It's All Good

I have been haunted by memories of late. I guess when one is approaching a full six decades there's a lot the inner haunter has to choose from. But don't hear that as a bad or a good - it just is what is happening. In fact, that is the problem: what is showing up in retrospect is how what seemed good, wasn't (or may have been) and what was a horror has become the foundation of a towering strength today. So these reviews are more like movie watching - scary scenes and fun scenes but both just some screen event with no real power over me anymore. The take-away here is that each event held within it the power to be positive or negative depending on how I chose then or see it now.

The Greeks had a word for spirit, daemonae (my Greek is 40 years old so sue me if it's spelled wrong), which was not just the demonic (evil) as it is known today. It was actually the force within that could be good (rightly used) or bad (improperly used). It was the root of happiness (eudaemonika) as well. I think they nailed that one. Life is like that - each moment is rife with the power of good and bad. However I see it, however I choose, it becomes that. Moreover, after the fact, it still maintains that power to morph from good to bad or bad to good. And, think I, if that is so of life, is it not also true of my experience of god? My belief in god (should you not have read others of these blogs of mine - god is a word of convenience but not to be confused with the bearded, robed, grandfatherish thing of lore) is that god is in through and a part of all life and movement throughout the cosmos - and that includes me and my tiny little corner. God holds that same daemonic power - the source of joy and the fear of destruction (remember, you and I can be taken at anytime). What if god were not good or bad (those are human terms), what if god just was/is; all powerful, meaning just that - the power to source everything and be channeled to good or bad?

Then that puts the responsibility squarely on me to choose (right and wrong) and to interpret the past (good and bad). Thanks god! It would be so much simpler if the rules were just spelled out, I mean beyond the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. But of course that is impossible - 6 billion people times a lifetime of living an infinite number of moment-by-moment choices - it would not be possible to write the rule book for that. Se we - I - have to think and choose, and who is to say what is good or bad? Life is just rich - filled with the spirit of it all, with the daemonic, the yin and yang of all-in-one richness.

Yesterday I got a note from a friend of long ago - someone who in the good and bad of it all I thought I had hurt. In telling her life story to her 18 year old, she had reflected warmly about our years together. Well - there you go! It's like Glenda asked, "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" I dunno - which witch is which? I guess to me it's all good!