I thought this was cute:

http://www.avalongrove.org/

THE CELTIC FAERIE TEACHINGS AT AVALON GROVE

A Few Basic Beliefs

•The Creator is both our Mother and Father (the Holy Parents, God and Goddess), who love us very much.

•The Holy Parents' son, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, is our loving, elder brother.

•Mother Earth is a living being who loves all her children, and she deserves our love and respect in return.

•We are related to all Creation, and we believe that all who dwell on Mother Earth should be treated with kindness and respect, no matter who or what they are.

•We strive to follow Jesus' greatest commandment: "And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these." Mark 12:29-31


Your thoughts?

Not sure I get this at all. What's the point? This isn't god, or even a religion. It's basically a person or persons who've decided that they don't like the religions that are out there in their present form, so have decided to take a few ideas and cobble them together into a more appetising story and call it religion.

Whoever wrote this seems to want to bring together the ideas of Christianity and the Celtic traditions (Pagan). In their own mind this presumably works, but really, this is pure fantasy.

My thoughts? Like I said; what's the point? It's just the coming together of two stories. It's not god, and it's not even a religion, as such.

I love Gaea. Mother Earth is a living being who loves all her children, and she deserves our love and respect in return.

http://www.celticwisdom.net/motherearth.html

Aqua Gaea

Gaea is so beautiful at night
When the fireflies give light.
I give myself to her charms.
She closes upon me her arms.

She swallows my body whole.
Such love is precious to know.
I become one with her heat.
She is such a wonderful treat.

I am drowned in her splendor.
I am freeborn; She is tender.
I feel her tears consume me.
Her abyss makes me so free.

Mother nature's spirituality;
A garden of love's neutrality.
Swimming in a grove of peace
All of my love to her is released.

I am just one of her admirers
Who live in harmonic fire.
Enraptured in her embrace
I have a smile on my face.

Yes, I think that part is pretty obvious.

I have to agree with HungHard's comments on the melding together of two stories here. I think this "religion" at Avalon Grove, is a desperate attempt by true pagans (worshipers of Mother Nature as God), to try to pacify the relentless bigoted attacks of the Christians who try to make everyone who doesn't believe in Jesus out to be heathens.

But does it truly make any sense? I personally don't think it does. According to Christianity Jesus was a demigod. A half-breed, half human and half God. Mary was supposed to be a mortal human, not a Goddess. So the idea that Jesus was the son of the God and Goddess doesn't truly fit the story. Jesus was a demigod, not a true child of Yin and Yang.

But I still think it's cute that they at least tried to pacify the Christians. Although in truth it's actually quite sad that they felt they had to. The Christians make Jesus out to be a monster who will condemn everyone to hell if you don't embrace him as the "Son of God", so these Celts tried their best to do that without embracing all of Christian bigotry.

But then again, this is what religions have always done. Christianity itself has embraced and incorporated many pagan beliefs in an attempt to make it appear more palatable to the pagans.

I guess this is one place where I might disagree with HungHard:



Well this same thing could be said of all religions. Christianity most certainly is no exception. It's a cannon of a whole bunch of miscellaneous stories. So these Celts at Avalon haven't started any new traditions, they're just doing the same things the Christians have been doing for eons.

It actually works really well for me.

I must confess that I find it rather amazing at just how many "Christian Witches" there are. I too used to think that this was a bit of an oxymoron, but after hearing the many diverse opinions and views on Christianity I see now that it's not all that far-fetched.

I've also been impressed the more I study Judaism (which is the foundation of Christianity). Jesus himself was a Jew and therefore believed in Judaism at that point in time. As strange as it may seem to many people, Judaism itself was a rather diverse belief system (not at all unlike the myriad of Christian denominations)

In fact, may Jews actually viewed God in a pantheistic sense, and not as a 'male'. So the idea of a God and Goddess is not truly in conflict with Judaism. It's just the Yin and Yang aspect of a non-physical abstract concept of "God". The strict "Zeus-like" Fatherly image of a male personified Godhead is actually more of a Christian fabrication that Jesus himself may not have even agreed with at all.

The only place where I'm personally in disagreement with the whole Christian thing is their claim that Jesus was the "Only Begotten Son" of God. Those types of claims of demigods were quite common in the Mediterranean folklore. Jesus was far from being the only demigod. In fact, there were dozens of them in those ancient mythologies.

I refuse to place Jesus on a pedestal any higher than any other wise sage. We are all children of God as even the gospels themselves have Jesus acknowledging. So that does indeed make Jesus our brother. In fact, Jesus even said as much himself. Whatever you do unto your brother you do unto me. That's as pantheistic as it gets. Just was telling us that he's one of us, and when he said "I and the Father are one" he meant that this applies to everyone. Where the term "Father" is just symbolic of the pantheistic creator in general and not meant to actually imply any gender.

So yes, I guess it does make sense that way. And Buddha would be our brother too, but I'm sure the Celts at Avalon don't feel a need to emphasize that.

I do not view Jesus as the only begotten son or as God. I follow him like Buddhists follow the teachings of Buddha. I believe Christians have distorted the truth of Jesus and that's a shame because he had a lot of good things to say.

No self respecting Christian would call me a christian so perhaps its not a good idea for me to use the term.

That's the way I feel too. Jesus would have made a great religion if he could stand on his own two feet as a Buddha (i.e. enlightened one).



Well that's because the Christians (mainly the author of the New Testament) made sure that Jesus cannot stand on his own two feet. They nailed him to the Old Testament by demanding that he is the son of the mythological God of that old doctrine.

That's a shame.

And this is precisely why I will never call myself a "Christian" because I don't support their beliefs that Jesus was the son of the God of the Old Testament. And that's basically what the term "Christ" actually refers to.

In short I don't believe that Jesus was "The Christ". And therefore I cannot claim to be a "Christian".

But I do believe in Jesus as a man, and I agree with his teachings which are extremely similar to the teaching of Buddha as far as I can see.

Also, we often speak in terms of Jesus and Buddha, but in truth there are many Buddhas that have existed all throughout history and even into today. I've personally met a few of them and I'm sure many people have. It's not uncommon to meet a Buddha really.

Note: Buddha simply mean "enlightened one" and doesn't necessarily refer exclusively to Siddhartha Gautama. I believe that Jesus was a Buddha as well. And many other people are too.

I definitely agree with that.

Based on this same conjecture, Conservative Jews could say the exact same thing about Christianity and the New Testament.

And, it's just as accurate to point out the fire-breathing Christian Fundies view Catholicism as being just as 'cobbled together to appetize'.

I could make an excellent case, too, that Christianity's Paper Pope is more about Paul than anyone else.

-Kerry O.

Exactly.

And very little about Jesus actually. They're just riding on his namesake.

Yup, that one is fairly easy to make. After all he wrote what...

13 of the 19 books in the NT?