086 – Christopaganism (With Jeremy and Irena Warriner)

Elaine Johnston 1:24
Hey, everyone, welcome to the reckless pursuit. I’m Elaine. And I’m Cody and this is episode 86. And we are talking with Jeremy and I Raina Warner.

Unknown Speaker 1:33
Yeah, this was an

Cody Johnston 1:34
amazingly interesting conversation super insightful, and very just very just called right. I think that’s what you were kind of describing. It’s just a calm conference.

Elaine Johnston 1:44
I can hear the wind chimes in the back.

Cody Johnston 1:45
Yeah, and it’s just such a they were sitting outside and we were having this conversation. just such a beautiful conversation. I just want to share a little bit about what this conversation entails. I Rana is a priestess in the temple of ascension and she grew up anymore i guess i traditional patriarchal Christian home and found life and found God through more of an earth based religion. Jeremy, on the other hand, also grew up in a just a traditional Christian upbringing a little more, I guess, open Christian upbringing, right, a little more progressive Christian upbringing, but he actually kind of stepped away from his faith for a little while, didn’t really know if God was real to him or not, if there was a creator, if this was all just an accident, and he found himself in a hospital bed, learning that he was actually in a medically induced coma for six weeks, from a a collision that he was in and he was trapped in a burning automobile and lost both of his legs. And so he, he also came to just understand God more in the process of being in this coma and had a spiritual awakening. And now both of them are both practitioners of a mortician Traditional Earth magic as well as being members and even serving on the committee’s for their Methodist Church. And so this is just a really interesting conversation if you have any, I guess curiosities are trying to understand the similarities between, I guess more of a traditional Earth type magic or more of a pagan mystic type approach and the old religions comparative to Christianity and how they can play together or what that’s like, I This episode is for you. And I just really encourage you if this just if paganism or any of those terms are like trigger words for you. I just really want to invite you to listen to this conversation because it just helps us realize how similar we all are. And I just want to skip all the other interest stuff and just get right to this conversation with Jeremy and I Rena Warner. Alright everyone, we’re here with Irene and Jeremy Warriner. How are you both doing today?

Irena Warriner 3:52
We’re good today. Thank you.

Cody Johnston 3:54
Yep. And we’re here talking about a topic that Elaine and I have been desperately wanting to talk about. For a while and finally found two people brave enough to speak on it, especially, I love it because we’re close to Halloween, which just makes us even better. And we have two people here who grew up in Christian faith, and have experienced outside of Christian faith into pagan practice, and all of that. And I just, I don’t even know where to start with this. So I’m not even going to attempt to try I’m just going to open the floor to you guys just to kind of open up about what your story is, what your backstory is in Christianity and kind of where you’re at now. And what what your practice is what you would classify your practice as just to just to make everyone aware of that.

Irena Warriner 4:41
So hi, I’m Irina, I grew up in Christian religion, Anglican Episcopal every other weekend with my parents and a Catholic High School, then 18 I got pregnant out of wedlock, lots of shaming going on being kicked out of the Catholic school, shaming by friends, judging by priests and then I get really angry with God and started looking for somewhere else to to find that peace that I had had when I was a child with the presence of a higher power. I had people in my life who were part of 12 step groups who believed in a higher power, I had Native American friends, I had other friends who were involved in Wicca so I did a lot of exploring and trying to find answers to, to fill that space within myself. I kept over the years trying to make Christianity work for me. And it really, it wasn’t for a long time, I had to come to terms and do some healing within myself around the belief systems that I’ve been taught about myself within those religious practices. And I did that all with a demonic priestess Group here in Indianapolis, a women’s group and have been able to walk back into a sanctuary with my husband and And find peace and thank God again, but still in the process incorporating those other practices of food, full moon circles, drumming, incense, sage, having the altar at home, where I leave my prayers for a higher power. I would have to say that that the pagan practice I’m envisioning, calling in would be one of the reasons Jeremy’s in my life. I used those those types of practices and rituals to bring in a right relationship within my life.

