Magic 201: Timing

One of the more frustrating things about being a priest is being able to see something of what needs to happen, but being unable to do it because you are waiting for someone or something to happen first—maybe someone has to come to a realization before you can help them. Maybe a situation has to come to a head. Maybe you need to change first, in the way that a priest’s life is constant change.

Being a godparent often involves waiting, a kind of relaxed tension that is itself a discipline.

The first step to that relaxed tension is the act of letting go. Letting go of the optics of the situation, letting go of the expectation or belief that it says something about you (or that you are the focus of the situation), letting go of the need to control the situation, letting go of the desire to get it over with. The situation says nothing about you as a godparent, and isn’t about you at all—there might be things that are changing in you, but whatever you know needs to happen is not an act in your play. The situation cannot be controlled by you entirely. You are, after all, co-parenting with a mass of spirits and, though not directly, the divine. As unpleasant, annoying, or frustrating as you might find waiting, whatever needs to happen will happen when it happens.

This is not so much reasoning with yourself as it is realization, something you know because you have lived it.

The second step is the trust you have established with the lwa you are co-parenting with. If you have established that mutual trust, this becomes a much easier prospect. If you have not, a teacher can help you establish that trust. To be a priest is to continuously exchange trust, among other things, with the spirits you represent. Even during periods where you are not communicating—trials or lessons, or even the fact that mature people do not tend to need babysitting—you still exchange trust. The lwa have told you what needs to happen, and you will do your part when it comes up.

The third step involves a recognition of the role of being a priest. A priest does not need a tally to tell them whether or not to do something for one of the people they are co-parenting. The fact is that the people you are caring for, because they need to be cared for, are always going to behave toward you in a way that lacks maturity. Resentment, attempts to manipulate, anger, immaturity, betrayal, neglect: they are all inherent parts of dealing with the people who need to be cared for. Part of relaxed tension is the obliteration of resentment, feelings of obligation, and the various ways that anger can express itself over time. All scales are balanced, in the long and short periods of time. This may involve something a priest does, but we do not have to hang on to the unpleasant parts of the relationship between priest and the people they serve. Letting go of the need to hang on to that, typically because we are afraid the scales won’t be balanced or we will be taken advantage of, allows a priest to conserve their energy.

The fourth step involves the willingness to pay attention. When we clear our mental slate of resentment and expectations, it is a lot easier to pay attention to something that isn’t our stale feelings, memories of the past, worries about what everyone else thinks or what this might say about us. There is nothing artificially or needlessly introduced between the priest and the situation, to distract them from paying attention.

There is almost always something the spirits have given us to do which we can be doing instead of being distracted.

A great deal of being a priest is waiting. Mastering that relaxed tension makes the process a lot easier.