A New Set of Virtues?

Needless to say, I am a huge proponent of giving something back to all the communities of which we are a part. Let's use our resources to make our communities strong. Part of doing that may lie in showing the outside world that we care about the world we live in beyond the small enclosures of our own religious groups. Whatever we do to make our world at large better benefits us on a smaller scale too. Our Pagan and Heathen groups, kindreds, and tribes don't exist in a vacuum. We're all part of a bigger world. A colleague of mine once described charity as ‘hospitality in action.'

Now, giving back doesn't need to involve money, although I do recommend tithing part of one's income to the charities of one's choice. I maintain a list of favorite charities on my website if folks are wondering where to get started (places to donate are listed at the bottom of the page). I understand that the economy is terrible and many people are really struggling. Sometimes giving back means taking a bag of used clothes to goodwill rather than throwing them out. Maybe it means volunteering for one day a week at a food bank, or going to give blood at the Red Cross or a local hospital. Maybe it means teaching a child how to read. There are hundreds of ways to ‘give something back.' One of those, of course, involves donations of money. This can be done in a way that honors not only the spirits of money and of exchange, but our Gods and ancestors as well. The important thing is that we find the way to give something back that works for us and our individual circumstances and then stick to it. Generosity of spirit is never a bad thing to cultivate. If our Gods weren't generous, where would we be?

Mindfulness. This is the grace of infusing the sacred into the most mundane and simple of daily tasks. It's keeping one's life and one's heart always focused on honoring the Holy Powers and ancestors. It's living one's life with that awareness foremost in one's mind. That's not always an easy thing. There are many aspects of secular life that can pull us away from such inner awareness but growing in mindfulness is a process, and sometimes we learn as much by screwing it up as we do by getting it right. Mindfulness teaches us that the Gods aren't ‘out there' somewhere far away but that we can experience Them, or at least Their graces and blessings in the here and now. An awareness of Them may then color our every interaction and that is mighty thing: walking with the conscious community of one's ancestors, and in the conscious awareness that the Gods are there for us, and we for Them. It's an incredibly powerful and potentially transformative mindset. It changes everything and if we work consistently at developing as mindful human beings, it wakes us up into the fullness of our humanity, and into the fullness of our spirituality.

Compassion. Our way often seems very hard and unforgiving and in some respects it is. Wyrd is a terrible, wonderful, powerful thing after all. Moreover, our ancestors lived in harsh times and had to make hard choices that we ourselves may never face. I do not believe, however, that this created a lack of compassion. I think that perhaps it may have had exactly the opposite effect.

A colleague of mine once asked me "Where is love in your religion? Where is compassion?" Looking at the community as it stands now, I was hard pressed to answer, other than to assure her that it was there. I didn't want to admit to her that frankly, I find it almost completely lacking in contemporary Heathenry. I think that perhaps there is a cultural misunderstanding if you will, within Heathenry, that compassion equals weakness; and while one of the things that I love about my religion is that it eschews weakness, I think that true compassion is anything but. It takes tremendous courage to put one's ego, one's sentimentalities, one's fears aside and open oneself up to the vulnerability of compassion. Compassion hurts. The word itself says it all: etymologically "compassion" breaks down into two Latin words that mean ‘to suffer with' someone. Willingness to engage in compassion is the mark of a strong, courageous human being. It is the best essence of Midgard, something to which I think we should aspire rather than denigrate. Like courage, that in no way means it's easy!

These are the graces that move us past the distractions of our own egotistical stubbornness. These are the graces that nourish both spiritual life and mundane lifethe way that water and fertilizer nourishes a newly planted seedling. These are the graces that open us to a holiness greater and older than we and in doing so brings the potential for inner transformation. Through their practice we have the potential to become better human beings and in doing so, to serve the Gods more fully, rightly, and well.