The Song and the Flame

When writing the entry on devotions, I noted that the “let’s call it an answer” I found didn’t point to any particular path. This led me to note that if I wanted pointed down a particular path, I should have asked for such direction instead of going with a general “how do you want me to worship you”. Because they’re related, but not the same thing.

And then, sitting there pondering that, I think I got the real answer to what I’d really wanted to know. Whether external or internal, I still have trouble telling, but it was such an instinctive and sudden and pointed response that I kind of think it might at least have been externally influenced.

The answer is: Apollo is not going to choose my path for me. That is my choice to make, something I have to do for myself. I don’t get a free pass past the difficult choices in life just because I’ve been thwapped. I am called to serve Apollo; I must choose the framework in which I work to do that. (I’m not sure that there’s necessarily a right choice or a wrong choice, though, as long as I get the job done.) In retrospect it seems obvious, but… well, these things happen.

I’ve been asked to bring a cake to the party, and whether I bake it myself or buy it from a baker, it’s up to me to come up with it; the person who asked me to bring it isn’t going to provide it for me. I knew that metaphor was going to come back and bite me in the ass.

Thank you.

(See?  The fortune cookie was not the answer, it was just a vehicle that got me to the answer, by a roundabout means.  )

Devotion means multiple things, I think.

One is devotion in the sense of a devotional activity. I already do some things. Daily, I say good morning and good night, and blow a kiss when I see the Sun first, and do the click-to-donate thing for a couple of health-related sites. Monthly, I do a more devotional devotion, libation and standing outside in the sunshine just kind of being religiously-focused for a few minutes. Irregularly, I donate to health-related causes. It probably wouldn’t hurt, though, to do a couple of actual projects in addition to the little stuff. Flowers and chocolates as well as housekeeping, you know? I’ve got the altar cloth already in the works. Bought the supplies Saturday. I think I might also revisit my old, forgotten project of putting together an “Apollo Mix” playlist. I’ve got a tiny start on that. I hesitate to re-commit to writing poetry, as I tried to at one point in the past, because I know I have such trouble with it anymore. Those are my ideas right now.

Two is devotion in the sense of being devoted. I think I’m doing pretty well there already. Aren’t I? I think that’s something that hasn’t really gone away since I got well and thoroughly thwapped. The relationship itself has waxed and waned, but I don’t think I’ve ever just dropped the emotional, spiritual devotion. There is an increasingly religious side of it that I’m keeping up relatively well too–but for that, largely see above, I think.

I don’t think it points to any particular path. Which just goes to show that you have to be specific. “How do you want me to worship you” does not necessarily indicate a choice of paths, I realize belatedly. And the fact that I wanted such a thing… That bears examining too. I think I’ve just had a small epiphany. I should save it for another post, though, rather than sidetrack this one.

“Devotion will make you feel more complete.”

It is a sad situation when I’m so turned around that I get this (or approximately this; it’s at home, I’m at work) in a fortune cookie and start to wonder:

1. What exactly is meant by “devotion”,
2. If I’m reading too much into a silly little fortune cookie, and
3. If I’m not paying enough attention to the message I asked for, fortune cookie or otherwise.

I find myself unable to throw out that little slip of paper, or even move it from its place at the top of my keyboard at home.  I feel a little silly about taking any actual advice from a fortune cookie.  They’re…  fortune cookies.  I’ve probably had half a dozen or more in the past week, and none of the rest of them said anything remotely significant.  They all have pseudo-mysterious advice in them.  Is this really to be taken more seriously than “Buy many dream boxes,” or the one I got Friday that told me I was pretty and smart or something?

Should it really be disregarded just because it’s such a “silly” place to find an answer?

And of course this still sounds like I’m getting more worked up about the whole thing than I am.  I’m not anxious about it, not fretting, not being kept awake nights or anything like that.  I’m just…  wishy-washy, I guess, wanting some direction and not entirely sure whether I’ve gotten it or not.

I do feel silly about taking any sort of direction from a fortune cookie.  Much less admitting to doing so.  But…  Haven’t I said multiple times here in this very blog that I need to trust my instincts a little better?  (OK, a lot better.)  And what are my instincts telling me?

So.  What does devotion mean in this context?  Things to ponder for the next entry…

So I’ve played with tarot a little more, because like some sort of cosmic scab I just can’t stop picking at it.  And Jill did a reading for me, though it was general, not focused on this stuff.  Some themes are apparent; some cards show up multiple times.  The Lovers, the ace of pentacles, the Magician.  Though the Lovers was what I babbled to Jill about (as it happened to appear in her reading), the Magician actually is the one that really keeps popping up.

