Letting Go, Looking Back

It seems like every time I have a spiritual crisis I respond by getting rid of things. This time, I finally admitted to myself that I'm never going to be an herbalist. It's something that seems like it should be ideal for me -- handcrafting magic, making something out of nothing, plus a solid tie to centuries of casual household magic -- but I just don't have the patience for plants. They don't do it for me. I emptied all of the apothecary jars full of rosemary and peony and jasmine leaves into the back yard and sent the jars over to Goodwill; my collection of herbal references went to the used book store. I have much more space now, and I feel much happier with that, but that still doesn't solve the original problem.

Perhaps it has something to do with something I've been reading about elsewhere in the blogosphere -- intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is why you do the things you love. It's the reason why the thing itself is enjoyable, rather than something you do because you ought to. Eating food because it's tasty, not because it's a part of your new diet plan. Shooting archery because it's fun and challenging and an excellent form of active meditation, not because I feel like I should exercise.

Praying because...?

I think the urge to get rid of things is a sign that I've lost track of that intrinsic motivation; it's been buried under a pile of books and paraphernalia and, more importantly, that which those things represent. A sense that I am obligated to practice, rather than doing so because it brings me joy, because it is the right thing to do.

I have been feeling, increasingly, that I have no right to call myself Pagan if I don't do something about my practice, and yet this thought is crippling my ability to practice. I love the idea that orthopraxy, rather than orthodoxy, is what unites modern Paganism, but somehow this has morphed into a subconscious sense that I'm doing it wrong.

I wish I had an answer to this problem, but an easy answer would be a cheat, because it's a real difficulty. I do need to practice in order to fulfill myself as a witch and a Pagan; feeling like I need to practice is crushing. Part of the problem is, doubtless, in the overly-broad term "practice;" what does that include? Do I need to perform devotions every day in order to feel right? Every week? At the dark of the moon? Is it devotions, or spirit travel, or divination, or what? I've never quite worked these questions out for myself. Now appears to be the time.

This week I visited my parents for my mom and my sister's birthdays. I slept in the room I grew up in, the room I first cast a circle in, the room I became who I am in. I can remember my first Samhain ritual, and I remember that I had a very clear sense of otherworldliness, and how it filled me with delight. I cannot remember that feeling itself anymore.

Finding the Time

The second time I went to therapy, in the beginning of my second year of library school, I expressed the frustration that I wasn't able to do everything that I wanted to -- it wasn't that I didn't have the time, just that I couldn't make myself do it. I would spend my free time reading Cracked.com or playing video games instead of doing these other things that were more important to me, like writing or practicing my religion. And the therapist said, well, you need to set some priorities; you can't do everything, so decide what is most important to you. And she probably offered some other suggestions, too, but I'm afraid I can no longer remember what they are. I can remember whether or not they helped (hint: no).

Not being able to get anything accomplished other than sleep and video games is a symptom of depression, of course. (I'm not sure if the video games are part of the official diagnosis or not, but they should be.) It was earlier this week, when I decided that my major accomplishment for the day would be a shower, that I realized how depressed I'd gotten again. Unemployment will do that to you, but I was in denial. I always start out my vacations -- and I'd been thinking of this summer as a vacation, at least until August -- intending to do all kinds of wonderful things that I didn't have time for while I was in school or working, and it never quite happens. Do I just get depressed when I don't have something that needs to get done, some external motivation? Possibly.

When I sat down to start writing a new blog post, my first inclination was to say that I hadn't been able to find the time to update. Which is both true and not true. I have had more time than I know what to do with; I have, at most, two (completely voluntary) obligations a week, for a total of four hours. But I really haven't been able to find the time -- or perhaps it's the mental space I haven't been able to find, because all too often the thought of writing something, anything, for public consumption has been overwhelming.

I lost the habit of daily prayers and readings when I went to a professional conference in DC at the end of last month, and I haven't been able to pick it up again. Last night I wiped a thick layer of dust off my altar. I haven't been able to find the time. Time is not an objective measure, an arc of numbers on a clock, but an experience. When we're enjoying ourselves, we say that time flies; at ten minutes to five on a Friday afternoon, it crawls. In a hot July in the midst of one job-hunting disappointment after another, it seems to vanish altogether until everything runs together in a long string of sticky afternoons and inadequate resumes.

