Sgrios Mass: The Sgriocan Assertion

((Notes: I lost my mom a few months ago and I just had my first birthday without her. This mass is based on true IRL events and the lessons of life, love, and death my mother taught me. I hope you find at least some value in these words. Please forgive me this moment of selfishness. If I could only ever hold one mass for Sgrios, it needed to be this one.))

**visibly nervous, voice a little shy**

I would like to begin tonight's mass with a poem of mine. In hopes that you might all get to know me just a little bit better. **deep breath** **a second one** **awkward pause**

The Sgriocan Assertion

**checks the room for reactions** **voice gets stronger**

I assert that I’m Sgriocan

I know that’s rather strange

I promise I’m not broken

I stand here firm and sane

Some people find it rather odd

“A Sgriocan? what is that?”

“You can only have one god!”

“This I know as fact!”

I will not argue you my friend

You may only serve at one

Though hearts have ample space within

To worship whom you want.

Sometime life will carve a path

Between two mountain springs

Forcing you to soak and bathe

In thoughts of twilight things

Healers walk a tangled web

Of a hurting healing mesh

Where grace is never optional

When gracelessness means death

The screaming and the bloody floors

Of a child be born

The love, and tears and joyous roars

That bring us all to mourn

The mercy and compassion

Of being loved and seen

Exists in the same fashion

At the end of suffering

Sgrios and Glioca

are completely intertwined

In a home of loving healers

Who honor death’s Divine

So for me I am Sgriocan

I love with all my spark.

I am fire, I am grace,

I am both light and dark.

I will not allow tradition

To make my heart untrue

I’m authentically Sgriocan

What, authentically are you?

** A pause that is almost too long, when she speaks, there is a confidence that was lacking before. **

 I wish I could say I know more of you better. 

**Takes time to look everyone in the face as she speaks. Softly smiling at each and every aisling**

I spend a great deal of my time learning and studying but that sadly means many of us have not had the chance to get to know each other better. As the newest (I think) member of the clergy, I thought I would use this opportunity to tell you all a bit more about myself and my relationship with my Lord Sgrios.

The d’Chene family, my family, are mostly healers. Sure, there’s a few in other occupations mixed in, but mostly healers. Some heal with prayer, and some with medicine. Some heal by sitting and listening. Some heal by teaching people how to heal, both themselves and others. Some heal with a sharp blade, a needle, and thread, and a whole wagon of personal fortitude. Some of them heal with cookies and by being the one person you know will show up in the dead of night to hold your hand on your worst day.

With the luck of growing up next door to all of my cousins we often refer to the collection of small homes and workshops as simply The House. Our childhood was, in many ways, idyllic, and in many more ways was also tragic.

Swimming days, fishing trips, and so many potlucks. Days of watching pain and suffering. Babies born, nursing sick relatives, changing SO MANY DIAPERS across all ages. The feeling of watching someone get out of bed for the first time in months. The feeling of knowing someone just got out of bed for the last time.

When you come from healers, when you become a healer, the relationships in all the lore and myths that seemed so very clear, quickly becomes murky in the face of hard truths. Watching people weep and grieve because of love. Watching people be grateful and thankful for the mercy granted by the end. It is a heavy perspective to be privy to as a child.

In our home, two Gods were held in the same regard. 

Sgrios and Glioca. 

Balanced and equal. 

Sgrios, Our Lord of Mercy. Beside him was Our Lady of Mourning, Glioca.

**pause. smiles to herself**

We spoke about Sgrios being the god of decay in grateful tones. Hearing the grown-ups postulate about how bad disease would be without a God to offer an end when medicine and magic has run its course. That Ceannlaidir may teach us to fight, but it is Sgrios that makes sure the threat is truly over. The necessity of death to give our lives meaning.

An everlasting resource has no value. This is true of both life and suffering.

They spoke of how the mechanisms of rot feeds us. Mushrooms, garum, cheese, bread, wine. They spoke of the lessons of decay, and the skills it forced us to learn. How to preserve food. How to keep a wound clean. They did not see this as fighting Sgrios, they saw it as seeing his whole truth. As learning from his blessings.

They spoke of the Nobility of Sgrios, The end that grants. The end that teaches.

**pauses. She quickly looks at everyone before continuing. There is a bite to her voice when she speaks again.**

Sure, it was in the light of Glioca, I was taught how to love myself.

But, in the certainty of Sgrios! THAT is where I learned to live in my truth. THAT is where I learned to love so deeply as to understand that sometimes love means GRABBING A HATCHET!

**pulls hatchet and giggles** **casually waves the hatchet around a bit while talking**

I am Sgriocan.

I am life and death

I am light and dark

I am roaring fire and silent grace.

It is from these truths that I came to this shrine. It is from these truths that I began my service. It is from these truths that I will continue to serve Sgrios and this extraordinary fellowship.

Hail Sgrios! Praise Sgrios!

By his blessings, we need never fear the darkness.

So it is spoken, so it must be.