I’m interrupting my regularly scheduled post to say a few things about religion.
Don’t worry, I’ll be posting the article about Virtue 4: Responsibility tomorrow, followed by the conclusion the next day. This is an extra post, not a replacement. 
I’m having a crisis of faith.
Well, it’s not really a crisis. There’s no danger or fear… No suffering will come from any choices I make; at least, none that I can see.
You see, I’m coming to terms with my past, slowly and steadily. Part of my past was a deep search for meaning in religion, and I invested a lot of time, energy, and emotion into that search.
I thought that I had come back empty-handed, but after writing a comment on Scott’s blog (which I never submitted), I found that I was reacting very bitterly. I was attacking religion like an old man yelling at kids who are having fun, because he can no longer jump and play.
I wasn’t just attacking Christianity, which seems to be the obvious target… I was attacking paganism as well, and any organized religious structure that I could wrap my mind around.
When I was done attacking, I asked myself why I had written that. More words poured out, this time apologizing, saying that I was simply venting my bitterness and begging the readers not to take my words personally. More apologies flowed out to Scott, asking forgiveness for cluttering up his comments with my inane ramblings, and finally I had a struggle with my ego. Rather, three sections of my ego fought with each other. One side wanted to hit the “submit” button, to say “Look at how honest and humble I am.” Another side wanted to simply navigate away from the page, to hide the shame of writing such spiteful words. Still a third section of my ego wanted to defeat the part of my ego that wanted to navigate away and hide the post, so that I could claim that I defeated my ego.
Well, the fourth section of my ego won… I’m in a damned if I do, damned if I don’t situation, and I’m likely to be here for quite a while. I no longer have plans to publish that comment, but I haven’t navigated away from that page yet, either. I can’t simply do nothing, ignoring my ego, because then my ego will have won. I can’t take action, whether to avoid posting or to actively post it, because again, my ego will have won.
At least this struggle has led me to recognize that I have a crisis of faith.
Now, I have faith. My faith is just as plain as my ego… If I fight my faith, then I build up faith in other areas. If I submit to my faith, then of course I’m simply building it up. I can’t exist without faith… Or rather, my ego can not exist without faith. Just as struggling to defeat the ego only makes it stronger, my faith gets stronger with each scrap of faith that I shed.
I feel as though I’m only going through the motions now… I’ve hit a point where I can’t climb any higher without climbing back down and plotting a new course. I have a new perspective now… The Peaceful Virtues series is a testament to this new perspective. It’s the map to get to the summit of this new mountain. Yet, as I stand atop this one, I am looking around and I see new mountains to climb, each higher than the last, with more rewards for reaching their summits, each one making my accomplishments so far seem insignificant.
Religion, faith, and the ego seem to be the keys to moving on towards the next summit… yet I have a problem with taking things on faith alone… Indeed, I credit my need for objective answers to be one of the keys for getting me to where I am now.
I don’t feel that this lack of faith is unreasonable, either. I have certainly tried different religions with an open mind and an open heart… yet none so far have delivered in what they promise: peace.
Should I rally against God, though, because I have not felt peace? Perhaps Odin is personally responsible, with His love of knowledge and warfare, for destroying my hip as I worked in His service… Maybe the Crone has adopted me early, giving me the lessons that would be easier to understand coming from the Maiden… Just this once, perhaps Jesus wants me to accomplish things that no man is capable of doing.
I know that these archetypes simply don’t behave this way… (And yes, I mixed different mythologies on purpose.)
Perhaps that is my problem… I’m seeing them as archetypes. Yet, somehow, that just doesn’t feel right. They aren’t models “in here” to me, any more than my wife exists only in my head.
At the same time, though, I’m disconnected from them. They don’t enter into my daily life, nor help form my opinions about the world at large.
A Sudden Change
Today, I’ve been experiencing a quick change in viewpoints.
This morning, I woke up, and instead of taking my shower immediately to wake up, I wandered over to my computer. At the top of my RSS feeds was a post written by Jeff Lilly on his site Druid Journal, talking about his sudden conversation with Odin. With my head spinning, I went and took my shower.
In the shower, I reached out with the long forgotten “muscles” that I used to use when talking with spiritual beings, and caught hold of Odin. He seemed quite… unconcerned with me. It was as though he were just noticing me for the first time, and was wondering if he should bother spending time with me.
After a brief exchange, he told me that I was out of practice, that he could only see the barest hint of me. Then he described me as “slow,” more of a description of my spiritual abilities than of mental abilities. I had to put everything into words… I had to construct everything, rather than simply trusting the symbols I was given and reacting to them immediately.
Then, almost immediately, my thoughts turned to a picture of Ragnarök. It was a raw emotion at first, thrust immediately upon me. Looking back, it seems that Odin had decided something, and wanted to show me what he decided.
I saw before me a great battlefield, and a walled city nestled in the mountains. The mountains were impassible; the only approach to the city was through a valley and through a heavily fortified wall.