Jeremy Warriner 6:34
So I’m Jeremy and I grew up here in Indianapolis, four blocks away from the woman who would become my wife, but we’d never met as children. Even though we had a lot of same friends. I went to a Methodist Church where I was very active in my youth and I always felt a higher power at work in that church and whenever, at gatherings of other Christian you When I went off to college, something happened and I didn’t feel that connection anymore when I would go back to my church or any other church and my career and in the hotel industry through the 24 seven nature of that business just made it even more difficult for me to be connected spiritually. And then in back in 2004, I was invited to a Halloween party and at that Halloween party, it I did not know when I until I got there that it was hosted by a coven of witches, and they hold an open ritual. And so I thought, Okay, this might be fun, and I participated and while standing around the fire in that open ritual, for the first time in years, I felt that same spiritual presence and from that point forward over the course of the next year, I started exploring paganism, while at the same time, continuing to And the same Methodist Church that I grew up in, for instance, it was Halloween when that when I felt that presence at work in my life again, the very next holiday at church. I felt that presence in the church for the first time. And then going forward. It’s always been there after a year, well, year later, and this is not related to that. But I was in a really bad car accident on my way home from work, and wound up trapped in a burning Jeep Wrangler for about 20 minutes. And six weeks later woke up from a medically induced coma to learn that my legs have been amputated. Now, before I was even aware that my legs have been amputated, there was this overwhelming sense of grief. And while I was asleep for six weeks, I have six weeks of memory. And at the tail end of that six weeks of memory, I remember somebody asking me if I wanted to move on or if I wanted to go And I said to that person, I want to go back and be with my family. And I To this day, honestly, I remember this moment of having all the answers and having seen the entire universe laid out in front of me from beginning to end. And then having all of that knowledge ripped away as I was waking up from the medically induced coma. But the one thing that stuck with me from that point going forward, is that there truly is the Divine Spirit at work in the universe, that every religion on Earth, while divinely inspired, is created by man, and that none of them have it right. What’s important is the acknowledgement of a divine power working in the universe and in our lives. And then going a little bit further, as I said, I had six weeks of memory that memory did not involve the car accident. So as I began exploring that, and there were all these questions of how did I survive? I had been sent a picture of my wreckage of the Jeep Wrangler, and it was this mangled burnt hunk of metal. where I fit in. It didn’t make sense how I got out of it didn’t make sense. And so I started calling first the police officer that filled out the police report. And then the other people that were president and what I learned was that this car accident happened on a county road in the middle of nowhere, and within a matter of minutes, while there were no witnesses. The first person to arrive was a minister who had planned on staying home with his girlfriend having popcorn and pizza and watching the movie, but then had cravings for food that he could only get at a restaurant the next town over and was on his way home from that dinner when he came up on the scene.

The next person there was a retired nurse who was sitting at home watching TV and decided she needed to go for a drive and she turns down a road she’d never gone down before actually said, God, which way should I go as she got into her car, and she came upon the scene in the middle. This was late at night in October. And she gets out of her car walks down into the ditch, almost walks into power lines that she can’t see that had come down when I went off the road. And a man walks out of the cornfield with a flashlight stops or waves around the power lines and then she and this man from the cornfield and the minister start fighting fire. two police officers arrived within minutes who typically would not have been anywhere nearby, but we’re dealing with an abandoned car when the 911 call came in. A minister starts running around a farmer across the street starts running fire extinguishers across and they thought the fire for 20 minutes could not get me out every time they pulled, couldn’t get the fire to stop and so the last time that they pulled, the story is as the Jeep was converted engulfed, I popped out and the the nurse check to see if I was stable and then turned around to see if the man from the cornfield needed help because she’d seen him beating the flames out with his bare hands. And he was gone. To this day we have never found that person and I I honestly truly believe it was the guardian spirit. And I honestly truly believe that is God at work that divine spirit at work in our world.