I know -- I know, in a deep part of myself -- that I could make time come back if I worked at it, if I spoke to my gods again and traveled to their secret places and paid attention to my own mind. The thought is, actually, a little frightening. The sense of time passing may only enforce how long it's been that I've been unemployed, how much longer it might be, how much trouble I could be in if I can't get a job soon. Or it may help cement my sense of self, give me an anchor even if I can't make the rest of the world acknowledge my skills and talents.

I got up before noon for the first time in a week today, ate breakfast and lunch and took the bus downtown to work in the library, where I wrote so many blog posts during the school year while avoiding my homework. I haven't dusted off the altar yet. We'll see. We'll see.

Daily Practice

listening --
I drew the Seven of Swords the other day. (I keep meaning to draw a card every day, but I don't always make it. Of course, when I leave it sit for a few days, sometimes I find that it means more by the time I get around to properly doing an interpretation.) I read it first as "getting away with something," but although that was the interpretation that stuck in my head, I didn't know quite what it meant. Today, while I was sitting in the library working on some homework, the card popped into my mind again and I looked it up. One of the interpretations was "lone wolf." I thought about how disappointed I was that my roommate has all but lost her job because it means that I don't have any time in the apartment by myself any more, and I knew what the card meant.

light --
The light coming in through the dining room window when I was making lunch was so vivid today. It looked like the light you get in the summer, at around 10:00 in the morning when I've just come back from the huge farmer's market downtown, hot and bright and molten, almost like something living. It's the only kind of light that makes my kitchen look big. It isn't spring yet in Wisconsin, but the light is back.

expression --
I wrote a poem during Imbolg, when I kept Brigid's flame lit for two nights and a day. (I wrote two poems, but one of them is terrible and I don't know how to fix it.) It's too much about me right now, so I keep poking at it, to make it about something else. It's also about the light in the dining room window, and food fresh from the farmer's market, and spring after a long winter. But there's also a person at the middle of it, and I don't quite know who she is just yet. I haven't figured out quite how to be quiet and let her speak through me.

offering --
I don't give up very much, it's true. Sometimes I think of May Morrison saying, "You will never understand the true nature of sacrifice." (Don't worry, I have no intention of murdering local policemen in the name of it.) Besides, the lakes are too frozen to drop anything into them right now, and clogging up the locks with gold jewelry is probably a bad idea. I share a lot, though. A view of the barren treetops with the full moon, a fresh snowfall with the frozen earth, a warm patch of sunlight with a lush green houseplant. And I say hello to everything I pass, and I speak to the gods as though they're always listening, even though they're probably not. Perhaps in some ways my attention is enough.

Practice Every Day

Thanks to Feith and SpiritsCast 101, I've started to pay a little more attention to what I actually do for my daily practice. I was surprised to find that actually...I do a lot. Somehow, without really meaning to, I've become much more attentive to the world around me, much more joyful in my responses to it, and much more attached to my own spirituality. And yet, I still don't feel that I do enough for my daily practice, and while I was walking home the other day, I realized why.

I've identified for some time now as a Celtic Reconstructionist, not because I want to be pedantic about research (although that is a part of my personality I can't get rid of) but because I love old Irish mythology, I feel a connection to the worldview and the history there, and as difficult as it is, I get a huge spiritual kick out of working in that framework. And yet this hasn't made its way into my daily practice in any substantial way.

The gods I communicate with every day are Irish, but my communication with them isn't. My daily worldview is still largely shaped by Wicca and American cultural and spiritual traditions. There's nothing particularly wrong with this -- it works -- but it isn't quite what I want for myself.

Of course, my life is entirely too modern for an exclusively Celtic daily practice. I'm writing this sitting in a tea shop that originated in Prague, drinking fermented Chinese tea with chrysanthemum blossoms. I could add a Celtic referent there, but it would feel very pasted on.

Sometimes that's valuable, that pasted-on feeling; it gives you a sense of separation from the rest of the world, which is one of the things that "sacred" means. But as a pantheist, an important part of my practice is being in the world, existing wholly present in the moment. Showing up. Separation isn't a goal, for that practice, it's a barrier.

I've always struggled with establishing a daily practice, in part because I've felt I ought to have a liturgy, and I'm not satisfied with anything that exists, but I'm not satisfied with anything I write either. Now that I've been reflecting on what I do use for a daily practice, and have been working on putting more energy and effort into it, and getting so much benefit from it, I'm working on that liturgy again. I feel tremendously happy when I put energy into my daily practice -- it really is one of those things that returns exponentially -- but I don't get that kick out of anything that isn't Irish.

