I was raised a good little Catholic girl. I was baptized, I went to church every Sunday, I had my first Reconciliation and first Communion. I went to CCD and learned about God and Jesus and the stories of the Bible. I genuinely believed when I was little. God was good, Jesus was my savior, and if I was a good girl and prayed and went to church, I would go to Heaven.
The problems started when I reached sixth grade.
I had a lot of friends of of different faiths, and I learned about even more religions in my social studies class. They all sounded pretty cool. I was particularly fascinated with ancient Pagan mythologies, and I wondered-where did those people go? I’d always been taught that if you didn’t believe in our Heaven, you couldn’t go. And since Heaven and Hell were all there was, it followed logically that all these other people would go to Hell.
I didn’t like that. What about the good people of all these other religions? What about the ancient people who didn’t know about Jesus? If they were good people and they did all the right things, would they still be punished simply for not believing in our god? Or would they go to their own form of Heaven? I asked these questions in CCD one day, and my teacher couldn’t answer. I was told something along the lines of “only God knows.”
Shortly after the “question” incident, my parents and I moved to another state, leaving behind the grandmother that had taken me to church and encouraged me to be that good little Catholic girl I’d always been. My mother has always been a very open-minded woman, and she told me that I didn’t have to go to church if I didn’t want to. So I didn’t. I was tired of the Church. I was tired of being given vague answers and told that if I didn’t do this correctly or that correctly, I would go to Hell. I’d honestly begun believing that, because I didn’t agree with a great many things I was told, that I must be corrupted by Satan. I believed I was going to Hell.
So I began to drift. I felt guilty and horrible, but I knew I couldn’t go back to the Catholic Church. It seemed wrong, and I just couldn’t do it. I hated drifting, and I latched onto Deism for awhile, though that left me feeling cold. I suppose I was agnostic for a good chunk of time, but I still felt empty.
Along came Paganism. I dabbled in Wicca for about a year, though that still left me feeling unfulfilled. I knew I was close-I was definitely a Pagan, but I couldn’t figure out just what kind. The magic aspect didn’t appeal to me, and the high ceremony didn’t, either.
Then along came the Heathens; the followers of Odin and Thor and Freya and all the other gods of the Norse pantheon. Something clicked-the gods, the ancestors, the Nine Noble Virtues…all of it fit exactly with what I valued and what I thought about the world. Perhaps it’s a little cliché to say that it was like coming home, but…well, that’s exactly what it felt like. I am home, among the gods of old and my ancestors, living life as nobly and as honorably as I can. And I am happy-so much happier than I was as a child; as a good little Catholic girl with questions nobody could answer.
Hail!