73rd Ritual: Fallibility and Repentance
A calm and peaceful evening to every being.
May her unsurpassed kindness guide us in our actions.
The holy word teaches us:
no one has a right to claim infallibility.
no one has a right to be the sole judge
of one’s own ability to fuck up
and history of mistakes.
no one has a right to objectively divide
people into good (read as superior)
and bad (read as inferior) people.
good and bad are shitty concepts anyway,
designed to create a hierarchy
based on arbitrary principles and
sortition of character.
no one has the right to absolve themselves
or deny necessity to repentance.
and no one has a right to receive
or duty to give forgiveness.
but neither does anyone have the right
to deny anyone else the path of repentance.
yes, goddess.
I wish it wouldn’t be necessary for you to say this. I wish it would be less normalized to weaponize mistakes and fallibility and immediately turn them into assets on the eternal cynical playing field of power and influence.
Goddess, I have always admired your kind and caring ways, and I try my best to follow them as well. Your emphasis on commitment to dealing with fallibility instead of perfection is the foundation of all my interactions with others, but also with myself.
People deserve room to grow - and I, for myself, am eternally thankful for the room and inspiration for growth that you have blessed me with.
Whenever I explain to beings what things she has changed in my life, this is where I start.
She has brought a much more humane, less harsh, and more productive way of dealing with conflicts and mistakes to my life, and witnessing her live to these standards herself was one of the things that built my unshakable trust in her. Back when she first revealed herself to me, I was living in so much pain, intense conflicts with myself and my past mistakes. Goddess has managed to reconcile me with myself, as well as many beings who hurt me, while also teaching me to stop denying pain.
But her word doesn’t just matter on a personal level. A deeply fucked-up way of dealing with mistakes is destroying so many communities, particularly among the most marginalized, and causing so much pain. And of course there is an impulse to cover up wrongdoing, to hide behind moral supremacy, in a world that knows nothing but good or bad, right or wrong, black or white. It’s all turning into a great war of good against evil far too often, and far too often, the pain of those hurt along the way is merely used as the necessary moral justification for personal crusades.
Thank you, goddess, for helping me escape these brutal wars of good and bad.
Thank you for opening my mind to dealing with mistakes in a healthy way.
Thank you, goddess, for your endless kindness.
Meow.