(no subject)

Men travel side by side for years - each locked up in his own silence ... till danger comes. Then they stand shoulder to shoulder. Then they discover they belong to the same family. -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 'Wind, Sand and Stars'

Crises of faith

Got a friend, she was bummed about things. We'd been squabbling, and when it all started, she said 'makes the arguing seem sort of petty now, doesn't it?' Yeah.

I told her we were getting together to do a working (Wiccan version of a prayer circle, more or less) for peace and wisdom, and initially she was all for it.

Then I called back a couple hours later with the details of when/where/etc, and she said she might not go. She was having a crisis of faith. 'How could God do this? What sort of God lets this happen?'

I dunno. I see us all as little extensions of God; God is everywhere, right? I'm reminded of a BOTA lecture on the Hebrew letter Cheth, which also means 'fence'. The lecture was about how we put up fences and city walls and other similar border devices to delineiate 'this is yours' and 'this over here is mine.' When in reality, the land is all the same. It's all one land. The working we ended up doing reminded of this, that we are all part of God, and we don't ever really die even though our bodies might.

But when you throw free will into it, you end up having the capacity to do any stupid, harmful, or crazy thing your very well-endowed brain (just enough to make you really dangerous) can come up with. If you loose sight of the fact that we are all one, then you might do something like crash a plane into a building full of people because they are 'different' from you. Or on a much smaller scale, throw a brick at a mosque window because they are 'different' from you. Believe me, in addition to racking up some major bad karma that I expect it'll take a few thousand lifetimes to work off, I think the souls of those hijackers are hitting themselves on their ethereal foreheads going 'Fuck! I forgot! We're all one!' This is the down side of having free will. We enjoy the benefits, but we have to accept the consequences without expecting a safety net to catch us, or else there's no point in having free will at all.

My friend didn't end up going. It was too bad; I think it was a really good working. We called to a host of facets of the All that needed to be present more than ever:
Athena- for wisdom and clear-headedness, if we go to war
Durga- demon-slayer, who holds all weapons, but also holds a lotus for enlightenment
Kwan Yin- for mercy and compassion
Ma'at- for truth
Jesus- the prince of peace
...and many others. It may seem chaotic, but we see it as activating that part of God within ourselves, and within the world, that can manifest these things. We sent energy out to perform healing and bring wisdom where it's needed. And we whipped it up right on the spot, which gave it a nice feeling to it.

If nothing else, it made me feel much more calm, and satisfied that I have done something else to help.