I suppose that's how I know I'm on the right path: that kick I get, the feeling of being plugged in to something so much more expansive than myself, and of feeling that I have a place there where I can do good work. I want to be able to work that feeling in every day, above and beyond the practice that allows me to feel I've done my duty and exercised my skills, as important as those practices are.

SpiritsCast 101

I've just started listening to Feithline Stuart's new SpiritsCast 101 series of lectures on deepening your daily spiritual practice. Longtime readers of this blog (if there are any of you still around) will recall that this is one of my long-term goals, and one of the ones I have the hardest time with. A new year-and-a-day program on exactly that subject, starting at roughly the same time that I realize it's happening? Genius.

I already enjoy it. I'd always meant to listen to Feithline's old podcast, Dark Side of Fey, but the files are still sitting on my hard drive, unlistened-to. She's got a friendly voice, which is always key for a podcast but especially for one that's asking you to do spiritual work, and the audio files are of good quality. The first episode was mostly introductory stuff, as you'd expect, but she offered a list of four elements she tries to incorporate into her daily practice: light, listening, expression, and offering.

I love this idea of having approaches to daily practice instead of single activities. My difficulties always arise from the fact that I don't have a set schedule, so I have a terrible time doing the same thing at the same time every day. Thinking of daily practice as an approach instead of a task eliminates that problem -- and it feels better to me, too. It incorporates a little more creativity into the process, which can only be a good thing.

And, to be honest, it bears no small resemblance to what I've started to do myself in the weeks since Samhain. This time of year my thoughts always turn to my old association with Macha and the war goddesses; their birds, the ravens, have taken over the bare trees everywhere I go, and I feel their protection when I walk home in the dark. I started dedicating my archery practice to Macha a few weeks ago, and it's a remarkably satisfying feeling; each arrow that strikes home carries just a little more weight with it.

But I think the best thing Feithline is doing with this series is encouraging a community to build around it. In addition to the podcasts themselves, there's a discussion forum, and she's encouraging everyone who participates to blog about the process as well. The community-building makes it a shared project, not just a lecture from authority -- and Feithline emphasizes that the only authority she has is experience, and all of us have at least a little of that, too. I'm just getting started blogging about it and playing around in the forums, but I'm very much looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.

Devotion 3.5: Stealing and Borrowing

(I wrote this post during my blogging hiatus, and found it whilst trying to find something to distract me from NaNoWriMo. I'm sure there was something other than my own writing that set me off on this topic, but I'm afraid I can no longer remember what it was.)

I've been tangenting from the Devotion series for quite a while, so actually, this tangent is slightly more on-topic than I've generally been recently, so actually this tangent is not really much of a tangent at all, but it still isn't actually the last real post in the Devotion series, so I'll keep on calling it a tangent until the word tangent has lost all real meaning. Tangent.

Anyway, the last real post in the series is going to cover a number of ideas and practices I have tried, and since I do tend to like my religious practices to have some sort of weight of history behind them, they're all practices I've borrowed stolen from other religions, ones with actual traditions, as opposed to my own seven-year-old eclecticism.

First, a note on terminology. I've noticed that my online vocabulary doesn't really go over quite as well in what we so egotistically call the real world, so in my defense: I find that sticking to a moderately offensive vocabulary keeps me mindful of exactly what I'm doing. Borrowing is a fairly benign thing to do. Stealing, not so much. Rather than feel better about myself with the nicer term, I'll stick with the harsher one -- but I don't really mean it as an insult. Everybody steals from everybody else all the time, but calling it stealing helps to remind us why some people get so pissed off about it sometimes.

Paganism is all about stealing from everybody else. Early Gardnerian rituals are stolen from the Golden Dawn are stolen from Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism, never mind from each other. Voodoo and Santeria steal from both African religions and Catholicism. More recently, stealing from Native American and Aboriginal Australian traditions has come into vogue. Even Reconstructionists aren't originally members of the culture they are reconstructing, so that's a kind of stealing, too.

Now, you could argue that what I'm calling stealing could also be called the natural progression of cultural development and exchange, and you'd be right. Change happens to everyone, all the time, no matter how "primitive" or "untouched" some groups may seem. (More on that later. Oh, have I got a rant on that.) You could almost say that modern Paganism, which has probably stolen from everyone in history to become what it is today, is the only natural result of a shrinking multicultural world.

