As you may (or may not) know, I’ve been gone for a long time. A lot has happened, a coast-to-coast move from Maryland to Oregon not the least of it all. There are a lot of things that I don’t need to worry about anymore. Some things that, unfortunately, I still do (like being unemployed for a year now) but overall, right now I feel like there’s a lot of potential for a return to where I need to be- or at least to get much closer to it.
With respect to this blog, I’ve got some ideas for posts I’d like to make. I plan to start doing some research and get to working on some of the suggested writings from when I solicited idea from you readers many many moons ago. I’d like to start writing some more poetry and I need to redo my “about” page.
So much has changed in the last couple of years I’ve had varying degrees of difficulty with things spiritual since the fall of 2007 (wow…has it really been that long?) and now I am hoping that I can start finding my way out of that. I’ve had to say this so many times, had so many false starts. Hoping that a change of scenery and 3,000 miles between me ad what’s troubled me for so long will be good for that
On Thursday night, I was talking to a friend about the passing of Isaac Bonewits. This eventually lead tot talking about my departure from Cedarlight Grove and ADF. As there were a lot of details that he had forgotten or was unclear about, I had to fill in the blanks. Long, tangled mess of a story that it is, it’s a lucky thing that I had written so much out on Livejournal and could just go and locate posts and link to them. This meant that I was also rereading a lot of this for myself, remembering what I was thinking when I wrote them, seeing how things were connected and realizing that I didn’t fully understand until now just how far a few early events went to unravel several years of my life. I see now just how sweeping the scope of these events. Now that I’ve had some distance, temporally and physically, I am looking back and I can see Apollo’s hand in it all. Though I always knew, I didn’t really understand. and even if I had, I was so upset at how much I’d lost that I’m not sure how much it would have mattered.
What’s different now from all the previous times that I thought I had gained a foothold was that I see so much more clearly how this is all His doing, this all came from Him. And now that I see so much more clearly, for the first time, I can say that I’m okay with that.
Last night, I was typing this post and WordPress ate it. At that point, I was ready to go to sleep, so I waited until today to do it again. and now, despite the fact that WordPress once again ate my post- at the same place: almost completely finished, I’m glad that I had to wait to redo it because I came to another realization last night.
I now believe that the reason for all of this is simple. The reason that I suddenly could no longer participate in clergy training, could no longer remain a part of Cedarlight Grove or ADF. when I dedicated myself to Apollo, everything belonged to Him. Even though I believe this to have been true before, that was the point where it was solidified, where I acknowledged it. The point was that instead of being based on Him, my religion was that of a whole other framework and I was trying to find a way to place him into it. I had to lose everything to start over again with Apollo as my base.
When everything else has been stripped away, when time and space make everything clear, I am left with the knowledge that He is all I need to start again. Left with that knowledge, and the memories of pain and light.
Memories Of Pain And Light 