Just a Few Thoughts on Spirituality

As a result of a social media post referencing an article titled "Can I Go to Church When I Don't Believe*," I entered into a friendly conversation with someone today who asked me the following question:

What does spirituality mean to you?

Well, I thought about it for a hot minute, and I thought it was interesting enough to share and not have it disappear down the ephemeral sands of social media time. Here are the thoughts I posted in reply.

As a person who is both spiritual AND religious, my specific personal understanding of spirituality may not be of much interest. Correct me if I am wrong! 

In general, I would consider anything to be spiritual if it connects you to that which is greater than your limited material self.

That could manifest as:

• a deep appreciation for good music that makes you feel something, communicated by its composer and the musicians interpreting it for your experience.

• cultivating a feeling of intimacy with and connection to the natural world, spending time and exploring your part in it. 

Or it could be:

• intentionally deepening relationships in meaningful ways with your friends, family, and strangers.

• studying the wisdom of people you admire and aspiring to grow in their likeness; or better yet, to forge new paths based on innovative approaches to ancient ways. 

All of these things would count as spiritual practices for me. 

I did my best to avoid overtly "religious" language...though there is no valid reason for anyone to say these words are not religious unless speaking only about their own perspective.

So, what do you think? Do you agree with any of what I offered? Do you disagree? In what ways? 

What does spirituality mean to you? 

 * I do not subscribe to the New York Times, so I have not read the article in question.

 

Epiphany 2024: A New Year's Message from the Birds

In the spring of 2023, I was going on a little walk through the woods with one of my friends (hey, Chrystie!) when she took out her phone to use an app to identify some plants that sparked her curiosity. We did that a few times, and I didn’t think too much of it, because usually when I’m curious enough about a plant to know something more about it I just ask my husband Joel, because he knows EVERYTHING about plants. (OK, maybe not EVERYTHING, but enough for any casual interest I might have from time to time.) At some point though, during our walk, she also used an app to identify some birdcalls that we wanted to know more about, and my brain exploded! (Not literally, thank God.)

Shortly after returning home from that visit to Virginia, I downloaded “Merlin” to my phone, and I’ve been hooked ever since!

Just a month or two prior to that visit, Joel and I moved to Ballenger Creek, MD, about an hour west of Baltimore City where we’d lived for many, many years. In our new home, I take many more opportunities – sometimes daily – to be in nature and to explore my surroundings, including hiking up mountains, strolling alongside rivers, and now, identifying birds! I’ve been learning all about my new hobby, including its language (pro tip: it’s called “birding;” “birdwatching” is literally a spectator sport in comparison), and even joining the local chapter of the Maryland Ornithological Society. That now makes two separate MOS’s that my household is a member of, through Joel, who is an active member of the Maryland Orchid Society. Anyway, birding gets me up and out of the house doing things that I find interesting, and it’s good for both my physical and mental health. I love it.

Now that I am a fledgling birder (ha! see what I did there?), I am constantly listening for birdsong and peering through my new pair of binoculars trying to identify species by what I hear and see. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE! How did I not notice them before? Why did they all kind of just look/sound the same and blend into the background? I cannot believe the incredible diversity of avian species; they are endlessly fascinating. So, when the new year rolled around, it was almost a game for me to find out what my first birds of 2024 would be…

Because I heard the loud caw of an American crow before I could even leave my house, I made a mental note of that and went out to find the first bird I would actually see for the new year. From the car on my way to a New Year’s Day hike with Joel, I saw a vulture soaring in the distance. It was most likely a turkey vulture, since that is what is predominantly present around here this time of year – but it was too far away, and I know too few positive distinguishing markers between it and the black vulture from that distance, so I also made a mental note of that and kept driving. Then whoosh!, a red-shouldered hawk flew by. Three different birds, each one closer, in the span of a few short minutes. A treat! And what could these birds portend?

