Kate Solusar’s Holocron

Last Friday, in chat, one of our long-term, well-respected members of our community expressed their view that discussions here often have a strong element of anti-Christian sentiment.  This member had really wanted to post about their observations, but felt it would detract from the Jedi training and mission of the site.  I asked this member if they felt I exhibited such sentiments in my posting, and they took care to assure me that I was very diplomatic and respectful, but that it was evident I was disillusioned and disheartened about Christianity and perhaps religion in general.  This conversation inspired me to share more about my personal spirituality and how I’ve come to hold the views I do today.

I’ve shared a bit in my initial holocron entry about what brought me to become a member of this site and choose to study, train, and make the Jedi way part of my spiritual journey in this life, so I will not go into those details again here.  Instead, I want to shed some light on some of my questions of the faith in which I was raised.  I want to make it very clear, it is a path for which I have the greatest respect and still strive to live, just in a different way.  I read very widely and probably one of the most influential writers I have encountered in the last 5 years or so has been Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.  He is a historical fiction and thriller writer, not a historian, or a theologian.  I see him as a layperson willing to ask “what if?”  His writing awakened a sense of tantalizing possibility, one that was only deepened by yet another historical fiction writer, Anita Diamant, author of The Red Tent.  For the first time, I was captivated by the idea of the divine feminine, of religion and ritual that was specifically female - of, by, and for women, that responded to their needs and honored the female life cycle – maiden, mother, and crone.  From where I stood, the faith of my upbringing was pallid, offering very little in the way of honoring and blessing my journey into motherhood, with all that entailed.  Childbirth and the pain that accompanied it was because of Eve eating the apple in Eden, so there was no honor or blessing in the messy, wonderful process of life-giving and life-bearing, and there was a sense that I was tainted, unclean.  There used to be a ritual for the mother of a newborn returning to the church community called “churching” which was a holdover from Jewish ritual purification ceremonies following childbirth.  Yuck.  I felt repulsed and repulsive to my church community – that old sex equals sin equals evil thing.  Unspoken, unintentional of course, particularly in this day and age, but present nonetheless.

So I started searching elsewhere to find a spiritual home that welcomed and honored me and that was not so patriarchal, male-oriented and dominated.  All of the great monotheistic traditions – Judaism, Christianity (in all its forms and guises), and Islam had the same patriarchal structure and predominantly negative view of women, except in their time-worn, familiar supportive roles.  That led me to learn about and seek out Earth-based spiritualities, like the Wiccan and other pagan or neo-pagan or reconstructionist or what have you communities.  Although I found much there to feed my spirit, it didn’t quite meet me where I was and I couldn’t quite meet it either, in all fairness.  Following the events I detailed in my first entry, along with Katrina and other natural disasters, my questions only grew.  I couldn’t put my head around the idea that some believers could be saved (e.g., they missed the planes on 9/11 or their lives and property were saved from the hurricanes or wildfires) but others, those who died on the planes and in the towers, those who died or lost everything in the disasters were not.  It just did not square up with what I had been taught about God and God’s nature and the sense I had that if God was omnipotent and omnibenevolent, as I had been taught, then God would not have permitted such harm to occur.  Blaming the devil,  particularly for natural disasters and their results, made no sense either.  It also really got to me when people would say God gave me my autistic son because God knew I could handle it (well, thank you very much, ugh!).  And, then with Christian and other religious views on evil, where did that all fit in?  Whenever I tried asking (heck I asked and discussed these issues with an Islamic cleric online even!), I was told to trust and just have faith, that I was asking into things too much for me, or that I was being impious or something similar.  Something had to give.  I needed to find a safe haven to explore, to seek, and to find.  So, I believe that the Force led me here, to this community.  I see in the Jedi way, a crossroads, where people of all walks of life, from various and sundry belief systems and even non-belief systems can find a common ground and gain the awareness and insight needed to live a well-grounded, ethical, even mystical spiritual life.  I have met and walked with all kinds of people here, and even share and learn with Sith/ist folks as well.  What I have found most helpful here is that, in the Jedi community, there really is no male or female, free or unfree, young or old (to paraphrase the apostle Paul from the Bible).  Mastery is not an end, it’s just a road sign, a step on the path of return to the Force at the end of our life’s journey.  And it is attainable by anyone committed to the path and willing to walk it to the best of their ability.

On this path, in this community, I can discuss my deepest questions, learn life lessons, all within the context of a fictional mythos, knowingly created by fallible humanity, without getting into the kinds of debate that we had recently here in the Moses thread, about the historicity or mythology or respect or disrespect issues people get into where the Bible is concerned.  I believe that Jesus was a great man, even Divinity incarnate, but I am very aware that my questions and my frustrations with the Christianity of my upbringing and culture make me a heretic within that tradition, and put me outside the pale there.  It makes me seem disheartened and discouraged.  I will say this – I have nothing but the greatest respect for people here, in this community, in this world of ours, today and historically who really and truly were or are people of great faith willing to really live their faith, Christian or otherwise.  We talk about many of them here from time to time – like Lao Tzu, or Buddha, Jesus, Moses, or Muhammed.  I know a few of those who claim to follow in their footsteps who truly are shining examples for the beliefs they claim to uphold.  They are an inspiration to me, and are examples I am willing to follow where their path intersects my own.

