moving accurately

This is one of my favourite quotes of all time; it keeps me going when times seem hard or there's a difficult decision to be made. It also seems to express the idea that the way to move through life is to follow your bliss and act as seems right to you, because no matter how unlikely it seems that your endeavour will have a successful outcome, if it's the right thing to do then it will open doors in unexpected ways.

Only one heart had to find its true position and travel on from there and all the rest would follow, for no matter how isolated the one felt itself to be, in the deeps of all life all were united and no one could move accurately without all ultimately moving with it...

~ A Far-Off Place, p.304, Laurens van der Post

There are many wonderful bits in this book, and I highly recommend it.

you are the hands of the Divine

Today's Poetry Chaikhana has a poem with an excellent message of responsibility for everyday practical compassion and working for justice:

You are Christ's Hands

By Teresa of Avila
(1515 - 1582)

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
Christ's compassion to the world
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about
doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.

-- from The Essential Mystics: Selections from the World's Great Wisdom Traditions, Edited by Andrew Harvey

I've liked the message of this poem for a while now. Never mind about what or who you think the Christos is; just think about the message that only we, who have hands to heal and bless and mend, can actually do the practical work of compassion.

As Ivan (the editor of Poetry Chaikhana) remarks:

It is a prayer of supreme spiritual maturity. It is not someone imploring Christ to come and fix everything in the external way imagined by so many fundamentalist sects; rather, it recognizes the presence of the Divine within each of us and our sacred responsibility to embody that compassion and service to the world. Each one of us is the vehicle through which Christ (or Ishwara, or however you name the personal form of the Divine) sends blessings. Our job is to get out of the way and let that sacred current flow through us unhindered.

One more reason why I'm a Pagan

It's called substitutionary sacrifice - the idea that Jesus, the pure lamb of God, had to be sacrificed to the implacable Jehovah in order to pay for our sins. It's not something that all Christians subscribe to (it's pretty much a heresy in Orthodoxy), but it is a widespread view among fundamentalists and evangelicals. The kind of chorus song illustrated in the picture expresses the vile substitutionary doctrine.

The idea that Jesus' life, death and resurrection is a mystery that his followers can participate in is a much more humane view (though if this is the case, why did the Church have to stamp out all the other mystery traditions?)

Another possibility (the Unitarian position) is to embrace the ethical precepts of Jesus; this leads one to an appreciation of other similar thinkers (Gandhi etc.) and a rejection of Christian intolerance.

But the twisted substitutionary doctrine leads to a rejection of natural desires and a rejection of the divinely-bestowed fullness of life.

Whereas the Pagan view embraces life, nature, and sexuality and the presence of spirit in all these things, the fundamentalist Christian views them as inhabited by demons - a word which originally meant a spirit of place or a tutelary genius (a daimon in Greek).

The Pagan view celebrates the immanence of spirit in matter, and seeks to encourage matter to become ever more ensouled, ever more aware of itself; to re-enchant matter, as in the old animist worldview of our ancestors. Ironically, I think this was actually Jesus' aim (if we can ever really recover what he thought from beneath the mass of doctrinal statements about him); and this was the source of Gardner's and Sanders' claims that being a witch made you "a better Christian".

In a dream I saw Jesus and My God Pan sitting together in the heart of the forest.
They laughed at each other's speech, with the brook that ran near them, and the laughter of Jesus was the merrier. And they conversed long.
...
"And now let us play our reeds together."
And they played together.
And their music smote heaven and earth, and a terror struck all living things.
I heard the bellow of beasts and the hunger of the forest. And I heard the cry of lonely men, and the plaint of those who long for what they know not.
I heard the sighing of the maiden for her lover, and the panting of the luckless hunter for his prey.
And then there came peace into their music, and the heavens and the earth sang together.
All this I saw in my dream, and all this I heard.

[Sarkis an old Greek Shepherd, called the madman : Jesus and Pan]
from Jesus the Son of Man by Kahlil Gibran

Io Pan!

Happy Beltane

At last the leaves are properly out on most of the trees. There are bluebells everywhere, but there is still cherry blossom. The chestnut candles are poised to burst into flower. Beltane is in the air. It's my favourite festival because it seems to me to embody in many ways what Paganism (or at least its contemporary revived form) is about - the simple joy of being alive, relating to other people (including other-than-human people) and the Earth and Nature.

"Oh, do not tell the Priest of our Art,
For he would call it a sin;
But we shall be out in the woods all night,
A-conjuring summer in!

And we bring you news by word of mouth
For women, cattle and corn
Now is the sun come up from the South

With Oak, and Ash and Thorn!"

