Does anyone else on the pagan community feel genuine love for their deities? Not in the romantic sense, but more in the way you love a family member. It's especially strong coming from a religion where you never felt a genuine connection to "your" God. You felt fear, obligation, confusion, curiosity, and maybe love on some level, but this love is different.
It is finally understanding the feeling people around you described from being in church every Sunday. It's growing up finding the congregation's hands in the air, the singing and crying, the raw emotion to be... unusual, strange. What were they feeling? How can I feel this way? You try to forge that connection, but you're never successful. You start to doubt the God you grew up with. You wonder if he hates you, or if you're not trying hard enough — if you're broken.
...Then, one day, you find what you've been searching for all this time, somewhere else. You experience the feeling of finally meeting your soulmate, finally finding your place or your tribe. You experience the pure joy, the peace, the childlike wonder, the longing, the wisdom, the bond, the reverence, the admiration. You experience an unfamiliar tightness In your chest when you pray to them or make offerings.
I've never felt more in love than I am with my gods. Ive never felt more at home, more at peace.
I hope to feel this way for the rest of my days, because what is life without the gods? What is life without something beyond this world, yet at the same time, an integral part of understanding the meaning of existence on this physical plane — on this planet?
I had this idea, that may or may not have been suggested before. I don't remember a suggestion this specific but there is a possibility.
If you use tarot cards or other divination methods, you can ask the deity or spirit what they suggest you journal about for that entry in your devotional journal.
Depending on your style of divination and/or your interpretations this could be a specific topic or a more general area of life or self.
Example:
I asked Aphrodite for a card to represent a journal prompt, something I should or need to explore.
I pulled the 10 of swords which in the Spirit Halloween tarot deck has an image of a Gryphon.
Upright: Back-stabbed, defeat, crisis, betrayal, endings, loss
The gryphon gives me the vibe of relating to the public face of a being.
Overall this suggests I should write about how a painful or stressful change in my public image affects me and what I think that means.
Which is a rather hardcore topic to start with 😅