I’m on the red line south, heading to work. The train is still kind of empty. I took the red line because I wanted the opportunity to sit down and write, and to not be crowded or crushed once we get to the busier parts of the commute.

I’m trying to put together a comprehensive list of the things I need to do over the next few weeks, and some of them are just getting away from me. Work is very busy right now, I’m juggling several projects and trying to make myself useful in a variety of ways. I often have the feeling that I’m not getting enough done, or being effective enough. It is frustrating, because it’s not really my fault. I’m bound by the processes and dictums of the rest of the company, and not just my own efforts.

The train is in the middle of the tracks now, stopped dead. Apparently we’re experiencing an equipment problem. The conductor is off the train trying to fix it. That seems dangerous when we’re not actually in a station. I am getting the scary image of another train coming by and smushing the conductor.

I’ve been thinking a lot about religion lately, particularly my religion. The Brotherhood of the Phoenix is its own religion, underneath the NeoPagan and earth-based umbrella. Theoretically we have our own set of beliefs, practices, and traditions, but in practice we’re a syncretic tradition. We’re a tradition of NeoPaganism, and to my mind the religion itself is NeoPaganism, and our Brotherhood is a sect or order of that religion.

This lends some interesting potential to how we view and work with our tradition. Most importantly, it heightens the fraternal element of the Brotherhood, and in some lights equates us to Catholic orders of Monks or Nuns. This is important, and resonant for me, because we operate less like a congregational church, and more like an order. Our services are segregated. They are open to a subset of the larger community, and we have rites and services that are closed to anyone who is not a member of our order. We operate independently of a governing religious body but are involved and attentive to the needs and growth of the larger religious community of which we are a part.

Becoming a member of our temple is not a simple matter of attending service and tithing, but a larger, significantly more complex process that is not undertaken lightly by us or those seeking to become members. The expectation is that when you join our order you will be a member for life, wherever it is that life takes you. We have an internal degree system, that is similar but not identical to the expected heirarchal structure of the NeoPagan religious community and a dedicated body of deeply committed priests and mentors who guide and shepherd members of our order, and the larger body of our religious community, and in many respects have duties external to even the religion. As with most traditions, vows of service tend to transcend the limiting elements of congregational bodies.

All that said, we are definitely a religion in our own right. We revere our own gods and mythologies, have our own mysteries of creation and existence, our own ethical tenets, and our own set of rites that give meaning and structure to the cycle of life.

What interests me most in all of this, is how I as a member, mentor, and one day priest, can build a culture of our religion. Our order tends to dislike the dogma of commandments, as does much of the NeoPagan community. As a result we’ve, for years now, avoided the codification of a single unified mythology or a unified way of looking at our mysteries, Gods, rites, and paths. Underneath that avoidance an unofficial dogma has risen, that I am not sure we have control over, and I feel we should. I do not think avoiding the path of dogma was a bad decision, but I think we have become a bit rabid in our avoidance of it.

The purpose of avoiding dogma is to allow individual experience to define a persons relationship with Spirit. Culture, Understanding, and Community grow in connection to each other, and with them comes a natural development of principles. We have struggled so hard to prevent dogma from creeping into those principles that I am coming to believe we have crippled ourselves to an extent. I think that a cultural understanding that has risen out of our experience is very different than a commandment or declaration from on high. If our tradition is learning about itself, finding truths and realities amidst our experience, I think we can healthily allow those principles to manifest themselves.

The key to doing this in a healthy way is not limiting ourselves to those principles. As they arise and we embrace them (which we are already doing, but are avoiding naming) we have to remember that they are not immutable laws of the universe, but communications of our experience meant to guide us and aid us as we grow, as we transform. Further, as these tenets are adopted, as they become part of our process, we must understand that they are not a law unto themselves. They are a representation of culture, of mores that have arisen out of need and experience.

So I’m spending a lot of time thinking about what dogma we have already, what more we need (or rather, have and aren’t naming), and how we can express and embrace that dogma without losing the freedom of individual experience. The policy thus far has been one of unofficial dogma, and I am beginning to think that it’s not working. Unofficial dogma smells too much like hidden dogma, or concealed tenets. What we need is a way of establishing healthy, true dogma that has manifested itself in our tradition, without shoving it down the throats of our members or community, and without presenting it as immutable.

I suspect that’s enough work for anyones lifetime.