*****

Around Thanksgiving of last year, I ordered and received a copy of Queers the Word: A 40-Day Devotional for LGBTQ+ Christians. I calculated that if I started the following Monday, November 27, it would take me through Advent and I would finish on January 5, the last day of the Christmas season; indeed, I finished the devotional yesterday, and it was a great spiritual practice for me to engage with a friend. Today, January 6, is Epiphany, which (in Western Christianity) is a celebration of the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Broadly speaking, however, an epiphany can be any manifestation of the divine breaking through to us mortal folk, whether that be as an apparition, as inspiration, as an idea, as an omen…as the birth of a holy child…as…birds? Hrm…

The first person I thought about while that bird was screaming its head off outside my bedroom window was my friend and colleague Mathew P. Taylor, the second anniversary of whose death we just commemorated in December. I can’t even begin to describe what a warm embrace that cawing was to my spirit. If I had been using the Merlin app, it would have identified what I was hearing as Corvus brachyrhynchos, or the American Crow. What my spirit immediately heard was Mathew saying, “hey, friend! I pulled a card for you, and I want you to know…you got this! Have a great year!” What a blessing. Mathew is still with me.

And then I saw, but did not positively identify, a turkey vulture, Cathartes aura. In my short eight months as a novice birder, I have come to understand that vultures generally get a bad rap. They are commonly seen as ugly, perhaps gross, and may even be feared. But the more I encounter these supposedly ugly, gross, and fearsome creatures, the more I have come to appreciate them. They play a vital role in their ecosystems, often consuming the carcasses of other animals that have died – their scientific name means “purifier,” and it is cognate with the word catharsis. Incidentally, they also eat other things, like fruits. They are also kind of beautiful up close, somewhat statuesque, certainly graceful, and they actually seem to be rather good-tempered despite human misgivings. At least around here! And so I thought to myself…what can it mean for me to be encountering this turkey vulture on New Year’s Day? Well, there is a lot about this world, and my experience of it, that is ugly, gross, and fearsome…but through the example of this hulking bird, perhaps I can learn to consume and be nourished by those things in me that have died, or that need to die, to help purify and keep my spiritual ecosystem healthy. Perhaps I can come to see that the past – and the present – that I constantly ruminate over doesn’t have to maintain a death grip on my life; perhaps if I look closely, I can find the beauty and grace in my experience, learn from it, and let it go, soaring like the vulture into a brighter day…

Finally, the red-shouldered hawk, Buteo lineatus. I haven’t learned to identify many hawks yet, and the meaning of its scientific name, “lined buzzard,” doesn’t hold any apparent spiritual significance for me. Most of the hawks I can identify around here are red-tails. But this one was clearly a red-shouldered hawk – the first bird that I both saw and positively identified this year, though I did not hear its call. One of the main things that hawks are known for is their keen eyesight. Because of their visual acuity, hawks can see very clearly objects that are up to 100 feet away, enabling them to hunt efficiently and effectively from great soaring heights. For this reason and others, hawks are often symbols of seeing “the big[ger] picture,” with the red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks serving additionally as symbols of spiritual vision, clarity, forward movement, and an efficient and effective pursuit of goals and dreams. WHAT? I’m too superstitious to say anything more about that right now lol I don’t want to jinx myself. Let’s just say that this is very encouraging!

So there you have it. I have begun 2024 with a threefold (hahaha) epiphany, a divine manifestation with a message for my life this year: 1) those who love me are rooting for me and have my back, 2) the past, though it may seem bad and dead, can nourish me and sustain my life, but only if I purify my relationship with it and learn to let it go, and 3) I can and will soar, clearly spotting my goals and dreams, and moving forward to grab hold of them. Whew! I am encouraged. May you, too, find encouragement in your life as you pursue your own dreams.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

 

 

Drinking from Deep Wells: A Candlemas Reflection

I was a faithful member of the United Methodist Church from the age of 12 until I was 18 and in college. When I left, for good in my mind, at the age of 19, I told myself that I was a leaving behind a church that condemned me, a religion that left me malnourished, and a God who had forsaken me for eternity. In a period of less than two years, my spiritual journey led me along a path from doubting Christian, to anti-religious atheist, to inquisitive Unitarian Universalist. My dalliance with atheism was short-lived and half-hearted, and my embrace of Unitarian Universalism was initially borne of gratitude for discovering a way to be religious that allowed me to be rid of the Christianity that I’d left behind me. I have now been a Unitarian Universalist for 18 years – at 36 years old that’s half my life so far, following the 18 years I was a professing Christian, and threefold the years I belonged to the United Methodist Church with which I identified for so long. A lot about my theology and my religious outlook has changed in all that time, and I continue to reassess my beliefs as I age and have more life experience.

