The end of my spirit year

Hi.  I know.  You thought I forgot you.  No.  Just got really busy with other things. Plus this blog seemed to have lost its way a bit.  But now I have things to say.  Important things.  Enlightened things.  Scary things.  Subversive things.  Big things.  Little things.  Just things.

Today was Maundy Thursday.  Back when I followed Christian doctrine I would look forward to going to church on this night.  Where some people think Christmas eve is the holiest of nights I always found Tenebrae very mystical.  I took communion for the first time at a Tenebrae service.  We were invite into the "upper room" to share Passover with The Prophet and his closest disciples.  The ending of worship was a ritual that still speaks to something deep in my spirit...we left the table and went back to our seats in silence.  People stripped the altar, a black cloth was put on it. All the lights were turned out and then the candles snuffed.  We left the sanctuary in silence.

This is the point where my spiritual year still goes into the tomb.  Into that place of mystery.  According to the story our hero/villain Jesus goes to commune with the other world and the underworld before his spirit is allowed to reanimate the human body placed on the slab behind the great stone.  If he spoke of this experience, either the apostles never recorded it or "the church" has tucked it away along with other gospels and scriptures because they "don't think 'the people' can handle it" which really means that it reveals more of the true story which would weaken their control of 'the people'.  But we'll get there in a few paragraphs.  For now let me state where I am in my yearly journey through Lent.

As previously mentioned, I walked a mainline Christian path for a long time.  It was while still being active in the church that I felt the power of Lent in my life and made it a structured part of my journey.  This year I saw that even as a pagan, my spiritual year is different.  Most paths' years end in the Fall or Winter.  Mine ends with Holy Week and the New Year begins on Easter.  Palm Sunday's message of walking into a situation that is dangerous with humble confidence, that last parade before dealing with awful treatment at the hands of your enemies.  I find that day usually a positive one. Monday to Thursday is getting my spiritual house in order.  Thursday is that last drink and dinner with friends because Friday is the day when everything literally breaks off the walls.  Saturday is time for pancakes and keeping old close friends close while I process Friday.  Sunday?  The Hallelujah chorus!  A new year.  New life.  New Light.

Tonight was a phone conversation with my daughter. Take out food and a cheap rose while watching my favorite shows.  I conversed with a videographer friend in L.A.  and a music friend in Phoenix.  All three people I would so sit down with over wine or beer, chips and dip, sushi.  Now I'm sitting in the quiet.  It's not dark but it's quiet.  My altars are dark.  No candles burning.  I'll go to the garden to pray before bed.

Tomorrow is a ritual I started at least 6 years ago.  I walk a labyrinth.  I had walked before in a number of places and found it to be one of my best meditation tools.  So when I learned that another Congregational Church up the road a ways was doing a Lenten labyrinth in their parish hall, I went with my son.  It was so great.  They used small bottles of water to make the path. There were small worship stations around the room that were all water themed.  I had a good walk.  I came away calmed, ready to enter the new year peacefully.  The next year their labyrinth was outside with the path created with heavy rope.  I felt like I came out with more questions than I went in with.  The next year the church didn't do one so I had to search for some place to walk.  I was going to drive up to a retreat center in Litchfield but it felt like such a waste of gas for a 30-45 minute walk.  I found one much closer to home.  It's outside and permanent and also at a Congregational church.  I've been going there for 3 years now.  This year I'm going back to the church I started at.  It's inside and I just feel like I need to walk around in the tomb a bit even though things have been gearing up to get pretty intense.  I feel like inside I can keep my own spiritual shit together to handle whatever The Fates throw at me.  I also need those little worship stations because I know I'm going to have to walk at least twice.

