My personal worldview, I suppose like us all, has been defined by my ancestors, as well as by my own personal encounters. Taken in, inhaled, viewed,  then woven out of need into the spirit of our beliefs.

I’m not an organized religion sort… and I mean that in ANY format. Strict adherence to ritual and scripture is not my cup-o’tea. I prefer a wandering nomadic sort of belief system. Animistic, in nature, I have always gravitated to the idea though of some sort of ultimate spirit, or divinity, which I have come to refer to as BEAUTY.

Beauty is the spark that ignites a flame, born out of the stuff that binds us all together. Beauty is just as present in the dark, as in the light. As the night can be beautiful, so is the darkness, and often more than the bright and blinding light of day. Residing in corners, in wastelands of the soul, awakened by those who dance, or paint, or sing, or write the truth.

Referred to more as SHE then as HE. Though gender is a human construct… and not all living things have defined genders, so why should our concept of god?

Then, just yesterday I said to myself “PaulaB, you gotta dance more“. And I recalled something a family friend had posted on my FB wall – Native American Encyclopedia |  Dance to Heal the Earth, by Dee Smith. This little snippet struck me:

Soon this dance will be done in a big way, in the old way, on sacred ground. All living things will take part. If you want to, you can take part. No one is twisting your arm. You can stop any time you need to, and start-up again whenever you’re ready. If you’ve read this far, you probably know what I’m talking about. You’ve probably been doing it in one way or another for a good while. Soon will be the time to make no bones about it! Cut loose!

As they say… when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I suppose we often think of teachers as other people, but they can just as easily be anything at all… dogs, cats, books, mere photographs or a simple Haiku Poem can be the teacher one seeks.

As I’ve written of previously, I was raised Anglican. My Grandmother every Sunday would leave for church, and through the open window loudly announce… to our breakfast table… Well, I’m going to Church now… MOM: That’s nice Mom. Have a good time.

When I was young Grandma used to take me to church, until I was 6 years old. Then one Sunday I came home and told Mom she was going to Hell for not going to church. From what I understand, I guess I went on quite the little evangelical tangent…so since Mom was having none of that, my visits to Church stopped. Henceforth, I visited only for funerals and weddings.

Mom was not an atheist, she was Anglican herself. She merely had a theological { or philosophical perhaps }, disagreement with the current Priest of our local church. She used to be a Sunday School teacher, and she was very spiritual and believed in God. Yet she didn’t have us baptized, as she felt it was OUR decision to choose what faith we should follow.

My Grandmother was a powerful force, and as the Matriarch, she ruled the roost. Even Grandfather, who was Catholic, had no say in such matters as belief or finance. Therefore, this defying of her Mother in this one matter, defined Mom’s domain, and the raising of HER children as being HER responsibility – Grandma’s advice would be respected, though not necessarily welcomed.

Mom was a strong believer in equality, and loving unconditionally. She had a strong mothering spirit, and in her finally days, just before she lost her voice forever, she told me that being a Mother had been her greatest joy.

Though I have to say, I do indeed still have that 6-year-old evangelical inside me. I see the battle between the two of them, as between night and day, flux and anchor, chaos and order. One trying to free the spirit, the other attempting to rein it in a little.

So here I am, all these years later, identifying myself as kind of I guess an Animist-Christian. God to me equals Beauty…Beauty is God/Goddess. Gender is only important with coupling, not for our everyday existence. Personally, I find I require soul more than just once a week, and that I feel every interaction I make is in touch with that Beauty. My actions, my thoughts, and words all pour into the world as energy, and in a world often out of control, it gives me peace to know in some small way I am seeding more goodness and healing.

In speaking of Beauty, one must not confuse it with the modern or common definition, but rather in the “eye of the beholder” way. For the sacred divine is both within and without, in the inanimate, the abstract, and tactile.

You learn from change, from experiencing pain and by ugly truths. Yet, even in those final days of Tim’s life, as that door of my life at that beautiful place was closing, that divinity provided a rainbow. So for me it has always been. This feeling of never really being completely alone, never being without some sense of that spark of Beauty, is profound. Once found not easily forgotten.

“Now is the time for this dance to begin. It, too, will spread, and it will bring healing to all. In the beginning, they say, God put a rainbow in the sky, to let us know that Spirit never forgets. Now is the time for us to put a rainbow across the earth, to let God know that we, too, remember.” [ibid]