I remember a class called “The New UU” that I took at the first UU congregation I would join on my new path, which is now called the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Montclair (NJ). In one of the early sessions, a gay former Catholic got into a heated debate with the minister leading the discussion about the role of ritual in Unitarian Universalism. This man was angry at even the merest suggestion that what would be his newfound faith should in any way resemble the one which had scarred him, which meant that there was absolutely no room for ritual of any sort, or even the word ritual itself. At the time, I thought he was being ridiculous; but in him I recognized the hurt that I, too, was feeling as a gay man ostracized by the faith of my upbringing. Who was I to judge him? Unfortunately, he did not find what he was looking for that evening, so he got up in a huff mid-class and he left. I sometimes wonder where his journey led him after that night. As for me, I decided that religion was still a worthwhile pursuit and I chose to remain.

My early years as a Unitarian Universalist were ones in which I was comfortable being dismissive of Christianity and also being around others who were equally or more dismissive. For a modern movement whose roots lie in two Christian denominations, it bewilders me how much we have come to embrace an overall disdain for our origins. Granted, I appreciated this tendency at first; but my years of study and open encounter with those UU’s who would still follow Jesus, not to mention my separation from the particularist and fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible that I’d fled, rendered me less hostile to the faith of my upbringing than I’d once been. Reading the works of Marcus Borg, whom I declared to be my favorite theologian upon his death just a year ago, was a great influence on my willingness to not disregard and discard all the good that I’d known within Christianity. In my experience, many Unitarian Universalists are open to the wisdom of ABC religion – Anything But Christianity.

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that I have come full circle and consider myself a Christian – I haven’t evolved that far, yet! – nor do I mean to imply that everyone can and should find that the Christian story is of ultimate value to their lives. I’m simply observing that, at some point, we became a faith that is comprised largely of people whose major impulse is to leave behind rather than to move toward. How do we overcome that?

In the eighteen years since I left Christianity behind me, I have attended Christian churches of various denominations only for weddings, funerals, and, after I met my husband and began observing Christmas again, Christmas Eve services. I once attended a Lutheran service on Palm Sunday because a nephew was being baptized. In almost every instance, I felt like an outsider. A welcomed and well-treated outsider, but an outsider nonetheless. Last year on Candlemas, a time of purification, preparation, initiation, and commitment, I decided that my spiritual life was spread too broadly and that I needed to choose the wells from which I would drink more deeply. On that day, I joined both the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship, having decided to stop fighting my background, and the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans, having long ago come to the conclusion that an observance of the natural cycles of the earth, and of life, held great value for me. I’ve spent the year between that Candlemas and this embracing the idea of claiming a narrower path than the one I’ve been taking all these years. I began moving closer to the rhythm of the Christian liturgical cycle during Advent, reflecting on quiet hope in the dark of the year. I continued observance of the rhythm of the pagan wheel of the year, participating once again in my church’s Winter Solstice ritual. In eighteen years, I refused communion at every Christian service I went to where it was offered (except once a year, at most, in my own UU congregation where I could partake in good conscience). On this last Christmas Eve, after ten Christmases in a row of letting my husband and in-laws go up for communion and waiting behind, I led our pew up to the front of the church and partook with them. Just this weekend, I attended the Imbolc ritual of the Baltimore Reclaiming Community, where I honored the lengthening of days, asked a blessing on holy candles, gazed into the ignis purgans, and made a pledge to “live fully now” in the coming year. Next week brings Ash Wednesday... There’s something about these rituals that I’ve been missing in Unitarian Universalism, notwithstanding the sometime belief that there is too much ritual, as espoused by the wounded man I’d met so many years before as a new UU.

