Militrary Pagan Group Ponderings

Its been a little over a month since I've arrived here and since then there hasn't been much going on in way of religious activity, ritual wise I mean. However, a few days ago I decided to go over to the chaplain office and discuss the possibility of performing rituals in one of their rooms, which was greeted better than I anticipated to be quite honest. Since I've decided to try and perform rituals here I'll need to start gathering materials necessary as well as try and branch out my practice so that I'll be more educated on ritual formats that I have avoided altogether during previous years of worshipping. With my oath renewal ritual about to end in a few months (more of that in another post) I'll soon be able to wear my pentagram necklace as well as perform said rituals.

However, an even more pressing thing has entered my mind as of late, and that concerns the possibility of having a Pagan group on base, which is a thought I've had since before joining. It turns out that there are some Pagans here and from the information I've been able to gather they seem a bit distant as far as cohesion goes, which is all fine and dandy considering we all have jobs to do. The thing is that I would love to get all the Pagans and spiritualists together for a meeting so that we would be able to get to know each other and actually be able to grow from each others' beliefs and views. I don't know if it will work since there's a process that must be done and I already know that there will be hoops to jump through since there is no Pagan chaplain for one and second we'd have to start from scratch. I already know that I would have to jinn up interest as well as a dedicated list of people who want to come every meeting, have a list of materials we would need and show that there is a need for a group on base.

Gathering the information necessary to present to the higher ups is no problem, not much more for me than explaining what the faith is and how there isn't much else in terms of religious support specific to our tradition around since that is an unfortunate truth of living in a terribly remote and small city. The difficult part I find is that they would need a leader for the group, something that I'm not all too inclined to be since I just want others to be supported and have people to speak with from a religious sense if they're having troubles. If not that then it would probably be good to have a simple study group here so that I could learn about what other people believe and see if there were any practices or the like that I could perhaps use in my own faith. A good exchange of ideas, especially with a majority being Asatru, a faith that I know little of save for the warrior aspect, beside that I'm quite clueless, so it could be a good idea.

Throughout my holding of the faith I really haven't been given the opportunity to speak to a group of Pagans in any meaningful way, so in many respects I'm very excited to lay eyes on another I know that I'm looking at a religious brother of mine. For now I'm still stuck in the thoughts phase since I'm unsure how serious I want to make this. I have as much time as I choose to give myself, but for now I know without a doubt that I absolutely need to start working on my own faith as soon as the time comes to renew my vows early next year.

Evening Prayer

I now prepare to fall into the darkness of my dreams.
Bearing witness to mindless thoughts and feelings within me.
I call upon the Goddess ruler of the darkened sky.
To bless me with a charm to stand the wounds that lay inside.


Pain and guilt, anger, hate I cast into the hand.
Of the Goddess beyond the brink of the hori-zon.
May she cast away that which seeks to harm me.
And bring an illusioned world with happiness in bounty.


To dark-ness I now descend with sleep upon my eye.
And seek to rest relenting to the ripening slumber inside.
Farewell I say upon the name of the Sun Lord.
As we descend into the reign of the spirits' hold

Revival Of The Gods

 

For months I've been considering the time that I've spent relatively distant from the Gods since moving away and how as a result I feel detached and unstable when it comes to my praise of them. Due to where I live I'm of course unable to do outdoor rituals or anything as public as I used to, though even then it was within the cover of the trees to avoid having to deal with ignorant neighbors or further intrusion from their kids or those who felt entitled to invade my space. Here I am though, alone and away from these people for the most part, free to celebrate as I wish and to never have to worry about time constraints created by having to worry about anyone other than myself. Yet here I am doing relatively nothing short of being in the social media haze that I saw people get caught up in back at home. Its weird how when I was under pressure to not celebrate and express who I am that I went to my altar and worshipped the Gods like a mad man, yet with me not being under that type of pressure my practice has shrinked considerably.

Everything can't be blamed on something as superficial as that because since I've been out on my own I suppose you could say that I've been going through a development of trying to find my place out in the world and finding a place within myself if that makes sense. I've still been holding onto the faith and have been praying and thinking of the Gods and how they fit in my world and how I fit in the world in general. I still feel their pull when I get up in the morning and see sights like this, the beautiful sun rising above the shadow of the mountains to greet all below with the first kiss of morning's breath. Its inspiring to me when I get up after spending a minute or so to give my morning prayer and walk out of my door and see this lighting up my face; I swear that the entire time it takes me to go to my job I look at the view and thank the Gods for being blessed to see such a day. Slowly I feel it coming back though, the will to revert in many ways to how I was back when I first took up the faith and strive to make my world brighter.

Right now I'm in the process of a ritual that I developed before I moved called the Oath Renewal ritual, which is a time where I realign my practices to better reflect the vows that I took up years ago for a period of several months. At the end of the ritual I hope that everything that I've built up from the past up until the end of the 'grace period' will be connected and I can feel like the Pagan I know myself to be. It's a difficult task to take up for me, but I feel that it will all be worth it in the end as long as I keep the faith dear to me and do not stray into the abyss of questioning my faith and its validity. Everyone has that period of questioning themselves and why they do what they do, but its a necessary phase because it forces each of us to give ourselves a gut-check and figure what's important to us. I myself have had this phase repeatedly over a period of several years and have come out a little bit stronger every time that I've survived.

But now the question is what will I do now? Its so easy to speak about the past and to hope for a better future, but if I'm not really working toward seeing it fully realized then what good is there thinking about it in the first place? The first thing is the most important, baby steps, baby steps. Its easy to go in a blazing hell fury like a stampeding army with prayers and rituals and all of the blazing spectacle of Pagan might, and I must admit that it sounds pretty freaking awesome now that I think about it. However, I think that it would be better for me to take things slow since I plan to not burn myself out when it comes down to it, going from a state of inactivity to blazing glory within the week. No, I plan to implement things in a slow and concessive order and build myself a wonderful faith practice engineered by my own will and the power of the Gods.