If only it were that easy. After all, religion is a very sensitive and personal subject, and of all the bits of culture you could steal from someone, the religious aspects are probably going to annoy them the most. In addition, many modern Pagans feel a kinship with the still extant aboriginal religions -- but the reverse is often not true. At the very least, we ought to be respectful while we go about stealing bits of other people's religions.

Exactly how that respect should be expressed is another matter. We hashed this out a bit in my anthropology classes, actually -- where we were mandated to be respectful by federal law. In our museum, we had a number of Native American ceremonial pipes (I want to say they were Hochunk, but I could be wrong) which were kept in a cabinet in the basement of the museum and were not allowed to be viewed or handled by menstruating women. Of course, the museum put up with these restrictions because otherwise the pipes would have been returned to the tribe they originated with. Without the threat of the loss of research material, the respect paid to that particular tradition would have been nominal at best -- and probably not even that, given the vocally feminist nature of our campus. Of course, I was part of that vocally feminist majority, and I can't say I disagree with them: but then, I never particularly wanted anything to do with the pipes, either.

As we as Pagans are stealing religious bits and pieces to use as religious bits and pieces, though, I think we should be held to a higher standard than the federally-mandated anthropological tolerance. I don't think we ought to be required to agree with every aspect of a practice before using it -- after all, if you were willing to do that you'd just convert (although that can be a kind of stealing, too). I do thing we ought to be required to understand every aspect of a practice, or at least as much of it as possible, before stealing it for our own practice. And, because I'm an anthropologist and context is everything, that includes the history of the practice and its variations, not just its spiritual significance. And if what I said earlier is true, that modern Paganism is stolen from just about everybody, then that goes for every aspect of our practice, including the things we already think we understand.

The fact that you understand something about the thing you're stealing isn't necessarily going to mollify the person you're stealing from, of course. It might, however, stop you from looking like an idiot and a complete jackass about it. Cultures and religions steal stuff from one another all the time; it's how they survive in a changing world, and while that doesn't mean the people being stolen from don't have a right to be upset about it, it does mean that it's not something to be thoroughly ashamed of, especially if you put enough thought into the process to understand what you're doing and to try to be as inoffensive about it as possible.

(Does it make a difference who you steal from? Absolutely. While I do believe that everyone and all cultures deserve respect, I also think it makes sense to be a little more cautious about stealing from cultures which are used to being kicked by others than those which are used to doing the kicking. (The kickers might scream more, but they'll be hurt less.))

A more respectful stealing has a multitude of benefits for Paganism; it helps flesh out our practices and theology, it helps us know where we've come from (to better figure out where we're going), and it makes us a little more popular in the wider world. If anything, modern Paganism's sin has been in ignoring its own history more than anyone else's, so I'm not sure how offensive we tend to be (as opposed to ridiculous), but it's certainly not a subject to be ignored.

I'm Back! & Devotion part 3

Two weeks later and I'm finally all wired up again -- the move has been exciting, exhausting, overwhelming, all those things and more. I have job leads; I've found the grocery store, the post office, and the library; I've even been fairly successful at figuring out the bus system. My favorite thing about Madison so far, though? The gigantic year-round farmer's market. For the first time in my life, the hundred-mile diet seems not only feasable but very attractive, too.

So now that I've caught up on my Pagan blog reading, it's time to contribute to the pool again, with my continuing series on devotion. I started off this series by talking about the difference between magic and religion and last time went on to my literary expectations and disappointments in Paganism. Like I said last time, though, I am trying to move away from the idea that devotion has to be something that's done with words. After all, words hold all kinds of power, but in Western civilization the liturgial word has all too often been solely the property of the leader or priest, creating barriers between the divine and the people trying to access it. I certainly don't believe that this is the only way an authoritative text can work, but I respect the fact that modern Paganism has moved away from that idea in reaction to its misuse in other traditions (even while I continue to be confused and frustrated with the lack of coherence and external direction).

