00:00:00.000all right so william s coming from an atheist background raised that way by my parents how
00:00:13.840would you suggest beginning to introduce faith to my family uh kids especially go ahead and take a
00:00:21.120swing at that daniel i think first and foremost the practice of also true is uh ancestor worship
00:00:30.000and while sometimes we sometimes in the last couple of hundred years
00:00:38.480particularly we've over rationalized the existence of divine beings
00:00:46.880so getting the first step toward that i think is
00:00:50.640the worship of ancestors you know your grandparents for instance if they passed
00:00:54.800on those are people that you've known touched
00:00:56.800held shared meals with and happy memories with so i think
00:01:05.040the first step toward embracing that is the worship of ancestors
00:01:13.520um apologize guys bear with me our entropy
00:01:18.080is not working again for some reason unfortunately
00:01:22.960so i'm trying to get that fixed what i will say is in the meantime um
00:01:33.520i like daniel said i think that um ancestor worship is
00:01:42.160the most accessible path to that um because i think that when you have pictures you know
00:01:50.000and i'm not sure if your parents are with you still or if you're if your grandparents are
00:01:54.240still with you but when you have pictures on the wall of people that your children can see
00:02:00.960they know those people existed there's not a question there's no you know fundamental
00:02:06.720existential questions about the existence of gods these people clearly existed
00:02:12.160And it's so fundamental to human nature in all of our expression to be able to commune with our ancestors, even people that don't, don't admit to it or don't like to, we speak to our dead loved ones often, even atheists do it without thinking about it.
00:02:36.120you'll have something you want to you want to share or you want to ask your grandpa about or
00:02:45.820you know you'll you'll come in those moments where you're in your feelings and you'll do that
00:02:49.960I think encouraging that in a more structured way with your children is a really good start
00:02:55.260and I think if your children can believe that your ancestors listen on from beyond the veil
00:03:02.700It makes it that much easier to get your children to to believe in the gods.
00:03:09.400I'm not sure. I'm not sure the ages of your children.
00:03:16.060And I think that makes a difference whether you're starting them out fresh or whether you're trying to get older children who have been atheists to be to become religious.
00:03:27.220One of the things is I would stress, especially with the rest of your family with older children, is is openness.
00:03:39.120I think it's a huge ask to demand that someone goes from no belief to devout faith with nothing in between.
00:03:49.100I think that's a it's a very big ask. And I think that's kind of a nonstarter for a lot of folks.
00:03:54.420So in the AFA, we try not to do that. What I would encourage people to do is to be open and to reach out to make an offering to the gods and see what happens with an open heart, an open mind.
00:04:10.520and just literally say that, say, Hey, I, you know, I don't know if you guys are out there,
00:04:16.940but I hope that you are. And here is an offering, you know, some incense or some meat or a shot of
00:04:25.700whiskey or, you know, literally whatever that's respectful and say, Hey, you know, I'm here and
00:04:32.480I'm listening and see what happens. And I think you'd be surprised. Um, some really great things
00:04:37.280can happen from just that. Also, I would encourage you to get with your local AFA membership and get
00:04:44.540your family to participate in a ritual or at least to witness a ritual. The power when a group of
00:04:53.460people come before our gods is there's a synchronicity that's built and there's a momentum
00:05:00.980that's built that makes us worth more than some of our parts when we're doing it as a family or
00:05:07.200as a, as a group, as a congregation. Um, and those are occasions where I've, I've seen that
00:05:15.280light come on in people's eyes where all of a sudden the gods are real to them. So I would
00:05:20.220encourage those kinds of experiences. You can't, you can't force a belief and you can't force a
00:05:26.080relationship, but that openness, I think is a key in, uh, in moving that forward.
00:05:32.560matt can i add something to that absolutely you can so it's interesting you said that and you
00:05:39.800mentioned you know bringing your family to an uh an afa event so i'm going to tell a little bit of
00:05:45.080my story when i first joined the afa um so i'd uh you know i had found a folk builder in north
00:05:52.240carolina through a facebook group that was related to focus heathenry but not necessarily just afa
00:05:59.920and uh they put me in contact with a guy here in south carolina and at the time
00:06:05.440at the house anyway it was just my myself practicing and my daughter who was mine at the
00:06:11.120time and i got invited to i believe it was a winter finding event which was only about an
00:06:19.160hour from my house told my wife i said you know i'm gonna me and lauren are gonna go check that
00:06:24.140out and my wife made fun of me about this stuff she's like oh you want to pretend to be a viking
00:06:28.700you're gonna go pillage our neighbors houses la la la so i told her we're gonna go check this thing
00:06:33.340out and um she said well i'm gonna come with you and i said why are you just gonna make fun or
00:06:39.740whatever she's like no i just want to make sure you're not bringing our kid around some you know
00:06:43.180weirdos or whatever so my wife tagged along and uh we we gave uh we exchanged gifts to pray that day
00:06:52.940i remember looking back at my little girl and again she was overcome with emotion because it was
00:06:58.140it was finally real and uh we finished up with the ritual and uh shared a meal and did a sambal
00:07:05.740which is a wonderful icebreaker i always recommend that to for newcomers to participate in sambal
00:07:12.220and before we got out of the driveway heather had applied for membership the austral folk
00:07:16.220assembly and it was less about the connection with the divine it was more about the connection
00:07:19.980within the community so there's always little stepping stones there and we talked about
00:07:24.220ancestor worship i think that's a that's maybe a second step i think uh getting involved with
00:07:30.140the community and seeing what it's about in real life is probably the most important thing you can
00:07:34.540do you know it's it's not the popular answer but i think that it's true when you see something
00:07:46.380it's easy to come into this or come at this from
00:07:49.660from regular 2020 modern american society or western society in general and be unsure and
00:08:02.060feel that maybe it's silly or not really you know not really feel like it's a real thing
00:08:07.100and you can't not feel that when you're at uh when you're at one of our events or better yet
00:08:14.860when you're at one of our Hoffs. Practicing it in real life, especially with other real people,
00:08:23.520with families, with good looking, nice people, it makes it very real. Being able to see that we have
00:08:33.360Hoffs that you can reach out and touch them. And as silly as it may sound that they're on Google
00:08:37.720maps like they're a real location that legitimacy makes it easier for people who are just starting
00:08:45.080out or who haven't considered house a true before to feel like it's a real thing and to take it very
00:08:50.760seriously and i think that does go a long way