Irena Warriner 12:28
I’m chills

Cody Johnston 12:29
Yeah, that’s that’s super powerful. Irena Tell me and and Jeremy, I want to circle back around because that’s super powerful. But just from you. I would love to hear what it was about Christianity, specifically their version of Christianity that you grow up in that push you away. I heard a little bit of your heart before we started this, started recording recording this call and it was super powerful. And then what really drew you into more of an earth based religion

Irena Warriner 12:57
growing up in those very big Article religions, there wasn’t room for me to be a powerful young woman. There wasn’t room for me to be intelligent. There wasn’t room for me to have a purpose other than to do as I was told, I married, the man that I had my first child with. And he was he had grown up with a little bit of church and it was all about control for him. And so therefore, since the church told him that I was his wife and I was his property, I had to do these things. It was a very abusive relationship, ended up really losing myself and losing, losing God. Again, those people that had been in my life previously started coming around and reaching back out to me and saying, You are powerful. There’s these other places to look to find to find your power and to find your source and, and to find your calling. And when I started reaching out and purchase dissipating within the demonic pass practices within women’s circles. I worked with a shaman from Peru for a while when I lived out in San Diego, I started finding peace and serenity. And understanding that those things I was taught were just beliefs, and they were man’s beliefs. They were not and I could choose differently. That wasn’t something I knew that I could do from being brought up that way. I wasn’t allowed to have my own thoughts. You know, I had to believe in a way that I was told to believe, finding my power and things got me out of abusive relationship and marriage. And then there was a lot of healing because not only did I have, you know, those belief systems from religion, I had the belief system from alcoholic parents as well. And so there was a lot of dealing with in nature, and women, and even, even some really beautiful men. Who helped me heal, and it wasn’t about control for them. And it wasn’t about Do as I say, and you have to believe things. It was very much a, you get to be who you want. This is your choice. Here are some tools, your different ways. Look at this. For me, ritual was always really important from the religious background. So I love the fact that I can burn sage and I can burn frankincense and I can burn all of these things within my own home or within my own ritual that I don’t have to do within the sanctuary. I can I can choose to give myself a cleansing bath and call it a baptism. I can choose so many of the things that have meaning to me and find happiness and in in connection with the world around me. And when I went through my shamanic priestess processes, I went through three different processes with this women’s group here in Indianapolis, and really did a lot of inner healing Shadow Work. Understanding my belief systems and, and how they had traumatized me that I could start doing things my way. And within reason Thou shall not harm none, right? And then I started understanding the cycles of where Christianity pulled in pagan belief. You have the story of Osiris whose Egyptian god who died and rebirth within three days, there’s a story of The Goddess Deanna and the Assyrians and the Babylonians. She, she had the death reverse cycle as well. Understanding the cycles of the earth helped to understand myself. And so there was just opportunity do much deeper work and healing work within myself and within my community with these other practices, then it within the Christian religion that I’ve been brought it up and now, recently, since I’ve married Jeremy, we joined I joined his Methodist Church and they say, they’re very open, progressive. They say things like Mother, Father God, they understand that you are They understand that if I’m made in the image of God, then there is a duality because there’s a feminine and the masculine. You don’t find that in many places. So that’s, that’s where I’m at. I’m also over the years I’ve started out as a massage therapist and started doing the healing work that way. Do I do laying on a hands healing, I do vibrational sound healing. I do Reiki I also do some of the laying on of hands healing that’s been passed down by Solomon wiki who was an Amish healer. And so these are all things that have been brought to me as tools to not only heal myself to heal others, and in those other communities I was in previously those would not have been accepted.

So I fully believe that my shamanism brought me to where I am today, and and ended Jeremy. I literally, I did a vision board and I called him and I called him the right conscious right relationship and that’s where

Jeremy Warriner 18:00
He came into my life. And I think it’s important to recognize that a lot of the things that she’s talking about, that are very pagan are also not anti christian. They’re part of Christianity, prayer, whatever you want to call it, you can call it spell casting, you can call it ritual. You know, it’s prayer is I found, or as I was recovering, there were certain points where, even before I woke up, where my family would reach out to the world and say, his lungs have failed. Please pray for his lungs to to work on their own again, and I receive get well cards from churches in foreign countries and languages that I can’t read. It reached that many people and that many people praying at the same time every night, in their own form of prayer, whether it’s Christian or otherwise guided that energy towards that healing. I think it’s very important to recognize that that’s all it doesn’t matter whether you call it Christian or you call it something else.

Irena Warriner 19:07
It’s all energy, it’s all source. Right? It’s, it’s very much and how you intend to use it, whether you tend to use it for good or whether you intend to use it for bad and that’s, that, in itself is any religion in religion can be used for good or bad.

