Distasteful as it is to me, I had occasion to petition the gods and goddesses of the northern pantheon the other day. Normally, I don't like asking to be bailed out of a situation that, most likely, I got myself into. That seems, to me, so smack of Christianity and is a large part of what I consider makes them unsuitable for me for a spiritual path or world view. Asking for supernatural help to get yourself out of trouble really doesn't sit well with me - how does that illustrate the much vaunted heathen virtue of self reliance?
However, things were (and, to some extent still are) pretty desperate for me in a certain area of my life and I had something of a 'Why the hell not?' moment, causing me to petition the gods for help in remedying this situation for me.
After this cry for help, the seriousness of the matter reduced somewhat (or, at least, my perception of it did), so now I feel I owe the Aesir and Asynjior a gift in return.
The best gift I felt I had to give was to put more of my time and effort into promoting heathenry here in the UK. Both by posting more regularly to this blog (with posts that are on topic, informative and that promote discussion) and by generally just being more overtly heathen in my daily life - though how much more heathen I can be when I am 6'3" with long hair, a beard, real ale in my hand and viking metal ringing in my ears is not immediately apparent to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment