This is long, I know, but hear me out. I've talked a little before about how modern worshipers tend to interpret Greek myth through a Christian lens and then get upset about it. I recognize the tendency in others because it was one of the major obstacles I faced early on in my own religious practice. Since then, I've realized that the mistake I was making was actually several smaller mistakes in a trenchcoat.
Mistake one was failing to consider historical context- not taking into account how an ancient Greek would have felt about things I considered unethical. The second mistake was conflating myth with actual cult practice and belief. Several people much more informed and much more eloquent than me have talked about those things at length. What I'd really like to dig into is the underlying desire for moral purity in my religious stories that drove my reactions to certain things, and how I've moved on from that. Let me tell you a story.
My grandparents have been married for more than 60 years. Their marriage is not an ideal marriage. There's been a lot of pain, and if I had been my Mawmaw's friend back in the day, do you know that my advice probably would've been? "Leave him." My Pawpaw was not always kind to her. He did things that pretty much any woman nowadays would find unacceptable, and yes, he had an affair once. His infidelity was incredibly painful for my Mawmaw and for my mom, who was young at the time, and deep down they still bear the scars. Like I said, far from ideal.
My Mawmaw is, however, the ideal Southern matriarch. She is a Steel Magnolia. She is the spine and the glue of this family, and as much as I hate what she's gone through, what my grandfather has put her through, it's an essential part of her story. The way she stayed, the way she compromised, the way she coped with the anger and the pain and loved him through it all, those were her choices. She could have left him. She's said so herself. She considered it, decided she could do it all on her own if she had to, but she didn't want to. She wanted to honor the vows she made, even when he hadn't. She loved him fiercely, with her whole heart, and the comittment she'd made meant enough to her that she chose to stick it out. It's not what I'd choose, but that's just who she is.
My Mawmaw's story says so much about family, tradition, marriage, and comittment. About what it means to be a Southern woman. About our struggles and our strengths. By alot of metrics, it's not "right" or fair, but it is beautiful. It is true. Mawmaw is the embodiment of Hera, for me. Her story, with its parallels to certain myths about Hera and Zeus that people love to hate so much, has been vital in developing my understanding and appreciation of Hera. If I had been preoccupied making moral judgements, condemning "objectively bad" behavior, and preaching "objectively good" behavior, I would have missed all of that.
So, my point. If we can recognize that stories about the gods are just that, stories, meant to express important truths about humanity and the world we live in rather than something objective about the gods themselves, then we can step down from our highground of moral purity and into the real world. We can read and write about the gods doing flawed, human things, things seemingly contradictory to their perfect, divine natures, and instead of panicking about whether our gods are terrible and immoral and cruel, we can learn. We can deepen our understanding and appreciation of the incredibly complex and sometimes contradictory beauty of the world we live in. That's just as important as knowing the difference between right and wrong. In fact, I think it's vital in developing compassion for others and coping with the frustration and hopelessness that can come with living in a world full of so much wrong.
