Today was a bit discouraging, I admit. I have been trying this past week to teach Freya to focus her will, in order to give her some influence over any future fighting, but it is something of the blind leading the blind. I do not have the language to pass on the teaching that was given to me, and even if I did, my training as a Guardian was expanding on a foundation that I have received since birth. We hoped, and we still hope, that some of that teaching might come back to Freya now that she knows the truth, but she has not asked about her previous life. I do not think she is quite ready to explore who she once was, which I understand completely. When one’s worldview is shattered, it is unwise to shake one’s understanding of self at the same time. In any case, my “lessons”, such as they are, have done little more than confuse her.
This morning Freya had a new idea, and she called me to her in order to start right away. “Since angelic methods aren’t working, I looked into human ways of focusing willpower, and I’m amazed I didn’t think of it before now,” she said. She was arranging cushions on the floor in her living room and lighting incense. “Meditation has done exactly that for so many people. Why shouldn’t it be a good starting place for me, too?”
I was enthusiastic at the plan, if only because she was. So she settled down on the floor and closed her eyes, breathing deeply, and for a moment I thought this would be the right approach. But then one of the cats jumped into her lap, and when they were locked up they scratched on the door and wailed for several minutes. Then Freya found the incense too strong, and her foot fell asleep, and then she herself began to doze off. She gave up after that.
“It’s not a bad idea,” I told her as she flopped down on the sofa, sighing in frustration.
“It’s a very bad start,” she countered, rubbing her eyes. Then she sat up. “Oh, you know what? I know someone who might be able to help me.” She reached for her phone and flicked through her contacts, but then she stopped and glanced up. “Wait, it’s Sunday. He’s at church right now.”
“It can wait until later then.”
Freya glanced down at her phone, feeling awkward, and I waited for the question that was coming.
“Ace, does it bother you that I don’t go to church?”
I was surprised. Her laptop was upstairs, but there was a spinner on the table next to her, and I moved the pencil immediately to point to “no.”
“Why not?” she asked. “I mean, here you are giving me all the proof I could want that it’s all real, but I still couldn’t get my butt up to go to church.”
There was no way to answer this with the spinner, so I leaned over her shoulder to look at the phone in her hands. She felt me looking and tapped one of the squares, opening a blank screen that looked much like the word processor. It didn’t take me long to figure it out after that.
Attending worship services is not a moral requirement, Freya. It is meant to be a help, not an obligation.
Now it was her turn to be surprised. “So people don’t have to go to church to get to heaven?”
If they did, it would be difficult for non-Christians, wouldn’t it? But no, worship services are not compulsory. It is never wise to try and force the human spirit.
“Huh,” she said, frowning. “So—and I’m not trying to be offensive—but what’s the point of them?”
Freya, I can read your emotions. I know that you are not trying to offend me.
She grumbled something about still thinking that was unfair.
And I make my emotions available for you to read, too.
“Okay, okay, just answer the question,” she said.
The purpose is community. Everyone does better in the company of people who believe the same things that they do—or at least similar things. You’ll not find one church, nor mosque, nor synagogue, nor gathering circle of any kind that knows the full truth, and most of the members don’t even share all of the beliefs the organization was built around. But when people come together with an aim to improve themselves and to help one another—well, that is always good.
She curled into the corner of the sofa. “What about churches that teach bad things? Child-abusing priests and hateful sermons about how gay people are going to hell?”
Well, those people don’t really have an aim to improve themselves or the world, do they? They may say so, but their real desire is to exclude others and to glorify themselves. And that is never good.
“It’s all about intentions,” Freya murmured.
Just so.
She shook her head and put down her phone, leaning back and closing her eyes. “Ace, you’re a religion in and of itself,” she said. “I’m learning more from you than I ever did in Sunday school.”
“I hope that you use it well,” I murmured to her, and showed her my certainty that she would. It made her smile, and she got up to try the meditation again. This time she did a bit better.