Higher Love

some notes from my, ahem, spiritual journey

I was raised Catholic, a set of early life experiences that gave me two things I genuinely treasure: an appreciation for ritual and an ability to access a space of deep contemplation via rote motions. (Put me in any space, force me to genuflect, make the sign of the cross, and my mind is really off to the races.) For better or worse the church also fomented in me a blanket distrust of institutions, a generally hostile stance toward conformity, and deep skepticism regarding any sort of god or higher power. (Here I’m going to offer my concise/lazy-ass summation of why: Spanish colonialism 😈 🖕🏾) For most of my adult life, my relationship to religion has been one of disengagement.

These days I am rethinking much of what I believe (or thought I believed), as well as what I glossed over and dismissed when it comes to faith. I’m thinking a lot about how religion really f*cked over spirituality.

Recently, for a magazine feature, I had some very honest, hard, and illuminating conversations with my mom. At one point she told me that Catholicism/her faith has gotten her through so much in life and that she wishes her children would find or settle into similar religious beliefs. (That part didn’t make it into the final piece, which you’ll be able to read sometime in the forthcoming issue of Mother Tongue.)

When I was younger I used to say that while I wanted to believe in God I just couldn’t — like I fancied myself “too smart” to believe in something that could not be proven, be felt or touched or known. I was real literal back then. Once I learned the word agnostic, I identified as one. (Here I’ll provide crucial context that the vision of God I was working off al those years was the all-knowing old man with the long hoary beard and billowing white robe, a rod-and-staff type god.)

On some level I always envied my parents faith — like, they could just believe! They could let shit go, give it to god, pray, accept what happened in life as his will. But I also know I that, in my youth, I meant it in a way that makes me cringe because it was laced with so much naiveté and condescension — like, they could just believe! No rigorous interrogation! How passive! How simple! How uninformed and disempowering! The ways I played—the ways I continue to play—myself throughout this life are truly staggering.

Right now belief and letting go are exactly what I want. Need, actually. Not only is it desirable, it feels—miraculously—attainable.

I no longer feel the need to understand, to be proven right. I don’t want control over natural or cosmic forces beyond me. Loosening my grip is freedom, delicious relief. It helps me worry less, enjoy more, remain open to all kinds of possibilities and explanations! (Explanations that aren’t somehow centered on me!) I feel lighter!

For a while I thought, I don’t believe in a god, per se, but I do believe in people. Humanity is divine. The service component of the Catholic faith always appealed to me — not the missionaries, but the nuns. All these nuns who taught me to read, to play piano, played the guitar, modeled steadiness and patience, who cared for me. The Nuns On the Bus, driving around advocating for adequate federal policies, equity, a social safety net.

What soured me most to The Church was how having even the simplest questions, doubts, curiosities—wanting to know, say, why girls couldn’t be altar boys or how the Holy Spirit could be an equal member of the Holy Trinity (and also inexplicably a bird) but what exactly does it do?—was actively discouraged and quashed. It felt antithetical to who I am and always was, my very nature. As I got older and was exposed to more systems of faith, I remember the longing I felt when I learned that Judaism essentially runs on questions, allows for doubt, encourages dialog and engagement.

In this particular moment of my life I am a bit weary of shouting about colonialism, but truly — eff a deterministic god who enters the scene, tells people they are stupid and crude, that He knows better, and makes them do his bidding by force. Like what a petty, small, and insecure god who managed to sideline so many indigenous, expansive, nuanced, and generous systems of belief.

It’s extremely fun to space out on how I am much more connected to every creature, plant, and being on this planet than my rational brain would have me believe. When I cut out that mental noise, I feel and trust my intuition, which feels more and more like a part of me that’s keyed into the divine and spiritual, both familiar and mysterious.

Shout out to my dear friend Patty, who shared this On Being episode with Celtic philosopher John O’Donahue about our inner landscapes. This bit, in particular, made us both howl (emphasis mine):

[Meister Eckhart] says, “Gott wirt und Gott entwirt.” That means, “God becomes and God un-becomes.” Or, translated, it means that “God” is only our name for it, and the closer we get to it, the more it ceases to be God. So then you’re on a real safari with the wildness and danger and otherness of God. And I think when you begin to get a sense of the depth that is there, then your whole heart wakens up.

At this point, in an everyday sense, it’s people I believe in most of all, and where I direct my affection and attention. But I’m casting a wider net as my heart wakes up. I don’t exactly know what I believe, which is just fine with me because I’m enjoying the hell out of whatever journey I’m on at the moment.

I’ll leave you with some Simone Weil who, in her essay “The Right Use of School Studies,” gifted me the exact frame through which I am looking at life (not just the g-d parts).

Certainties of this kind are experimental. But if we do not believe in them before experiencing them, if at least we do not behave as though we believed in them, we shall never have the experience that leads to such certainties. There is a kind of contradiction here. Above a given level this is the case with all useful knowledge concerning spiritual progress. If we do not regulate our conduct by it before having proved it, if we do not hold on to it for a long time by faith alone, a faith at first stormy and without light, we shall never transform it into certainty. Faith is the indispensable condition.

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Thanks, as always, for reading and sticking around. I’ve been on a safari of the mind and body the last couple of months, having taken January and February mostly off from working. It was long overdue. I worked myself into a tiny nub of a person last year and was majorly in denial about this and other realities of my life.

These days I am doing a lot of research for what will hopefully eventually be my next book project, doing speaking gigs (I’m available for hire if you need someone for your caregivers or parent ERG or need a panelist or keynote speaker for your conference, workshop, fundraising luncheon, whatever), and drawing and watercoloring flowers. I am figuring out how to get back in to a regular writing practice again. This newsletter, and knowing you’re out there, helps so much.