Modern Paganism is hardly unique in this respect. Last fall I took a religious studies class to fill out my senior-year schedule; it was a surprisingly fulfilling experience, focusing less on the facts and history of religions than I'm used to such classes doing and more on the experience of living within a religion. When we addressed Hinduism, we talked a lot about it being a religion of orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy. Doctrines vary -- name and number of gods, nature of the universe, afterlife and how to best prepare yourself for it...all those things are negotiable. But everyone gives offerings. Offerings are huge. Everyone venerates images of the gods, because those images are a means of focusing and manifesting their power. Everyone, in other words, does something.

Which, hell, is one of the reasons I went for Paganism. It involves more doing than just going to church on Sunday. Unfortunately, the variability in Paganism is even bigger than that in Hinduism, and there isn't even any orthopraxy. There are no sutras to write as acts of merit. There are no scrolls to bind to your body in prayer. Especially when working with Irish/Celtic dieties as I usually am, there are no images to venerate or traditional offerings to make. There is no daily cycle of prayer -- no prayers, period.

It's one thing to decide, intellectually, that what you want out of the Universe is a mystery religion, like Paganism, where the scripture is not in a book but in your own experiences. It's another thing to struggle with finding ways of having those experiences when all you've learned how to do is the liturgy and structure of the United Methodist Church. I don't doubt the path I've chosen, and I don't doubt my need to continue as a Solitary before I try to find a group or coven to work with. But by the Gods it can be hard.

Which is, of course, why I've been running this devotion series in the first place; wandering around the idea of "how the hell do I get there from here?" I've always been a little surprised, actually, at the lack of Hindu-inspired traditions and practices in modern Paganism. After all, Hinduism is pantheistic, polytheistic, relatively uncentralized, and has endured for thousands of years. It's also almost entirely reliant on community structure, which might be one of the reasons it hasn't taken off in modern Paganism: we still lack that kind of community cohesion. Which means, really, that borrowing from the Hindu tradition might not be a bad idea right about now. (Besides, doesn't a devotional celebration this big look like a hell of a lot of fun?)

For myself, I've been experimenting with the idea of offerings. In our mostly European-inspired traditions, offerings outside of formal ritual are usually associated more with lesser spirits like the faerie than with the gods, but in Hinduism offerings, mostly of food, are the key to devotional practice. (Another offering is of clothing; statues of the gods are dressed in bright scarves and flowers. When I find the statuary I'm looking for, I'll be all over that one, too.) The wonderful thing about offerings of food is you'll never forget about them; you eat at least twice a day, and with a little mindfulness, the presence of food becomes a reminder that devotion is necessary, and stimulates mindfulness on its own. (To tell the truth, I started wandering down this line of thought with Alestair Crowley's list of devotions; he borrowed the Buddhist concept of mindfulness to inspire a great deal of his own tradition's requirements.) It's no different, truly, than the offering given in formal ritual, but if I waited to acknowledge the gods until I performed a formal ritual....well. Let's just say that technique hasn't been working well for me the past couple of years.

(Next time around: stealing borrowing from other traditions, the physicality of devotion, and Adventures with the Rosary.)

Word and Will: Devotion Part 2

One of the reasons I'm making some changes in my life right now is that I've realized that I seem to have different standards for Paganism than for other religions; or at least, that I seem to think of them in different ways. As a rule, I tend to think of most religions in terms of what practitioners do. Followers of Hinduism have large community rituals and food offerings and truly lovely devotional altars. Followers of Judaism keep kosher and the Sabbath. Followers of Christianity go to church and evangelize and tithe, either to the poor or to the megachurch. (Yes, to a different degree depending on the individual, but considering the devoted.) For my own part, though, I have been content to define myself as Pagan based on what I believe -- I believe in many gods, in the immanence of divinity, in magic and reincarnation and all those other things that Pagans believe.

Oh, I still associate Paganism in general with covens and group workings and events like Pagan Pride Day, but I've been isolated from the opportunities to participate in such things, and I've allowed that to become an excuse for my own lack of practice and devotion. (One of my first books was Cunningham's Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner; despite the general emphasis on covens in most witch books, I have very little excuse, really.) To be blunt, I haven't done anything in far too long. So I've been thinking about devotion.

Partially I blame my Religious Studies class; it was the first class outside the anthro department I took on religion since high school, and it gave me a lot to chew on, mostly concerning the day-to-day practice of many religions. It also really made me feel the lack of Pagan religious texts. There's a lot of history, ancient and modern, questionable and well-researched; a lot of magical theory, ancient and modern; plenty of basic introductory texts. There is not, however, a core holy text, or even a set of texts.

