Wiccan Whirlpool

I’ve really been putting a lot of thought into this over the last several days and I think I finally put my finger on some of what was bothering me.  First, one of the ideas that the chaplain was pushing is that god loves everyone.  It makes me sound like an ass to say that I don’t really believe that, but then again I don’t believe that the Great Unknowable First Cause has much in the way of feeling in general.  Spirit seeks attunement with Spirit, I’ll give you that much.  The Divine in us calles to the Divine without.  Perhaps you can call that love.  Most people probably don’t really think that through so deeply.  But when you meet someone for the first time on their deathbed how can you judge them at all for good or ill?  Maybe what they’re headed for is a well-deserved peace and reunion with loved-ones, and maybe it isn’t.  Maybe they’ve worked really hard their entire life preparing their very own little hell and they’re distressed because they know it’s coming.  What good will it do to tell them that god loves them at that point?

Along that train of thought–the chaplain spoke about her experience with an elderly man who was dying alone on her watch.  The man had a son who had been estranged for many years, and when he knew he was dying he tried to call him but the son wouldn’t return his calls.  Here is this person, she said, who is reaching out in his final hours and getting no response.  You’d think, she said, that at this time the son could have set aside their differences and come to his father to see him one last time. Supposedly, the reason this doesn’t happen is that people fear the emotions such a reunion might bring out.  While she admirably seeks to not judge the dying person she very obviously is passing a kind of judgement on the son in this story.  What if the father was such an evil person in life that the only way the son could continue was to leave him forever behind and move on?  We must remember that if we’re going to offer compassion to one party we must offer compassion to the other.  Sometimes the only way to forgive a person who has done you terrible hurt is to remove that person from your life forever and as entirely as possible.

Tomorrow I’m going in for volunteer orientation.  That’ll be two hours or so.  Woohoo!