Happy November to everyone!
I was planning on writing more about ancestral practices but have a slight change of plans. Yesterday, a man decided to deal with his pain and frustration by driving a rented truck onto a pedestrian walk way in Manhattan and killed 38 people in the name of his religion. When I was watching Morning Joe today one of their guests said that we can either transform our pain or transmit our pain and it struck a cord in me.
We live in a broken world. We are oppressed, disenfranchised, marginalized, and then ignored. Our media and social media outlets capitalize on that pain and sometime with well meaning and thought provoking questions but more often than not it magnifies the issues and not really resolve them. How do we deal with the constant influx of distressing information and how do we transform it into something positive?
I like the idea of transforming pain. The Wiccan Rede states An It Harm None Do As Thou Will but we fall short. We hurt others in our selfishness and we hurt ourselves. The first step in the process of transformation is the same first step that is used in the AA Twelve step program. We admitted that we were powerless over ________ and that our lives had become unmanageable. In my own walk I am powerless over my sense of rejection. It can overrun my life if I allow it too. The second step become more important of coming to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity….Awareness
Because of my pagan leanings I choose to see that power as the Goddess and her Consort but it is also my community and elders and their wisdom from traveling the path before me. Surrendering my ego and sense of righteousness in order to understand someone else’s side of the story is a vitlal necessity and then that leads into the third step of surrender…. Giving my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him. It is not easy to recognize when we need to walk in active forgiveness and surrender. Both are necessary as a part of transformation.
As a nation, as a world, we need to stop seeing our pain as isolated incidents. That we are the only ones going through our confusion and frustration, our sense of loss and our sense of what needs to be done in compensation. We do not always know the best way but we are willing to yield the pain of our ego to the wisdom of compassion we may heal more than just ourselves in the process.
May the month ahead bring you encouragement, empowerment, and peace.
Blessed Be!!
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