Old School (Non-Neo, Small-P) Pagan in the City

(Using the most simple, stripped-down, irreligious definition of pagan here: country dweller. Or a person who is earth-based, living life connected to the land/nature and the Earth's cycles.)

The thing is, I don't feel like an alien on Earth. I feel foreign among most of the people on Earth and within the way people have things set up currently, but I love being on Earth itself. The nature, the animals, the landscapes, the elements. These basic components all feel right to me. It's just when I'm around most of the people on this planet, interacting with them and traipsing through the way things have been set up (especially in the urban setting) that I wonder at times if I can withstand it.

It's the lack of soul that does me in. The lack of wisdom. The lack of connection to the Earth and its cycles. The lack of valuing what is truly valuable. It's living by the corporate time clock, chasing dollah dollah bills. It's the constant chatter that says nothing, the traffic, the cell phones, the disconnect, all the artificial light, the people living their busy, busy lives making decisions that boggle my mind with their shortsightedness. It's the meanspiritedness. The crookery. The illegitimate power. The institutionalized hatred and violence. It's the inane hierarchies and their ridiculous social rules. The compartmentalization. The ignorant, assheaded decisions made by our so-called leaders, who have little to no regard for (or understanding of) the effects of those decisions on the people and environments around them.

This makes it disheartening because I want to be able to enjoy my time on this beautiful planet. And I want to be surrounded by those humble, good-hearted, down-to-earth people who feel like home to me.

But I've had to be in the city way more than I would like (the most recent one being hugely corporate, Big Oil, glossy-imaged, new rich), among people whose value systems and ways of living I don't share.

I'm in the city because the cities are the epicentres for the people who want to eat the Earth I love for dinner. This is where the directives come from to strip my Earth down for parts, to trade it away for dollars and cents, and to use and abuse the good-hearted people here. This is the raw battleground where the tipping point is tipped and a new balance found.

So for my deep, deep love of Earth and my Earthly comrades, I'm here. We're here.

I don't feel as if I belong on another planet. I feel as if most of the people I come into contact with do. :-)

I'm not a starseed. I'm not one who feels that I'm "not of this planet, just in this spacesuit human body." I don't want to leave - unless we lose the fight and it becomes completely uninhabitable. (There have been moments, haven't there?) I want to make it better here. I want to kick out the bastards and the crooks and the devaluers of this Earth and its inhabitants.

I don't want to leave Earth's living things to their devourers.

I'm not an ascension-preacher. The consciousness has always been here on Earth for those willing to tap in.

I'm not here for a New Earth. I'm not here to transcend this Earth. I want the same Earth that that runs through my blood and bones. The same Earth that ran through the blood and bones of my ancestors. I want my feet firmly planted on the ground. The wind whispering to me the wisdom of the ages.