It's Fine to be a Human-Doing

It's not all about 'being'

I’ve been reading A Secular Age by Charles Taylor. In Medieval Christianity, mystery and enchantment surrounded people, much as it did in the ancient pagan world. This was the time of the sacred bones of saints, blessed icons, and prayers for ancestors [ie. Indulgences] Eventually, the ideas of the Reformation convinced a portion of the Christian population that such things were idolatry. The only thing worth reaching toward with the soul was god’s grace. It was a very mental conception of the divine, and one that left no room for whatever pleasures one might take from being human.

It’s been making me think about the nature of enchantment, which is something Pagans both embrace and seek to create. You might say enchantment is something like, ‘the shift of consciousness that allows one to partly become one with the world around us and/or that which is greater than ourselves.’

I know this feeling. It is the bonds of connection in the middle of a group ritual or when dancing around a fire to the beat of drums. It is the color of the sky at the liminal moments at dawn and dusk, it is the breeze or water current that flows right through our bodies instead of around it, it is the sound of a hawk or crow crying far above.

Then the world intrudes.

The truth is, if I try and live in enchantment all the time, there’s a price. I am an embodied being with limitations. I have to choose how I spend my time. Since I’m 59, I feel this more acutely than I did at 30. Unless I choose death or misery, I must make sure there is a roof over my head and food on the table. I need to ensure my health is good so I can accumulate the skills and resources necessary to avoid a bad ending. This is true no matter which god we worship. It is true for every religion and every human.

Some religions have techniques for keeping the sacred present. For example, Orthodox Judaism has a blessing for most activities and people. To speak such a blessing is to remind one of the immanence of God. Muslims pray five times a day, and they know they join other Muslims in this even if they aren’t in a religious setting. When everyone around you holds the same beliefs and values, it’s much easier to feel the presence of the unseen world while doing mundane tasks.

Touching the immanent, the unseen world, is how I got through emotional turmoil. It gave me hope and a measure of peace.

What enchantment didn’t give me was the practical skills that allowed me to survive and thrive in the embodied world. Psychologists talk about two states of mind: Being and doing. In spiritual circles, ‘Doing,’ may be denigrated as being something lesser. I heard all the time that it is ‘being’ that matters.

We need both.

I’ve struggled with various health and emotional issues and writing or other creative work has been a way to engage with ‘being.’ Then disaster hit. It became clear my stepdaughter wouldn’t be paying the parental educational loans we’d taken out on her behalf. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and I had to find a way to keep us from bleeding $700 a month for ten years.

There was nothing enchanting about the situation. That’s what it is to be embodied. We must act, or we die. That doesn’t mean the gods aren’t present with us when we must act. I prayed to my gods about what to do. The answers came to me with shocking clarity.

I had no idea how to do what they said to, and neither did my husband. He found the thought of buying a property and fixing it up impossible and nerve-wracking. He’d bought houses twice and found the process incredibly stressful. I had to figure it out, and then convince him. Once we found a place and bought it, I hauled my behind there every morning for months. The house was broken down and neglected. I did the physical labor that usually only men do. I tore out walls, rotten wood, and carpet so we could make the place livable. This, while struggling with chronic Lyme disease. [One of my main symptoms was fatigue and dizziness. Mixing this with ladders was no joke.]

Pretty mundane.

That’s being goal-oriented. I didn’t do it as fast as a man would. But no one else was going to. My husband had to work [also in construction] to keep that roof over our heads and food on the table. So it fell to me, flawed and broken creature that I am. Praying would have been good. Ritual would have been good. But every ounce of energy I had was going in one direction and we were on a deadline.* I couldn’t have stopped.

Every day I set small goals, and achieving those goals sometimes got me a moment of grace. There is magic in looking with satisfaction at something we’ve made with our hands. When I finished framing a door, or putting trim on a cabinet, I nearly always stopped and took in what I’d done. [I still do this, and will often make my husband come and see. He indulges me. In his world everyone can do these things.]

Sometimes I didn’t get done what I hoped to because my body just wouldn’t cooperate. So then I re-set and made a new goal the next day. It mostly didn’t feel spiritual, let alone enchanted, and by the time I did a second one of these [to make a place to live for the aforementioned stepdaughter] I was pretty burnt out.

Then something amazing happened.

I realized my anxiety about my future, and the depression about how useful I was in the world was… gone. I’d saved myself and my husband from being bled dry by debt. I’d done everything I could to make sure my stepdaughter was housed and my husband didn’t have a broken heart from the tragedy that we were dealing with [still deal with.] My hard work created a steady income stream for us that didn’t exist before. I felt competent.

‘Being’ had given me temporary relief from my depression and anxiety. But it was only temporary.

It wasn’t until I started ‘doing’ with determination [and much later in life than was ideal] that I got a respite from those feelings. The goal-oriented behavior often subtly - or openly - criticized, is a path to competence. Competence in any endeavor is a path to a flow state. When we become so at something that we don’t have to think about it while doing it, then spirit runs through us, expressing the gods’ will if we invite it. That’s everyday enchantment, and it’s what I have in my life now.

There’s nothing wrong with being a human-doing. Goal-oriented behavior can be a path to peace of mind and gaining space to express creativity. I’m grateful for the direction the gods pointed me in. I’m grateful for the learning that came with pushing myself to do more. I’m grateful for their guidance, while also leading toward deeper meaning in the midst of ongoing pain.

Having passed through that fire, I know I can do it. When the gods point me in a direction, I can do the work it will take to get there. Doing is good. Goals are good. They make things better. I trust my gods more now than ever. I know they’re with me even when I’m wrapped up in the doing.

* I found out later how important having a deadline was when my inlaws bought a fixer-upper and lost thousands of dollars because they took years trying to make everything perfect.

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Selina Rifkin, M.S. [Nutrition], LMT, has been to Hades in a handbasket. More than once. This has given her some opinions. Like most of her generation [X] she’s okay with snark. Most days she tries for good writing. But the snark, and side comments creep in. She lives with her husband, and is Mother of Cats; four boyz and one cranky gurl. Selina has written The Young Woman’s Goodlife Guide: Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 20. Or… Learn From My Pain, and How to Train Your Cat: Using a Clicker and Leash to Keep Your Indoor Cat Happy and Healthy, and the Goodlife Guide to Nutrition.