I belonged to AFA but let my membership lapse. I don't participate in any group or ritual. I wanted to look to a tradition that was part of my people's heritage, not a middle eastern desert religion nor a native American tradition. My people are Northern European, my mother from Germany, my father's family from Great Britain/Ireland/Germany. I grew up Catholic but cannot relate to their focus on abortion and gay marriage.
Here is an excerpt from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
"No buts about it. Spiritually, I'm a rich man. Because of my Asian ancestry, I've inherited a certain amount of spiritual wealth. But-- you and Debbie and the pilgrims and the would-be pilgrims have got to understand this-- I cannot share this wealth! Why? Because Eastern spiritual currency is simply not negotiable in your Western culture. It would be like sending dollar bills to pygmies. You can't spend dollars in the African jungle. The best use pygmies could make of dollar bills would be to light fires with them.
Throughout the Western world, I see people huddled around little fires, warming themselves with Buddhism and Taoism and Hinduism and Zen. And that's the most they can ever do with those philosophies. Warm their hands and feet. They can't make full use of Hinduism because they aren't Hindu; they can't really take advantage of the Tao because they aren't Chinese; Zen will abandon them after a while--its fire will go out--because they aren't Japs like me. To turn to Oriental religious philosophies may temporarily illuminate experience for them, but ultimately, it's futile, because they're denying their own history, they're lying about their heritage. You can hook a rainbow to a crazy vision--Jellybean is doing that--but you can't hook a rainbow to a lie.
"You Westerners are spiritually poor. Your religious philosophies are impoverished. Well, so what? They're probably impoverished for a very good reason. Why not learn that reason? Certainly that's better than shaving your noggin and wrapping up in beads and robes of traditions you can never more that partially comprehend. Admit, first of all, to your spiritual poverty. Confess to it. That's the starting point. Unless you have the guts to begin there, stark in your poverty and unashamed, you're never going to find your way out of the barrows. And borrowed Oriental fineries will not conceal your pretense; they will only make you more lonely in your lie."
Sissy elevated herself or elbow... "But what can a Westerner do, then, in his or her poverty?"
"Endure it. Endure it with candor, humor and grace."
"You're saying it's hopeless then?"
"No, I've already suggested that the spiritual desolation of the West probably has meaning and that meaning might be advantageously explored. A Westerner who seeks a higher, fuller, consciousness could start digging around in his people's religious history. Not an easy task, however, because Christianity looms in the way, blocking every return route like a mountain on wheels."
"...I don't get it, I thought Christianity was our religious heritage. How has it blocked...?"
"Oh, Sissy, this really is tiresome. Christianity, you ninny, is an Eastern religion. There are some wonderful truths in its teachings, as there are in Buddhism and Hinduism, truths that are universal, that is, truths that can speak to the hearts and spirits of all peoples everywhere. But Christianity came out of the East, its origins highly suspect, its dogma already grossly perverted by the time it set foot in the West.
Do you think there was no supreme diety in the West prior to that Eastern alien Jehovah? There was. From the earliest Neolithic days, the peoples of Britain and Europe--the Anglos and Saxons and Latins--had venerated a deity."
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