This wasn't your average day at your average church.
Lubbock's chapter of The Pagan Pride Project celebrated the Autumnal Equinox Saturday afternoon at Clapp Park in Lubbock.
For the third year in a row, the group celebrated its annual Pagan Pride Day, an event that included sacred rituals and guest speakers who spoke to the group about what it means to be pagan.
"It is time for pagans to reclaim what we are and who we are," said Cindy Wilson, a pagan priestess from Roswell, N.M., who spoke about being a responsible pagan at Saturday's event. "It's time for us to stand up and be proud."
She spoke for nearly an hour under an oak tree to a gathering of about 20 people, including a woman who said she traveled an hour to attend Saturday's event in Lubbock, about the importance of embracing paganism and not being afraid to openly celebrate her beliefs.
Aaron Brocklehurst, a coordinator of the event and a staff member at Texas Tech, said the local celebration is an opportunity for Lubbock's pagans to come together and collectively rejoice in their beliefs, which vary greatly under the umbrella term of "pagan."
Paganism technically is a belief system that is not Christian, Muslim or Judaism and includes Buddhism and Hinduism, she said.
"The rituals are to give thanks to the gods for the blessings we've received throughout the year," Brocklehurst said. "The best way to put it is - it is the pagan Thanksgiving. The whole point of it is to let the community know we're here."
While pagans do not have a standard set of beliefs or a particular sacred text, Brocklehurst said, pagan worshippers try their best to adhere to the pagan beliefs and rituals that ancient peoples practiced centuries ago.
Typically, she said the event has an attendance of between 50 and 60 people of all faiths and religions.
"It's a peaceful, loving religion that doesn't seek to alienate anybody," Brocklehurst said.
And Tech has its own organization for pagan students, The Pagan Student Union, an organization which Blake Werner began this semester at the behest of Brocklehurst.
Werner, a junior chemistry, biology and psychology triple major from San Antonio said the organization now has about five or six members, but he expects its membership to grow in the coming months.
"It is kind of intimidating coming up to Lubbock," he said. "It's a Christian city. It's nice to have a group that shares your beliefs."
Like Brocklehurst, Werner said he became a pagan after a Christian upbringing that "just didn't feel right."
"It was just a series of events," Werner said. "I used to be a strong Christian, but then things started happing. You start reading things and it just clicks. I wouldn't say you turn your back on Christianity. (Paganism) is just a more comprehensive view of the Universe. Right now, I'm still searching. It's just more of a comfort level."
"It just fits over you like a glove," said Denise Guinn, the event's other coordinator. "It just fills you like your own personal mold."
Many of Saturday's attendees spoke with ease and pride about their belief system, which they said sometimes is frowned upon by a predominantly Christian society in Texas and in the United States.
Some of Lubbock's pagans, like Charree Mahoney, said they are raising their children to have pagan beliefs.
When her 8-year-old daughter grows older and decides to explore other faiths, however, Mahoney said she would not argue. Instead she will encourage her daughter to establish a spiritual identity of her own.
The belief structure of paganism aptly has provided her daughter with a moral compass, she said, because the notion of Karma is prominent in the minds and hearts of pagan worshippers.
"Just watching me, she's absorbed it," she said about her daughter's initiation into paganism. "She has absorbed that there are certain things you don't do because that's going to come back to you."
Pagans believe strongly in personal responsibility, Brocklehurst said. Unlike Christianity and other major religions, paganism does not derive its moral codes from any particular dogma or established beliefs. Instead, pagans rely on their own judgment to distinguish right and wrong.
During her talk from behind a podium under the tree, Wilson advised the audience to take pride in paganism, which she said is a religion that has been around longer than any other.
"Use your intellect," Wilson said. "That is your greatest weapon. And don't blink."
She urged the group to stand up to the adversity often presented by Christians who claim paganism is an altogether unwholesome religion.
"You have a lot to be proud of," she said, thumping the podium. "I don't think Jesus had any problem with pagans. In fact, I think if he showed up here today, he'd feel more at home with us than he would in any damn church.
"We must fight for acceptance and nothing else, nothing less."
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