A Follower
I’m not terribly religious. Generally, I’d classify myself as a Unitarian Universalist. There is enough common ground between the “major” religions, there is enough “good advice” in all of the religions, that I’m hard pressed to say that one batch of 50,000,000 people are more right than another batch of 50,000,000 people. Before I knew there was such a thing as “Unitarians,” I referred to myself as a Godian. And in my glory days of poetry, aka my Angst-Ridden Teenage years, I wrote a long-winded description of the deity as a faceted jewel, of which most people could only see one facet, but now and then you could catch a glimpse of another, as the jewel turned.
I like the notion of “inspire” in the sense that an inspiration is the deity’s breath breathing through you. And just as your breath can be made into various words or sounds, or just a light humming noise, what you do with that breath is under your control, more or less. I also believe that each person, if they listen quietly, inside themselves, can hear suggestions or feel pulled in one direction or another. Not strong enough to call it “destiny” or to overpower our own decision-making, but we’ll be happiest if we listen to the wind of the gods through our heart and go where it suggests. Although sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between what we want to hear and what we are being told.
I also believe that in addition to these internal currents, there are external currents and signs. One of my main ones has been the sighting of a heron. For some reason, I feel an affinity for these gangly yet graceful birds, slowly flapping with their wide wingspan or standing quietly watching the fish pass beneath them. I also feel an affinity for otters, but I see many more herons than otters.
