Overlaps and Intersections

One of my favorite things about reading the blogs of other people are those serendipitous moments when you’re reading someone’s words and have that “Eureka! That’s what I’ve been trying to say” experiences.  After yesterday’s Hiatus post, I wandered out to peruse recent posts from other PBP participants and came across Philomela’s post “Joining the Dots: Bringing Myself to the Blog“.    Her point about talking about how her path is affected by and affects other area of hir life really hit home for me.  This is one of those things that I feel like I’ve been missing with my focus almost exclusively on the PBP posts.

This doesn’t even begin to describe it. Maybe if we create this in 4-D?
(Credit: Wikipedia)

Within my path and my life, there is so much overlap and intersection of different, seemingly disparate aspects that I’d need the world’s most complicated Venn diagram to explain it all.  It goes beyond simple overlap into cause-and-effect situations and then all just starts folding over in on itself.  In other words, it’s all one big ball of interconnected mess with me at its center.  I suspect that this is true for a lot of other people as well.

One of my goals as  I move forward with this blog is to do a much better job of incorporating those places of overlap and intersection into my posts.  I realize more and more that my own spirituality is not a stand-alone experience, but something that sends ripples into other aspects of my life, just as it is affected by the waves created by mundane experiences.   We’ll see how well I’m able to actually incorporate more of those points of overlap and intersection into this blog.  Fingers crossed!

H is for Hiatus (PBP Week 16)

I’m not sure how late this post is, but I know I’m ridiculously behind on my PBP posts.  I’m going to call my lack of posts – and the complete apathy I’ve felt about that lack – an unscheduled hiatus, a bit of unexpected sabbatical.  It’s safe to say that I’ve barely given a thought to the mounting pile of past due posts for the PBP.  The moments when it’s crossed my mind, I’ve just shrugged, uttered “meh”, and moved on to something else.  So what if it doesn’t get written… big effing deal, right?

Maybe it is a big deal, because apathy is not my general frame of mind about writing, particularly when I’ve committed myself to a project.  On a normal day, I’d feel the pressure of unmet deadlines, even if I’m the only one who minds whether they’re met.  Normally, if I’m behind, I’d worry over potential post ideas until I could actually get something down in writing.  I’d schedule time for writing so that I could catch up.  Lately, I’ve just looked at my to-do list for this blog and thought “So what?”

Curiosity finally got the better of me when I actually realized that the apathy meter had reached 110%.  Why was I skipping out on this obligation? Why didn’t I care that I was doing so?  After a few turns of the hamster wheel in my brain, I’ve come to the conclusion that 1). I’d grown very tired of the look of the blog itself and 2).  more serious an issue, I’m not entirely happy with the blog itself.

The first issue has been, at least for the time being, been solved.  After 5+ of using some variation of the Misty themes, I’ve switched themes entirely to something that feels a bit more casual and has a font that is easier to read (at least for my aging eyes anyway).  Other changes to the appearance are, I think, pretty bloody obvious.  The background is courtesy of NASA and the Hubble site.  The current header photo, if anyone cares, is a digitally altered photo of  a memorial at the grave of  writer Conrad Aiken.  I don’t have an particular affinity for Aiken as a writer, but those four words really strike me as a poignant way of describing the journey of the eclectic seeker… or maybe it’s cheesier than hell.  In any case, I like it.

Since I’ve taken the time to fix the first issue, it’s probably obvious that I’m not planning to abandon this blog entirely, as I’d briefly considered doing.  I haven’t been able to pin down what I don’t like about the blog, other than having a vague and irritating sense that it just isn’t what I want it to be.  Part of the problem is that the blog has become focused almost exclusively on the PBP posts.  While it’s been a great motivation to write regularly, I’ve felt obligated to give the PBP posts my focus, abandoning other ideas that don’t fit this blogging project when time and energy are short. I’ve struggled to find things that are ‘pagan enough’ because, truly, my path has multiple influences and while the overall flavor is pagan, there are other threads running through it as well.  In the end, I needed to decide if this blog is to be focused on paganism or on the eclectic spirituality that I actually practice. You can probably guess which one I chose.

So, what does this long ramble mean?  In the end, just this:  the blog has a new look and I’m dropping out the PBP.  Yep, it did take me several paragraphs to spit out those twelve words.

Hate (PBP Week 15 – Belated as Usual)

 ”Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.” ~ Coretta Scott King

I feel like I need to say these words out loud in light of recent events in Boston and in the wake of personally witnessing instances of homophobia, fat-shaming, and racism….

Hate is not acceptable. There is no room for hatred on my spiritual  path.  Hating someone because they are different in any way – physically, cognitively, socially, culturally, sexually- is simply not acceptable to me.  One of the most beautiful things about the human condition is that, as individuals, we are each an unique expression of both innate and environmental influences. To hate someone because they are in some way different is to hate the very nature of human existence.

