Gods and Goddesses Within

This small church, St. Antoine de Padoue Church, is located in Saskatchewan, in what is now a National Park called Batoche.  There is a history lesson in the story of this church, but that story is not for this blog.  Just an aside, the church is still in use for occasional services for the Métis community that lives in the area.  I took my brother here for a visit in order to see if there was any connections to be made.  Though we are Métis, the tiny rural community and church didn't provide any threads of connection.  I should have known that quest was doomed to fail as I was again looking outward for connection, for validation, for salvation.  To be honest, I must own my story and my own quest and not place it on a community or a "faith."

"By identifying the unconscious as the source of every God or Goddess who ever, in whatever guise, addressed mankind, Jung challenges humanity to take heed of this side of itself, to gain a heightened awareness of the direction from which it is approached by the deities and to enhance its appreciation of the continued power.  Put briefly, Jung is saying that since mankind cannot divest itself of its relation to Gods and Goddesses, it wold therefore be in its best interests to face that side of itself from which they come, in the hope of teasing from them a myth which would be safe for its collective survival and enrichment." (Dourley, The Illness That We Are, pp 75-76)

It's tempting to cling to one of the new and revised holistic "faiths" as it would mean that I could have a rest from owning the roots of my own spiritualism.  But, for whatever reason, each of these new containers of "hope" leave me resisting.  I am left saddened and worried.  I ache for the loss that is lived by all those who migrate to new faiths, loosing their old faiths as much as I ache for those still unconscious of their own worth as they worship a God that is more and more distant, Gods who promise a holocaust for the human race.  I ache for those who almost gleefully grab the latest books proclaiming the end of the world.  If only they could discover the beauty within themselves, the gods and goddesses within themselves.