‘A hint of paganism’
Sydney Carter, who wrote the hymn “Lord of the Dance” to a tune (“‘Tis a Gift to be Simple”) originally created by the Shakers, a movement of 19th-century American religious communalists, has died. Says the Daily Telegraph in Britain, “But the optimistic lines “I danced in the morning when the world begun/ and I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun” also contain a hint of paganism which, mixed with Christianity, makes it attractive to those of ambiguous religious beliefs or none at all.”
Full story here.
And some of us hear only Gwydion Pendderwen’s more blatantly Pagan version in our minds when we think of it.
Thanks to GetReligion for the link, where blogger Douglas LeBlanc is discomfited by those pagan overtones too.
But she is not a Western goddess
Right-wingers complain that naming the new planet Sedna is a manifestation of liberal white guilt or something.
No doubt they would have been happier if the astronomers had chosen “Hekate.”
Not being Inuit, the name merely reminds me of a former comic strip in the Pagan magazine PanGaia, in which Sedna had a role.