Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Dirt Heart Witch

Home
About
Archive Index
- Agora: The Dance of Pagan Recovery

Home
Pagan
Everything Out There is In Here Too

Everything Out There is In Here Too

Last updated on: August 29, 2014 at 6:52 am by Jenya T. Beachy

Everything Out There is In Here Too 2014-08-29T06:52:23-07:00 Jenya T. Beachy

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

love to preach!

A couple of years ago, I was preparing a sermon for the Old Time Good Spell Feri Pagan Tent Revival and it was going great. We had a gig coming up at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Los Gatos. It was the second or third time we’d visited there and I knew what to expect. We had to clean up the language a bit from our usual “halle-f**-lujah” stuff, and do some more explanation of how it worked, but the UUs were good hosts and we enjoyed our time there.

So I was writing along and thinking I was quite clever at coming up with the idea of “Don’t Go Back to Sleep” as a subject for a Revival and I got the whole sermon buttoned up and asked my husband (teacher/poet/beloved/priest/idea man) to give it a listen. He did so, attentively at first, but clearly he lost interest just a few minutes in.

I know when this happens because he starts to chew on the edges of his mustache.

But he let me finish and finally said, “Okay, that’s a good intellectual exploration, but where’s your heart in this?”

BOO!

He was right, of course. I was writing out of my head because the subject was really painful. I didn’t want to try to convince other folks to not “go back to sleep”; I wanted to find reasons why it was okay to pull the blankets back over our heads and hide. But that’s not my job, is it? I don’t want that to be my job.

When I started this blog, I was fired up about the idea of the Homestead. I’ve been shifting my life, my work, my practice toward more resiliency and responsibility for a lot of years and it felt like a good time to start recording some of these things in case they might be of service to others.

And I find myself in resistance to writing now, which I can only credit to a desire to hide and stay safe. I don’t want to write about what’s true down deep. Too painful, but I can’t cry.

Here’s the treadmill my mind/heart is running on: Brutal, systemic racism. Rampant destruction of the natural order. Ignorance and hate and plain meanness. Unfathomable choices of those “in power”. Even among the more enlightened among us, hurtful speech and knee-jerk defensiveness.

I feel hopeless.

getting born or dying looks the same, I bet

Then I am reminded that the hardest part of childbirth is just before the baby is born. It’s a crucial time and the Mother’s life can hang in the balance. She is working so very, very hard to bring new life, a new ethos, into the world.

As a cell in the body of God, my job is to help the birth along, to utilize my skills in service to the whole. I know how to make food out of animals. I can do that. I know how to open to awareness of the spirits I share space with. That is particularly painful because the land is in pain, but I can do that. I don’t know how to be what someone else is and stand on the front lines of this or that conflict, but I know how to ask how I can help. I can do that.

And finally, in the prayer that is writing, long-sought tears come.

Thank you, Mother, for your many blessings. Your lessons are always apropos.

What to do with infinite love and wild pain?

It is what it is; cook with it and pray with it and walk with it and write.

Remember that We are in this together.

Serve.

“Light at the End of the Tunnel” image courtesy of shutterstock.com

Previous Post

August 26, 2014

Homemade Hummus and a Warm Welcome Home

Next Post

September 2, 2014 Eggs by Ostara

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Air Animal Products Arts and Crafts Author Big Gods Books Buddhism Celebs Chickens Comestibles Deep Well ~ Great Heart Society Dirt-Heart Farmette Drink Earth Elemental Practices Fauna Festivals Fiction? Fire Flora Food Goats Holidays-Holy Days Homework! Invocations Jenya T. Beachy Justice Kitchen Witchery Meat Birds Meditations Moon Magick News Off-Topic Ole Time Good Spell Feri Pagan Tent Revival Poetry Practices Prayers Predators Queer Rant Recovery RIP Rituals Saints and Prophets of Shapeshifter Seasonal Shapeshifter Tradition Small Gods Songs and Chants Spellcraft Stories The Secret Country of Yourself The Village The Witches' Toolkit Travel Turkeys Uncategorized Updates Urban Pagan Homestead Videos Water

Select a Month February 2020 January 2020 November 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 October 2018 August 2018 May 2018 April 2018 February 2018 October 2017 September 2017 July 2017 January 2017 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

True or False: The fruit of the Spirit includes love, joy, peace, and twelve other qualities.

Select your answer to see how you score.

FALSE TRUE