As I was walking from my bus stop to work today, I happened to walk through the park. I tried to focus on being fully in my body and so have a small spiritual experience.
But as I left the park and entered the busy streets of the city that surround it, I noticed my spiritual awareness shifting back to “everyday mode”.
This annoyed me somewhat as I do not see the city as a place where the sacred cannot live. I have realised that this is because many sects of paganism have a strong “nature good, city bad” mind set.
This is a mistake.
Nature is amazing and huge, and awe inspiring. But so are cities.
A beavers dam is a created thing, yet we still call it natural. So why does the thing created by man become unnatural?
Just look at the many wonders that surround us in this modern world! How can these giant things, that we have found a way to create, be anything but awe inspiring?
Any pagan will be the first to tell you that the gods are both kind and cruel. That nature will as easily kill you as care for you.
What they never seem to realise is that the same can be said of the modern world and technology! Or they realise it in their minds, but ever seem to carry an emotional repulsion of the “evil modern world”.
Sure with all our scientific advances we seem to be doing an amazing job of screwing up the planet. But, for instance, no one sane is going to complain about the medical miracles that used to be unthought of.
It seems foolish to me to complain of the negative areas of technology, while exulting our gods for being both always kind and always cruel.
The gods have not been banished to the dewy meadows and pretty glades- though they can be found there.
They live also in the crush of the crowd, the dazzling lights, and the concrete labyrinths of our cities.
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with regards to the city being holy as well.
do you think this applies to everywhere? is a places “holiness” a byproduct of its existance, or the space itself, the history of a space, or the use it is used for at present?
thoughts?
I think this applies to everywhere.
I would say that spiritually that everything is holy, because everything is within the divine. Nothing is outside of god- so nothing can be unholy.
We are just very good at forgetting that everything, including ourselves, is in fact holy and part of the great divine.
On a more agnostic or atheistic note, I would say that everything is holy because of the sheer wonder and improbability of it’s existence.
The most amazing thing I can think of, is that anything exists at all, and that we are able to perceive it.
This doesn’t mean all things are good.
Pollution and many toxins for example are things we have made that are in no way good. This does not make them less divine.
In the same way that a plague or earthquake are not caused by man- but are in fact part of the great divine.
The divine is not always nice.