Christian Wiccan Spirituality

By

The Reverend Doctor Robert, N.D.

The term Christian Wiccan means many things to many people. There is no one definition or set of rules as to what a Christian Wiccan is or what one who professes to walk this path should or must believe. So, before addressing my Christian Wiccan spirituality, I thought it would be appropriate to provide a brief explanation as to what being a Christian Wiccan means to me. As a Christian, I am called not so much to know and follow a set of laws or a creed, as to know and follow a person ~ Jesus the Christ. I derive this belief from Jesus' words, "...that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me" (John 17:23). As a Christian, I am called, therefore, to know, love, and follow Jesus in His life and work. My Wiccan path is more Earth-based. I honor a Deity or Divine Being that is divided into male and female spirituality known as the God and the Goddess. For me there is but one Godhead but with separate and distinct personalities. The Heavenly Father, my Gracious King; the Earth Mother, my Glorious Queen; the Sacred Son Jesus, my Lord and Savior; and the Lady Holy Spirit, my Comforter and Counselor. As a Witch, I practice magick. I use natural energies to enhance my life, and to bring about healing and protection. So, having said that, I am a Christian Wiccan. A Christian who walks the Wiccan path. A Wiccan who follows the teachings of Jesus the Christ. And I am also a Witch who practices magick everyday of my life

So, what is Christian Wiccan spirituality? Is it something concerned only with the saints, with prayer, and with special devotions or rituals? On the contrary, Christian Wiccan spirituality deals with everything in creation. It is the way the growing human being understands how each piece of his or her life and the life of the world is connected with every other. Being a Christian Wiccan has allowed me to explore what it means to become a human being in the power of the Lady Holy Spirit. Christian Wiccan spirituality is both that which gives meaning and harmony to the whole human experience and that which focuses upon what we must do and be to grow as humans in the power of the Lady Holy Spirit. My spirituality begins with the birth of a baby and ends with an affirmation of hope in the face of death. The path of the Christian Wiccan is a journey towards union with God/dess. It is a common journey, a shared adventure, and one that involves a leap of faith into the unknown. My spiritual path has served to deepen, in a practical way, my commitment to Christ, especially through private prayer and ritual, and in the sharing in a corporate way, with the worship of all those of like or similar mind.

For me, Christian Wiccan spirituality is this: human life in its fullness lived in an ever-deepening and loving surrender to the Spirit of Jesus the Christ, that the Lady Holy Spirit promised, poured out, and always flowing from the heart of the eternal reality that we call the Father and the Mother. It flows for the sake of redemption and renewal of creation. This Spirit touches us in every part of our lives. We have to bring spirituality down to earth, to our particular circumstances, not in order to keep it there, but to see that it embraces everything to do with the here and now, with our breathing, with our sexuality, with our hopes and aspirations, and with our human fear of death. It is the power of the Spirit that continues to raise us from our deadness. An honest spirituality has to face the central question of our death, because our death is the other certain and fixed point of reference in an uncertain world.

So we find that there are some basic concerns involving all human beings, which we might call spiritual. And these concerns usually come in the form of questions. Do I matter? Does anyone really love me? What is the meaning of my dying, my particular dying? These are the questions of meaning, if intimacy, and of death that wait in the darkness of every human heart. These are spiritual questions that challenge, stretch, and vex the human spirit.

Christian Wiccan spirituality, which shapes the Christian Wiccan character, starts with the affirmation that our summons to personality is set within the context of a marvelous created order that is fundamentally good... "In the beginning God [Goddess] created the heavens and the earth... And God [Goddess]saw that it was good" (Gen. 1:1ff.).

It begins with the revelation of the goodness of creation, and goes on to affirm and proclaim that goodness in all our being and doing. It should avoid like the plague anything that suggests that the world of matter is evil and that the world of the spirit is good. If we look at the world in which we live, we can see that the material can be good and the spiritual evil. The material well-being of the people of the earth is no less a spiritual concern than their inner well-being. The body is not divorced from the spirit, still less is it inferior and evil. To be honest, we have not always been healthy and Christian-like with regard to our attitude to the body. There has grown up in peoples' minds a picture of the Christian who is a kill-joy, a wet-blanket, a ghost appearing at the feast, as the enemy of honest, full-blooded enjoyment. They suspect that there would be no more "cakes and ale" if Christians had their way!

Christians have often been considered people who are more concerned with externals than with inner dispositions. Some get away with professing a Christianity that seems to say that Christ does all our loving for us. They don't have to do anything but keep up appearances. Others seem to profess a morality of rules and regulations. Spiritual evils are much harder to spot than visible and material ones. Hatred and malice lurking in the human heart are much harder to detect than mugging, prostitution, or bribery. We naturally go for those things we can easily identify, and miss the deeper, inward, spiritual sins. We humans are capable of committing acts of quiet and sophisticated cruelty unreachable by a court of law. The webs of tyranny woven around our personal relationships are many and varied.

Two conclusions, then, come out of this glance at the word spirituality. The first is that it is not necessarily good or evil. The second is that it is not necessarily otherworldly or escapist. There are spiritualities (and Christian Wicca is one of them) that are deeply involved in political and social realities. If Christian Wiccan spirituality is concerned with all our being and doing, then it will include the life we share with others as well as our private lives. The New Testament bears witness to this engagement with the world and involvement with one another. "If any one says, I love God [Goddess],' and hates his brother, he is a liar" (1 Jn. 4:20). The mere saying of pious words counts for nothing: "Not every one who says to me, `Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of Heaven" (Mt. 7:21).

To sum up, spirituality is another way of talking about our total life, and Christian Wiccan spirituality is concerned with the Christian life blended with the Wiccan path, seen as the totally human life, and as such affirms the value of the body, the material. It denies any dualism between spirit and matter, and refuses, therefore, an escapist view of things. The Christian Wiccan is not one for whom salvation depends on a release from the body or an escape from the material order. Nor is it narrowly individualistic. We find out who we are only in communion with others. It is above all a person's engagement with inner and outer realities, and it is to the shape of this engagement we must soon turn.

Blessed Be!

Doc

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