Vodou Culture 101: Interference
One of the hardest lessons to learn but one of the most worthwhile is that sometimes you have to watch people drown. Sometimes, you have to let them fail, let them experience hardship or pain, even let them harm themselves or others.
Why? Because the time is not right to help them.
The reasons for this are many. Maybe they don’t think they need help. Maybe they don’t want help. Maybe they cannot take advantage of help. Maybe they are not actually willing to change. Maybe there’s something that needs to happen to them which will let them finally see the things that need to be changed. Maybe they need to experience this to learn a lesson. Maybe this is a life that they need to spend in a particular way, in order to help them change.
A priest does not have the luxury of a compassion that is only focused on this life. They don’t have the luxury of a compassion that is emotional, that only thinks to comfort because the distress of the person distresses the priest. We do not have the luxury of weighing our own comfort against the welfare of others.
A priest does not have the luxury of appearing good, of trying to be someone whom others see as righteous.
A priest does not have the luxury of being right, of trying to be perfectly in alignment with the divine at all times nor of winning whatever competitions for the appearance of wisdom which others expect them to be a part of.
A priest does not have the luxury of anything less than a love from the perspective of the divine—it is not this life, this distressing circumstance, this pain. It is the progression of lives. It is their elevation. It is what the person needs, not what they think they need, and only in divine compassion can we have any idea what that difference might be.
Reputation is beneath the notice of that compassion, and expectation is too far beneath that to see at all. Fuck all questions of right or good or the approval of others and meeting their expectations.
These are questions every priest must answer: can we love the person enough to interfere only where, as best we know, the spirit needs us to?
Can we love the person enough not to take what they need away from them?
