Worthy of More Than Hell

I don’t believe in a hell. I never have. I think about it, and I understand why other people might believe in it, but I cannot compromise my idea of an all-loving, all-encompassing god with that of a place of eternal torture. There has never been a part of me that wanted to punish, not even people who could arguably deserve to be punished, and I never honestly understood why. Isn’t it a good thing if all the wicked people in the world go to hell? Shouldn’t I be glad? Shouldn’t I want them to suffer for whatever they’ve done?

But… I don’t. I want them to be happy – with themselves, with their life, with their choices, with their reality. I want them to be free of whatever personal hell they’ve created already, and I want a god who can appreciate that, who can lead them to a homewards towards joy and peace instead of torment.

One large idea behind Wicca, one main thing about it that caught my attention, is that there is no hell. Not just that, but there is no evil. Devils don’t sit on our shoulders and whisper sins, and fallen angels don’t wait down below with red horns and burning pitchforks (obviously not, since the existing concept of Satan comes from a twisted version of the pagan deity Pan). People make bad choices, yes, but we are all only doing the best we know how. It doesn’t make us bad. It doesn’t make us sinful. It makes us human – erroneous sometimes, and hopeful, and beautiful in that hope because it, too, is what makes the world beautiful. Even mass murderers are nothing more than human.

Falling

Everybody’s in such a hurry to fall in love, and some days I don’t know why. I guess no one warned them about all the dangers that go along with loving; the hard parts don’t make it into the story books. Real life never just ends happily ever after.

When you really love someone, it hurts. It aches. It’s wonderful and breathtaking and scary as hell, and it is a feeling that nothing else can give you. It doesn’t end. It doesn’t get easier. True love is tender, easily bruised and easier broken, less like walking on egg shells than it is holding an unborn chick. And if it’s hard to let that in to your life it’s harder to let it out again.

Demons

Demons that haunt the shadows
where no one else can see,
too human to be hated –
too close to the heart they make bleed.
They come out
in sweat and tears and pain,
and the many shades of gray that lie between
the pencil and the paper.

April Showers; May Flowers

Where do all the faeries go
when the world is lost in snow?
What do all the flowers do
when springtime doesn’t follow through?

The earth outside is warm
despite the frozen storm,
and the green keeps growing
even through the snowing.

In the darkness the world sleeps,
and through the stillness lightness creeps.
Life rests now in quiet peace,
waiting for the spring’s release.