Like a Moth to the Misfits, or, Finding My "In Betweens"

Already two months in your presence my friends... such an unexpected gift.

I have become very fond of & comfortable with our little local Thelemic "study group." I find myself looking forward to our meetings for many days beforehand -- it has become my respite from a weekly grind which I keep thinking will come to a halt, but still refuses to relent. For several weeks I have been wondering about how & why, in the spiritual shakedown, I would wind up with the Thelemites. After all, my relationship with Mr. Crowley has always been simultaneously ambivalent & appreciative. Most certainly his approach to spiritual engagement was a far cry from huffing duff in some damp forest... 

Members of the local O.T.O. encampment sometimes join us, but last night none of them attended. This allowed for an openness & freedom of personal expression which is quelled in their presence. (This occurs, I believe, out of respect for visitors who are not privy to our personal lives & politics -- an effort not to bore them -- not because they are intolerant guests or because we we fear candid conversation.) In their absence, we talked at length, without pause, without awkward silences, without splintering into side conversations, winding freely in & out of overtly Thelemic themes into other subjects, brushing upon more personal matters & community matters...

We talked about Thelema.
We talked about rites, rituals, ceremony-ing & common vs. individual religious experience.
We talked about understanding & misunderstanding.
We talked about pan-pagn politics & the woes thereof.

We talked about language & the language of symbols, both shared & strange.

We talked about pasts & futures & common stories.
We talked about wanting to belong, but refusing to compromise ourselves in order to do so.

We talked about values & wants & needs & dreams & how virtually none of us gets what we really want.

We talked about how in this big, little Alaskan community each of us is really quite alone...

I realized something about this group; we are the community's misfits (not all of them, of course), the in-betweens. A crew comprised of bookworms, butterflies, dedicants & dirt monkeys, none of us "practice" in the same manner. We do not share a common spiritual tradition & we vary greatly in the degree to which our worldviews overlap. Yet, with uncommon consistency we continue to aggregate & bond. Moths spiraling between the flames, in the Darkness, among the Stars, amid the Everything & the Nothing. 

Before last night, I assumed that our shared appreciation for the Law of Thelema was the binding agent; the glue that held us together & gave us a common language. Now, I think there is something more that unites us, something beyond & in addition to, Thelema. I cannot yet articulate it. It might be a mysterious, organic, complicated commonality of something or, it could be as raw & basic as loneliness... or perhaps a simple answer lies with Rudolph & his dentist friend.

Regardless of the glue's composition, I am so very thankful to fly among these people.