Yep… you can tell it is the New Year… and I am in “Introspection Mode.” I am being newly inspired, and over thinking everything.  I feel like I am like a mouse in a Religious Maze. I keep getting this little hints, and I go after a new truth only to find myself hitting walls and Dead Ends. I get so discouraged when I find out that some new source or System is just a mishmash of what has come before. The problem is I am not easily fooled. Much of this I have seen before. So, I travel down the path a little ways, only to find out that the terrain starts to look real familiar and when it comes to the point that someone want me to “ drink their kool-aid,” I am only too ready to hand it back to them.  It seems like to me, that a lot of what I have access to is either available to me because someone has their hand out to make a buck from me or they are looking to gain some form of power to move them upward on their Emotional Power Trip.

My most recent wading into a religious practice system has come to a quick end and I have come out of the investigation feeling very let down. While I did find some interesting information, and even felt that there where messages that I needed ( because they all fell into place so well and fit into the “puzzle board” of my life).  I know that I will work my way out of this maze…  I do it all of the time.   There is just a part of me that wants me to “commit” to “something,”  And another part that wants to keep my options open.  I understand the lure of “traditions”  but  also yearn for yet undiscovered “Higher Truths.”

Part of what drew me to my participation in  the SCA ( Society for Creative Anachronism) was to understand my history  and culture.   Growing up in East Tennessee in the 1960 and 70’s I felt we had been completely washed out of tradition and culture.  I now know, that is not true, but I did not have much appreciation of our fairly close minded, racist, backwoods culture.  I know now that some of our traditions came from our Scots-Irish Heritage, along with smatterings of German, English and even Cherokee.  Our Religious heritage was for the most part, different versions of Protestantism.     I was the product of  my Father’s family who had been in the East Tennessee Mountains for multiple generations and my Mother’s who was from Kansas.  My mother was viewed as a “City girl” and an outsider by my Father’s family.  My sister seemed to have been immersed and drawn into the culture, being totally content with her life and options. Me, on the other hand seemed to have been born with one foot in each culture and not a part of either.  I have been looking for where I belonged most of my life.  I have always been drawn to what was different or unusual.  And yet I do value my family and friends.  I value my family history and wish they would have left me more information.  Maybe I would have understood myself better.   I know that one of the issues is that most of my relatives had odd ways of preserving their privacy, by not even acknowledging their own thoughts, even to themselves.  That I am aware of there are no diaries, or places they put down any of their own thoughts.  There were a few letters, but they were mostly news of who was having a baby or who was down sick.   Maybe they really did not feel the need to comment on what they thought, or why.

As I am musing about this, I  apologize that my thoughts are all over the place… but I really am getting around to it, I promise.

I really am wondering if maybe I just need to get over the whole idea of following someone else’s tradition, and have the faith in myself to seek out Deity, once and for all, on my own.  I have had my moments.  Moments of pure contact, pure love, and in total Contact with the Devine.  Why can I not trust myself that this is enough?

I am sure the answer has to do with Self-Confidence and the age old desire to belong to a Tribe.  That “might makes right” and the “Truth” found in large Groups of People.  And yet I have always found myself looking for the unusual, the unique, and ideas that put me firmly in the minority.  I have never been able to be comfortably normal.   By my own admission, I set myself apart, cutting myself from the Herd.

Although the “title” was denied me by my parents, I am of an artistic temperament.  And like most of my talents, I have just enough to make me a bit eccentric, but not exceptionally talented.  I am like the “Jack of all Trades”, of the Art and Music World.  Master of None.  One of my observations in the Music World was that the crazier the Musician, the more talented they were.  I am only a little crazy and a little talented.  It must be my fear of Commitment!! ( if you think on it you will find a joke there… )

As each Season comes to an end and the Wheel of the Year turns, I know that I will make my way into the new spring of my mind.  My seeds will be gathered from these musings and planted.  We shall just have to wait and see what comes up in the Summer.