Part of what we as Unitarian Universalists value in religious life is the “encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations”, and we promote the “direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life”. I have come to a point in my life where that means I must dig more deeply and draw from the wells that I have chosen for myself. The words of what some view as the Unitarian Universalist’s most sacred hymn plead “roots hold me close, wings set me free”. For the year ahead, I intend to explore ways in which I might be held close by my Christian roots and set free by Pagan wings. I will continue to be nourished from other wells, as they offer me their resources; but I will tend to my own at this time, and I will pray that this anchoring and expanding might continue to be held within my chosen faith community. Spirit of Life, come to me…come to me.

Resolutions 20:15

It's 2015 now, and a question that's asked over and over this time of year is "what are your new year's resolutions?" Generally, my response has been something along the lines of, "I don't make new year's resolutions". This year, however, I decided to set several goals for the year and so I have shared those with people instead of resolutions. But the more I think about it, the more I realize how foolish I'm being. What good is a goal if you don't have the resolve to strive to attain it? So to any of you who received my self-righteous answer, I apologize! And I resolve to make a decent effort to achieve the following goals in the year ahead:

1. Health. My management of my own health has been half-assed and reactive for several years now. I have pretty much been coasting along and only addressing issues as they've arisen. In 2015 I will be more proactive and manage my physical and mental health in better ways. Now that I'm approaching 36 — which is not that old! — I can't really afford to take my fitness for granted.
2. Education. I have been telling myself for almost half my life now (!) that I will return to school to finish the undergraduate degree that I began but never completed. Once again, there have been half-ass attempts in the past to do this, but it's time to hunker down and git-r-done! (sorry...couldn't help it.) I also want to attend seminary and explore the possibility of becoming a Unitarian Universalist minister of some sort. That'll be easier with the undergraduate experience.
3. Redacted*.
4. Family. I am very liberal, progressive, and open in just about every way you can imagine. But there are still areas where I have more traditionally-minded opinions. Last year, my partner and I became husbands by legally marrying in a beautiful ceremony at our church. See? Traditional. This year, I would like to do the research needed for us to lay the roots we would like for our family. Will we buy a house? Will we have children? Will I finally take a class in personal finance and become a real grown-up? 
5. Relationships. I have admitted more than once that I have not been the best friend for the past several years, and I have not done much to sustain loving relationships with family members either. I can come up with many reasons why this has become the case, but I don't want to make excuses. I can and will do better! I will send cards, write letters, make phone calls, and visit more often. This is absolutely necessary.
6. Spirituality. I will pay more attention to my spiritual life, and will do the things that bring me peace, joy, happiness, and edification. Some of these are playing music, attending performances, reading, writing, studying, hiking, praying, speaking French, being mindful, being grateful, going to church regularly, and making my husband happy.
7. Purpose. I will be more purposeful about my life. One way I will do this, for now, is by adding more structure to my days so that I can actually pay attention to the goals I have set for myself for the year. I will review my goals periodically to make sure that I am working toward their attainment, and I will add/subtract goals as they are needed or met.

So, there they are. My new year's resolutions as of today, January 6, 2015. Your prayers and support will be greatly appreciated for the next twelve months. I got this, y'all! Thank you.

I'll link related posts below as they are written. Happy New Year!

*Goal #3 will be revealed when appropriate.

Why does this blog exist?

I created this blog years ago, purportedly to flesh out my interest in becoming a UU seminarian some day, and to just post my thoughts about religion and life in general. I had the idea that it would be a place where I could think my deepest thoughts, albeit in the open, and engage in conversation with other people with similar thoughts or interests. I have always been one to think deeply about things, or perhaps I have been one to obsess over things...I'm not sure what the difference is. When it comes to expressing my thoughts on profound, complex topics, I find that it is usually easier to get to the crux of things if I take the time to write it out. My brain seems to process things most clearly while in the act of writing them down.

