This post repeats my reply to Randi’s comment on my “Abortion, Slavery and Women” post.  It does not deal with abortion because she raised more important issues.

Dear Randi-


I hope my
Pagan perspective can help you make more sense and find more meaning in the
pain you have experienced.

My first Pagan spiritual
experience was of the Wiccan Goddess, over 25 years ago. It was an encounter
with pure unconditional love, among Her other qualities. On the very few
occasions I have again had such encounters, that love was always present. Her
love raises the question of why this world is such a loveless and often nasty
place? If spiritual reality is loving, why is this world so far from that? Many
people of many religions have lost their beliefs over this question. It is one
of the big ones in human life.

For me at a personal
level the past few years have been filled with plenty of despair, both for
powerful very personal reasons, and because of the seemingly inexorable slide
of the US into the complete repudiation of everything that made it worthwhile
(in my view). To top it off, there is the brutal mindless greed that is
destroying the wild world I love with all my heart, particularly but hardly
confined to global warming. I often wonder how I can be of the same species as
the radical right, with its embracing of lies, ignorance, self-righteousness
and hate or of the sociopathy of parasitical CEOs and equally bad politicians.

How do I see these two
realities, spirit and the terrible mundane, interacting?

The first and for me
most important point is that when I have encountered Pagan deities (and not
just me on this point) their presence is somehow MORE REAL than the world around
me. This is a very important point
I do not know how to demonstrate to those who have not experienced them. (Nor do
I not now why everyone has not experienced them or similar beings in other
religious traditions>) But here’s a try.

I imagine there are times
when you have been at peace, probably surrounded by natural beauty, and somehow
that has seemed more real than the human cesspit you describe so powerfully.
That is why so many of us like to get out into Nature to get things “in
perspective.” Certainly wild nature kept me relatively sane for many years as I
grew up. I think forms of love can do this as well, but that word is so full of
baggage I don’t want to go there now.

So following from my
first point: from my Pagan perspective reality exists in degrees of intensity,
of reality, and that spiritual reality is more real than mundane daily reality.

But even so, why the
omnipresent suffering? If ultimate
reality is so good, why are we in this one? This is a question of ultimate
mystery that wise people have pondered perhaps ever since there were wise
people to ponder. Here is the answer that makes the most sense for me right
now, when all I love seems possibly doomed in the near future because of
willful ignorance, hardness of heart, and poisonous bile.

We come into this world
radically ignorant, and the influences around us combined
with whatever genetic and karmic traits we arrive with shape who we are.  This process leads inevitably
to things going wrong.
 When we are ignorant we make mistakes, and when we make
mistakes regarding others we can misinterpret their motives. I imagine you have
had happen to you what has happened to me: getting angry at someone based on a
misunderstanding. When the misunderstanding is relieved, my anger dissipates,
often into embarrassment.

But if I had not learned
the truth, and had lashed out against the other person, they would have formed
a wrong opinion as to who I was and what motivated me. We might have then
ratcheted up our mutual hostility to ever higher levels, each seeing the other’s
actions as proving their fears, without either of us ever knowing the source of
that hostility was a misunderstanding. Great evil can thereby arise out of
people who are foolish and/or ignorant, but not evil. No devil is needed.

Children in particular
are vulnerable to this process because they know little of human beings or life and see the adults around them as
trusted authority figures – or as feared ones.  They lack the understanding to know
why adults do or seem to do the things they do that are hurtful to them.  Often they internalize their understandings and misunderstandings as deep levels. We accept as
true things that are far from it, and because we accept it at such early stage
in becoming who we are, our misunderstandings subtly and not so subtly color everything
that happens later. And so we all carry scars next to our core that hinder and
challenge and hurt us all our lives.

In other words, these
hurts and injuries are unavoidable, and they happen to everyone.  Even to Dick
Cheney.  He was once a little boy with loves and dreams and an open heart.  We need to remember that even as we also need to remember what he is now.

So your rapist father
was once a baby, once a little boy, once ran crying to his mother for safety,
and so on. Over time he was poisoned by things that happened to him, the
ignorant interpretations he put on the things that happened to him, and so on
and on. Fear and anger came to live close to his core.  Then he acted poisonously and brutally to another, and in so doing
poisoned the life of his daughter.

It goes on and on.

The most profound truth
in Christianity – I would argue its defining gift to humanity – (a gift
Christians mostly fail to practice) is to emphasize the importance of genuine
forgiveness because that is perhaps the best way to detach from the stream of
poison. Of course one needn’t be a Christian to practice this.

With that let me tell
you the true story of Hal.

