One early-drinking afternoon a few years ago, a few friends were gathered in the living room of the shithole of an apartment I currently inhabited. Two of them were trying to have an Important Conversation - actually, one, Elsie, was attempting to have an Important Conversation. Dan was attempting to evade it, and focus on his can of cold beer. They regarded each other with the kind of awkward intimacy that only comes from a friendship developed in childhood and carried through to a mostly subtextual but generally unresolved sexual tension.
Elsie wouldn't let up. Dan needed to come back to church. They'd gone together for years, and in the midst of some serious personal drama, he'd stopped. "I just don't feel," he said, slowly, staring her straight in the beer, "That I should be going to church right now."
She crossed the room and sat next to him, close, might have even put her hand on his face. "When you don't want to go to church, that means you really need to go."
I don't know if he went back. I am not, in any sense, a Christian. But her words have stayed with me.
Sitting here late at night on a full moon, I really don't want to go to church. I don't want to go through the effort of cleaning up my temple/office space and casting a circle and engaging with my spirituality right now. I don't want to do the monthly forecast reading that I always (try) to do on full moons Why not? It might be because I am lazy, or avoiding something, or scared.
I believe that most of the excuses we use to avoid our respective practices are indications that we ought to be actively pursuing them. I feel drained, but know that part of the purpose of the kind of work I do this time of the month is to recharge myself and to be inspired. I might be scared or avoiding some insight or revelation, but that is a call to divination if I've ever heard one.
There are legitimate reasons to avoid divination, magic, prayer, meditation. This uneasy sort of aversion that currently holds me in its grasp is not one of them.
AH, we all get those moments - I just not think of it too much. Either I will have lazy days or I will have those other days that consumes you.
ReplyDeleteAs long as you are doing it for the right purposes, I suppose.....
I tend, unfortunately, to be an Avoider. I am trying to work on Getting Shit Done instead. =) And, yes, there are some good reasons to put things off. Just trying to figure out when I've got a good reason and when I am bullshitting myself.
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