On The Blessedness Of Change

I often speak of how I believe in a naturalized theology, wherein the natural world which we occupy, in all its splendor, horror, and just plain boredom, is the surest and clearest indication of both the nature and will of the Divine. Of course, as most of you know, I am a mystic, first and foremost, and as such I deeply believe in gnosis, a personal experience of—and relationship with—the Divine, in all and any of Their forms. But I also believe that moments of direct and transformative mystical experience are moments of rare divine grace. We can make ourselves better vessels for gnosis through living the spiritual life in earnest according to the traditions to which we have been called, but that is all we can do. We can make ourselves better lightning rods through our spiritual practices, and we can engage with the various deities and spirits as we will, but in the end we must wait upon the Divine to provide the lightning. True, transformative mystical experiences are rare. Most of the time we just have to do the Work each day in love and faith.

Because of this, we are usually left to muddle our way through figuring out a workable theology through inference, and inference requires starting points, things we can assume to be true. Some theologians start with the laws of logic, others start with the revelations of an holy text, still others start with the reported contents of a particular mystical experience. All of these have their strengths and weaknesses and each of them, in my opinion, reveal different aspects of the Divine. But I believe that just like in the physical sciences, the processes and facts of nature are foundational to our knowledge of the world, and that the spiritual is not just one aspect of the world, it is the defining aspect of the world.

This means that the spread of fallen leaves that caught your eye last week, the way Brownian motion mixed the cold cream into your hot coffee this morning, and the light that is currently allowing you to read these words are all revelations of the Divine, just as much as any holy text, just as much as any ecstatic vision, and just as much as any sacrament.

Consider this deeply. Let it seep into every bit of your mind. There is no supernatural and natural…there is only existence. There is no magickal and mundane…there is only existence. There is no spiritual and material…there is only existence. Dualism is only a trick, a certain way of thinking, a sort of mental illusion, and it’s just not true. We don’t have to look for our deities on Mt. Olympus or Mt. Sinai, because They are right here.

This is my gospel. This is what I am here to preach. You are not separated from the Divine. You are not a sack of electrified meat that can occasionally arrange itself in ways that can accomplish the miraculous…you are the miraculous. You are spirit made solid and worth so much more than our broken culture taught you.

But there is more: you are not alone.

You are never alone…we are all in constant living relationship with everything else in existence and in constant living relationship with the Divine.

Intense, right?

Let’s take a little break. I invite you to take a breath. Pat your edges. Wiggle a bit. Maybe drink some water or eat something. This can be a lot to take in. I know it was for me.

Feeling a bit more grounded? Good. Let’s continue.

Now, assuming that what I say is true and that what we call “the physical” and what we call “the spiritual” are just two aspects of one divine phenomenon, what can we observe about nature that can give us a clue to the nature and will of the Divine? Well, very quickly we observe that everything in nature is constantly changing. Cells, organs, systems, and bodies all develop, grow, age, and eventually die, reproducing themselves in endless variety as they do. Minerals and gases bind together into various forms and work their way through radioactive decay, often changing properties and form as they do. Energy itself finds its way through various transformations before finally finding a home in the graveyard of dispersing heat. Everywhere in nature, we observe change. Change is, as the saying goes, the only constant. Change is the name of the game.

Now, this does not mean that the eternal does not exist. The spiritual/ideal side of reality is clearly eternal, because the Divine is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, just as the number 2 is, and even if our understanding of the Divine changes over time this is just as our number theory has changed and developed over time to include new knowledge about 2…neither the Divine nor 2 has changed, our understanding of them has changed. This part of reality exists outside time and thus outside change, and the part of the Divine that exists as the Eternal is thus changeless. However, this does not mean the Divine does not evolve and change in Their expression in our temporal part of reality. Different eras, different prophets, different aeonic formulae, and different people from different places have all engaged with the Divine in many different ways, all equally legitimate, and thus it seems that such change, such movement and development, is a part of the nature of the Divine Themselves, an ongoing revelation of the Divine through nature and through us as parts of nature. As the Kore Chant says: “She changes everything She touches, and everything She touches changes”. And in our tumultuous age that is more evident than ever.

Now, the reaction to change by many people is to resist it, to shore up the barricades, to get stiff and push back. And sometimes this is necessary…when you are ministering to people with severe substance abuse problems, for example, and you are graciously offered some of their drug of choice, that is probably not the time to embrace change. But in my experience, the change I encounter in living the spiritual life is ultimately beneficial and spiritually restorative. When I am doing the Work, my lived relationships with my patron deities, ally spirits, and the Divine as a whole are constantly changing me, making me into a new creation. I am more than I was. Better than I was. More alike unto the Divine.

So let us relax and soften into the inevitable pull and push of the forces around us. Let us open up to to other people, nature, and to the Divine and let ourselves be transformed. Let us dare to embrace the world and let the world embrace us.

Let us change.

Happy Full Moon, dear siblings.

In love,

Soror Alice

Art: William Turner, “The Fighting Temeraire, tugged to her last berth to be broken up”, (1838)