Jeremy Warriner 19:20
And so, in my church several years ago, specifically my church, not the broader Methodist Church, but the one that I grew up in, recognize the absence of the feminine in Christianity recognize the that duality that needs to be there. So in frequently it depends on what the parents want. But in our baptismal formula, it’s I bless you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God mother of a song.

Cody Johnston 19:50
That’s extremely interesting to me, because in an earlier episode, Elaine and I kind of had a conversation. And just to offer a little bit of relation here, my mother passed away from alcoholism. So I had an addictive parents as well. And I never, I never had an issue with my father. My father wasn’t like a hard figure for me to understand or like, so I didn’t need a Father God. But whenever I just was sitting here meditating one day, and it hit me so hard that God is my mother. And of course, I grew up, you know, in the church and everything too. But just like that idea, it’s not taught, it’s not talked about in traditional Christian circles, but just to say, God is my mother and I just broke down bawling, because I was like, God, you’re my mother. And so I love that I just, I just want to interview interject there for a second. So

Irena Warriner 20:39
that’s, that’s actually fascinating, because, for me, I had a very father who was bipolar as well. And so he was hard to connect with he was in different things. And so I kind of find the parallel that I also had this very patriarchal religion. That was about Based that was broken as well. And so when I could not get what I needed from either father figure, I ran, I came toward this mother figure. And that’s what I found was all encompassing. And then I had to heal that piece of the broken father figure. And, and, and be okay with that too. And at that moment, I really could do that. That’s when, you know, the love of my life came in, and I, and there was this balance that I’d never had previously. Wow.

Elaine Johnston 21:30
Yeah, that’s what I love about you. your guys’s story is that there is that balance, I see that balance. I’m, I’m sure the listeners can, you know, listen to that balance and understand that and I love how you can just connect, you know, both going to a Methodist Church and having, you know, pagan practices that you can encompass those together, like you were saying, so I just think that’s beautiful. And that’s not something that you actually see a lot out in the world.

Cody Johnston 21:54
Yeah. And so and I’m really curious about this too, and I’ll ask both questions. At One time because you guys like are so good at telling your story so I’m just gonna blurt them out there. A How do you guys are? What is it about the Christian faith that keeps you coming back to the Methodist Church? And then be Have you guys received any kind of either encouragement and or backlash for being a air quotes here but like an interface

Irena Warriner 22:24
I would have to say for me, it’s a community, it allows me opportunity to do service work in a positive way. And actually, this community has been very accepting of me. I got nominated onto the committee here at the church for the United Methodist Women. I’m one of the spiritual co coordinators. And so I actually I actually get to bring in some of my thought processes and some of my processes into this women’s community within this church, and they’re open to it. And I’ve had many of them come to me and say, I want to understand that more and what It was beautiful was that Jeremy and I got to have our wedding ceremony in the church. And we actually wrote our own vows. And we actually wrote the whole, the whole entire ceremony. I mean, every music piece had had a part every. We did a whole releasing ceremony in the beginning where we chose to release a bunch of things from our past so they would not carry forward with us going forward into our new life together. We did a ham fasting where we tied our hands together, which is a Christian tradition, but it’s also the pagan tradition because Christianity came after the pagan religions and drew in a lot of aspects of it to make it easier for the populace to transition. Right. We also included a hand washing because

Jeremy Warriner 23:48
I have no feet so

Irena Warriner 23:49
we couldn’t defeat watching.

We were trying to bring some biology in very much into our wedding ceremony to say this is us. We are We have connected on a spiritual level. And this is where, and this is what we’re saying to our communities. This is us. And we don’t. We’ve had nothing but good wishes. Oh, yeah.

Jeremy Warriner 24:13
And I, and as she talks about that being our wedding ceremony staying, this is us. I identify as a Christian Neo pagan Jedi. So our ring bearer brought our rings in tied to a lightsaber hill that was lit. So

Unknown Speaker 24:29
yeah, no,

Irena Warriner 24:31
no, it’s been. Our community has been very accepting of us.

