There's the Law and There's What's Right

'Scuse me while I ramble 'n' rant a wee.

Sometimes laws are made.  Sometimes?  Too often! 

The social contract tells us how to behave, in a general sense, and laws are supposed to help enforce the boundaries and keep us civil.

Thing is, it seems that some folks think they can and should force everyone else to think and do as they do, even when their mandates fly in the face of justice.

Recently, the state of Georgia passed a whole mess of laws restricting the ability of its citizens to vote.  I won't bore you with the details - they're horrifying and unjust and bewildering in their indecency.  Horrible people making horrible rules because they think they can do what they like and make everyone else do it, too.  If you're reading this, you obviously have some kind of Internet skills and can Google the stupidity.

Although the whole mess makes me irate, I'm really stuck on one part.  I am...riled...

Georgia lawmakers have made it unlawful to give food or water to people standing on line to vote.

Umm...

Hello, Georgia, have we met?

Because I know, if we'd ever met, you wouldn't have done that. 

You'd have run the other way, in fact.  Possibly you'd have bound and muzzled whoever proposed it and left them on a mountain top under a new moon as a propitiating sacrifice to the gods of decency.

Because now?  The Witch is...riled...

There will be a reckoning.

Lest anyone mistake the above for some kind of threat, it's not.  I don't threaten.

What I DO is feed people.  Anyone who is hungry.  Regardless of who you worship, vote for, love, admire, wear, or follow, I will feed you.  Even the lowest of humans, politicians, I will feed if they hunger.  I will always strive to answer hunger and thirst.  There is no circumstance that will keep me from doing what I can, what is just and right and compassionate.  No mortal being, no law of the land, no threat, will make me stray from that path, will bend my integrity, will keep me from it.  I've not yet met the god that would demand I stop, nor has the power to make me.

You, Georgia lawmakers?  You are mere mortals, and among the weakest of them.  You believe that you have power, that you have mastery over your subjects.

You do not.

You believe in an illusion, and one day the illusion will fade and there will be a reckoning.

Among many pagans is a blessing of sorts:  May you never hunger.  May you never thirst.

I take this seriously.  Bone deep, in fact.

There's also the threefold law, a reminder that for every action there is a consequence, usually magnified three times - harm someone, receive three time the harm (often by your own hand).  Help someone, three times the blessing will find you.

Some witches curse.  Some people seek vengeance through action.  Me?  I bless.  Sometimes, though, it's wise to fear the blessing.

Bless you, Georgia lawmakers who enacted this travesty.  May you see yourself.  May you find the world reflecting you to you, and truly See yourself.  May you know, to the bone, to the soul, to every corner, in ever shadowy place you seek to hide, may you Know what you are, what you have done.  May you feel what your actions mean to those you seek to control.  May you understand, all the way to your last breath, what kind of evil you carry within you.  May you have opportunity after opportunity to make things right, and may you find the courage to act on those opportunities even against the poison of your own souls.  May your children, and your children's children, unto the last generation, set themselves to right your wrongs or endure the consequences and curse you for it.  May you know what it means to suffer unjustly until you learn how to be just.

May you know what it is to need compassion...and may compassion find you, reach out to you, offer succor, without pain or price, because your unjust laws?  Do not make you free from need, and compassion asks no price.  Unlike you, compassion doesn't care how it may benefit from its action.  It also won't keep you from collecting your consequences, because compassion knows that some lessons must be learned hard, and it would be cruel to protect you from your actions.  How would you learn?

Between this life and the next, there is someone standing at the gate.  They have the power to determine your destination.  Consider your actions and which pathway your feet will be set upon.  How will you answer for what you've done?  What will you tell the savior you claim to worship, to follow, to adore?  

Bless you, who made this cruelty into law.  I hope you learn quickly that there is the law, and there is what is right, and sometimes the two are not the same.  We are not obliged to obey unjust laws, and you can be replaced.

There will be a reckoning.