Faith, Thought, Prayer, and Time

Having read Celia Viggo Wexler‘s essay in the San Francisco Chronicle this morning at breakfast (yes, I still have the newspaper delivered), these lines jumped out at me:

“I wanted answers as a Catholic woman. But what I learned applies to any person encountering a religious crisis. . . . Faith is not loyalty to a church. It demands a relationship with the divine, something that takes time, thought and prayer.”

And that’s where many of us stumble—not just Catholics, or Christians, or any follower of a popular religion, but, yes, even those of us who follow more lightly trod paths. We name ourselves a particular type of worshipper—Pagan, Northern Traditionalist, Heathen, Wiccan, etc.—and settle into a comfortable and accepted identity of that tradition. What’s required, however, is not just a name and an identity, but a life that fits our chosen path.

Our Gods require service, our path requires faith, and both require action. It’s easy to say, “I am a devotee of [your deity here]”, but it’s much more work to live that devotion. It’s easy to go to rituals, attend study groups, and opine endlessly in online chat rooms. Yes, these are ways of honoring our Gods through learning and sharing knowledge, but knowledge is not enough. We need to do something with our knowledge to transmute it into wisdom.

A life of active and honorable service requires us to ask questions, to think deeply and clearly, and to take actions based on our acquired wisdom. If you have memorized the words of Havamal, but not imbibed the lessons, your behaviors will not change. One of the reasons we take up a faith is to gain wisdom which directly informs our actions, and thus we live more useful lives as better humans than we would be otherwise.

We speak to our Gods in prayer, and They answer us in myriad ways. Sometimes we’re lucky, and it’s a direct reply to us as we are in conversation with Them at the altar. Far more often, They speak to us through the words of others in conversation, music, books, or even newspaper articles.

We question ourselves—”Am I strong enough to do what is asked of me? am I wise enough? am I ready?” (The answers are usually “yes”; “you’ll learn what you don’t yet know”; and “you’re as ready as you need to be”.)

We question our Gods—”Why did You choose me to do this work? what makes you think I can do this? isn’t there someone else who could do it?” (The answers are usually  “because”; “We know you can”; and “no”.)

We read other’s thoughts, ideas, and experiences to learn about how to process our own. We write about our own thoughts, ideas, and experiences, whether or not we share those writings with anyone else, in order to gain clarity on what happened, what it might mean, what we do with it or about it.

All of this takes time, however, and most of us feel starved for time. We have so many demands to juggle—work and its commute, family (especially if you are responsible for the care of dependent children and/or elders), community (those circles and study groups, or simply enjoying a movie night with friends), quotidian details (you must eat—which requires grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning up; you can go only so long without doing laundry; you must put fuel in the car and make sure the engine is maintained; and on and on). With all of that, time for yourself quickly falls to the bottom of the list, and what time you do have for that is often spent unwinding from the other stresses and demands.

The idea that you can take regular time for prayer and contemplation seems far-fetched, at best. I’m not perfect at it—far from it. Most days I have 45 minutes of meditation and divination time. Some days, things go awry, and finding even 5 minutes seems impossible. I’ve offered silent devotions on airplanes, and done brief meditations in my car in a parking lot. I keep devotionals on my iPad to read, and carry prayer cards in my iPhone case to occupy my mind on transit. Some days, it feels like there is no time, and taking 10 minutes on the bus is the best that’s going to happen.

If you are going to walk your path in service to your Gods, you must take time for thought and prayer. You need time to yourself, with yourself, to check in with who you are and how you are doing. A strong sense of self makes working with the Divine much less complicated. When you know who and what you are, and are grounded in a strong sense of your true self, you can open yourself more fully to your Gods and Their lessons. Being closer to your Gods make it easier to take right action, and to live a life of honorable and loving service to your Gods, your community, and your family.