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.

Life Lessons in a Pot

I’m terrible at baking, probably because I learned how to cook the same way I learned how to drive: by watching my dad do one thing, and then turn to me and say “Never do that. You’ll get yourself killed.” If nothing else, though, at least it taught me that words without action are meaningless, which to be fair is a hard lesson to instill in a poet. Cooking has a way of doing that to me, teaching me things that I’m not sure I would learn any other way. The kitchen itself comes with a little, small-print warning sign, Perfectionist be ware. There is no perfection in foods. You can only control so much before it’s out of your hands, there are only so many variables you can keep in check… and that’s OK. If it’s a mess, at least you can eat your mistakes.

Humility is another thing. Most of our foods now come pre-packaged, pre-made, just stick it in the microwave and go. Which is great, but it also means that we forget where the things we eat come from and why they matter, what kind of work actually went into what ends up on our table. We forget that we are eating things, plants and animals, that gave up their lives to support ours. Cooking is a good reminder of where we come from, in my opinion. It’s hard to feel invincible when you hold an egg in the palm of your hand and realize how fragile existence is, how small and temporary and beautiful. Cutting meat and breaking eggs is sort of like saying a prayer. Thank you. I understand, I appreciate. Thank you.

And in exchange for being humbled, you get food. You get life. You get the knowledge that you can create just as well as you can devour, and that you really need nothing more than what you have right now.