champagne toast to life

I subscribe to The Sun, primarily for its poetry and its back page of quotations. Every issue the quotations address some theme and I’m always amazed at the synchronicity of these themes with my own thoughts. I can’t get these two bits out of my head;

Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.

Kurt Vonnegut

All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife…..Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself, and never mind the rest.

Beatrix Potter

Vonnegut’s words make me laugh, a chortle of mirth at the mystery of it all. And aren’t we so like the yeast, not able to really ever envision the big picture? I’m thinking back to my early days as a witch, and the naiveté we all had when we were doing the big spells to change the world. Who can ever know the effect our actions will cause? So many times I thought I was doing one thing, and in hindsight, it turned out to be something altogether different.

Potter’s words speak to the importance of believing that we are indeed involved in the art of making champagne, that there is some great force at work which is moving things along as they should be, even when it looks like doomsday. I find myself constantly amazed that I am in some place of trust that champagne is being made, even as species die. And this is where the behave part comes in. I do believe that there is a great power silently working all things for the good, and part of behaving means actively engaging in assisting that force, paradoxically knowing we are never sure what actually is in assistance. Nevertheless, we need to try, behaving in ways that strive to harm none, and following our intuition, which just may be the radio station dialed into that great force.

Are all outward forms of religion almost useless? I came to the Craft because I was turned off by organized religion, and the big joke here is that somehow I’ve been part of creating one, although hopefully it stays the most disorganized of organized religions. In my lifetime I’ve seen my little tradition of Reclaiming grow like wildfire, and now Feri seems to be doing the same. I love that Potter says “outward forms of religion” which I think I do agree with, feeling that the only thing that really makes a difference is our own inward and individual sense of spirituality/religion. With more people having died or killed as a result of religious beliefs than can be counted, outward forms of religion sure appear to be useless in making humans behave. Whether Witch, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, or Muslim, we all can behave like jerks. From what I’ve seen in Reclaiming, the more involved some people get in the outward organization, the more hideous they behave and the more they operate from ego. I know this from direct personal experience, having been one of these people when I was in the center and fully invested in the outward organization. The champagne that was made from being essentially cast out of Bay Area Reclaiming is that the farther I’ve gotten, the more my relationship to the wondrous great force has been strengthened. What I thought was so hurtful, hideous and horrible, has actually turned out to be an incredible gift. Who knew? Who could have?