Chimeric Belief

You are homesick and bloody from work. As the gods and spirits and myths before you, you left your home for a new land in hopes of a change that never happens, and travel now unseen in the background.

You trail in the footsteps of Freyr, Demeter, Enlil, and Ninurta, following the harvest across the land. Potatos, corn, and beans are popular but you find yourself in the trees, reaching for apples and hovering a distance above the ground that could mean your death if you fall.

Orion nips at your heels as you travel, carrying with him his bow made of snow and ice and his cold wind arrows, a harbinger of winter. Ahead of you flies Cygnus and Aquila with the warmth of summer in their wings, circling above the traveling Ursa Major. Others travel with the Great Mother Bear, planting the seeds that you take corn and potatoes and beans from now.

You don't travel alone; with you comes people from countries not your own and though you rarely travel with the same person twice, you find comfort in not being alone. With you too are the gods you worship and the ones created in the ruts of the wagon wheels and the dirt of the fields. Here are Jesus, Allah, and thunderbirds.

Many of those around you are Christian; Jesus, Yeshua bin Yosef, was a traveller and he found his home in Brazil, Mexico, Russia, America. He is a familiar presence here at your side and though you have no rosary of your own, people you have only ever met once and will never meet again offer you their prayer beads in the moments between work and rest and death.

There are those that believe only in moments of rest, that bask in the light of a sun that is sometimes friend, sometimes enemy. They live to a rhythm only they can hear, melding their lives as a whole into something quiet and holy. They are not happy, not really, but you think they could be content.

More still acknowledge the sacral kitchen and dining room, the quiet reverance of a warm meal and familial atmosphere. Your mother would oft scold you for not respecting the sacred mealtime; only here, in fields and houses not your own, with never a moment to clean the dust and dirt of travel from your skin, have you truly understood how divine a moment to eat truly is.

There are other things, there will always be other things. People have found belief in fields and stormy skies and travelling for aeons. You will too, eventually, when the road and the dirt beneath your feet are your only constant friends.