So I’m doing this post a week thing, right? And WordPress is posting these really neat topics. But I’m finding a really hard time choosing which topic that was posted over the last week to actually write about. So I’m going to stick with the 30 Episodes and see what comes up.
Lately I’ve been trying to integrate a lot of new spiritual experiences with my existing understanding of the universe. I started my official work as a priest last month – Woohoo! It hasn’t been exactly the earth-shattering experience I expected it to be, but it has been wonderful. I had already been working on a daily practice, leading up to my service as a priest, with Senut, so I imagine I was already pretty adjusted to the ‘workload’, so to speak. Other than that, my attitude toward worship is pretty much the same.
Worship, for me, falls into two different categories: ritual and mundane. Ritual worship is what most people say it is, I think – setting aside time and space for the gods, to work with them, to give them some praise, to be with them, what have you. Mundane worship is a little weirder – it’s the things I do every day that honor the gods, even outside of ritual space. It’s praying and offering a sip of my coffee to Wepwawet. It’s staring at a blood-stained sunset and giving thanks to my Mother. It’s honoring the gods in small, subtle ways.
I honestly don’t think that I would be able to worship solely one way or the other. On Tuesday, I prayed to my gods at dawn, driving to work, under the brilliantly colored sunrise. Later that night, I knelt before my shrine to worship my gods there. One without the other is like food without water, or water without food.
I think this goes back to my thoughts on shrines, at it’s heart– the need to create a space separate from the mundane world to honor the gods, without being so naive as to insist that it’s the only place the gods will ever enter into my life. I’ve encountered some people that seem umbilically attached to the idea that ritual is the heart and soul of a functional relationship with the gods, and I know it’s important, I understand that it’s important, but without the quiet integration of worship and life, it feels like a lot of empty arm-waving; likewise, little daily observances seem too casual and flippant without the grounding of a formal acknowledgement.
So anyway, enough pontificating. Today, I honored the Jackal in my car, as I sang one of His songs and contemplated the world through my windshield, I honored my mother as I cleaned and purified my room. And later, in about half an hour, I will still sit in front of an altar, because that’s important to me too.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll try and peck out one of those prompts. How do people blog daily, man? I don’t get it. My life is just not that interesting.
carrying their light 