Pagans: What led you to this path?

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As a teenager I’d decided I was an atheist. It made my very Christian mom very sad and she prayed every single day for me to find God until well over a decade later when I finally let her know I’d accepted Jesus into my heart. Never had a clue at the time.

She shouldn’t have worried. Soon after we got the Internet, and I found out more about this new idea. The atheists I’d met online were as pushy as the Christians that drove them to it. I stopped calling myself an atheist because I didn’t want the association. Nobody tried to ram Jesus down my throat, and I didn’t really have anything against the guy. I just didn’t believe. No biggie.

9/11 happened and I joined the Air Force. After training I found myself in Utah. I’d picked up one of the New Testaments they kept in the barracks but couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I didn’t much care for my fellow airmen. I’d made a few friends, but the military kept taking them away from me. I decided to seek out friends off-base.

I had dial-up internet and so I went looking for meetups. One jumped out at me, it was a pagan discussion group held at a coffee shop happily half an hour off base. I started going, I made friends. There was a university near by so plenty of fellow young people, brainwashed by something less stark than the military, Mormonism.

Alternative spirituality communities exist all over the US, but in Utah it’s huge, because Mormonism already is a huge alternative religion. You’d be amazed at what you’d find there if you open your eyes a bit and look.

I joined a discussion group and they became my peer group. From there I found a Wicca coven run by adults rather than kids or adults acting like kids and still living with Mom. I gravitated towards them and learned how spirituality really operates. My dedication ceremony remains one of my most treasured memories. I practiced there for the better part of a year. I disliked the military and it weighed me down. Eventually I would leave.

After leaving the military my life in Utah just kinda well, ended. I couldn’t find a good job and so I packed up and left Utah and the coven. I held on to the spiritual lessons I’d picked up but it would be a few more years before I’d start meditating again with purpose.

I no longer identify with paganism. But it’s great fun and I wouldn’t take it away for anything.