Are you open to religious experiences?

[thesummerqueen]

Spiritual experiences?

A long time ago here, I posted poorly shot pictures that barely captured the experience of returning to one of the three major touring caverns in Northern VA. I hadn't been there for over a decade. I had a terrible, passionate and profound urge to kneel and touch the rock, as if somehow you could feel through the cold layers the slow, beating heart of the earth. Everything in those caves was so beautiful, from the anthodites in their formerly vacuum sealed chamber, looking like blossoming flowers, to the ribbons of rock festooning walls and ceilings, finer and thinner than the most polished hand-carved marble. And none of it - NONE OF IT - was formed because of us. If no one had discovered the cave, those formations would still be there in a darkness so extreme that a human would go mad living in it. And yet, even deep, deep under the earth, the cave tour guides had to be very careful about light sources because wherever a lamp shone for extended periods of time, moss grew. Life is so tenacious.

Did you know that the Appalachian mountains are some of the oldest on earth? There's something almost Lovecraftian about them. They aren't as spectacular looking as the Rockies because they're so much older, worn down by rain and wind and life. When you drive through them at sunset, the more distant ones take on a look like they're made of glass and amber, like sidhe halls shut to human entrance. I discovered my atheism, and one of those spiritual places, standing on a deck overlooking the Shenandoah river as it fought to melt out of its winter stupor. Spring creeps up the mountains a hands breadth at a time, like a bride sliding off her icy white gown and revealing herself in cream and pink splendor, when the dogwoods and redbuds bloom. It's achingly lovely. If you go a bit off the paths from the Blue Ridge Parkway, you find glades that fill with streamers of sunlight, glittering with dustmotes like fairies among all the wildflowers. It is a pagan place - if there were a Goddess, she would wander there.

Rhythm will tell you - the only true words in the bible were when Moses was told to take off his shoes, for he stood on holy ground. The whole earth is a spiritual place, and full of those experiences. You can feel it when you plunge your arms elbow deep into damp spring soil. You can taste it during crazy thunderstorms when the air is thick with humidity and ozone.

I got "We are Star Stuff" inked on my arm, because the most spiritual expression I've ever heard came digested through Sagan, then Neil deGrasse Tyson as he passionately explained that we are made of the guts of exploded stars. We are made of the universe's fabric, part of it in a way that no biblical tale can ever hope to match. That makes me feel divine and luminous, the elements of starlight briefly robed in mortal flesh.

Oh yes. I am open to spiritual experiences. Whitman's "Song of Myself" is a better hymn to the profound nature of the earth and its inhabitants and their place in the universe than ever any "religious" text.

Which is probably why if I were to have any *religious* experiences, they'd probably be Wiccan.