the relevance of this message is forgotten, as tiny fractionalistic denominations claim that those in other Christian denominations are not really Christian. I believe that those who engage in interdenominational warfare are mocking Jesus' sacrifice. They are akin to those "lawyers" Jesus railed against:

"Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering." When Jesus left there, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely. (Luke 11:52-53)

In recovering older traditions of Christianity and looking at them through the lens of pagan-identified facets of the one divine presence, I invite others to join me in melting that stone in our hearts. Why should we sacrifice a stream of divinity just because it has been misused and abused by misguided men? In order to heal our own wounds and help others heal theirs, we must go back through the past, searching out the lost and buried mystical traditions, murmuring name upon name, recoving the names of God/dess and celebrating them back into relevance.

"If Christianity can't recover its mystical tradition and teach it, it should just fold up and go out of business. It has nothing to offer." - Father Bede Griffiths