Heed the Hail of Beyond

    If we do not heed the hail of Beyond, that the wod within us drives us towards, then we lose enoughness in our beyonding, and in that gap, the force of greed enters in.

    We've got it good. Say, a good companion, a decent home, some good connections, a good, wholesome project or two which isn't doing so bad. We're not masters of the universe, but we've got something worthwhile that can grow in its own time, a worthy garden to tend, and then ...

    It's not enough. And so, we "trade up", as we say in this competitive culture so warped by commodification. We give up the good because something "better" nags at us, a "better", a "more" (more, more), that doesn't ask for spiritual growth, that doesn't ask for hunkering in and rooting, that doesn't quest us, but instead, lures out through glamour alone, and an empty, defairied glamour at that.

    And we forget that that "more" that threatens to corrode our enoughness is but the tarnished echo of that Beyond we've abandoned, a Beyond we could find within the Enoughness.

    To find the Beyonding in the Enoughness. That there could sufficiently define the heathen path. It's not easy, by any means. But it is rewarding.

    It is not that you should settle for something that is less than you, but more that the good is so good it is not worth giving up for something that only nags. Nagging is emptiness calling out for companionship in the emptiness ... to eat you ... to pull you into Utgard, the ghostly call -- come out into the cold inhospitable. And there you lose yourself, you freeze into the ghostliness, the shock and awe of bad enchantment, chasing fulfillment like Tantalus, always out of reach. But Beyonding will be with you even in the enoughness. It will fructify it and make it grow.

    I am, of course, not saying one should never gamble. Risk and daring are our way, but home is also important. It is very important. One's risks and gambles should be to honor the ancestors who live in the homeland, to honor our home-mates, our kith as well as our kin. But sometimes we get complacent with the ones we love. We let them stagnate. We do not honor the wod within them. We fail to challenge them. This is, needless to say, different than a failure to accept them and trying to naggingly criticize them into a space we'd like them to be, but more accepting them in their dynamic nature, and spurring them on a bit with loving push and emphasis, the right amount of fire and mischief and muscle and gentleness. If we let home become homebodyness, we may lose the hearth's vital spark. There is nothing saying we cannot go on vikings. But if we keep the home alive by ensuring the circulation of vital force and spiritual growth within it, then it lives in our heart even as we are out adventuring, and we neither squander it nor abandon it for illusions. Instead, we bring treasures back to it.

    Bring the beyond back. Let it stir up and fructify the home, the village, the hood. Quest for it to keep your spirit alive. And let it sprout strange smiles within the hearty enoughness. Heed the hail of beyond. Hail the heed of enough.