Pagan Godspell

It is the heart of winter here in the not-so-wild-Midwest – a season of walking head down and hands clutching coats and big bags full of scarves and wrapped in gloves, muttering obscenities (well, if you’re me anyways) and losing the feeling in toes and fingers.  While the badgers continue to growl and chew about my ankles, and the wind chill factor rockets down below -20 degrees, I try to steal a little light in pockets of time – a handful of minutes in a coffeehouse chair or a library couch, feeling my heart blossom out a little, trying to meet peace.

During one of these stolen precious moments, I find myself reading The Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver (which no poet should be without), in which she says:

If Romeo and Juliet had made appointments to meet, in the moonlight-swept orchard, in all the peril and sweetness of conspiracy, and then more often than not failed to meet – one or the other lagging, or afraid, or busy elsewhere – there would have been no romance, no passion, none of the drama for which we remember and celebrate them.  Writing a poem is not so different – it is a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (the courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind.  They make appointments with each other, and keep them, and something begins to happen.  Or, they make appointments with each other but are casual and often fail to keep them: count on it, nothing happens.

She goes on to talk about “that wild, silky part of ourselves without which no poem can live,” (delicious) and how in order to seduce it into engaging wholly and gloriously with your writing, you must do one regular, committed, seemingly simple thing: you must show up.

This is consummately good advice, both for the poet and the Pagan (and the Mystic, and the Contemplative…) – if we do not show up, we cannot expect the gods, or that “wild, silky part of ourselves,” or the indwelling spirit, or the stars within, to show themselves to us.  If ritual, and indeed spirituality, and perhaps the purpose of being, is relationship, then all the responsibilities and committments of authentic and life-long relationship comes with it.  Keeping dates – making time.  Making the house ready for guests – tending the bread.

This does not ever need to become a chore, or a discipline that sucks the joy out of living in the world completely.  Yet, there is something to be said for pushing past boredom or fatigue on occasion in order to meet that joy.  I did not want to attend my evening dance class last night – I was tired, and grumpy, and cold and weary to the bone (and my ankles were all chewed – *shakes fist at life-badgers*), and I sat in my car for a full 10 minutes, fighting with myself.  Luckily, I won (that’s the best part about fighting with yourself), and went to class, and the goodness rushed up to meet me after a few minutes of feeling my body move out into its joy.

I am also reminded of how the keeping of our Holy Days, or the regular meditations/prayers/offerings we make (I struggle with this in particular, the discipline of daily practice, but I persevere, and the gods are at least understanding of my good intentions), or the time we spend even just preparing for ritual – the writing, the gathering up of offerings, the baking of bread, the placement on an altar, the singing – how all of these things sound out through the world like great messages, saying “here I am, waiting for you – these are my promises, I intend to keep them – I will not leave you – here is my passion – here is your blessing.”

For today, and particularly in this week, as my postings grow a bit sparse and I struggle to keep appointments with myself (though the construction work on the Good News Bookshoppe continues!), I wish you all a little blessing in the freezing wind – pockets of forgiving light and heat and time – and the deepening relationships that come when we say to the world, to Awen, to Imbas, to the gods - here I am, showing up.