If you can't summarize it in 3 decent sized paragraphs, then you don't know enough about the subject.

Ciao a tutti,

I've been stuck for blog topics.  Not because I don't have any. Because the ones that I do have seem to fit best with back-and-forth dialogue rather than the neat (sterile?) written word.  They're less about opinions and more about questions and trying to find answers.

For instance, here are some snippets of the types of conversations that I've had over the past week:

• Religion? Spiritual path? Umbrella term of related movements?
• Wicca, Neo-Wicca, Paganism - same or different? How so? Specific priesthood(s) of a religion? If so, which one?
• Paganism as an umbrella term - useful or confusing?
• If Paganism is a movement, what is the religion that Wicca and Neo-Wicca is a priesthood of?
• Initiatory Tradition vs Priesthood?
• Orthopraxy vs Orthodoxy? 
• When aspects of an entirely orthopraxic Path begin to run counter to values and ethics of modern practitioners (through cultural changes), what should be done? Anything?
•  Judaism (an orthopraxic faith) has the Torah* and the rabbinical commentaries to help modern day practitioners interpret the "correct practices". Does Wicca have something similar?

And the hardest one so far -

• There are many different religious movements within Judaism ranging from very orthopradix/conservative to very liberal and yet they all fall under the umbrella of "Judiasm". Wicca (Trad/BTW, Neo-, etc.) seems to not have a similar concept an instead insist on an "us versus them" perspective. Why?

Each time I try to address those questions in writing, I seem to get bogged down with going back to what I put a paragraph or two previously and changing what I wrote.  When discussing things over coffee, it's easy to circle around to further clarify what was said earlier but very difficult to put it in writing.

Someone once said to me that if you can't summarize it in 3 decent sized paragraphs, then you don't know enough about the subject.  Leaving aside the truth to that statement for the moment, I thought it might make a good exercise.  So, anyone want to take a crack at it? Pick one of the items above and write 3 paragraphs addressing it.  It's not as easy as it sounds.

Benedizioni,

---Vinnie

*The Torah consists of the foundational narrative of the Jewish people: their call into being by their God, their trials and tribulations, and their covenant with their God which involves following a way of life (halakha) embodied in a set of religious obligations and civil laws.