To the Exegesis of Wild Voices: Finding Your Own kind of Spirituality

Hello there again! First off, thank you to those who took the time to read my blog post! You’re amazing and I hope to hear more from you all. 💓

Today I’m just gonna go off on a whim and talk about something that I find near and dear to my heart and it does somehow tie into last week’s post. So for the majority of my time in art school, I always felt a particular pull to spirituality or at least the search of connecting to something higher than ourselves. Particularly with regards to how everyone gets to that point where they want to call themselves spiritual. Now, Reading this back to myself, I can’t help but cringe a bit to how I’m phrasing this! 😖Best way I can put it and yet it still sounds kind of basic, I know!

So, for context, I do call myself a Christian though I don’t always feel like that category makes a lot of sense when compared to how it is practiced and how christians interpret holy scripture. Hell, I can’t even claim I’ve read the Bible in its entirety. I think it’s just a mixture feeling like I don’t think all of what’s in the book aligns itself with my values. Plus, it’s hard to look at the book as hard facts like so many do. I may get more into what I think at some other point I’ll just leave it to that cause that is just a massive topic!

Yet, I do believe in what Jesus preached. And I’m going to be a little controversial and say that I don’t necessarily care if he really is the Son of God but that he was able to show the people of Palestine what it meant to be connected to God. On top fo that, he was a revolutionary for the time advocating for the marginalized and dispossessed population that the elites had long ignored. To me, Christ shows that we all have the ability to connect to God, the Universe, etc. And of course, be a good person!

That’s the one Christian aspect that I feel like I will carry with me for the rest of my days. Sure, there’s other aspects of the faith that I can ascribe to but it really becomes matter of digging through text to find nuggets of truth.

Which brings me to the theme of today’s post: Finding your own kind of spirituality.

Again, maybe not the best descriptor but like everything, it’s a work in progress. 😛

During my thesis year of University, I tasked myself with creating a scared space for myself that felt emblematic to my experience and that all of my intricacies could be taken to account. A few of those intricacies was my upbringing in Mexico and how my faith was influenced by experience down there and my own conclusions regarding my Christianity and how fixed or amorphous it was/is. One of my hang ups with Christianity or at least the practice of it was the idea of eternal rigidity. Nothing changing all in the favour of one Truth. To me, faith should constantly be shifting. And part of how it does shift is through exposure to new ideas from varying faiths or even philosophies.

(In case you were curious, here's what my final thesis resulted with! )

One of my clutch texts for my thesis was Karen Armstrong’s The Lost Art of Scripture, and just reading about how scripture was adapted and changed according to the times just kept driving home to me that our faith has to grow and change according to our circumstances. And this is across multiple religions. It also emphasized that the divine can be witnessed heard or even just sensed in the most random of places. All of them which are not always clear. But we have to be willing to be flexible with our beliefs. In the end they are still ideas and should be held lightly and allowed to evolve. That is why ,at least in the Christian setting as far as I’m concerned, why we say the Bible is a living text.

As I was doing my research for my thesis paper, I was being exposed to other Religious ideas and cannons that I felt became puzzle pieces to a whole elaborate tapestry of our understanding of God, Spirituality, etc. Another book that really jumped out at me was The Path of a Christian Witch by Adelina St. Clair. St. Clair who also had struggled with her own Christian upbringing and chronicles how she was able to work with witchcraft as a form to connect even further with Christ and Mary Magdalene (in her case). I think the struggle to find one’s spiritual pathway, whether it be packed full with the faith you were brought up with or otherwise, is ultimately our own to define. But by doing so and committing to defining that path it’s important to not always be so stoic in what we know. Sure, there are something that are absolutely true and have evidence but when it comes to faith and spirituality it really is an intuitive and long-winding path that doesn’t always make sense until maybe retrospectively just like in the case of St. Clair.

Even now, I’m still trying to learn from other faiths and it’s honestly awe-inspiring how much they can help you rethink of your own beliefs and challenge or reinforce them. I’m currently reading another Armstrong book about The Prophet Mohammed and that has just been mind-blowing and —I want to say — sublime, even. From aspects of the faith’s roots having already a keen recognition of how each Abrahamic tradition has it’s unique path to reaching God or Allah in this case to even the honesty and vulnerability of the Prophet and his challenges, this canon has enriched my understanding of my own beliefs. On top of it, demystified a lot of stigma I may have had before.

Okay, so I’ve lightly geeked out about a variety of things but what does it actually have to do with finding your own kind of spirituality? Well, I can’t really give a clear answer to that. Like everything in this life, it’s really up to you how you get there. I want to say that having a spiritual path or practice is not unlike having an art practice! For myself, my art obviously assisted being a vessel for a lot of these ruminations. But it uses also, I think, the same kind of right-hemispheric ‘thinking’. Even better, it’s an alchemy of both intellect and intuition. It’s definitely a daunting road and there’s not really a road map for it and I guess the reason why I wanted to write about this today is because it’s my hope that you may venture into it for yourself. The same inspiration I get from this topic I want to impart it to you, reader.

Maybe you’ve started already, in which case, congratulations and keep at it! And if the woo-woo talk is making you roll your eyes, hey, that’s okay too! :) Who knows? Maybe even just enjoying a work of art or basking in nature is all you need to feel this kind of awe. Even that’s how God the universe or whatever can temporarily give you a nudge even if you choose not to see it. It’s your path and no matter where you go with it, make it your own. 😊

Take care and stay safe. 💞

- Tatjana

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