In front of that wall were tents… modern military tents, lined up in rows by the thousands. In front of those tents were legions upon legions of soldiers dressed in ancient armor carrying strong swords. Each one had their eyes on the horizon and one thought in their heads… I’ll get to that thought in a bit.
I gravitated towards the tents… Inside was modern equipment, full of computers that had various maps of the battlefield, showing different pieces of information, and I found one that was comfortably familiar. There were generals inside, as well as other low-ranking soldiers sitting at the consoles letting the generals know the progress of the enemies. Each soldier and each general had swords at their sides, and the ones informing the generals each had daggers and flowers. They each watched the swarming tide beyond the horizon, and they all had one thought in their heads.
Behind the tents, there were people on the walls… Again, they all had swords in their hands, and these ones had bows and arrows as well. Behind the walls, there were people preparing to hide themselves in dark alleys and the sewers, to spring out and fight against the enemies in surprise… the last line of defense.
And, the one thought that each one had was to be allowed to give the people standing behind them just five more minutes than they might have had before. Each line knew that they would be overrun, in the end… This was the nature of Ragnarök; a battle that can not be won, but which must be fought. Each person knew that they would have to use their swords, and their experience from the wars they fought while they were alive… If only to give the last people, those who were defenseless, just five more minutes than they had before… than they might have had if that one soldier had fled.
That thought, of giving the people behind me five more minutes, swept over me, and I wept.
I wept, not for my own sake, but because I knew that I could not hold back the tides of the enemies forever… That there would come a time when I would have to stop shouting updates to the generals and start running out from my tent towards the masses… And some time after, the enemies would be at the gates, and there would be nothing that I could do beyond that, except know that I gave everybody behind me five more minutes.
Odin gave me this, knowing that I’m a man of peace…
But more importantly, knowing that I would sit in that chair, watching the battle unfold, and that I would indeed lift my sword in that last minute.
Oh, I hope that the Valkyries make themselves known as they visit that veterans cemetery where I’m to be buried. Let the world know that, though the bones of those around me are turning to dust, that we’re each being called to defend the world one last time, and that we’re proud to stand, looking towards the horizon, with our thoughts on those behind us. Oh, that the Valkyries would let them know that I’m proud to walk among the other soldiers, regardless of what uniform they wore when they fought.
But, as the day wore on, the freshness of the vision faded, as all visions do. On my drive to work, I watched for cars that had a headlight burned out, but I didn’t see any. At work, my thoughts turned to databases and programming…
Then, as I re-read Scott’s post about why he is an atheist, and as I read over eighty comments that he received from it, I thought to reply, and my reply turned to anger and bitterness. Gone, already, was the camaraderie of standing in front of the gates at Ragnarök. Which, of course, leads me back to the beginning of this post.
More Musings
So, it seems that the question is… Why am I bitter about religion?
Why am I bitter at all?
After all, I’ve been training myself to recognize my emotions… to deal with them so that I’m neither ignoring them or repressing them, nor am I letting them get out of control. How could I have had such a deep emotion hiding within myself?
And, how does Odin’s appearance fit into this? It is definitely unlike me to walk to the computer before taking a shower… I need to wake myself up before I can do anything else, or I end up slipping back into bed. Yet, there seemed to have been a message waiting for me that I had to hear in the shower, and I wouldn’t have thought to search for that message if I hadn’t have been on the computer first.
I’m afraid that if I study this logically too much, that I’ll lose something. Yet, logic is one of my foundations.
Odin says that I think too much… that I must act quickly and decisively, then adjust accordingly. It’s advice that I’ve given out before, but I didn’t expect to be called slow.
So, who am I to be?
Am I to be a soldier, even after I have left the military?
Or, am I to sit back, and be the hermit, giving information only to those who come to me?
Jeff’s Inner Landscapes Meditation
This leads me back to a meditation that I had asked Jeff to do for me a while back.
In it, Jeff was shown an image of who I’m supposed to be… At least, who the earth sprites say I should be. They showed him an image of a shaman… half man and half beast. Not quite one, and not quite the other.
Another image that Jeff saw, which caught him by surprise, was machines of war left frozen on the peaks of mountains…
This is, out of necessity, an incomplete view of Jeff’s meditation… Perhaps more will come later… but it seems that I have some work to do, the least of which being to understand what is at the peak of those mountains, and understand why those machines of war are left out there.
In Jeff’s talk with Odin, he is reminded that war does not only happen physically. I’m not equipped to wage war physically… Indeed, I can’t. Instead, I need to keep climbing my mountains, and discover the nature of these weapons of war.
Next Steps
I suppose my next steps are to try things… To be active. Ragnarök will come in its own time, and it will be with my spirit that I’m fighting, rather than with my body… It isn’t something to worry about now, Odin has already said that he’ll be proud to hear my words calling out to update the generals. Whether the Valkyries pick me up or not… Even if my spirit has to walk the entire distance, I’ll be at that battle defending those who can’t defend themselves… just to give the people behind me five more minutes.
Until then, I’ll continue to learn about myself… And, I’ll be more open spiritually.
