An Intentional Life

Does your life reflect your intention? 

If you had to write a mission statement, what might it be? And how does everything else in your life support, undermine, or avoid this?

I ask because too many of us are still uncertain of direction, or we are living fragmented lives. We speak one thing here, and there, we act in a way that contradicts our speech. We’ve lost our way. We are going through the motions. We’ve forgotten our connection to the Gods.

Sometimes we’ve had it. We have known. We’ve sensed the power in our core and used that to help us steer our way through life. But then work got in the way. Or illness. Or children. Or our practices became automatic, done by rote instead of with intention. Or we simply forgot that our words and actions needed to support one another.

I’ve written whole books on this topic, but sometimes it needs re-stating in simpler form:

1. The arcs of our lives must be contiguous.

2. Our smallest actions affect our largest intention.

3. We can start again today.

Let’s look again at the question that began this post:

1/What is your mission statement? In other words: what is your intention, whether for the next six months, or six years, or your life?

2/ Does your life as it is now support your mission, or what I call the Large Arc of Your Intention?

Does your life as it is now undermine this?

In what ways do your thoughts, practices, or actions avoid this your mission, your intention, or your Will?

Every one of us needs to revisit these questions. No one is immune from the need to do an inventory of one’s life: Not the great mage, not the priestess, not the teacher, the Adept, the activist, or the person just trying to get through the day.

We can live in right relationship to all parts of self, and all parts of life.

No matter how long we’ve been doing it, our practice starts again today.

#arcs #intention #mission #practice

A Love to End All Wars: On Race & Religion

Last night, arriving home after doing my civic duty at a public hearing regarding fourteen activists facing a $70,000 fine for chaining themselves to our local transit system on Black Friday, a friend pointed me to a piece that, among many other things, said that one should not ask Pagan organizations to take stands on racial justice, as it is just a “cause du jour.”

I decided to respond this morning and thought the points I made might be good for many of us to think on and dialog about. Here is my comment, edited so that it applies to the broader situation:

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“We must look at our world as it is, and it is a desperate and painful ordeal to undergo. Yet the pain of the world is what we are masking by accepting the false dreams of our fallen empire whose jaws still devour even those in its death throes. Before dream we must open our eyes, and wash them clean.”

That is from Apocalyptic Witchcraft by Peter Grey. In that book, he clearly asks us to work both in the shadow and in full sunlight. He asks us to engage, deeply.

My magic works both in the mysterious realms and in the manifest world. Oftentimes the two overlap. Separating spirit and matter is a trap. And yes, it is a trap often made by certain Christian sects. It seems to me that we can also fall into this trap, in saying that religious organizations should not speak to their members on troubles of the times.

If spirit and matter are conjoined, interpenetrating, not separate, then how should my spirituality not have a care for justice? How should I not care that people get fed, clothed, housed? That Nature of which we are a part is not raped and trampled? How should I not care that together, we’ve built systems of such shocking inequity that government employees regularly beat, harass, rape, and kill members of society with impunity?

Should a religious organization not have a care for the welfare of its members? Isn’t that part of its mandate? For example, Pagan and other religious groups have spoken out in favor of marriage equality. Why shouldn’t Pagan and other religious groups also speak on racial injustice? Both directly affect their members. Choosing to speak on one sets a precedent to speak on the other.

My religion is never about morality. My religion deals with ethics. My religion –like so many Gods and Goddesses do– deals with justice.

Peter Grey wrote: “Love is the war to end all wars, and the war is upon us.”

I know where I’m standing.

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How about you? What are your thoughts on the role of your religious or spiritual organization in taking stands? Should religious people or organizations be engaged in civic life? Are you? In what ways?

#BlackLivesMatter #justice #Love #religion

To Dream a Better Dream

You Winter, whom we begged so long to come

While lilies in sequestered fields lay dreaming.

Revolution in the air, breaks through the numb.

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Hand to hand to time such a strange seeming

This year marches past shops with boarded faces

Despite the Yuletide rush and raucous beaming.

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You Winter, who on branch rests black-winged traces

Midst grumblings, unrest, sharp limned dis-ease…

And a crazed, upwelling, hopeful shout displaces

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That nemesis, the known, who clings, yet flees.

What quality of day is yet to break?

This fire-lit longest night, some prophet sees

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But tells us not,

Says simply now: Awake.

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T. Thorn Coyle

Winter Solstice, December 2014

Solstice Blessings to you all. May your life be blessed.

#WinterSolstice