Are you there God?
It’s me, Magdelena.
Thank you for calling God’s answering service. Prayers may be recorded for training and legal purposes. We are currenty experiencing a high demand on our service but please hold and an angel will answer as soon as they become available. Your prayer is in a queue……
***
For all it’s religious connotations, it has always amused me that the term ‘faithful’ is usually applied to lovers and/or spouses. I suppose on a gradation of intimacy, our partner is or should be our most trusted friend, our confidante, our strong shoulder of support and warm embrace. We expect a tremendous amount from those around us and sometimes, frankly our expectations are unrealistic. I think by extension we expect too much from our conceptions of the sacred. Faith becomes a passive gesture, a given, not something we work on, are challenged by, struggle with and finally surrender to.
There’s a peculiar misconception surrounding surrender, in both its spiritual and sexual contexts (although I think this division arbitrary; in my mind they are sacred, one and the same). Surrender is viewed as a passive, last ditch, feeble collapse to the will and whim of another. It’s not this at all, in truth it’s a very active, questioning and demanding journey characterised as much by dark nights as ecstatic highs, but mostly it occupies a finely balanced middle ground.
Faith is a rare and beautiful thing.
I have faith.
I know there is more, and beyond this I see how faith aligns us to qualities that expand and elevate the human experience.
Recent events have given me cause for self reflection. I think this natural for having invested so much time in this space and these writings, sensing their loss brought issues into sharp focus. I reached the point where I was prepared to let it all go, by this I mean in my heart I stopped fighting and stopped hurting. Yes, I was melancholic for a time but that dark energy has a gentle depth and within those inky folds I reconnected to humility, kindness and compassion.
I think it is literally virtually impossible to spend hours online and come away feeling good. In a very real sense computers strangle the life from us, and to quote Dr. Ali
“Computers will become a noose around the neck of human kind - literally”.
Allow me to quote from his ‘Ultimate Back Book’:
The damage it causes to the neck and the complications that arise out of that are unbelievable…..Staring at a screen in a fixed position contradicts the very principle of the existance of the neck. Nature has given the neck the extraordinary function to move in all directions and that is why it is structured differently from the rest of the body. The neck is meant to move and not be fixed.”
People are meant to move and not be fixed but I think every one of us can observe how cold, closed down and quite simply inept our people are becoming due to their reliance on technology. It isn’t flexible enough and its remote nature means we never see/hear/feel the consequences of our actions. Put your hand up if you’ve had a bad experience with a call centre or online customer care division this week. It’s become a fact of modern life and more than I hate the cost cutting principles it’s based upon, I am seriously vexed by the piss poor excuses these drones offer. ‘I’m only doing my job’ is an appauling defence not the least because of the rank incompetancy displayed. Tick box mentality meets the cold heart of technology: welcome to hell.
Dr. Ali is something of an advocate of doing the opposite. I met him once and asked what belly dancers should do for the low back ache that can accompany early or vigourous training. He advised massaging the pelvis. It’s a principle he carries into many healing areas and so I thought it interesting to apply this to neck problems. On the other side, the soft side we have the throat. An area of acute vulnerabilty and tenderness, the place where our lifeblood pulses.
In mystical terms it is the fifth chakra and stored within this wheel is the energy of Will, quite literally willpower. The Sacrament of Confession is allied with this chakra and when plotted on the Tree of Life, it is aligned with the Sefirot of Gevurah and Hesed representing the qualities of judgement and mercy. Please don’t labour over these mystical aspects because the interesting thing is that the fifth chakra is the bridge between the fourth and sixth chakras, namely the heart and the mind. Too often these two are seperate and isolated yet they are united by the power of will.
The question is, where do we invest our will power?
When we are not strong enough to think wisely and act with love, our will is susceptible to hijacking and we will invest it foolishly. There are so many addictions yet perhaps one of the most intriguing is the contemporary addiction to cyberlife. It seduces us, sucks us in and before we know it hours have slipped by. It’s quite a terrifying thought but dare you even admit how much time you spend online? I’m not pointing fingers, I’m really not the smart arse in the room because I’m writing this with a neck problem. But the antidote is in the venom and pain is true and our finest teacher. For me the lesson is to spend less time sitting before the screen and spend more time moving, living and loving.
I’m not by any means suggesting that the community we have created and spend time in is in any way wrong, not at all. I am simply saying that we should treat time as the precious commodity it is and time spent online should be judicious. We should spend it wisely in the company of friends and use it for the good.
In a beautiful demonstration of this I have to say thank you to my Yakuza bitch. This site is here, hale and hearty because two blog angels heard my prayers and came to my rescue. Nina and Jeff devoted the morning on the eve of their Honeymoon to helping me. Yes, you read that right. When they could be forgiven for wanting to attend to the necessaries of packing and preparing, they devoted their time to me and to making sure all was well before they left. Kindness like that makes me catch my breath, it’s so rare. Thank you nina and Jeff for taking such good care of my baby metawhore. She’s as cute as a button now.
Warm hugs and thanks to
Vanessa for her help and sensual inspiration. Vanessa, your podcasts are orgasmically electric. Is there anything more exquisite than hearing a woman come?
Thanks also to Kochanie who held my hand and offered soothing words.
To Beau for braving the darkness to carry me out, and to all of you for your comments and mail, for your love and tender thoughts when I was decidedly down. You held my faith for me and for that I am grateful.
I’d like to especially thank N who may blush at seeing herself mentioned here but whose mail was exquisite. She reminded me that Muslims are currently celebrating Ramadan and that this is a time to connect with Divinity. It’s a time of cleansing, of purification and of connecting to the sacred self. The energy in her mail was magnificent and it inspired a soft devotion in me, a turn back to contemplation, to silence and simply being.
After reading her mail, I turned off the computer and made to leave. As I walked passed the mirror my eyes were drawn to the beads of a broken rosary looped across the top. It was a gift from the daughter of a former lover and it means a lot to me. I don’t actually know how one prays with a rosary but I’d like to.
I think whatever your faith, knowing that someone cares enough to pray for you is a blessing and a gift and unlike calls to carelines, they truly are answered. Not always in the way we expect but music, laughter and love are the backbone of the universe and God is nothing if not a cosmic joker.