And I love words. I love the concept of the Jewish Tefillin, holy texts bound to the arm and forehead during prayer -- I find the idea of binding very powerful, and that of physical contact. I'm significantly lacking in holy texts, however. (I am toying with the idea of ogham and names, actually.) I love the power of words in the Buddhist tradition, where even one letter taken from a sutra has the power to perform miracles. I love the respect accorded to a Muslim who has memorized the Koran, because doing so preserves the Word of God.

I know, I know. I write; why can't I do it myself? Well, it's not the same. Other people have written often quite stunning pieces; why not use those? I'm not sure what the difference is between knowing that something was written by an unnamed poet five thousand years ago by the inspiration of God and knowing that something was written by Doreen Valiente forty years ago by the inspiration of the Goddess, but it exists in my mind nonetheless. I struggle even more with the genericness of so much Pagan writing: because there are so many gods, and because of the Wiccan tradition emphasizing the unity of all gods as the God and all goddesses as the Goddess, specificity is hard to come by. And, let's face it, a lot of Pagan writing can get pretty cheesy, and it's hard to feel properly worshipful when you're being distracted by your own cheese.

I have been trying to drag myself away from the idea of devotion as inherently tied to words. In the bible study group I went to in high school, we were encouraged to pray even if we had no words, but I have found that, for myself, this gives me even less structure than meditation does and in the end does nothing for my sense of connection with the divine. I have also been struggling with this idea that connection with the divine is something that happens only at a particular time, when you sit down to pray/meditate/what have you. As a Pagan, I know this is not true, but in real life, I often find that I wish I had that devotional ritual to re-focus my mind, remind me that whether or not my internet connection will be hooked up by next week is not the be-all and end-all of the Universe, that getting out of the house is good for the soul and the body, no matter how much of a nuisance it seems. I need a devotional ritual -- and since I've signed on for the type of Paganism that is, essentially, a massive do-it-yourself project, I have to come up with one.

That's the rest of this series, then; my wanderings through the potential of devotion and how I'm going to come up with something that makes me feel genuine, worshipful, powerful, and not full of cheese. Unfortunately, although the status of my internet connection is not the be-all and end-all of the Universe, it does affect blogging -- and since it might not be up for a week or two, posts might come a little farther between than I'd expected. I will try to get down to the library, though, when I have Part 3 ready.

Tomorrow I move my life up one state and to the right. And after that -- who knows.

On Being an Intermittent Pagan (Devotion Part 1)

(Playing blogroll tag the other day, I found Never Say Never To Your Traveling Self, a UU blog that makes me very happy. Huzzah, new blogs!)

I really thought I'd be able to keep up with the blogging in July, despite the fact that I'm preparing to move away from home and packing up my life into lots of little boxes. As it turns out, I've been completely mentally and emotionally incapacitated by the whole thing. (I'm marathon-watching Star Trek Enterprise, for cryin' out loud.)

The fact that I've realized that marathon-watching bad scifi is as emotionally unhealthy as living on TV dinners during the move has been physically unhealthy hasn't stopped me from doing it, of course. I'm doing them both for the same reason: I'm drained, and I don't want to put the effort into making/doing something that would be good for me, even though I know I'll feel better once I do.

I seem to treat religion in the opposite way from the stereotype; it's something I do when I feel good about myself, when I feel centered and happy and prepared. When I'm having problems, I knucle under and deal with them myself, usually without much of a support structure. It's a problem I've been working on in my social life, but it couldn't hurt for me to start working on it in my spiritual life as well.

Part of my problem, I think, is that I have a tendancy to confuse magic with religion. And given that magic is more associated with Paganism than anything else, and that I don't subscribe to a brand of Paganism particular enough to separate it in my mind from the broad spectrum of Pagan beliefs, I suppose that's understandable. It isn't what I want, though, not by a long shot. I think that magic and devotion should be interconnected, balanced, and mutually supporting, but that hasn't been a reality for me, not for a long time, if it ever has been.

This seems to have turned into an introduction to my devotion series without my intending it, so I'll go ahead and announce it now -- quite a while ago I started working on a long post about devotion and the practice of religion, and it's turned into something that will go better as more like half a dozen posts, which I hope to start posting on Monday. A little cross-cultural comparison, a little theory, hopefully something really productive by the end of it all. We'll see how it goes.