I don’t normally make posts like this, but I needed to say something.
I keep seeing posts about how things like flamin hot cheetos are a lazy offering, but honestly, if I was still able to eat them, that would be a perfect offering for Lord Hephaestus.
I specifically wouldn’t offer them currently, because I can’t eat them, don’t have them around, and it wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice for me to give up something I couldn’t have anyway.
I don’t offer my tap water to the Gods because my tap water isn’t safe to drink, it has to be boiled to be safe. I do offer the safe drinking water I have through. Because that is a sacrifice for me. I don’t offer fresh fruits/veggies because I physically can’t eat them. There’s no sacrifice. I do offer from snacks and meals I can eat. Because that is a sacrifice for me.
I’m physically disabled, specifically, I’m bedridden, use mobility aids full time if I’m out of bed, and often go weeks without leaving my apartment, especially through the long winters here. I physically cannot get to the outdoors, even if I wanted to, many days. I have in home care attendants for over 40 hours a week (not including additional respite). I have high physical care support needs, and need assistance with every one of my activities of daily living (showering, dressing, cleaning, meal prep, transfers, etc).
Many of my conditions are made worse with movement, some of them cause irreparable damage to my body literally any time I move. So when I physically do something, literally every muscle movement, it is a sacrifice. Digital offerings included (to be clear, I never have and never will include AI in any part of my life— I’m talking about my digital drawings, poems, and collages). I can’t even sit up in bed most days, so yeah, a poem I had to use speech to text to write IS sacrifice for me.
So much of how my practice used to look, and ideally how I wish it could look, is completely inaccessible to me at this point in my life. But I’m still just as devoted to the Gods. I’m not being lazy, I’m doing everything I physically can do. I feel like people might not understand the feeling of not only losing the ways in which you connected spiritually for well over a decade and having to try to find ways to adapt for your body’s limitations; but also the feeling of being put down by others in your community, even unintentionally, for you doing the best you can.
You might say “well of course disabled people don’t count!” But when you specifically say that specific ways in which I practice are “wrong”, it does hurt, it does ostracize me from my community, and it does make me feel ashamed to be disabled. It also dismisses how real the sacrifices I do make are.
How I practice my faith is between me and the Gods. If you don’t like that, you don’t need to be on my blog and can block or unfollow.
