The Judgement of a Priest

Quick proviso: I’m still learning.

This has been a recurring theme over the last week or so—a child is free to trust in their guardians, if they can. A child has consequences mitigated by their guardians.

An adult is their own keeper, and must experience the consequences of their actions. A friend or loved one might help, the lwa might help, but the action and its consequence belong to the adult. Worse, an adult mitigates the consequences for their children.

The increasingly hands off approach the lwa have often taken with me tells me that they intend me to grow up, to be an adult in full. And in the silence inside me, I understand that I will need to be an adult to do my work.

When we talk about age, we don’t mean the number of years a person has been alive. We mean the degree to which they have developed themselves: their capacity to function as an adult. For people who have the capacity, their ability to mitigate the consequences for the children they are asked to care for. You can be seventy years old in the body and three years old in the soul, a giant toddler ricocheting through life and leaving a mess everywhere you go. You can be seven in the body and forty-six in the soul, already cleaning up the messes of others and reflecting on the nature of your existence.

The way someone looks has little to do with the soul.

In a number of ways, the judgement of a priest is developed in the work they do on themselves, their issues, and their understanding. Priests are often called from truly bleak childhoods, so that they will understand the people they will work with. The judgement of a priest is developed in experience, in every type of experience.

I am watching mine as it develops. Papa once said to me, and it made no sense at the time, that initiation is the spirit giving itself to us to work with. I asked him how we were to love the spirit. His answer was in any way, in every way. A priest is a servant of the spirits: their caretaker.

In a real way, the judgement of a priest is the spirit giving us their tools to see what we do with it. We care for the spirits. We care for people. We care for each other.

I know I will do well for the simple fact that I am willing to take any consequence I must. The spirits are my beloved ones, just as much as my children will be.