-- A Tree Song from Rudyard Kipling's Weland's Sword story in "Puck of Pook's Hill"

Mystic moments

Last year, I had one of those moments where everything seems illuminated from within, filled with light. I've had a couple of such moments before; once in about 1994 I had a vision of Yggdrasil, possibly inspired by the poem Hertha by Algernon Charles Swinburne, where everything suddenly seemed to be right, and to fit together and make sense; also around 1989 I remember my first experience of the Goddess was like a big bright light shining in the night.

Of course one expects these things to happen in ritual; it's when they happen spontaneously without any particular prompting, and with such intensity, that it's really mind-blowing.

Last year's experience was approximately between 2 and 3 pm on 8 July 2007 on the Pennine Way, just west of Manchester. I was walking along looking at the plants and trees and everything seemed to glow with an inner glow of divine presence. Sort of nebulously numinous. Everything seemed interwoven, coinherent even; all part of one enormous Being of light.

Has anyone else had something similar?

peace is the way

I am a pacifist, but what exactly do I mean by that? I know that war is wrong, but what is the right response to aggression, or to interpersonal violence? What do I mean by peace?

Peace is not simply the absence of war, nor is it a state - it's a process of dialogue and the active resolution of conflict. One saying that particularly affected me was A J Muste's "There is no way to peace, peace is the way." This neatly encapsulates the idea that peace is not a state but a process or a journey; a process of engagement and dialogue. In order to dialogue effectively, one has to enter into the viewpoint of the person one is dialoguing with, and be open to them, even to the extent of being prepared to adopt their point of view; but for the dialogue to be truly mutual, they have to be equally open. If there is a conflict of viewpoint, the parties need to seek truth and reconciliation, not blame. The truth and reconciliation process in South Africa involved all parties acknowledging what they had done to each other (on both sides of the divide), and both asking for forgiveness, and giving it. Both sides had to recognise that they had done wrong things, and only when that truth was out in the open could they move on and begin to heal.

If this process of mutual understanding, dialogue, tolerance and forgiveness does not occur, then the situation begins to slide towards warfare. But can war ever be justified? If my country was invaded, would I take up arms against the invader? No, because if I did the particular enemy soldier that I killed might be a conscript who was unwilling but couldn't get conscientious objector status, or a guy who joined the army because he didn't have any other prospect of employment and then regretted it. And anyway, non-violent resistance is more effective, particularly if you don't have the firepower for a war (which presumably you wouldn't if you'd just been invaded). Gandhi wrote a lot about how satyagraha (non-violent resistance) works and why it works; it is still a process of resistance, using civil disobedience and actions like the breaking of unnecessary or unjust laws (like curfews, or the salt monopoly).

What about individual violence? I am not sure about this one - personally my first instinct is flight rather than fight; but if one of my loved ones was being attacked, i don't know how I would react. But saying that this slight inconsistency doesn't make me a pacifist is like attacking vegetarians for wearing leather shoes. It's just that both pacifism and vegetarianism make people uncomfortable, so they have to try and find an inconsistency in order to make themselves feel better.

Certainly my conviction that peace is the way leads me to engage in dialogue and conflict resolution activities as much as possible; because pacifism is not just a matter of going on anti-war marches, it's about living my values of peace, understanding and forgiveness every day (even though I sometimes get it wrong), and actively seeking to engage in dialogue with groups with whom I might otherwise be in conflict. Being a pacifist doesn't stop me getting angry about injustice, either - it leads me to seek to channel my anger into a constructive process for change, rather than getting depressed or lashing out. Anger is a good emotion, and it is a pity that it is generally so taboo; provided it is used effectively, and allows space for a response (either of apology, restorative justice, or explanation) it can be a very necessary warning signal to others that they are treading on your corns.

How does this relate to my Pagan spirituality? I guess it's my conviction that all life is sacred, which is a part of my Pagan world-view, but I'm not sure which came first; did my conviction that life is sacred lead to my Pagan worldview, or did my Pagan worldview lead to my conviction that life is sacred? I think the ethics came first, actually. I'm not a pacifist because a deity told me to be; I am a pacifist because I see it as the best way to remain in harmony with the Tao.

I am also convinced that social justice and environmental concern are pre-requisites for peace; the fair and sustainable distribution and use of the world's resources would go a long way to helping to prevent war.

Yakut Prayer

A wonderful poem from the Poetry Chaikhana --

Yakut Prayer By Yakut (Anonymous) (19th Century) My words are tied in one With the great mountains, With the great rocks, With the great trees, In one with my body And my heart. Do you all help me With supernatural power, And you, Day, And you, Night, All of you see me One with the world! -- from The Essential Mystics: Selections from the World's Great Wisdom Traditions, Edited by Andrew Harvey