PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

Featherless, looking like a tiny pterodactyl, the baby bird lay on the sidewalk, dying.

I knew what I should do. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

I was maybe eighteen, wrestling with the Big Issues. For various reasons, I'd just turned vegetarian; I'd vowed myself to non-violence.

The bird was suffering. I could have ended that suffering. I didn't.

Decades later, I still regret that moment of self-indulgent turning-away.

As lovers of life, pagans do what we may to ease suffering. “Kill cleanly,” says the law of the hunt, meaning: When you must cause suffering, cause as little as may be. To relieve the suffering of another is an act of generosity, and worthy of the great of heart. To end suffering is always virtuous.

I like to think that I'm wiser now. I like to think that I would be willing to set aside my compunctions to do the harder thing, for the sake of something larger, for the sake of ending another's pain.

In retrospect, I owe that broken little nestling a debt of gratitude.

Hey Boss Warlock:

What does the Lore say about suffering?

Once two witches were taken. “Deny the Horned,” they told them.

One refused, and went steadfast to the gallows. Seeing her faithfulness, many took heart and were made resolute to resist. In this way did the Craft survive, and the Red Thread go unbroken.

The other denied the Horned with her lips, but in her heart she remained firm. She lived to a ripe old age, teaching the Old Ways all her days, and in this way did the Craft survive, and the Red Thread go unbroken.

Both suffered. Which did better?

Life is full of pain. So Boss Warlock is wont to say, with no little irony, in the face of inconveniences and minor obstacles, meaning: It could be worse.

(For this he was once accused of closet Buddhism. “No need to get insulting,” said Boss Warlock.)

As lovers of life, we pagans do what we may to ease suffering. “Kill cleanly,” says the law of the hunt, meaning: When you must cause suffering, cause as little as may be. To relieve the suffering of another is an act of generosity, and worthy of the great of heart.

As pagans, we live by the virtues. Winston Churchill once said that of all the virtues, the chiefest is Courage, because Courage makes all the others possible.

So when we meet with suffering, we do our best to do so courageously, and better it be if we can make that suffering serve some larger purpose. While we may, we thole: endure. When suffering becomes unendurable, we make, if need be, an end. To end suffering is always virtuous.

This is our people's way.

The calls for magical intervention kept coming, interspersed with medical updates that were presented as progress, despite all evidence to the contrary. There’d been a tragic accident, and a young person was on life support, unresponsive. Emotional emails flew back and forth, many filled with hope and confidence in the power of magic and affirmation.

I participated at first. But when we were asked to use a spell formula affirming the miracle of a complete recovery, I stepped away. I worried that we were asking too much, that this person's nearest and dearest were going to be either devastated or exhausted by their hope against hope. Energy was being expended at a rate that would inevitably demand a crash. Perhaps even a soul was being held to earth when it was time for it to fly free.

 “The very great virtue of the Old Ways is that they see the world as it is, not as they wish it were.”

(Alain Daniélou)

Life is full of pain.

That's what my grandmother would say when you skinned your knee, or grated a knuckle along with the cheese.

(“A little blood makes everything taste sweeter,” was another of her ungainsayable sayings.)

As I've grown older, I've found myself saying the same. As an observation, it's hard to fault.

A friend once accused me of closet Buddhism on the basis of this saying. If I were the kind of person who took easy offense, I would have been offended. So far as I'm concerned, Buddhism is just another damned missionary religion, may they all rot.

But he was wrong, so I let it go by. Life is full of pain.

No, there's nothing Buddhist about this simple saying. This is a pagan Life is full of pain through and through, pragmatically acknowledging the way that things are and then getting on with it.

The expression lends itself to ready irony. When things are merely irritating, or merely inconvenient, it means: it could be worse. Which, of course, is usually true.

And when it addresses real pain instead, it gives perspective. No pain is unique. In pain, as in joy, we always have fellows.

Yes, it hurts, I know, but you'll get through. Yes, it's inconvenient, but it could be so much worse; just accept it and get on with it. Are you going to let a little pain stop you? Come on, you're bigger than that, and besides, there's dinner to make.

No, this is a life-affirming Life is full of pain. Yes there's pain, but there's joy, too. If you're lucky, they'll balance each other out. If not, well...when there's joy, then savor it all the more, knowing that that won't last either.

There's an incompetent in the White House, the country has lost its way, and I don't look nearly as good naked as I used to. Life is full of pain. There it is, and we get on from there as best we may.

Life is full of pain, but the implication is not: Therefore, life is no good. The implication is: Savor, then, while you may.

I stood on a subway platform as trains roared by, oblivious, paralyzed. I had been frozen by a brief, polite encounter with a former co-worker, a few weeks after I’d been laid off from my very first job, as a community college English teacher. My last set of students—young men in practical disciplines — had filled their evaluations with comments on my dress and appearance: “She should wear shorter skirts.” “She should wear more make-up.” It was decided my relationship with them had been “too personal", and my contract was not extended. Standing on the platform, remembering all this, a renewed sense of shame burned in my heart.

Over the years I would understand what happened better, with a more sophisticated eye. But at the time I was looking for emergency first aid. And I found it in the practice of “offering it up.”

I won a set of brown beads in a raffle. They were simple and pleasing, warm to the touch. To my surprise, they turned out to be amber, understood by the ancients as both a kind of solidified sunlight and as the tears of a goddess.

A few times in my life I’ve been gifted with untreatable pain and now is one of them. These days I’m lying awake at night, unable to find a tolerable position, obsessing about what is wrong with me and how it might be getting worse. Promising to fix myself tomorrow with better diet, more meditation, increased self-awareness—bemoaning whatever failure of self-care led to the problem in the first place. Unable to concentrate during the day, experimenting with various combinations of food, drink and drugs to escape sensations that continue to demand my attention. Forced to acknowledge that I am getting older, decaying in my own skin. Fretting about how this makes me less of a companion, less of a teacher, less of a person.