A Defining -- Spiritually Inspired

Creativity and personal Freedom are cornerstones of my spiritual Customs.  These are gifts to be nurtured and treasured and encouraged. And my spiritual Path does all that.

There is no set in stone dogma I must adhere to.  No rigid code of behavior.  I don't require anything beyond natural consequences to convince of me to choose the Right Action.  No sin.  No hell.  No eternal damnation if I should be "bad".  And while so many of the Faithful believe that this is the sure recipe for rampant cruelty and that the non-Faithful cannot more moral or just -- I proclaim just the opposite.  Doing the right thing solely because you fear damnation, makes you damned already.  But choosing to do the right thing because it is the right thing (without looking to the reward and/or punishment) is what makes one truly Moral.

My expression of creativity and personal freedom is reflected in my Customs.  I can Cast a Circle or not.  I can invoke a deity, a hundred deities, or none at all.  I can sing or dance, recite poetry, speak in tongues, or simply bask in the wonder and beauty that is Life.

I am encouraged to pursue my passions.  I am not treated like I'm evil -- accused of orchestrating the "fall from grace".  I am not dirty simply because I menstruate or enjoy sex.  I am celebrated and empowered to be a better woman simply because I am a woman.  I do not need saving because I am not damned for the singular sin of having been born.

I behold the world around me as a place of beauty and wonder.  I do not believe that the earth is merely here for us to use and discard.

I see Spirit all around us.  I feel it in the sun that warms my shoulders, the rough tree bark under my fingers when I stroke the trees in greeting on my daily walks.  I feel it rippling through me as the Harpies bring forth the rain, the lightning, the thunder within a glorious and wild Texas storm.  I hear it in the multitude of birdsong, frogsong, and in the creaking and rubbing the trees do as the breezes pass through their canopies.

I need no special religious clergy, set above me, to tell me what the Divine wants of me.  I speak to the Divine, soul to soul, daily -- words and symbols, metaphors and longings that would be lost in translation to another.

For example, the Divine may send a Werewolf in my dreams.  And to another, this is terrifying -- a monster.  But to me?  It is simply myself -- a melding of my human (physical) and my lupine (spiritual).  Not a monster, but a sign that I am doing what I need to do -- that I am aligned.  I am balanced.  I am simply Me.

So why would I look to another to tell me what the Werewolf means?  They would get the meaning all twisted and perverted.  And that is what I see in the faiths that have such rigid dogma, no room for Divine connection.  These sheep rely on the word of their shepherd and trust that his interpretation of the Divine Inspiration is correct (if indeed he even possesses that true spark).  And then the whole rule that the Divine will only speak to Males...that Females are forbidden to speak in their Holy places?  Why would the Divine set one sex above the other like that?  It just does not make sense to me.

So count me out.  I'll not sit meekly in your halls that reek of old gold, dead wood, and deader words.  I'll be the Heathen, dancing in the fields by night with the Lunar Madness in my heart, and a fire in my eyes.