paganism

Nothing: a landscape, a glass of wine, a little loveless love, and the vague sadness caused by our understanding nothing and having lost the little we're given.

An Atheopagan Prayer by Mark GreenPraise to the wide spinning world Unfolding each of all the destined tales compressed In the moment of your catastrophic birthWide to the fluid expanse, blowing outward Kindling in stars and galaxies, in bright poolsOf Christmas-colored gas; cohering in marbles hot And cold, ringed, round, gray and red and gold and dun And blue Pure blue, the eye of a child, spinning in a veil of air,Warm island, home to us, kind beyond measure: the stones And trees, the round river flowing sky to deepest chasm, salt And sweet. Praise to Time, enormous and precious, And we with so little, seeing our world go as it will Ruing, cheering, the treasured fading, precious arriving, Fear and wonder, Fear and wonder always. Praise O black expanse of mostly nothing Though you do not hear, you have no ear nor mind to hear Praise O inevitable, O mysterious, praise Praise and thanks be a wave Expanding from this tiny temporary mouth this tiny dot Of world a bubbleGoing out forever meeting everything as it goes All the great and infinitesimal Gracious and terrible All the works of blessed Being.May it be so.May it be so.May our hearts sing to say it is so.

But if God is the flowers and the treesAnd the hills and the sun and the moonlight,Then I believe in him,Then I believe in him all the time,And my whole life is an oration and a mass,And a communion with my eyes and through my ears.

The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at my Crevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knew all a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the antique bronze gods and goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beauty and without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book was bound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefully chosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger, Milton in the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of human passions without their bitterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all gods because I believed in none, and experienced every pleasure because I gave myself to none, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of polished steel: I looked in the triumph of this imagination at the birds of Hera, glowing in the firelight as though they were wrought of jewels; and to my mind, for which symbolism was a necessity, they seemed the doorkeepers of my world, shutting out all that was not of as affluent a beauty as their own; and for a moment I thought as I had thought in so many other moments, that it was possible to rob life of every bitterness except the bitterness of death; and then a thought which had followed this thought, time after time, filled me with a passionate sorrow.

Praise be to God I__ not good,And have the natural egotism of flowersAnd rivers following their bedPreoccupied without knowing itOnly with blooming and flowing.This is the only mission in the World,This__o exist clearly,And to know how to do it without thinking about it.)

Things don__ have significance: they only have existence.Things are the only hidden meaning of things.

When I__ depressed, I read Caeiro _ he__ my fresh air. I become very calm, content, faithful _ yes, I find faith in God, and in the soul__ transcendent living smallness, after reading the poems by that ungodly anti-humanist who goes unsurpassed on earth.

What does this think about that?Nothing thinks about anything.Does the earth have consciousness of its stones and plants?If it did, it would be people. . .Why am I worrying about this?If I think about these things,I__l stop seeing trees and plantsAnd stop seeing the EarthFor only seeing my thoughts...I__l get unhappy and stay in the dark.And so, without thinking, I have the Earth and the Sky.

And I find a happiness in the fact of accepting __n the sublimely scientific and difficult fact of accepting the inevitable natural.

A kid thinking about fairy tales and believing in fairy talesActs like a sick god, but like a god.Because even though he affirms that what doesn__ exist exists,He knows things exist, that he exists,He knows existing exists and doesn__ explain itself,And he knows there__ no reason at all for anything to exist.He knows being is the point.All he doesn__ know is that thought isn__ the point.(10/1/1917)

If I die very young, hear this:I was never anything but a kid playing.I was a heathen like the sun and the water,I had the universal religion only people don__ have.I was happy because I didn__ ask for anything at all,Or tried to find anything,And I didn__ find any more explanationThan the word explanation having no meaning at all.

Let__ only care about the place where we are.There__ beauty enough in being here and not anywhere else.If there__ someone beyond the curve in the road,Let them worry about what__ past the curve in the road,That__ what the road is to them.

Those of us who embrace the feminine know its strength.

All beings exist and nothing elseAnd that__ why they__e called beings

Night doesn__ fall for my eyesBut my idea of the night is that it falls for my eyes.Beyond my thinking and having any thoughtsThe night falls concretelyAnd the shining of stars exists like it had weight.

There__ enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.

If I could take a bite of the whole worldAnd feel it on my palateI__ be more happy for a minute or so...But I don__ always want to be happy.Sometimes you have to beUnhappy to be natural...Not every day is sunny.When there__ been no rain for a while, you pray for it to come.So I take unhappiness with happinessNaturally, like someone who doesn__ find it strangeThat there are mountains and plainsAnd that there are cliffs and grass...What you need is to be natural and calmIn happiness and in unhappiness,To feel like someone seeing,To think like someone walking,And when it__ time to die, remember the day dies,And the sunset is beautiful, and the endless night is beautiful...That__ how it is and that__ how it should be...

...I don't believe in Him, and if He does exist, I don't like Him. His type of gods aren't gods who echo how mortals behave. They're gods who are held up as example of perfection to be emulated. They're not gods of the people. They're remote and inaccessible, they demand blind, unthinking obedience from their followers. They're dictators. We Aesir and Vanir, by contrast, are mirrors. Other gods rule. We reflect and magnify. We are you, only more so. We share your flaws and foibles. We are as humanlike as we are divine, and I think we are all the better for that.