Jeremy Warriner 24:35
It has been it’s, it’s been really wonderful. And I also said, I grew up in the church, I was very active in the youth group and, and at the point of the car accident, I was very skeptical of there being a divine power there being any kind of plan to the universe. There, then I was skeptical of any goodness, really in mankind. And because of what I’ve seen and witnessed and gone through my career and my life becoming an, and as a result, I also wasn’t that involved in my church at that point, I was what people would call a chaser. I was there on Christmas and Easter. But then this accident happens. I wake up to learn that this entire community that I’d really not involved myself in in years, had been supporting my family for six weeks when they didn’t know honestly, if I would wake up the next day, or if I was going to die. And the concern even there was that if I did wake up who was I going to be because I had sustained such injuries. So that that brought me back into the church, this overwhelming feeling of that there was a divine spirit now that not even a feeling just a confirmation for me, of what I gone through that there was something else at work in the world. To me, it was No longer really worried about where I was and what religion I fell into, as long as I agreed with what was being taught from the pulpit. You know? And if I disagree that the ministers willing to have that conversation, and in our minister absolutely, always has been. And in fact, when this whole method is thing came up with the, the LGBT community and the vote that least the Methodist churches around here don’t seem to agree with. I sent him a message immediately saying, you know, are we ready to start the Cristo pagan Jedi Temple? And, and he responded with they may the force be with assault.

Irena Warriner 26:43
That’s funny.

Cody Johnston 26:45
That’s great. So out of all of this, you’ve both been through emotional and and physical turmoil that has brought you to your place of faith, who is or what is God or the divine to you now maybe from what he or she or it was at one point and how has your, your new understanding made you more able to just just to love people and to love life and to love each other,

Irena Warriner 27:15
my understanding of the Divine is, for me, it’s a much deeper level it I mean, it goes down to a cellular level, I can, I now understand know the seven generations back type thing and understand that our future is love. And that source is love. And I choose every day how I want to interact to connect with my with my source, my higher power that in itself makes a world of difference for me, but for me, I wake up in the morning, and I just I just choose that every every interaction I have today is going to be is going to be impactful. Because I I want people to see that love and happiness is there for you know, for all and that I just I want to be that little piece of spirit for them that they can see that they can see that,

Jeremy Warriner 28:09
to me, we all come from the same source, and that is God. And I believe that God truly is the residual energy of the Big Bang. It is create God is creation. And it’s that spark that animates each of us. Because we all carry within us the spark of the Divine. So it’s within us it’s also within our entire world. We are a part of the source we’re all connected. When I think about Christianity and earth centered religions feel like it’s important to incorporate the aspects of the earth centered religions, because we are part of the earth. But as IRENA was saying, love is absolutely at the center of it. We’re meant to help each other get through this. We’re meant to help each other evolve. Love not just for our fellow brothers and sisters but love for our world and With all the changes that are going on helping understand, helping others to understand where we are and how we need to heal our world, I’m ordained in the temple of Ascension out of Asheville, North Carolina. And one of our gathering events we had

Irena Warriner 29:18
a lady who does water blessings come and she taught us how to do water blessings. And so we have all learned how to go and help heal bodies of water that have been damaged. And you know, and things like that. And so, that itself is when I by blessing the water by blessing my food by blessing of the people as I walk by them when I see things that are going on for them, that’s how I choose to to interact and connect with with divine and that’s how I choose to have that in my life every day.

Cody Johnston 29:49
Kareena How would you or what would be something you would like to to pose to people who are maybe more in those traditional Christian circles like you’ve come out of just to kind I help open their mind and just kind of understand, I guess just the complexity of the Divine of source of God, or maybe just to just to give them something else to chew on. Because I know I know that you can hear you can mention anything about Oh, paganism or Earth religion or anything. There’s just this this group of people that are just going to lose it, right, especially like Elaine and I had said in our, in our previous conversation, like, you know, we’re from the south, like, we get this all the time, or you bring anything like this up and people starting it. There’s this level of superstition, and maybe that’s what I’m trying to go with is how do we take the superstition out of these like and these categorization and putting things in boxes and just helping help people open up their minds and broaden their understanding? Do you have anything to say to that?

