Hope

I like hope.
No strike that.
I love hope.
Without it what is there?

You see life, this life, the life we are living, the life that our ancestors have lived and our descendants are going to live, this life is beautiful.
It's a fantastic, beautiful, mystical, unphamamable, weaving thing. Yes, it contains suffering, sadness and pain, and plenty of it, but in amongst that, running through all that, is beauty, splendour, love and wonder!
And hope fuels that.

Hope gets us through the mire, doesn't matter what it is in, it just matters you have hope.
And believe me, there is always hope.

Be excellent \m/

In the middle....

Somewhere in the middle of the space between Liberal Methodist Christianity and Heathenism stands I.
A foot in each camp, seeing the wisdom in both and appreciating their benefit and similarities.
And unable to choose between the two.

I have always been fascinated by why pagans converted to Christianity. Whilst there is no denying that use of force in the conversion process did occur, I have never felt that it was the full story. After all, if you try and force something on people who are reluctant to accept it then they will always find a way to undermine it, and history has plenty of examples of when such things have happened.

The thing I have never liked about any of the monotheistic religions is this shared notion that only those worshipping their God will be looked after. This, to me, goes against the principles of a all loving god.
Additionally there is the holy texts. Mankind has a habit of changing things to suit itself. Knowing this and acknowledging the existence of free will, I do not see how texts written by man, and then translated repeatedly over the years in different political and social climates, can be treated as something to follow literally and blindly.
Common sense and a forgiving view of things is much more the order of the day in my humble opinion.
After all, is it not said somewhere in the good book "best not judge, lest thee be judged yourself"?
That says to me that any human being who judges harshly another, whether they are basing that judgement on a holy text or a personal opinion, is in danger of receiving the same from the divine force of the universe at the point when they will be hoping for the most forgiving of judgements.

Ironically, Christianity - the religion of love and forgiveness - comes across harsher than the religion of the "barbaric" Northmen.

And here I am, in the middle, doing my best to figure it all out for myself......