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Prayers for the Dark Night in Aurora

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I don’t often weigh in on national news. That isn’t really the focus of this blog. But today, national news went local.

I live just south of Denver, in the city of Englewood. My home is about 20 minutes from Aurora, the scene of a gruesome mass-killing which took place last night at a midnight showing of the newest Batman movie. We’re also about 15 minutes from my parent’s house in Littleton, which sits just a mile or two down the road from Columbine.

It’s a strange thing to position yourself in between tragedies, as though somehow your proximity gives you a greater amount of insight into the meaning (if there even is such a thing) behind the massacre. Neither of the two events affected me in any immediate sense. I mean, I didn’t know anyone who was killed at Columbine. My little brother was in elementary school at the time, his school a few blocks away from the scene. I recall my mom calling me, frantic and panicking about the school being on lockdown, and she couldn’t get to Jake.

I guess we were affected a little.

I don’t know who was killed last night, or who is injured. My grandmother jokes that we’re related to half of Denver, with cousins in every corner of the city. There might be a relative in the list of the injured or dead — I suppose there’s a chance — but I hate the thought. I’m sure I would have received a phone call by now.

This idea that proximity engenders relevance is confusing. So much of my waking time is spent pushing ideas through various internet channels of communication, connecting to people in other cities, other states, other countries. So much of what happens, or is communicated through the internet, comes to feel simply like information, consumed without much mindfulness.

And then something happens nearby, something so visceral and bodily, and I feel disoriented.

Columbine became a symbol. The word, our state flower, turned into a list of villains and victims. The memorials of the dead were erected near high school football fields, and license plates were imprinted with the words “Never Forget.”

Coloradans are certainly remembering today.

I don’t know if Aurora will become a symbol in the same way that Columbine did. Perhaps it will come to represent something about violence in entertainment, or the lack of security in public places. Perhaps this will be the moment where fear takes center stage, and we become distrustful of one another. Once they release the information about the assailant, perhaps people will seek to understand what it was about his family, his home-life, his schooling, his socioeconomic condition, his politics, his gender, which led him to make this choice. We will apply our arm-chair-sociologist perspective on the matter, and locate — pridefully — the reason he did it.

Not that the reason will make it any easier to understand.

As a religious person, one who is often engaged in conversations about what good a personal religion can do for one’s life, I feel inclined to do something religious in response to this. I’m not certain what good it will do for anyone other than myself, but I still feel the need.

Perhaps I’ll pray for the victims, or for the shooter, or for his family. After all, they’re out there in the city somewhere, trying to make sense of what just happened.

Prayer feels like an appropriate response somehow.

I’d like to open up the space for all of you who may not share my proximity to these tragedies to offer up the prayers that seem most appropriate to you. The prayers may be directed to specific deities, or they may simply be words of peace that you’d like to offer up to anyone who reads them. You may begin your prayer with “I pray to…,” or “I pray that…,” or you can use another form, if you like.

But please join me in taking a moment to respond softly, and kindly, and with a sincere heart, in prayer.

The Action of Worship

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My religion is experienced in the doing.

This became clear to me as I entered the sacred space of our ADF ritual at Pantheacon, lifted my voice to invoke the spirit of Inspiration, and, for a moment, left my mind behind.

When I stepped in front of the altar and began to sing, I was performing a religious and magickal act. It was spontaneous and improvisational, and it originated from within my heart. It was the purest offering I could make.

In that moment, I was not thinking about what it meant to be a Druid. I was not weighing the strengths and weaknesses of the various Druid traditions, or squabbling over the definition of a word or title. No – I was invoking. I was calling down, stirring up, igniting the fire of inspiration in my own heart and in the hearts of all those present.

There was nothing intellectual about it.

“Worship requires action – it is not an intellectual task.”

These words came from Jean “Drum” Pagano, a man I met during my weekend in San Jose. Drum has been involved with ADF since the earliest days, and he serves in various leadership positions within the organization. Drum’s voice, in the few conversations we had in person and through his written word, resonates deeply with me.

Have you ever met someone and felt instantly as though you understood something about them, as though something inside them was very similar to something inside you?

That’s how it felt when I met Drum.

Drum says that worship requires action, and I heard that very message echoed by other Pagan leaders during the conference. So much of what we do in our day-to-day lives is mind work. We blog about our ideas, we argue about our differences, we share memes on Facebook ad nauseam (which, in my opinion, is very low mind work), and we allow this to consume great portions of our day.

What happens, then, when we spend our lives in our mind, on our screens, and even in the pages of our books, but we do not practice the action of worship?

It is no surprise that during November and December of last year, a time when I felt most conflicted about my religious path, that my altar was a wasteland; vacant, and unused. I did not approach it because I was uncertain if I believed in the words that I was saying each morning. I thought about it, and thought about it, and when I couldn’t decide how to think about it, I did nothing.

(If you were reading my blog during that time, you might remember a change in my tone. If you weren’t, you’ll find evidence of the change in the Archives.)

The result of my lack of doing was a period of spiritual stasis. In the absence of regular worship I became a bit more cynical, a little jaded even, and there was no sign of the fire in my heart which I speak of so often. I sing from this fire. I write from this fire. I make love from this fire. Worship keeps the fire burning, even as worship is an extension of this fire.

But then, after I became tired of the cold, dim reality of a life without reverence, I began my daily practice again. When I did, something changed.

I lit a candle, prepared a chalice of water, and laid out a wand made of wood. I gave thanks to the Mother. I called upon the God who had aided me before in the creation of sacred space, and was happy to discover that I could feel His presence again. I made offerings to the Gods and Goddesses, known and unknown, to the Ancestors, and to the Spirits of the Land. I lit a fire for Brighid, and gave thanks to Her. I did all of these things, stumbling from time to time, but reverent as I could muster, and my consciousness began to shift back toward the fire.

Worship requires action. You cannot think yourself into a state of transpersonal awareness. You must do something.

I wonder (more of an imaginative act than an intellection one) if you’ve experienced something similar. Have you been through periods when you thought more than you felt? And, if so, did that throw you off? Perhaps you have a different relationship to the intellect altogether. Perhaps it is a starting point for your experience of worship.

I always love to know what my readers think, but this time I’m going ask:

What do you do?