Irena Warriner 30:48
Be willing to listen and be willing to share your experience strength and hope with them, I have found that my experience has helped shift monies ship many people’s thoughts or ideas about something when I share an experience of something because it wasn’t technically a religious experience or something. But if you can get somebody and you can be empathetic with them, and talk with them and really get in deep, that’s where I found a shift occurs. And it doesn’t have to be that they’re all for it. It’s just that maybe they’re a little more open to it. And once you again, your plant that mustard seed, right, then something things will plant and start to grow for them. And they’ll start to notice that things can change.

Cody Johnston 31:42
That’s beautiful. And I just want to give you both just any last minute anything y’all want to throw out there before we wrap this up. Y’all have anything else you would like to just kind of throw out there and scatter some seed on the ground as we can,

Irena Warriner 31:53
I guess maybe just to be open minded and to understand that we’re connected through energy and source. And that there’s healing to be had when you go looking for it, if you’re willing to do the work, it’s not always pretty. Like I said, I’ve truly been blessed and my life has been bought into balance because I was willing to, to look outside of those boxes that that were put in, and those belief systems that were put in, so

Jeremy Warriner 32:21
in trying to have those kind of conversations, it is that recognition that like said earlier, not no religion has it, right. Which also means no religion necessarily can be said to have it wrong. And so that’s the importance of respecting different views, different ways of approaching things. It’s about coming to God in a positive spirituality in a non discriminatory space, which that there’s a lot of people that struggle with that. And so then then I think, if you start going down that road, it’s important to look at our History and the history of our religions, and the fact that they’ve been rewritten so the Kings could have divorces and all sorts of for all sorts of other reasons. Once we boil that out, and you listen to people with respect and you are open to seeing how they may use different words, but it’s about getting to the same place.

Irena Warriner 33:24
Finding that right ground very much

Jeremy Warriner 33:26
that that I think that’s very, very important. Well, thank

Cody Johnston 33:29
you both so much for having this conversation for being brave enough to talk to a couple of strangers across the internet and share your story. We We greatly appreciate it and it was amazing getting to know both of you. Yeah, you two are a beautiful, beautiful couple have been through some crazy stuff. And I love hearing your

Elaine Johnston 33:46
stories individually and as coming together and the fact that like you, technically you were in the same circle, as children, like had no idea, I think.

Jeremy Warriner 33:55
And so the one thing that I think we also have neglected to mention Is that so I sustained fourth degree burns to my lower legs wound up in a burn unit, became a volunteer in that burn unit after I left and got out of that. How we met was she years later started working there as a massage therapist, and somebody in the burn unit sent me a message while I was at a Christian conference to say, hey, you’ve got to meet this woman. And so instead of paying attention to the political stuff being discussed on stage at this conference, I was texting back and forth with this. This woman I’d never met before, who was asking me to come to a bonfire that very night. But

Unknown Speaker 34:42
yeah, but

Jeremy Warriner 34:45
the burn injuries that I did, I never would have met the person that introduced us. So yeah,

Cody Johnston 34:51
that’s beautiful. Thank you both so much. I greatly well thank you

Irena Warriner 34:55
for what you’re doing and being open to the conversation and getting it out there. Yeah. We appreciate it.

Cody Johnston 35:01
It’s our pleasure.

Elaine Johnston 35:02
Hey guys, we just want to take another minute and think Jeremy and I Rana Warner for being on the show this week and just sharing their just powerful, powerful story and just how they were able to come together through their different backgrounds and upbringings and just understand just how similar they are and just to be able to intertwine their different versions of faith and what works for them and how to just have that together in a marriage.

Cody Johnston 35:30
Yes, thank you both so much for taking time out of your day and sharing your story and just being vulnerable. We greatly appreciate it. Also, if you have anything you would like to bring to the conversation, we invite you to be a part of it. We have a group nomads a safe community for Christians to ask unsafe questions. You can find a link for that in the show notes below. And if this story resonates with you think that you have someone that would really benefit from hearing this we invite you to share it on with a friend Best way to keep the conversation going. And last but not least, if you have not done so, so far, please go down there, click and give us an honest review that helps us know how to better serve you guys going forward what you like what we can do to keep improving and as always be brave, be bold and be reckless.