Circle Around like the Moth

The woods have always been a home to me. Even when I lived in the deepest jungles of LA as a child my heart roamed the woods. I told my mother at the ripe age of six that I was going to live in the woods with no electricity or running water. She smiled and said that I would change my mind when I was older. Now, thirty plus years later, the woods are still my home. The rains come when I need to be cleansed, the birds provide distraction and joy when things feel bleak, the death and decay surrounds me when I need the resonance that the pain and small deaths that I am experiencing is important and even more important, part of the natural scheme of things.

Here I am again, walking through the woods, watching the birds chase each other, my thoughts preoccupied with the idea that I have NO FRIGGEN IDEA who I am praying to. My brain is wrapped around the simple idea that I realize that I don't know who I think that God is. The second part of this leads to a fear that perhaps I have become faithless and will soon find myself in the ranks of the atheist camps. I imagine myself as a card carrying science monger, armed with a Scientific American in one hand and a smoking clove and a latte in the other. How did I get here? My mind whirls. How does my craft fit into this, deeper whirl. How could I have spent the last (how many years has it been now?) working in a spiritual field, dedicating myself to craft and God and wind up here? I remember conversations about the difference between craft and religion. I remember my deep walks in the woods before where they affirmed my belief in something Other, something Holy. But today, what I see is mechanicality. I see an ordered universe, with cause and effect. I wonder if I did something wrong. Did I not meditate enough? Pray enough? Believe enough?

These question beset me, unkindly at first and then quietly as the walk continued. Wasn't I supposed to find myself without an image of God? To let go of the old forms?
My steps, steady before, come to a dead halt. My brain hones in on this one nugget as if it were the sole color pin on a litebrite board.

Slowly it comes out of my mouth. Outloud. Even though I am alone, "I have been working to remove my anthropomorphic images of God. You believe that you SEE GOD IN NATURE."

I look again. Did I feel alone? Not really. Did I feel that there was no meaning in the world. No! In fact the world felt fine, it felt ordered, wonderful, even joyful. My God was nature. Why was I surprised that I found myself a God in the natural world. I am in a friggen nature religion. Surprised there Sophia?

Now? No, not really. :)

Now. To figure out then what it means to be in prayer in this place. This, my friends, is a new and exciting place for me. The theory vs the practice. Hallelujah!

LUX,
Sophia

PS: Beloved Aalim: this is in fact not the post you seek.