I love that question by Dr. Phil.  I was inspired to write this by one of Spark Vallen’s posts in her holocron about what’s more important — choosing to be peaceful or choosing to be right.  Growing up, particularly in my adolescence, I was far, far more concerned with being right than being peaceful.  In an effort to ensure my correctness, I had no problems striving for the utmost, exacting, technical correctness, particularly when expressing any kind of opinion.  I thought being right gave me the right to correct others’, either their “technical” errors or their erroneous opinions.  I didn’t care about my tone, or how I expressed myself, or how the way I expressed myself affected other people.  After all, I just wanted me to be right and others to be right too, or agree with me.  I liked using the “bully pulpit” as a way to get my points across and didn’t mind browbeating people into submission.  And it worked!

It took my husband to be (at the time) to show me that there was another way, a better way, one that respected others more and allowed them to express themselves and yes, make their own mistakes and actually learn from them.  He let me know that he did not appreciate this side of me, and considered it to be bullying.  He did not ask or demand me to change, but offered to help me work on this if I wanted to change my behavior.  It is amazing what love can do in effecting a positive change.   It’s been 10 years of hard work on this, and I am glad to say that I’ve improved for the better and that my spouse is great at keeping me on track.

I bring this up, because I realize now that my priorities in discussions have changed.  I prefer to achieve consensus where possible, to agree to disagree if consensus is not achievable.  Obviously, this is a practice I bring with me to this community, in our dialogue and discussion here.   I cannot control what others may say or do, and there are times when I really wish others had taken a different approach in a given situation.  So now I find myself striving to be a peaceful person, caring more about my relationships with others and my community, than the need I have to be right.  Because when it comes down to it, in order to be right, someone else has to be wrong.  There are times when correction is necessary, as a parent, that is an important part of my job.  But I would rather find a way to achieve that where no one has to lose face because of my words or actions.  I find that controlling my words and actions, taking care to be respectful and considerate of the other’s point of view and perspective, is the best way to achieve this.  Taking responsibility for my words and actions, acknowledging when my intentions have fallen short of the mark and offended another, intentionally or not, and genuinely working to heal the breach without a conditional apology, but with sincere, heartfelt words, is another way of also achieving this.  I have a dry wit and humor and can be sarcastic, all too easily.  I have even ended up being that way unintentionally, simply because I have spoken without thinking.  I have hurt others, and shot my own message in the foot when I get carried away.   That does not work for me or for my message or for others.  I am less than I can be and certainly than I am called to be as a Jedi.   So it all comes back to Dr. Phil’s question — “How’s that working for you?” 

One thing I like about the spiritual path I am currently on, is that it allows room for questions.  Having grown up in a highly structured religious tradition, one that strives for logical, settled answers within its particular tradition, it’s not always been easy to ask questions.  When I shifted off the moorings I spoke of in my last entry, I found I had lots of questions.  What did I really believe?  I have come to understand that the answers I think I have now may never be entirely settled, that I may have to realize that my human experience is too limited to fully grasp what I seek to understand.

 As Jedi, we speak of following the Force.  A new academy student, submitting their first assignment, again challenged me to consider the nature of the Force.  It was their belief that the Force is non-sentient and has no will of its own.  I find this appealing, if hard to put into words and understanding.  It certainly is a challenging perspective for someone with an upbringing in a theistic tradition, like me.  My own considerations of this question and meditation and reflection on it has led me to consider that if the Force has any will at all it is for balance, for homeostasis, based on how I view its operation in nature, in the world around us.   It also appears to seek uninhibited flow through all things.  There is no where the Force is not.  It is impossible for us not to affect or be affected by the Force in our lives.  The biggest difference I see between Jedi and other Force users (Sith/ist, Jensaarai, and others) and those who don’t share a similar belief or view is awareness.  We are just more aware of that connection, and our effect and being affected in turn.

 What this means for me in my daily life is that I need to strive to be awake, fully aware of my connections, and discern how to best align myself to the natural flow.  It does not mean I do not seek to improve situations or myself — I do.  In fact, caring for my body, taking responsibility for my health, affirms my personal responsibility to make decisions to be that open channel, allowing myself to both bend and be bent by the currents and eddies of the Force within and outside me.  If decisions about sleep, what enters my body, my physical activity, and similar practices can enhance or impede the flow of the Force in my own being, imagine how my decisions about handling waste, resources like water, also have an impact.  Here’s where for me, the rubber meets the road, where my practice impacts all aspects of my day to day.