Margot Adler: Pioneering Pagan Activist, NPR Journalist Dies At 68

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Margot Adler: Pioneering Pagan Activist, NPR Journalist Dies At 68

I never read Drawing Down the Moon in its entirety, but I recall the importance it had in some pagan circles. Adler had an interesting article about being a pagan priestess and member of the Unitarian Universalist Church:

Vibrant, Juicy, Contemporary: or, Why I Am a UU Pagan

But as I get older, I no longer believe in almost any "either-or." I now believe almost everything is "both-and." Many dichotomies are nonsense when you think deeply about them: male and female, dark and light, material and spiritual. Any mystic knows that. Take Teresa of Avila. She knew that when you wash the dishes, that is part of a spiritual experience. Even the whole notion--here's something I shouldn't say as a good liberal--the whole notion of church-state separation is ridiculous. At least cognitively. Of course, it's important because I wouldn't want to be a non-Christian in a Christian nation, so maybe we have to do it politically. But the idea that religious reality and political reality are separate? Ridiculous!

The same goes for the idea that humor and religion don't mix. If you visit the Kung bushmen, you might see a ceremony in which they're trance-dancing for two days, and then in the middle of the ceremony someone might make a joke with some sexual connotations about the man dancing, and he makes a little comment and then goes right back into his trance--and there's a sense that there's no difference. I once went into a Zen garden in Japan, and suddenly a loud troop of Japanese schoolchildren came romping through, and I thought, "They're ruining my mystical experience, these children!" But then I backtracked and said, "I'm wrong! This, too, is part of sacred reality."

Consistent with the lack of separation between the sacred and profane is the earth-centered traditions' understanding of deity as immanent, in everything. This means that not only is the mind holy but the body is holy, sexuality is holy, everything is a piece, and it's all part of the sacred reality. All this boils down to what I would call an ecological perspective on religion. One-crop economies always fail, and a healthy meadow, a healthy forest always has multiple species living interdependently. It may be heretical and subversive, but I think spiritual reality should be like that--that, again, we're all not supposed to arrive at one answer, that maybe the world could be richer, deeper, more interesting because, in fact, there are many answers and that only if we each seek out our own answers will we be able to chart a path through the dark days that seem to lie ahead.
 
Tribute: Margot Adler

'Reporter Margot Adler’s mellifluous voice has been heard on National Public Radio for 35 years, where she covered everything from budget cuts in education to the arts to Occupy Wall Street. She died yesterday at the age of 68, after battling cancer for three-and-a-half years.In addition to being a brilliant reporter, she had another life as a leader in the Pagan community, and was a Wiccan priestess. She was a guest on the show in 1989, and she spoke with Leonard about witches.'
 
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