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So I'm death aspected. What this means isn't that I want everything to immediately die, or that I hate living things, or that I wander around wearing black and making nihilistic statements.
What this means is that I know every molecule in my body has been through more organisms than I can ever imagine, all of which have died.
What this means is that death is a balance, the weight on the other side of the scales without which they fall apart. It's the feeling of one hand held in another with life.
Death is the place from which all nourishment comes, and it's the limiter of all pain and disaster. It's the boundary that protects life inside it, even though setting boundaries can feel hard and come with loss and grief.
What this means is that I'm aware of death in a way that most of our society, viewing it as an outrage to be erased and forgotten, doesn't want to be. What this means is I'm aware death needs to be honoured with ritual and with thought and integration into our philosophies.
What this means is that I believe in grief. Death exists, loss exists. They are real, not some temporarily inconvenient aspect of the world that science or God and the right behaviour can erase. And because they are such real forces in our lives we will always be exposed to grief. It's a fertile place full of strong and sometimes unpredictable energy.
I have so many mourning rituals, and so many grief rituals. The normal pagan ones tend not to stand for me. Instead I write, I pour the energy into the land, I cry, I cherish what is lost, I sing loudly and cry in cars and in public.
People die every day. They die in cars, they choose death, their bodies decide to take them back to the earth. We adjust to that.
This particular end times seems like we may get a big dying, a big loss of the society we knew, and a big grief.
This grief is-- more than 50% of the pine trees died in the last mountain pine beetle epidemic. White-nose disease took bat populations down unimaginably. Few American chestnuts are left. Once there were so few Canada geese we thought they'd go extinct.
The fact that thriving populations get lowered by natural factors doesn't reduce the grief of it. Even if it's inevitable, even if it needs to happen, the grief is real. Our planet has had a lot of these kinds of grief lately.
And now here we are. Humans, looking something not so extreme in the face. And it's still a big grief.
I'm death aspected. The coming grief feels like weight, like gravity, but not like an outrage. It feels like it will need a container, made by humans, to live with the grief and give it meaning and solace.
I do hope we are up to the task.
What this means is that I know every molecule in my body has been through more organisms than I can ever imagine, all of which have died.
What this means is that death is a balance, the weight on the other side of the scales without which they fall apart. It's the feeling of one hand held in another with life.
Death is the place from which all nourishment comes, and it's the limiter of all pain and disaster. It's the boundary that protects life inside it, even though setting boundaries can feel hard and come with loss and grief.
What this means is that I'm aware of death in a way that most of our society, viewing it as an outrage to be erased and forgotten, doesn't want to be. What this means is I'm aware death needs to be honoured with ritual and with thought and integration into our philosophies.
What this means is that I believe in grief. Death exists, loss exists. They are real, not some temporarily inconvenient aspect of the world that science or God and the right behaviour can erase. And because they are such real forces in our lives we will always be exposed to grief. It's a fertile place full of strong and sometimes unpredictable energy.
I have so many mourning rituals, and so many grief rituals. The normal pagan ones tend not to stand for me. Instead I write, I pour the energy into the land, I cry, I cherish what is lost, I sing loudly and cry in cars and in public.
People die every day. They die in cars, they choose death, their bodies decide to take them back to the earth. We adjust to that.
This particular end times seems like we may get a big dying, a big loss of the society we knew, and a big grief.
This grief is-- more than 50% of the pine trees died in the last mountain pine beetle epidemic. White-nose disease took bat populations down unimaginably. Few American chestnuts are left. Once there were so few Canada geese we thought they'd go extinct.
The fact that thriving populations get lowered by natural factors doesn't reduce the grief of it. Even if it's inevitable, even if it needs to happen, the grief is real. Our planet has had a lot of these kinds of grief lately.
And now here we are. Humans, looking something not so extreme in the face. And it's still a big grief.
I'm death aspected. The coming grief feels like weight, like gravity, but not like an outrage. It feels like it will need a container, made by humans, to live with the grief and give it meaning and solace.
I do hope we are up to the task.