Hates invests far too much time, energy, and emotion into a no-win situation.  No matter how justified a person might think their hatred is, nothing will be gained from either the verbal or physical expression of hatred.  The person who lashes out in hatred may feel a sense of satisfaction that the object of their anger (or fear, etc) has been hurt, but at what cost does this satisfaction come?  There is something more than simply wasting resources when we make the choice to hate.  Hate dehumanizes the person it is being directed at, but more importantly, it dehumanizes the hater themselves.   When we stop seeing the humanity in another person, we lose touch with our own humanity and our ability to be compassionate, forgiving, and empathetic.

The dehumanizing factor of hate is what, in my opinion, makes hate such an attractive option when we feel fear, anger, or confusion.  By viewing a person as something less than fully human, we feed into our own false sense of superiority and allow ourselves an excuse for expressing the ugliest parts of who we are.   Hate is a choice to devalue another person and it is a choice that we will all be faced with at some point.  All of us  will come face to face with someone who makes us want to shout, ball up our fists, and possibly do much worse.  There are individuals whose actions will be so despicable and destructive that we will struggle to see them as anything other than an inhuman monster.  We may never fully come to terms with the actions of another person, but always, we have a choice of how to respond to that person.  We can choose to perpetuate hatred  or we can make the choice that hate stops here and now.

This is my choice:  Hate is not acceptable. There is no room for hatred on my spiritual  path.

Goals (PBP Week 14- Terribly Belated)

Here’s a big, thinky-thought question for you… when we’re skipping down a spiritual path, what is the ultimate goal in doing so?  What is it that we seek to achieve by participating in a religion or spiritual search?  Is this something that comes from the religion itself or do we decide for ourselves what the ultimate purpose of our path will be?  Is having a spiritual/religious goal even important or does it distract from the process itself, by focusing too sharply on the destination rather than the journey itself?

I asked the first of these questions of a few more freely-sharing friends and acquaintances and some of their answers follow.  Today’s disclaimer: this is by no means a scientific poll, of course, and probably not representative of the full spectrum of possible answers.  Your miles, as always, may vary greatly.

• “To be at one with everything; to know I belong.”
• “Learn to submit to Christ’s will and serve Him humbly.”
• “Understand the universe.”
• “Go to Heaven when I die.”
• “Improve myself.”
• “Avoid pissing off my deity ever again.” (!)
• “Self-acceptance.”
• “To know God.”
• “Be a voice of  the goddess.”
• “Experience God’s love.”

I’ve pursued some of the goals on this list myself.  I’ve realized that no matter how close I come to feeling the interconnectedness of all things, a part of me will always feel a sense of isolation. I think this is just part of what it is to be human.  I’ve also realized that to a great degree, deity in any guise is unknowable, as is our universe.  We do not have the capacity as humans to grasp all of the secrets that this world holds… and even if we could, do we really want to remove all of the mystery from our lives?  As for a goal of paradise in the afterlife, I’m not convinced that such a thing exits.  One of my deepest fears is that the afterlife will just be more of the same… a struggle for understanding and acceptance, an unceasing quest for knowledge, and a continuation of answers that simply create more questions.

There was one answer, though, that made me smile.   When the question of an ultimate goal was posed,  one of my quirkier friends began singing the last few lines of Ingrid Michealson’s “Be OK”: “I just want to know today, know today, know today, Know that maybe I will be ok.”  I’m giving this answer kudos for being both simple and  profound.  Really, can I ask for much more than that on this journey… just the knowledge that I might be alright in this crazy world of ours, to know that even in the darkest of moments I am going to be ok?  I may change my mind tomorrow, but for this moment, that answer is good enough.

Getting Grounded (PBP Week 13)

Life is full of change and mine doubly so over the last few months.  I’ve realized that, amidst the changes, I’ve lost touch with any form of regular spiritual practice and ritual.  The best I’ve been able to manage is mentally muttering a half-prayer/half-mantra/half-rant* that goes something like this “Enough already. Enough. Enough. Enough. Of FFS, enough already. Just stop.” Somehow, I don’t think this particular mantra is going to get me brownie points with anyone and certainly hasn’t gotten me any closer to inner peace or enlightenment.  It hasn’t even managed to lower my blood pressure or reduce my stress.  As mantras and prayers go, it might just be a failure.

It is time to be grounded – in several senses of the word.  Most of the last few months have been spent in a constant state of heightened anxiety, one in which I felt separated from everything except the anxiety itself.  To say the least, this isn’t a physically, emotionally, or spiritually healthy state of being.  My initial goal is just to feel grounded again, to bring myself back into living moment by moment rather than fretting over what just happened or what might happen next.  Forget out-of-body experiences- what I really need right for the time being is some good in-body experiences, some moments of feeling whole again.

Exactly how I’m going to accomplish this has yet to be determined.   I know where I need to be, but haven’t quite figured out the best way to get there.  Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a Michelin map for this.  Nor are the answers at the bottom of a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream – already checked there.  I think I’ll start by shutting off the computer and sitting outside in the sun for a bit.  With any luck, my brain will turn out to be solar-powered and start churning out some ideas of what to do next.

 

*Yes, I realize that there are more than two halves listed.  Can we just say that things have been so backwards that the sum of the parts has been greater than the whole?