Hold
Against dissipation, to hold : to hold onto one's treasure is an awesome power in a world where so much is evanescent, and so much slips away. To hold is to keep together and keep whole that which is precious and yet which would threaten to disperse into the four winds, and to keep it where it may be cherished. One of the old meanings of the word "hold" was loyalty, and it was the loyalty of the heart extended out into the world, saying, "No, I shall not let go of that which is precious to me," knowing that much would slip away ; that in this world of transience, where wyrd is ever changing and becoming, much slips through our fingers, even as we experience it, and in fact that most does, but that some things are not to be allowed to slip through. They must be regathered and held, and this extends even to the ancestors. The ancestors are not just cherished for what they may do for us in the other world, but that we love them and will not let them go.
Our love extends that far, for even over the threshold of death itself, we shall not abandon them, but claim them. We claim them even over that abyss from which none return, but still we say, they are ours. We extend that relation of love even beyond the doorstep of existence itself, into the substrata beneath and within existence, Hel, the hidden interiority within the unseen heart of existence, and say, we are all of one unit. All whom we love are tied together. And to do so with those who are now grounded in the very heart of existence itself is often what gives us the power and root to do so in this changing and mutable world where things have not yet found their final form. That which is dead is done ; it has found its final form, and therefore has a stability that the wonderful living world has not yet found. But once again we must remember that death does not have a connotation held in bad faith of ghostliness or deadenedness. Those words are relative to our world, to the realm of husks and compost and rotting. Once someone is dead, their spirit-form finds flourishment and fulfillment and stability, for the final doom pronounced at their afterworld hearing by the Gods is etched into the Tree itself. Indeed, as I have commented before, in some ways, the dead are far more alive than we are. We are the ones who are trying to find our alivement, and this life is our first journey in that direction.
So we do accept much of the transience of the world, as the Buddhists urge, but we also urge -- and this is the other hand of the equation that is so important -- to hold on to that which is your treasure. That which can be gathered into significance, and given the coherence of that wholeness or heill which is the holy order the Gods bless this Earth with, has the strength to persist beyond all the streamings and doings-undoings that unfold in the passage of time. The word treasure itself refers to the heirlooms, which take on value because they were held by the hands of the cherished family members and passed on. And so, we do not allow even death to separate us.
It is not something that can be proven scientifically, but we defy even science with our faith, a faith that is not a blind belief, but an assertion. It is a laying down of our law and our will. We will not let them go. We will that we will not let them go. There is therefore an element of boldness, daring, and assertion to our faith, and even audacity, to speak beyond that which the five senses would permit us. To speak and say, our loved ones we still love, and hold close to us. We say this beyond the apparent world of manifestation, for we understand that death has literally under-mined our loved ones and beneathed them beyond manifestation. The five senses would be pointless in this regard. Our will stretches beyond what the eyes can see.
If our faith extends our will this far, beyond that which can even be seen, then it gives us the strength to hold in this tornado-world where all is so often in flux, and to develop the will to hold and keep the precious coherent and alive in our lives. It will often be a battle, but it is a battle with significance.
Our love extends that far, for even over the threshold of death itself, we shall not abandon them, but claim them. We claim them even over that abyss from which none return, but still we say, they are ours. We extend that relation of love even beyond the doorstep of existence itself, into the substrata beneath and within existence, Hel, the hidden interiority within the unseen heart of existence, and say, we are all of one unit. All whom we love are tied together. And to do so with those who are now grounded in the very heart of existence itself is often what gives us the power and root to do so in this changing and mutable world where things have not yet found their final form. That which is dead is done ; it has found its final form, and therefore has a stability that the wonderful living world has not yet found. But once again we must remember that death does not have a connotation held in bad faith of ghostliness or deadenedness. Those words are relative to our world, to the realm of husks and compost and rotting. Once someone is dead, their spirit-form finds flourishment and fulfillment and stability, for the final doom pronounced at their afterworld hearing by the Gods is etched into the Tree itself. Indeed, as I have commented before, in some ways, the dead are far more alive than we are. We are the ones who are trying to find our alivement, and this life is our first journey in that direction.
So we do accept much of the transience of the world, as the Buddhists urge, but we also urge -- and this is the other hand of the equation that is so important -- to hold on to that which is your treasure. That which can be gathered into significance, and given the coherence of that wholeness or heill which is the holy order the Gods bless this Earth with, has the strength to persist beyond all the streamings and doings-undoings that unfold in the passage of time. The word treasure itself refers to the heirlooms, which take on value because they were held by the hands of the cherished family members and passed on. And so, we do not allow even death to separate us.
It is not something that can be proven scientifically, but we defy even science with our faith, a faith that is not a blind belief, but an assertion. It is a laying down of our law and our will. We will not let them go. We will that we will not let them go. There is therefore an element of boldness, daring, and assertion to our faith, and even audacity, to speak beyond that which the five senses would permit us. To speak and say, our loved ones we still love, and hold close to us. We say this beyond the apparent world of manifestation, for we understand that death has literally under-mined our loved ones and beneathed them beyond manifestation. The five senses would be pointless in this regard. Our will stretches beyond what the eyes can see.
If our faith extends our will this far, beyond that which can even be seen, then it gives us the strength to hold in this tornado-world where all is so often in flux, and to develop the will to hold and keep the precious coherent and alive in our lives. It will often be a battle, but it is a battle with significance.
posted by SiegfriedGoodfellow at 8:32 AM
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