ADF Virtues- Piety

[badstar]

The faith which moves mountains, or at least believes them against all the available evidence to be pink, was a solid and abiding faith, a great rock against which the world could hurl whatever it would, yet it would not be shaken.
-Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency


Piety seems to be an idea that a lot of individuals in the Pagan world struggle with. It is difficult for many to reconcile with a pagan belief system this idea that is more often than not pinned solely to Christians, and brings to mind the image of celibacy and self-deprivation, monks or nuns kneeling and praying.

When I think of "piety" or "the pious", being originally from Central Pennsylvania, I initially think of a house church full of Amish people praying quietly. My mother's family is Catholic, and the other image that comes to mind is of course, monks chanting and nuns in adoration in some remote monastary. Or of martyrs- those who have died for their religious causes. Which is all well and good, but those are not the only images of piety.

For a while, I wasn't really sure myself how to see piety in a non-Christian context, and then one day I was flipping through my Dedicant's Program book and found a statement that made sense to me : "The virtue of Piety is about keeping faith, about keeping commitment to specific practices and works over a long period of time." (pg. 90) Stated this way, piety can be applied to any religion.

Today, I was talking via LiveJournal with another dedicant who had issues with the idea of piety, because she saw it as adhering to duty out of obligation.

My answer to this objection is simply this:

Personally, I don't believe that adhering to duty solely out of obligation is true piety. When one keeps obligations for no other reason than obligation itself, it opens the door for a lot of resentment- the pious are not resentful of what duties they keep. In my eyes, piety is NOT about obligation, but about keeping a commitment because it's in your heart to do so, because you want to, because you need to, because that is what is within you.

Piety

From Merriam-Webster:

piety
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural pi·e·ties
Etymology: French pieté piety, pity, from Latin pietat-, pietas, from pius dutiful, pious
1 : the quality or state of being pious: as a : fidelity to natural obligations (as to parents) b : dutifulness in religion : DEVOUTNESS
2 : an act inspired by piety
3 : a conventional belief or standard : ORTHODOXY
synonym see FIDELITY

Comments

[fuego.livejournal.com]

you would thnk that :-P