Last Tuesday I came home from a three month trip to Israel, Poland, Amsterdam and Prague. It was a fun trip, but a long one, and for the past week I've been unpacking, getting used to the time zone, and basically settling in.

Then two nights ago my father came up to me and asked, "Do you have anything planned for tomorrow?"

"I don't think so, why?"

"Well, your mother and I want to take you out to eat somewhere and have a talk."

I gave him a look. This sounded highly suspicious. He rushed to reassure me.

"Oh, no, don't worry, it's nothing bad. We just want to talk to you about religion."

Oh, boy, I said to myself. Here goes. See, while having to hide my religion is not fun, and I like the idea of saying "I'm Wiccan, deal", it's still frightening, especially because I don't expect my folks to react well. Still, I had hopes. Lately they'd seemed pretty tolerant of my choices to be less religious, and had said things like "It's your life and your decision". So I was hoping they would't take it too badly.

So bright and early yesterday morning we went off to Starbucks and had the discussion. I came away feeling awful, thinking "that went horrible", but looking back now I don't know if it really did. My parents were not at all tolerant. They said "Wicca is idol worship, something you're supposed to die before you commit, and it is completely unacceptable". They said that they wanted me to talk to a rabbi/therapist, which I'm willing to do, though I don't know what good they think it'll do. They apologized to me, because "we have obviously made horrible mistakes in raising you." These things are all annoying and a little hurtful, but mostly just silly and not really worrisome.

The biggest problem for me is that they said "We want to have a good relationship, but we'll see how that goes." I should add that I have always been close with my parents; aside from this one issue, we get along on most things, and we enjoy each other's company. When I was in Israel I called home often, not out of homesickness but because I enjoy talking to my folks. So if they say there's a chance we won't keep this bond in the future it makes me very sad. However, I don't know if that's really going to happen, because they rushed to assure me I could always call them, and if I ever needed anything (non-Wicca reltaed of course) they would help me as best they could. So it seems that our relationship is more assured than they'll admit.

One thing that came out of this is that I was thinking about why my parents and I have such a huge split here. It all comes down to something I was talking about before, in a previous post: whether religion is a personal thing, or affects everyone. My dad said the main "problem" with my choosing Wicca is my statement that Wicca makes me feel fulfilled, while Judaism makes me feel stifled. He said that the point of religion is to do the right thing and make the world a better place (ie, things affecting other people), while I still maintain that religion is about helping you, individually, connect to deity. He feels religion is about everyone, so he sees my decision as irresponsible and wrong. On the other hand, I see religion as personal, so not only do I find his meddling in my personal choice rude, I can't understand why he cares so much. This, I think, is the core of the issue.

Overall, our "talk" wasn't amazingly smooth, and they didn't accept me as much as I'd like, but it wasn't too bad. The biggest surprise was that apparently, my siblings already know about my decision. Not sure how, exactly...I'll have to talk to them sometime soon. But that'll be another post!





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