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cedar_groveFrom The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.
By honouring all things as living, the courage to join with the Universe becomes a manner of being that can happen even while sitting still.
This is a way of living to which I am not a stranger. As a Wiccan I have come to see myself as a part of the Universal family. The Earth is my mother, the moon my Sister, (as well as my self and my grandmother), the sky and the sun my father, and all things - not just those that we generally consider to be living - are my siblings as well as my children. If you ask how can that be, it is because in Wicca, God and Goddess are all things to all - including the self, and we are therefor God and Goddess also. It's a concept that can be difficult to grasp, particularly if one's only experience is of God as something outside of oneself and holding dominion over you.
But understanding from the head and understanding from the heart and soul are two different things. This, I discovered during my time as a - dare I use the term - neophyte all those years ago, when I was first starting out. I knew the words and the gestures, could make the summoning and banishing pentagrams of all the elements from Earth through Spirit, had a fancy blade with which to draw my circle, and 'performed' the rituals with efficiency and dedication. Now... that might sound like I'm putting myself down. I'm not. It was what I needed, how I needed to learn and internalise the 'litany' and practise of the faith I was beginning to feel. Somewhere along the line though, at some unknown point in time something threw a switch inside of me. The words became less important, the gestures all but unnecessary - what happened was that I began to live my faith.
It's hard to actually explain the difference, but... take the blessing of the salt, for example. In the creation of the circle (a Wiccan's working sacred space/temple), one of the first things to be done is to bless (consecrate) a small quantity of salt, which will later become mixed with water... to create a kind of wiccan holy water (for want of a better way of putting it). Salt, as a representative of elemental Earth, being male, and Water (Elemental water) being female, conjoined they are a perfect whole... and wholeness is something that I've spoken of before.
The words of the consecration are a variation on the following:
Creature of Salt, Blessed Be. May you case out all impurities and imperfections, and may only love and joy remain. In the name of the Lord and Lady of Life, So mote it be.
Instead of simply speaking the words, however well intentioned and visualised, it became a matter of feelings the salt as a living spirit/entity that was at once father, brother and son, and with the love in my own heart, feeling the burdens of being constrained; of being weighed down by the unhelpful burdens heaped upon the elemental earth by we unthinking children, just lifting away - to be a spirit lightened by love and joy, (and truth, as I later came to rather eclectically add). Whereas before I was 'seeing' the words, the benediction of the salt if you like, now I feel it, I become it.
This was something which carried forward into the whole of my waking and sleeping, and living, for a very very long time... and then suddenly I lost my way... again for a very very long time. I have yet to reflect or understand the lesson in all of that, but I'm staring to feel that there was one.
Now however I feel renewed - if you'll allow me to indulge in a little cross faith metaphor here, I feel somewhat like the prodigal son (or daughter), returned to the grace of a way of living that is empowering and humbling both at the same time.
The real sory comes from a love-source
that cannot be understood with intellect, but
known only as a person is known
--Coleman Barks
By honouring all things as living, the courage to join with the Universe becomes a manner of being that can happen even while sitting still.
This is a way of living to which I am not a stranger. As a Wiccan I have come to see myself as a part of the Universal family. The Earth is my mother, the moon my Sister, (as well as my self and my grandmother), the sky and the sun my father, and all things - not just those that we generally consider to be living - are my siblings as well as my children. If you ask how can that be, it is because in Wicca, God and Goddess are all things to all - including the self, and we are therefor God and Goddess also. It's a concept that can be difficult to grasp, particularly if one's only experience is of God as something outside of oneself and holding dominion over you.
But understanding from the head and understanding from the heart and soul are two different things. This, I discovered during my time as a - dare I use the term - neophyte all those years ago, when I was first starting out. I knew the words and the gestures, could make the summoning and banishing pentagrams of all the elements from Earth through Spirit, had a fancy blade with which to draw my circle, and 'performed' the rituals with efficiency and dedication. Now... that might sound like I'm putting myself down. I'm not. It was what I needed, how I needed to learn and internalise the 'litany' and practise of the faith I was beginning to feel. Somewhere along the line though, at some unknown point in time something threw a switch inside of me. The words became less important, the gestures all but unnecessary - what happened was that I began to live my faith.
It's hard to actually explain the difference, but... take the blessing of the salt, for example. In the creation of the circle (a Wiccan's working sacred space/temple), one of the first things to be done is to bless (consecrate) a small quantity of salt, which will later become mixed with water... to create a kind of wiccan holy water (for want of a better way of putting it). Salt, as a representative of elemental Earth, being male, and Water (Elemental water) being female, conjoined they are a perfect whole... and wholeness is something that I've spoken of before.
The words of the consecration are a variation on the following:
Creature of Salt, Blessed Be. May you case out all impurities and imperfections, and may only love and joy remain. In the name of the Lord and Lady of Life, So mote it be.
Instead of simply speaking the words, however well intentioned and visualised, it became a matter of feelings the salt as a living spirit/entity that was at once father, brother and son, and with the love in my own heart, feeling the burdens of being constrained; of being weighed down by the unhelpful burdens heaped upon the elemental earth by we unthinking children, just lifting away - to be a spirit lightened by love and joy, (and truth, as I later came to rather eclectically add). Whereas before I was 'seeing' the words, the benediction of the salt if you like, now I feel it, I become it.
This was something which carried forward into the whole of my waking and sleeping, and living, for a very very long time... and then suddenly I lost my way... again for a very very long time. I have yet to reflect or understand the lesson in all of that, but I'm staring to feel that there was one.
Now however I feel renewed - if you'll allow me to indulge in a little cross faith metaphor here, I feel somewhat like the prodigal son (or daughter), returned to the grace of a way of living that is empowering and humbling both at the same time.
