Experiencing Gods

Since I've decided to write about my journey down this Birch Path, I should tell the story of how I got on it in the first place. I am where I am today because I experienced the presence of a deity.

Some pagans and polytheists seem to experience this as naturally as breathing. Some never achieve it. (I like Yvonne Aburrow's discussion here on that subject.) I'm somewhere in between, I guess. I've experienced things that I interpreted as the actions of a deity many times. In my teenage years, I was convinced that Jesus ruptured my appendix on purpose so that I couldn't go to summer camp. I wound up having to go to a different camp later in the summer, which I fell in love with. I worked there for close to a decade, and had some of the most formative experiences of my early 20s... including losing my virginity in the backseat of a Volvo, which I'm sure Jesus was not so thrilled about but I've never regretted for a second.

But I've only experienced the visceral, overwhelming physical presence of a deity one time. It was Easter Vigil, 2006. I was preparing to enter the Catholic Church, in what I did not yet know was the beginning of my exodus from Christianity. As I prepared for confirmation, I was encouraged to choose a saint to be my patron. I obsessed over the choice. Looking back, I can see that I didn't want a patron, I wanted a pantheon. I was trying to be a conservative, modern Catholic. I wanted a modern, verifiable patron. But over and over I returned to Brigid. 

Brigid, light on the hearth, light of the forge. Brigid, midwife and healer, counselor, sage. Brigid, blacksmith and wordsmith and milkmaid with her red-eared cow. She of the everburning flame, the lady of Cill Dara, the priestess of the holy oak. 

St. Brigid's Well at Kildare, Photo by Andreas F. Borchert
via Wikimedia Commons (CC-Attribution-Share Alike)

I wasn't quite decided when I stepped up with my sponsor to receive the chrism on my forehead. The priest, who was a gentle, kind man, had been my teacher for a year. He knew I was undecided. I'd talked to him about wanting a modern patron, despite the pull of the mythic past. I think he knew what I'd choose.

When it was my turn he gave me an inquring look. "Brigid," I whispered.

"Brigid - be sealed with the gift of the holy spirit." And I was. But it wasn't the spirit I'd thought I'd encounter. Things get really difficult to describe at this point in the story, but she was there, in a way that I'd never thought a deity could be present, in a way that was absolutely nothing like the ways I'd experienced Jesus in the past. Her presence was heavy, like sinking in water. She wasn't gentle - at all - she wasn't loving or stern, I didn't feel emotion from her. She was just present. Undeniably, unquestionably, present. 

My response was bewilderment. I didn't recognize what was happening. My legs got weak, as soon as I sat down, I found I couldn't stand. I cried through the remainder of the service. Through the reception afterwards. Through the gifts my friends had brought me. I don't know, to this day, why she decided to show up that day. Many thousands of Catholics must look to her as a patron, and not feel her hand descend over them. I did. 

My relationship with Brigid is distant now. I don't think she ever intended to call me into her personal service. I think she touched me because she could reach me, because I was reaching, and I reached to her blindly. I think she touched me to deliver me to my own gods. At first I tried to reach her but my attempts to have been... halfhearted. I'm a little afraid of her. Her fire is overwhelming, hot, and immense. But I walk the path she set me on. She reforged me in her kiln and made me a Pagan. 

And here I am.