Oddly enough, this isn't a self-destructive post.

[ Trying to get a handle on Bonfire. Bear with us here. ]

Something that bothers me occasionally is that there are sins for which I cannot get expiation.

There is no way to ask for forgiveness. There is no way to repair the harm. My part was a tiny one -- but it was a banal part, a just-doing-my-job part, a part that wasn't personal. The wounded will never know my name, know that I played any part at all. If I hadn't done it, someone else would have.

But it was still done.

When I remember it, I feel filthy. None of the ways of getting clean are available to me except for the oblique one, the sidelong one, the one that doesn't help the person whose wounds I could see through the news clippings in the file, the paperwork in the file, the life filled in between the lines of newspaper reporting and legalese -- the one that says "I can't fix it, but I can do my damnedest to keep it from ever happening to someone else."

It's good to remember sometimes, why I'm such a hardass about marriage. Why I don't have any space to compromise in my psyche. Why it matters so much to me. Because I think about those worst things I've seen and I want to scrub my hands until they bleed and the blood is clean, and I take that need to be clean and I go out and say "No more." Maybe the ghosts will forgive me enough that I can be okay, when people can marry, when their families are protected.

No more.

It matters too much.

This probably makes no damn sense and I've broken down in tears and hysterics anyway.

Too much thinking about marriage lately. Probably bad for me.

Lúgh mailing list.

Especially for jehanna and arawen.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Cro_Loga

This post on the Cauldron's message board has a thorough summary of the purpose of the list.

Recovery and grief

Flowing-together of several thoughts in a somewhat paint-splattered confluence . . .

Eventually last night I went upstairs and sobbed on teinedreugan for a while, and talked, and was held, and felt miserably guilty for snapping at brooksmoses, and a variety of other things.

And he talked a little about grief, and asked me if I'd thought of working through a ritual to help me deal with this grief.

I hadn't; I hadn't really conceptualised my reaction to that as grief. But I think he's right, and I think it is, and I wing myself thinking of how Malidoma Somé traces so much of the harm in the culture of the West to people not knowing how to grieve. If I can't even identify my grief, how can I grieve?

And I remember the discussion lysana hosted at PCon, about the darker gods, and the need for grief and a place for it, and I try to put the pieces together into something that works for me.

I painted -- well, did the base coat on -- my statue of Yinepu just now. My hands are smudged over with black and white and gold. And the figure is more alive, more real, more a reminder of His presence in my life, recent but strong enough to already be familiar. On a whimsy I drybrushed His nose slightly gold. Again, I find myself remembering that one of the major draws to Kemeticism for me was the colour. And I keep finding myself turning around to look in His eyes. The statue is, at the moment, behind me and a little to the left -- where He always is these days. (Because Wepwawet is on the right.)

I'll probably do a specifically focused Rite in the next few days to see if He has any guidance for my grief, and to offer the stone I bought for Him at PCon.

(And, of course, since I commented yesterday that I don't seem to get RSI except from computer games because I have the attention span of a cloud of gnats, I've strained something in between my pointer and middle fingers on my right hand from repetetive motion, and only aggravated it by painting. Such is life; Hail Eris.)