And then today I had a reading that actually makes some sense.  It…  could be read to point me down the semi-recon path I’ve sort of taken the first steps on.  But I find myself running up against that brick wall called Doubt.  Am I just seeing what I want to see?  Everything before this has been confusing; why would this be any clearer?  Isn’t it convenient that it says what I want to hear?

But…  If I’m not going to pay attention, why am I doing this?  Just because it’s convenient doesn’t mean it’s not the right interpretation, or that I should discard it.  At some point it occurred to me that I distrust it because they’re just cards, just pasteboard with pretty pictures, and it would be so easy to just make them fall into place to say what I wanted to hear.

But then it occurred to me that this could be said of anything, even my own thoughts.  So easy to just believe what I want to be true, to interpret my own experiences in such a way as to support what I want to believe.  Self-delusion does not require external tools.  I don’t tend to have a problem with the idea that this could all be self-delusion.  So why should I be so doubtful about this?

And of course then there are the days–today is actually one of them–when I wonder why I’m getting so worked up over this.  Why the fuss?  If this seems right and I have no indication that it’s not welcome, why not just go with it?

Am I just looking for some sort of validation?  If so, given that I’m seeking it from the deity who is the primary focus of the activities I’m seeking validation for, is that a bad thing or not?  And is the very fact that I don’t feel so anxious about it anymore in itself a form of validation?

Should I just give over and start claiming the “Hellenic Pagan” label already?  Why am I so nervous about it?

Are y’all tired of my angsting over this yet? 

No answers forthcoming yet. A slight worry that maybe it was there and I just missed it, or that no answer will ever come, is beginning to set in, but it’s tempered by the knowledge that answers don’t necessarily appear just right away. I did discover just after asking that I felt somewhat less worried about the direction I’m headed in… But I’m pretty sure that was all internal and psychological.

Sunday I had the thought that hey, this is definitely serious enough to consider trying to use some divination to help. I mean, I thought maybe taking steps to try to find an answer rather than just sitting around waiting might help, and Apollo does have some ties to prophecy and divination, so this seemed the obvious way. Right? Unfortunately, this theory has a huge flaw in it, because… being inexperienced with divination and lacking practice or study, I still didn’t know what to do, really.

I tried a couple of tarot readings, one a random seven-card draw and one standard Celtic Cross layout. For each card, I studied it and tried to come up with my own impressions about its meaning, then looked it up in a couple of different sources, figuring this should give me a pretty good look at the meaning. In some cases I was very close, in others far afield… In all cases, the cards made some sort of sense individually, but the overall effect was massively contradictory and made little sense at all. So I don’t know that going that route is necessarily going to help a whole lot.

I guess I’ll have to keep at it, looking for an answer, listening for an answer, maybe trying again some other way.

I sucked it up and asked.  And felt I was heard…  we’ll see what happens next.  I’m still a little apprehensive, but–well, part of being an adult is knowing when you have to do something despite being afraid, isn’t it?

It kind of hit me last night that the phenomenon of being scared isn’t limited to asking about what the heck I should do, religiously, anyway.  It’s not just that. I’ve been scared of a lot of things lately.  Scared of doing poorly at work, scared to talk about my recent religious explorations, scared of making Tim unhappy (not, I should be clear here, that he’s given me any reason to be scared; it’s purely internal), scared (again without any basis) that people will misconstrue things I’ve said or done and I’ll get in trouble–just scared.

I don’t think, therefore, that my problem is specifically that I’m frightened of asking.  I’m just plain skittish in general.  I didn’t notice it because it’s really not so overwhelming as the paragraph above might sound.  It’s mostly just kind of background noise, very subtle.   Fear isn’t, like, running my life or anything.  But when I step back and look at me, I do see a pattern of little bits of it creeping in more often than they should.

Why?

I think the thing about divination is that I need to not take it lightly.  The times I’ve tried it, it’s all been silly little stuff, just kind of “so does this work or what” stuff.  I need to take it more seriously, try it when there’s a genuine need, not just for the hell of it or because I “ought to” or whatever.