However, I don't write as much as I ought to. Why? I can give any number of good, valid excuses. The lack of time, other priorities, and so on and so forth. But none of the excuses trumps the fact that I just need to write. I have felt so muddled and mentally confused for the past few years. My extreme identification with my social media personae and my incessant need to be connected to the internet - my feeling as though I will miss something if I look away for just one moment - all of that leaves me feeling overwhelmed, rudderless, lost.

You see? Until I wrote that, I couldn't even begin to articulate what the problem is. Too much too much too much - rotting my brain, clouding my mind, zapping my energy. Eating my soul?

So yeah, back to the question at hand. This blog was supposed to be a place for me to expose myself. For me to share my thoughts, and to clarify my thinking through conversations with those few of you who might read what I have to say. I still have hope that that might happen, which is why I keep it up and try to post from time to time. Perhaps my expectations are too high, or too low. I think I might be a little bit of a perfectionist when it comes to things like this, and I don't want to post anything "unrefined". But thinking like that keeps me from posting anything at all...so I guess it's time to give that up.

I really miss the community of Unitarian Universalists that existed on Beliefnet ten or fifteen years ago. I miss having those conversations, and having a community that wanted to discuss the things I like discussing. I've learned that one of the ways I might in some small part re-create that era today is for me to follow other people's blogs and engage with them there. So, if you notice that I've started leaving comments on (and not just reading) other blogs, it's my way of trying to declutter my mind and rejoin the conversations that are going on out there. I need focus and clarity...and it looks like I'll have to get there by accepting where my unfocused, unclear mind is right now, and laying it bare. So here goes.

Perhaps this is part of discernment. Who knows? I just need to write more; it really is a spiritual practice for me. And it'll all figure itself out in the end. Right?

Time for Wonder

When I started working in DC, I decided to use my 90- to 120-minute journey (each way) as productively as I could. I would have so much time available for reading, writing, and meditation. At first, being a newly minted commuter, I tried hard to pay attention to my surroundings, and landmarks. Everything was fresh and new to me, and because I have to make two connections, I wanted to avoid missing an unfamiliar stop...or getting on the metro in the wrong direction! There wasn't much time for else as I learned my new routine, but I did allow myself to listen to the radio or to podcasts as I traveled.

As my commute became routine, I relaxed a bit and started to just gaze out of the window as my train sped along from Baltimore toward Washington, stopping from time to time to load more passengers - very few passengers de-train between the two terminuses. Termini? Anyway, there are a surprising number of beautiful things to see on this stretch of land between the two cities. There are several marshes, in fact...and early on I discovered a flock of large, white waterfowl - I never know the difference between a crane, stork, heron - hanging out somewhere near BWI airport. Whatever the name of the bird, it was a beautiful sight to behold. Nature, glorious nature. And in my witnessing these birds, I felt connection. I felt the presence of the divine, pervading and imbuing all existence. They gave me joy, these simple moments of wonder, that lasted for entire days.

Since those early days, as my travel became rote and I became less concerned about missed connections and the like, I began to do puzzles found in the free papers given out in DC-area metro stations. Sudoku. Crosswords. Ken Ken. I also began to read more. Finished several books. Started studying Hebrew. All good, useful, enjoyable things. Never wrote much, though. I get too caught up trying to think of something to write about, and end up writing nothing, inspiration or no.

But I had stopped being in awe. I stopped noticing most sunrises. I belatedly noticed one day that those white birds must have flown south to warmer climes. I no longer composed ephemeral haiku in my mind about other people I observed along the way. I stopped floating in divine wonder, and became insular...focused on getting from point A to point B as quickly (i.e. distractedly) as possible.
But then this morning, the sky was on fire with sunrise. I almost missed it, playing on this phone! But something nudged me to look up and away from what my partner calls a "glowing rectangle" (I, like many of my co-commuters, have several such devices), and my eye saw red.

And I wondered, was in awe.

And I wrote.

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