Written weeks ago and lost...

[avevale_intelligencer]

So as a counteragent to the sheer Baeniness of it all--just in case I find myself getting the urge to find out what makes one kind of gun different from another, say--I'm reading Diana Wynne Jones's The Merlin Conspiracy (three quid in the boot sale, an unwanted present, I'm betting because the buyer thought it was going to be one of those books like The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail). [Edit: I have now finished it, and apart from this momentary jar, thoroughly enjoyed it. The following comments should not be taken as a reflection on the book, but rather on a train of thought that it brought to mind.] And I've got to the part where the Young Magic Person that DWJ does so well is sitting in a really-not-disguised-at-all Chalice Well Garden, though Glastonbury is not mentioned, being very irritated and harrumphy in an adolescent way about a bunch of people who are drinking the water and getting all happy and excited about it. She thinks, you see, that the place is all about being quiet and reverent and solemn and so on, and it turns out that she's right, the reason people are behaving so vulgarly is that an evil witch has bespelled the water.

I've sat through various people complaining that Chalice Well isn't the way they think it ought to be, and this sounds very very familiar. After a while of it, you start to feel what one is supposed to do is go in, sit for ten minutes with eyes closed and a constipated expression on one's face, drink one glass of water very quietly, and then leave. Anything else is violating the sanctity of the place. I've heard a pagan complaining about Christian images in the stonework, and a Christian getting very upset when it was suggested that the "vesica piscis" design on the well cover might possibly be interpreted as having something to do with the sexual act. (Whether it does or not I neither know nor care.) In recent years a practice has grown up of tying ribbons and crystals and little votive offerings to the branches of the tree that overhangs the well, and this has been a source of upset as well.

It's all these New Agey types, you see. They don't really understand. They're just pretending, playing at it. They don't see what a dreadfully serious business going to the Well really is. They think it's fun, for the deity of your choice's sake.

Well, I'm a New Agey type myself. I like crystals, and fancy wands and so on (looking at them anyway) and I happen to think that if a breadknife is just as magical as an intricately carved athame, then an intricately carved athame is just as magical as a breadknife and probably less covered with breadcrumbs, and take that, Granny flaming Weatherwax. And I like the idea that there can be a holy place where you can recognise and celebrate its holiness in your own way, not the way the people around you think you ought to, and if that means tying a ribbon to a tree or paddling in the paddling pool, or being happy if you feel happy, then that's what you should do and be damned what anyone thinks. It's your place as much as theirs. I think the ribbons and such are pretty and touching, and I think any Lady worthy of worship would feel the same.

I am also a psychic dead letter. I know that some people have a sense of the presence of God, because Jan does, but I don't (so according to one definition, amusingly enough, I've lived in hell all my life). So I feel very little in Chalice Well Gardens apart from the beauty of the place. Were I to be granted a moment of contact with the spirit of the Well, though, I'm pretty sure that what it would evoke in me is a strong urge to sing. I'm also pretty sure that if I were to yield to that urge, I would be surrounded by grumpy people going "ssssh" and worried people with badges asking me to stop or leave, because I was "spoiling it for the others." And, doubtless, earnest adolescents getting harrumphy about how vulgar I was being. I think I could live with that, though.

I just think it's sad that, for so many people, even in these multi-religious times, tolerance and spirituality seem to be mutually exclusive, and that I had to get this rant out of my system before I could carry on reading the book.

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Yea, Brother! OK, some of them go too far (doing damage to a stone circle by spilling wax all over it /is/ too far), but I'm with you on the singing (or "making a joyful noise" as the Bible says, there's no insistance that it must be tuneful). The problem, of course, is that when needs clash (their need for silence and the NAs' need for laughing, for instance) there is no way to resolve it so that everyone is happy except to separate the groups. At least with conventional places of worship one can define times to do one and times for the other (8o/c service is spoken, 9:30 is with organ and choir; 11o/c has a rock band), when the place is open to everyone it's hard to do that. I don't think thre's a solution...

[ci5rod.livejournal.com]

Different places, different times, different people... same purpose. Turn, turn, turn, and all that. It is difficult to be tolerant in situations like you describe, since it involves putting aside something that someone considers important, giving someone else's worldview temporary supremacy over one's own. That's rarely happy-making.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

True, but is it supposed to be? It's always difficult to be tolerant. I thought that was kind of the point.

I agree with Keris that one can't legislate a solution. Prescribing times would just mean that some people who wanted to worship a certain way would be unable to get to the place when their group was scheduled. And there would always be those who could not achieve tolerance at all, who would move heaven and earth to get the place reserved for their kind of worship and their kind alone.

The only solution comes from inside oneself...the recognition that one's deity doesn't go away because there's someone else around doing something one doesn't agree with, or because one is being prevented from doing that which feels necessary oneself. Tolerance is achieved by being tolerant oneself, and thus being an example of tolerance to others, and yet not expecting or demanding tolerance in return. (Which is why, even if I felt the urge to sing, I probably would restrain myself anyway, unless I was quite alone.)

It's not happy-making...but it's how we learn to share.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Or we don't go there. Personally, if I find that a place is not conducive to what makes me happy, I won't go. If, for instance, my appreciation of a place like Stonehenge were predicated on people being quiet there, and the other people going there want to be rowdy, I wouldn't go (indeed, in the case of Stonehenge I don't go, I find Avebury a lot more pleasant). I don't annoy others by telling them to be 'reverent' and they don't annoy me by being loud (or vice versa), which tends to minimise unhappiness even if it doesn't maximise happiness.

Being tolerant sometimes means "we won't intrude on each other, because our worldviews are too dissimilar that at least one of us will be hurt if we try to force them together". And that's not wrong, it's a recognition that people are different and we don't all enjoy the same things. I won't play heavy metal at 130dBA around you and you don't play techno trance around me, or whatever, no matter how much we each enjoy our chosen activities. As long as we communicate it in a tolerant way ("Sorry, I have nothing against your religion but I get an asthma attack from incense which is a major part of your services", for instance)...