Syracuse University's newest chaplain is pagan priestess Mary Hudson

The first pagan chaplain at Syracuse University has a sense of humor about the misperceptions of her faith.

"We don't do animal sacrifices," Mary Hudson said, with a slight laugh. "We're not going to steal your babies and make candles out of them.

"And godless? Absolutely not. We have more gods and goddesses than most people I know. Some of the most spiritual people I know are pagans."

No dark makeup, no Goth clothing here: In her small office in the basement of Hendricks Chapel she shares with the Catholic chaplain, Hudson, 50, wears faded jeans and a powder-blue knit top.

Hudson earlier this month became the 11th chaplain on the Hendricks staff, taking her place among representatives of more mainstream faiths like Episcopalianism, Roman Catholicism and Buddhism.

"I know that you have to play nice in the sandbox," Hudson said. "You have to understand that everybody has a point of view."

Hudson is a third-degree priestess -- the highest rank -- in the Church of the Greenwood. She served for nine years as adviser to the SU student group Student Pagan Information, Relations and Learning. SPIRAL meets every Monday night and holds outdoor rituals on campus on some of paganism's eight annual "Great Days."

Hudson was born on one of the most important of those days: Oct. 29, the date of the harvest festival pagans call Samhain. Raised a Baptist, Hudson later bounced from Episcopal to non-denominational to Catholic churches before finding her true religion in paganism.

"It is literally who I am. It's part of the core of my being," said Hudson, who practices daily meditation and seeks guidance from her pantheon of gods and goddesses. "It means finding a great deal of beauty in nature. It means finding a connection with deities that resonates with me. It means finding a great deal of peace and calm when I find that deep connection with every living thing around me."

Hudson defines paganism as a broad umbrella of religions that are largely nature-based and have multiple gods and goddesses.

Hudson recently left the adviser post and her full-time job in the university's information systems department. She said she was then asked by former Hendricks Chapel Dean Tom Wolfe to take the unpaid post of pagan chaplain.

Her job, she emphasizes, is to educate, not convert.

"Aggressive proselytizing is not allowed," she said. "I'm here for students, faculty and staff to come talk to, to confide in, to ask assistance of, just like any other chaplain to make sure they understand their rituals and to teach them to do them on their own."

Hudson said college is a time for students, away for the first time from home and the religious upbringing of their youth, to explore new ideas.

Former interim dean Kelly Sprinkle said the pagan chaplaincy "helps us expand the direction of how we look at religious life, and it helps us understand religious pluralism."

SU's religion department offers no classes in paganism. Only 17 SU students identified themselves as pagan in a voluntary survey, Sprinkle said.

That's a misleading number, though, Hudson says. Her e-mail list for SPIRAL is about 100 people, she said, and that includes students and employees.

"Pagans are an interesting group -- they will fly under the radar," she said.

As far as anyone at SU can tell, Hudson has only one counterpart: Cynthia Collins, pagan chaplain since 2002 at the University of Southern Maine.

Of the school's roughly 10,000 students, about 100 identify themselves as pagan and another 500 are what Collins calls "pagan-curious" -- people who simply want to find out what paganism is.

So what is it, anyway? Collins says there's no direct answer.

"Ask 200 pagans and you'll get 400 answers," Collins quipped.

Central to most branches of paganism is the creed "harm none," and the emphasis on personal responsibility, Hudson said. The gods and goddesses of paganism offer advice and guidance, she said, but do not judge and forgive like the god of Abraham.

"I don't have at the end of my life a deity to forgive me for everything I've done," she said. "I have to make sure I can forgive myself for my transgressions and how I lived my life."

Hudson's appointment reveals a growing acceptance of pagans and their beliefs, said Jannae Lehman, the secretary of SPIRAL.

"People question the validity of our religion, which we as pagans can't understand because we as pagans don't question somebody else's religion," Lehman said. "If someone believes in their religion, then it's valid."

Lehman's Catholic parents have no problem with her being pagan, she said.

"They raised me to be myself and to be happy," she said. "If being a pagan makes me a better person and makes me happy, that's all that matters."


http://blog.syracuse.com/cny/2010/03/syracuse_universitys_newest_chaplain_is_pagain_priestess_mary_hudson.html

c'est excellent!

ce qui l'est moins ce sont les commentaires qu'il y a dessus, c'est vraiment triste, mais bon...

C'est vrai que les commentaires sont parfois . . . navrant mais bon.

Mais je pense que d'une façon globale, les gens en général acceptent de mieux en mieux le paganisme.

Par exemple, un groupe (de Metal) païen norvégien a envoyé plusieurs message pour jouer dans les fêtes d'écoles primaires. Ils s'attendaient à recevoir pleins de "non" mais en fait pas du tout, ils ont donc jouer en acoustique dans ces écoles "pour leur parler un peu d'Odin avant qu'ils ne soient emportés par Jésus Christ" (citation de chanteur), et ils ont été plutôt bien acceuillis.

Je trouve que ça montre que petit à petit le paganisme refait surface en Europe et que mis à part quelques fanatique, il est de plus en plus accepté.