Wheel of the Year, Museum of Witchcraft, Boscastle<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhat does my Pagan religion have to teach me, when it comes to this painful truth?<\/p>\n
Merely that it is a painful truth. \u00a0All life feeds on life, and birth, evolution, change, growth\u2026 all these things depend on loss, depend on death. Is there another world? \u00a0Another life?<\/p>\n
At times, I feel confident of it. \u00a0Certainly, many Pagan traditions hold out some hope of it: of rebirth, or a Summerland, or something<\/em>. \u00a0Sometimes I can feel a joyful sureness running through my body like fire: nothing that lives is ever wholly lost. \u00a0Everything that was, in some way, still is.<\/em><\/p>\nBut whatever there may be, the truth is, we can\u2019t any of us be sure\u2013not fully sure\u2013and whatever there may be after we die, at a minimum it includes a transformation so complete that we can never touch one another again, know one another again\u2026 not while we are still here, in this life, in this body. \u00a0When we have lost someone we love, we cannot hold them in our arms and be with them now<\/em>, here<\/em>, where we feel our loneliness and our yearning so bitterly.<\/p>\nAnd here, in the season of death, in Black November, between Samhain and Mid-winter, we can at least acknowledge it. \u00a0Death is necessary and<\/em> death is terrible, \u00a0and there cannot be\u00a0Maypoles and fireflies without paying the price for them: bitter loss and grief.<\/p>\nWhat is the wisdom I can bring to this, as a Pagan and a woman?<\/p>\n
Just this\u2013this hard nugget of truth: embrace this truth. \u00a0The world is awful and bitter and bleak\u2013and also worth it. \u00a0The price of admission to living fully is understanding that, yes, the price really is<\/em> this high, and everyone pays. It doesn\u2019t matter. \u00a0Love your life anyway.<\/p>\nEmbrace<\/em> the Wheel of the Year, that damned wheel that strips us, ultimately, of everything and everyone we know. \u00a0Embrace<\/em> the Wheel, the bleakness of not-knowing and of letting go and of grief. No: we can\u2019t know there will be a morning after the dark of night, for any of us, as individuals, nor for anyone we love. \u00a0But we share that truth of our mortality together. \u00a0We are not alone in this, our humanity and our grief. We have each other, and we have life itself.<\/p>\nThis is what it means to love the earth, to love being alive. Just as the answer to the inevitability of loss is not to wall ourselves off from love, the inevitability of pain and death is no reason to reject or deny the wisdom of the Wheel. \u00a0This world is beautiful<\/em>. \u00a0This life is glorious<\/em>. \u00a0 It is made of summer sunlight dancing on clear water, and birdsongs in the morning, the smell of fresh-cut grass and freshly-poured mead.<\/p>\nAnd it is made of the turf that grows over the grave, and the tears that are shed onto it.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t get to have one without the other. \u00a0You cannot say you love the kitten if you will not love the cat, and we cannot embrace any of the Wheel, unless we embrace it all. \u00a0So embrace it, even when it scorches you, cuts you, freezes you to the marrow of your bones, because this life is your<\/em> life, your only life. Don\u2019t miss a moment of it.<\/em> \u00a0Even the hard parts, even the awfulness of it, is good.<\/p>\nEverything in this cauldron is good. \u00a0Drink deep: every drop. You\u2019re here. \u00a0Live.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This world is beautiful. This life is glorious. It is made of summer sunlight on clear water, and the smell of fresh-cut grass and freshly-poured mead. And it is made of the turf that grows over the grave, and the tears that are shed onto it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1904,"featured_media":1318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[149,148,7,80,147],"class_list":["post-1317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cats-posts","tag-death","tag-grief","tag-pagan","tag-samhain","tag-wheel-of-the-year"],"yoast_head":"\n
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