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.