Hal is an Ethiopian
friend of mine who had been imprisoned and tortured and brutalized almost daily
for years by the Mengistu Communist regime. When I met him he was a warm, good
humored, kind, and truly wonderful human being. He had no religion to my
knowledge. As we got to know one another, he finally told me his story, and it
was the kind of story that books and movies are made from.

He said that after the
Communists were overthrown his jailers were in jail, and many of their former
prisoners were in power. He knew the new Minister of Justice, and one day when
talking together, the Minister asked him whether there was anything he could do
for him.

Yes, my friend said, let
me see the person who informed on me, and also my jailers and torturers, who
were now in prison.

It was arranged.

When Hal confronted them
they often burst into tears, begged for mercy, or made excuses (for some of
them had been in positions where they either played along with the Communists or
they or their families would suffer). No matter what they said and no matter
what they had done, Hal said he forgave them. And he meant it.

I exclaimed at how
spiritually amazing it was that he could do that.

Hal replied that he was
not religious, he did not do it for them, he did it for himself. It was how he
freed himself from them and the poison those years of brutal incarceration had
poured into his being. It was how he healed. And it worked.

My point in telling this
story is to say that I think our lives, all of them, whatever else they may
be – and I think more is going on that just this – are opportunities to grow in
openness of heart, in love, and in kindness. But to do so we need opposition, so that
what emerges from us is strong. Life is a kind of boot camp of obstacles, a boot camp of the soul, and the
wounds we inevitably acquire give us something to help us grow stronger.

I do not presume to say
what I have written does the matter of suffering by innocents full justice. Life is mystery.
But it makes sense of key parts of my spiritual experiences as well as of the
more mundane and hurtful parts of my own existence. And believe me, there is pain a plenty for me, and likely for us all.

What is the point of
such a world?

Here we all have to find
our own personal best guess. Even our guesses shape who we are.  

Mine is that what is the core of every human
being is harmonious with the Goddess’s quality of perfect love. That is what is
most real in us, the seed that can take shape and grow. When our time comes that part of who we are that is compatible with
that ultimate reality passes on, and that part that is not is dropped away because it is not really real.
Some of us bring a lot with us into the next existence, wherever and whatever
it might be, and some don’t bring very much at all. Then perhaps the process
begins again, in this world or somewhere else.

It seems
to me the only way a world of duality that brings forth human beings can be
redeemed is that it grows wise and loving souls. I can think of nothing else that would redeem the pain of human existence.

If I am anywhere at all
close to the truth, the best thing you can do for yourself is forgive your
father – not excuse him, not deny what he did nor make it into something
trivial, but like Hal with his torturers, forgive him and in the process free yourself from
him. As it is, every time you look into the mirror, when you see his face in yours the poison in your life is reinjected. Look into the mirror and think of who he was before he was
poisoned, the potentials unrealized, the good qualities that were never exhibited
or brought to fruition.

There is a second
dimension to all this.

I think it is very
important that we work to improve the situations where we have influence,
whether it be our circle of friends, our family, or a wider realm of influence.
Every way of life that is compatible with caring could exist in a good world.
Muslim, Christian, Pagan, atheist – it does not matter. What matters is the
quality of relationships. Wherever we are situated, we can do something to
improve it, to make that quality better.

I think we carve out new
potentialities for perfection when we develop and explore the world into which we are born, even
though this society will not be perfected in this world, ever. Some ways of life succeed better than
others in this world, and some are only a small promise, a dream.  That is why we have no guarantees for success even in the
short run. 

But in this world all successes are short run unless other people carry them farther, and so far that has been unlikely.  I am impressed that everything, even what seems best at the moment, eventually
declines and passes on. This is our Wheel of the Year.  My understanding of Paganism depends on seeing the sacredness of the entire cycle.  

Because ignorance is
such a central feature of our existence, this world may be a womb for birthing new
realities. Achieving perfection would bring that process to a stop. Screwing up gives birth to possibilities for new visions.

Perhaps we ultimately end up in the
“vibrational level” we have created for ourselves in our lives, and if that
involves creating caring friendships, love relationships, and the like, they
develop further while this world goes on spinning out new possibilities.

So it is very important
to work for a better, more caring, more just world – so long as we do so in a
caring and merciful way. Here is a point where every religion worthy of the
name can come together, as well as every decent person.

Is any of this true? I
have no idea. The reason these thoughts are sources of succor for me in these
dark times is that such visions are compatible with the spiritual experiences I
have had as well as with the world and life I experience. They take the best and the worst, and redeem the latter without denying their pain and suffering. Without denying that these are misfortunes and that good and wise people had best seek to help others.

I think that the WORST that spiritual reality can pull off is at least equal to the BEST of what I am capable
of conceptualizing. And since this is my best, if this is the worst, at the deepest level I do not
despair when I take the time (which I do not always do) to put everything in
its largest context.