Asking…  asking.  (See Shad’s comment on “Salad Bar” if you’re not getting this.)  I think I’ve got to ask, just stop worrying about it and ask, but I’m…  I’m a little scared.  I think maybe I’m afraid that I won’t get an answer, or that I will but I won’t recognize it.  I’m dumb like that sometimes.  Or maybe I’m afraid that I will get an answer and I will recognize it, but I won’t be able to do it.  I mean, not like it’ll be beyond my physical or financial abilities, or be a strain on my time or whatever, but that I’ll just get ditzy and forget, or get going real strong for a month or so and then just kind of trail off like I do with every second or third project I take on.  Like I’m afraid I won’t be able to live up to my promises not because I am prevented from it, but because I just can’t make myself good enough.  My memory and motivation won’t last long enough, my self-control won’t be strong enough, my focus won’t be strong enough.  Which are not valid excuses.  It shouldn’t be that hard, just decide you’re going to do something and then do it, right?

Except it is.  I’ve decided a thousand times today to get back on track at work, but here I am blogging.  I decided only to have half a peanut butter cup, but I had nearly the whole package.  This is what I’m scared of, really, deep down inside, I think.  That I’ll know what to do and decide to do it, but be too weak and stupid and unmotivated to carry it through.

Dammit.  And I decided I wasn’t going to do this anymore, but here I am doing it anyway.

At some point, I may just need to suck it up and do it.  I mean, what am I, five?  I can’t live life according to what I fear; sometimes I have to try, and accept the consequences if I fail.  And take a little responsibility, good grief.

So I’ve always said I suck at divination.  Which I do, but I think to some extent I’m a little afraid of it.  I realized this today when I was surfing around and happened to see something about a prayer to Apollo for a prophetic dream.

And day-um, that thought scared me.  I just had this feeling, kind of a “don’t ask questions to which you do not want to know the answers”.  I think part of it was specifically the dream part; other forms of divination (tea leaves, tarot cards, spaghetti…) don’t provoke that reaction.  But the whole asking to have a prophetic dream thing…  I almost got the feeling that if I asked, I might get one, but I had better be damned sure I was willing to deal with it.

I wonder if this is part of my persistent inability to divine…  Part of it is a lack of focus that interferes with the whole idea of continuing to try even if I don’t get it right very quickly.  But maybe part of it is just that I’m not necessarily ready to deal with it?  Or not.  I don’t know.

Over at TC there’s a discussion about what we would be if religion were a salad bar. My response:

“Heh. At the moment I guess I’d be homegrown mixed greens with kalmata olives, feta cheese crumbled over the top, and a bit of oil and herbed vinegar for dressing.

“I’d also probably be wandering up and down the salad bar looking at stuff and wondering if it would go well with what I already had, and generally questioning my salad choices to the point that the people I’d come with were all rolling their eyes and wondering when the hell I was going to give it up, make a decision, sit down and eat my salad already.”

Sometimes I wonder if that’s really the thing here. Just make a decision already. And if it’s the wrong one, and the salad tastes awful, hey–I can go back and try again. Sometimes I wonder if I need to just stop dicking around trying to figure things out and reason things out and decide exactly how I’m feeling about things, close my eyes, and eat the freaking salad. Because if the salad’s just going to sit there on my plate, and never go anywhere because I’m too busy trying to decide and too insecure about my decisions to trust them… Then what’s the point of being at the salad bar in the first place?

At first I thought this kind of clashed with my earlier thoughts about needing to think things through. But I don’t think it does, after all. I need to make a decision and sit down to eat–but here the salad bar analogy falls apart, because I also need to do research and thinking and stuff. Just… about the salad that I have, not about what’s going to go into the salad. Except first I need to know what’s in the salad I have. (But wait–didn’t I just answer that question?)

I suppose what really bothers me here is that I don’t have this kind of indecision about other important things in my life. I know, for sure, who I want to be married to (and I am, thank goodness). I know, for sure, that I want to be a mother. I know, for sure, where I want to live and what I want to do for a living. I only get indecisive on things that don’t matter so much, like where to eat and what movie to see. Why am I so indecisive about religion? Shouldn’t it be one of those things I know, one of those big important things?

And no matter what I try to tell myself about eclecticism, this is indecision. I mean, I’m not saying that all eclectics are just indecisive–by no means! But for me the thing is that I don’t know where I’m going or what I want, really. And I’m not sure how to figure that out, and I just get all indecisive and overwhelmed and lazy and don’t bother trying to pick any one direction.

Wow, this wound up being considerably longer and going in much different directions than I’d anticipated.