Not To Speak With the Loudest Voice.

It is pleasant, it is finally pleasant,
this world, this great world.

It is pleasant, it is finally pleasant,
this great world when the caribou come.

It is pleasant, it is finally pleasant,
this great world when it is summer at last.

--Eskimo summer song

No matter how difficult matters may seem, we can always find solace in awareness of the cyclical truth of all life.

As pagans this is something that is... almost overly emphasised in various aspects of our faith: the belief in reincarnation; the 'Wheel of the year' that governs the festivals and the march of the seasons; the law of return - the whole notion of kharma... what goes around comes around; the cycle of the moon as she waxes and wanes.

All of these things, an more, manifest themselves in our hearts, even when we do not truly or fully understand them or their full implications. Does it make us better people or better pagans to remember these things so to adjust the way we touch the world as acccording to these cycles? I don't necessarily think that it does.

Thinking about all of these things in the light of some discussions that have been floating around on Facebook recently, about extremists of any religion... I come to the conclusion that, depending on motivation, it is just as easy to become a radical pagan - or an evangelical pagan - just as it is for any other religion.

Okay, I will accept that living by the understandings and the tennets of one faith doesn't necessarily make you into a fundamentalist Christian, or an Islamic extremist, or an evangeical pagan... or whatever faith you call your own, there has to be that extra step, the idea of pushing what you believe onto others, and to me that means not necessarily standing there and trying to 'convert' people, but it also mean being open and vocal about what you believe without invitation.

Many of us jest sometimes, with phrases like "I might have been really bad in a former life..." when something goes wrong or whatever. Me, I try not to make comments like that, partly because I don't think they're funny, partly because it is like abrogating responsibility for something difficult that is happening in your life, but mosty because, to me, it draws attention to (evangalises) that particular pagan tennet. I realise also that it's a fine line.

So... yesterday I found myself getting... defensive and annoyed on behalf of Muslims, who yet again are being tarred and feathered with the same brush because of the loud voices of their extremists - with the voices of their prejudice and bigotted patriarchs - who have probably, and very sadly, irrevocably damaged Islam worldwide.

Who among us outside of Islam have actually read, and interpretted for ourselves, and without prejudice, the words written in the Koran. (Q'ran, however you wish to spell that particular holy book). Similarly though who among us outside of Christianity have read the bible and done the same? I must confess to having read neither from beginning to end... but then again, nor have I read other holy books and writings.

Perhaps we all should before we judge a religion - or a faith - by the loudest, and not always best, voices.

The Nature of the Rose

The forest is beyond my strength.
My rose is hidden far from me.
If the wood were less in length
My rose would be less far from me.

If I could have my precious rose,
I'd live in love forever.
If I knew what Shekinah knows
My exile would be shorter.

--Song of Rabbi Isaac of Laig

Like the rose-windows that shone in medieval cathedrals, the rose shines forth from spiritual poetry, embodying profound spiritual meaning.

I've always been attracted to roses, though not necessarily as a symbol of wisdom. I like the aesthetic shape of them, their scent... to think of them as a symbol of wisdom and to link them with spiritual poetry - that's new for me.

I suppose it shouldn't be, though I don't know why.

It may be because my experience of writing poetry has always been more of an emotional one than a 'spiritual' one. I've only written one with a specific spiritual bent, and that was a prose poem that I'm sure I've posted onto LJ before at some point... concerning the creation of life and the world through the love of the Lord and Lady of life. The rest of the time the poetry I've written has been an outlet for my emotions, and usually at a time when those emotions were stormy or intense

That is what feels 'normal' to me for the writing of poetry.. so am I sitting here now thinking that I should be writing poetry of a more spiritual bent? No, I don't think so. I just find it curious that I should have gone down this avenue of thought when beginning at the rose.

Taking the rose as a symbol of wisdom... deconstructing that symbol through meditation has been interesting - with the outer petals that are the simple, easy to access and understand wisdoms of every day life. They are soft, they are beautiful and we can smell the fragrance of the rose, but know instinctively that the greater scent and deeper wisdoms are coming from within... so we look harder, and we breath deeper, and the closer, more tightly budded petals of the mid and inner parts of the rose are revealed, slowy as the outer open to us, fall away for us to see - to understand the inner. This is the process by which we acquire our wisdom, through patience, watching and waiting, and living beyond the unfolded softness of those outer petals of the world.

We listen to... we see and seek, and breath the inner core of the rose.