12/21/12 marked the beginning of the New Era or New Age.  No you didn't notice any big change.  There wasn't one.  Not on the surface at least.  You saw visible changes leading up to it.  Those of the Old Regime have been drawing the line between Darkness and Light deeper and deeper, especially over the past decade until it became a chasm.  Some of you will still be able to make it across when you wake up and realize your not on your correct side.  Some of you think you are Light Warriors but you're really not.  Some are spies for the Darkness.  Some don't have the real courage to put your money, bodies and minds where your mouths are.  Then there are those who are over on the other side. You believed the lies.  You tried to "be good" but your true self has been trying to beat itself out of your and that Light is just screaming to get out and come over to this side and fight, or heal, or feed, or educate or bury with the rest of us.  You were kind of like Dorothy, just wandering through the poppies cuz they were pretty and never saw the trap coming.  The Darkness knew you were a bright Light to contend with and tried to take you out of the game.  If it was lucky you'd come to and be one of them.

What started on the Solstice was labor.  Very early stages.  We are building up the muscles so we are really strong when hard labor sets in and as one we start to push and birth this New Age of wisdom, compassion, justice, truth, and joy which will culminate in peace and love.  We are working on being more confident in our true, unique, free thinking selves.  We are worshipping by showing The Great Spirit that we have broken from the flock of hive-minded sheeple to be who each of us was individually created to be.  Yes, we will still live or visit in community.  We may stay with a tribe.  But that tribe fully functions because each member has their own skill and talent.  It works because we are each different not because we are all the same.

Some "christian" clergy jerk post a red and pink division symbol with a reference to the book of Luke and Jesus' statement about dividing people.  I love how people who claim to follow this prophet's teachings interpret that to mean that they are "better than", to be sequestered from, to judge others.  Even I was raised with that statement out of context.  If fact I didn't really get it till yesterday.  Here's the thing.  Biblical Jesus (there are no historic records that he actually existed) was an early version of Robin Hood.  No, he didn't steal but he did ask people for things and then gave them away.  The point is is that he is this villain/hero.  Jesus was not popular with the religious hierarchy.  He was telling off the clergy at his bar mitzvah.  Where the Pharisees and the Sadducees had done a great job of making up a gajillion rules that not even the best Jew could live up to, therefore having great control over the people, JC comes along and says "One rule-love your neighbor as yourself".  A spin on the Golden Rule...treat folks the way you want to be treated.  Allow me to interject here that you must go to YouTube and search "Kid President" and listen to his version..."treat everyone like it's their birthday".  Kid President is right.  If we did that the world would be awesome and in the New Era that's how it will be.  But back to our story about villain/hero Jesus.  The locals love this guy cuz he is taking ten tons of spiritual weight and legalistic monkeys off their backs.  BE NICE TO EVERYONE EVEN IF IT'S SOMEONE THE RABBI SAYS YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO LIKE...cuz their the wrong color, from a different town, worship a different god or have more or less money than you.  Remember that who story about the Samaritan.  The point of that story to the townsfolk he was telling it to was that Jews and Samaritans didn't get along, like at all.  So both the beat up Jew, who by the way gets passed over by a rabbi and a Levite...clergy and lawyer of his own race and religion, and the Samaritan have to give a lot of ground for the whole story to go down the way it did.  Jesus was such a hippie...people lived in kinds of communes around him.  He crashed on whatever empty couch he could find.  He probably had some pretty nasty dreds.  He was unemployed and he was the pied piper dude who was setting people free.  Of course they followed him.  THAT pissed off both the Jewish politicians and religious leaders along with the Romans who "owned" Israel.  The thing is with "controllers" they can't have real alphas around to screw up their game plan.  They either have to depose them or dispose of them.  Jesus got dealt the dispose of card.

A friend sent me an email earlier this week and short paragraph generated most of that last paragraph and will fit into other things I will write later today and tomorrow.  He told me how his 5 year old asked him "Daddy, why did Jesus have to die?".  He didn't give it as second thought and answered, "Politics".  In that one word answer is some very heavy revelation and will put more scripture and society and culture of the Old Era in very clear perspective.  I'll continue with that in my next post.  Blessings.  May these days be filled with blessings for all.