Taking the Divine Seriously
It takes a priest to really take the divine seriously, and even we sometimes don’t like what we’re hearing. We give up the life that came before initiation and for some of us, that means giving up everything. Friends, money, job, the things we own, cars. I am sitting in a small room which contains all my goods. I could move my whole life in a Toyota pickup, where a few years ago I had enough stuff to nicely furnish a mid sized house. Much of it was books, book shelves, comfortable chairs, computers and the various electronics an engineer will pick up over the years. The first year after initiation is like that, the spirit removing anything which would distract or prevent you from doing the job of being a priest.
I’m perfectly willing to take this all the way to absurdity. It’s because I am grateful.
Taking the divine seriously is really a measure of how much you want or need to stay the same. Even among priests, some of us can get away with keeping our day job, or relegating our magical and priest work to something done in the evenings or weekends. Even among priests, some of us can get away with a life that has being a priest as a kind of side hustle.
I told the spirits to burn me up, to consume me and my life until all that was left was spirit—you can’t take something from me if I’m desperately trying to give it to you. The spirits are good to take what is offered.
My life has been extraordinary, I am told. What it’s mostly been is a series of bizarre decisions, made under duress and in confusing or chaotic circumstances, spanning seven countries on two continents and several island nations. The repeating motif has been that there’s something strange about me, something just ever so slightly off. Something that always made me just a little bit separate from the world around me. It was not that difficult to give my life up. It’s hardly felt like my life, my whole life. So many strange things have happened to me that I have often felt like a passenger, freighted from coincidence to statistically anomalous coincidence while I fought as hard as I could to look normal and not at all suspicious.
If I’m ever laughing at what looks like nothing while we sit together, know it’s because at some point, you have to respond to absurdity with laughter. Someone had to be not average in every distribution.
I used to have a hell of an education in statistics.
My godfather figured out what that difference was immediately, but waited for me to figure it out. I wish it had not taken me this long, but no time is wasted to the divine.
The priest life is definitely for me, sitting at a noon in my robe and answering questions as the presence of spirit rests gently on my tingling scalp.
Personally, I like to think I’m playing chicken with god. I don’t intend to blink.
