Samhain Waxing Thanksgiving Moon
Woollies at Stefan’s house tonight. Bill, Frank, Warren, Stefan, Scott, Tom, Mark, me. Paul was there for a bit before he left to have dinner with his daughter Clare.
Topic tonight was what role a higher power plays in your life, if any. We wandered here and there, but came back to a few themes: some found matters of this sort best expressed through loss of the ego, others found the idea of a higher power important for their journey. A few of us focused on the self, the authentic self or the integrated self or the deep self, a self that is sufficient to itself for worth, but eager to belong: to belong to the earth, to each other, to a past, to a family, but in that belonging still the self remains what it is, validated and grounded in an accidental combination of genes that is unique and separate, yet also a part while remaining apart. The key element to this perspective then becomes personal responsibility, willingness to make choices and accept their consequences.
We touched on the notion of the sacred as a created sense of belonging, of a self located in a context, a place, a family, a cemetery, a house.
Some found this perspective a product of aging, of graceful self-acceptance, of knowing who we are, warts and all, and loving that self, not an ideal self that others or external systems would have us mold ourselves toward.
We have different toe holds on our reality, on what we need to feel whole and authentic, but we agreed long ago to take this journey together, and we’ve accepted responsibility for the ride.
