I once had a client that spoke openly to his wife about our sessions. She asked if he could still even be christian if he was working with a shaman. His answer still sticks with me today as something I have pride in. He said, “Working with my shaman has helped me to be a better christian.”

This is at once very simple, and complicated. The clear and simple answer is “Yes, Absolutely.”

Being a shaman is a job, it is not a faith. So, in this way, it is like asking if you can be a Grocery Store Clerk and a Christian. I am a shaman (I would like to remind people that I use the word Shaman because people know it, and it is so similar to the truth “Paq’o”.) and I consider my religion to be relationships, but was raised catholic.

The complicated longer part of the story, requires me to dive into touchy topics around the current state of the christian church. If you look at the large number of types of christianity you can follow, they are all different for some small reason. But the church itself (in a perfect world) follows the teachings of christ, and builds a culture around it that makes their church unique. The teachings of christ are to love, feed, teach, by kind to, and help people. He cared about people above of all other things, including his own safety. For me, this is what it is to be christian, and I think that any church that doesn’t have a culture that seems to confuse the core message would agree with me.

What I do in my job of being a shaman, I do my best, within my boundaries, to help everyone who asks me. I try to help those around me to work towards my personal mission of helping our greater community grow to be healthier and more connected.

There are also challenges around things that appear in the Bible that appear to go against some of the core aspects of my shamanism. For instance, I work with different spirits to help me process my thoughts and efforts. And from the readings I have done of the different bibles, I see many things that could be interpreted as working with spirits could be considered bad, or not christian. The reason I don’t see this as a conflict is that working with Jesus is working with a spirit to grow forward. And there is a book of the Bible that says you should put no gods above that of the Christian god. And I don’t put any god above any other. I think there is also something to be said here about the different books of the Bible being written by men who followed God. I would really says that much of these messages can shape what your church look like, but should never take away or change the message of Christ, which is: to love, feed, teach, by kind to, and help people.

So, to sum it up, if you want to be a shaman, or thrown under the bus to pick up the work, you get to choose how you move forward with it. And if you follow christ in your actions, you are still a christian.