Thursday, July 28, 2011

Phooey on Unicorns

Despite appearances, I never meant for my blog to fart sunshine and poop rainbows. I do not consider myself New Age or a lightworker. While white light is an integral part of my healing practice, that's mostly because it is a blend of all colors.

I do not like unicorns. I do not like angels. Even if I thought archangels were out there bringing us messages, I'm certain they would not always convey their prophecies to rich white housewives in their 50s. If they do, they're jerks. I could never be New Age with an attitude like this.

I tried to get into Dances of Universal Peace. They filled me with raw oozing rage. The very first dance wanted me to 'live welcoming to all.' Sorry, that's a good way to get kicked in the teeth. I respect the force who lives in me and believe I was given a drive for self-preservation for a reason, just like any critter in the forest or the sea. It is good to want to take care of yourself. It is holy.

Just the same, I do feel the need to look out for my fellow human beings. There's got to be a balance, and that is what I was going for.

My intention here is twofold:
1. To explain my faith and practice in a clear, positive, and soothing way; this needs to be a good place for someone who is emotionally or spiritually spent and needs reminders of the balanced life.
2. To present Pagan spirituality in a way that is active, not reactive: in other words, the opposite of my first days as a Pagan. Sometimes I need my own reminders about balance.

When I began this path in a meaningful and open-hearted way, it was out of great need and had quite the reactive flavor to it. I was depressed and despairing. Hundreds of miles from home, I wandered the woodland trails, just me and the moon and the trees. I had never moved from my bedroom in my house before, let alone away to college with no one I knew. I was hungry, angry, lonely, tired: all the things the shrinks tell you never to be all at once or you'll lose it.

I lost it.

'It' could be defined in many different ways, but eventually I got 'it' back.  This took years and much seeking and struggling and crying, and dancing and loving and communing. Getting 'it' back happened through the Goddess. She shone through Nature itself and through the faces and hearts of many people I knew and some I have never met in person.

This began with the moon. Call me crazy. I don't care. I reached out, and she heard me.

And then she laughed like a little girl.

It was a good start. It was exactly what I needed. And why not? Life has so much to be happy about.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Waking the Dragon

No, I'm not referring to the legendary temper of a character in A Game of Thrones. I'm referring to one half of an ongoing battle between...two forces. Not good and evil per se. Mercy and justice.

I associate so many names and faces with the Divine, frequently having many facets, as we all do. Folks in India dearly love Kali as Mother, yet we in the West are more familiar with her destructive aspect. Other Divine faces concern themselves with the not-too-different matters of both love and war: Inanna, Freya, Brigid. Even Kuan Yin, possibly the ultimate face of compassion, is often pictured riding a dragon.

It makes one want to say, 'What would Sybil do?'

It does seem odd sometimes that I experience the Divine this way. And yet, given how complicated even we humans can be, doesn't it make sense that we came from something or someone even more sophisticated? There is too much to fit into just one thought in just one brain, one feeling in one heart.

She is a mosaic to me. That doesn't bother me anymore. However, it does leave me wondering: if love is the law (and it is), why are there so many different and opposing ways to love?

Even if you remove sex and romantic love from the equation, it's still so easy to be cruel and kind at the same time. I don't know anyone who hasn't hurt someone else, and deeply, myself included. I remember this when one friend is accused of hurting another. How do I show love to both of them?

When does an unacceptable word or act become excusable? Does your position change if someone was drunk, off their medication, or simply had low blood sugar? What if there was a death in the family or some equally epic event? What tips the scales that far? What doesn't?

I just don't know. And I feel that I have to be all right with that. Yet life goes on, and so do the lives of those I care about. In a perfect world--no, a tame world--we would all be in a Hug o' War and no one would feel like a victim, a villain, an outcast. But we are wild and we are willed. We dance the dance of life, and in our passion, we stomp on one another's toes.

To continue the metaphor to its limits, some of us started the dance wearing cleats.

I don't like confrontation, but sometimes it's appropriate. The question is, when? When do you wake the dragon?

I still don't know.