Light

I long to be a joy, to be that one who not only brings pride to her family but also brings light to the lives of those with whom I spend time.  I want to live in a way that is lightness and passion and excitement all at the same time.  It is my anxious nature that sometimes keeps me from this.

But who am I writing to?  Am I writing in the Christianese jargon of so many?  "Shining Christ's light into all the world?"  Or am I speaking in terms of freedom and nonjudgment and light?  I used to know what to write in order to please the audience.  I knew how to say the right things and quote the right verses in order to get a pat on the back and a smile for my faith.

I even know how to fake it so it looked like that but held all the hidden meaning of my soul.

But now?  Now that I am a faith-filled, free spirit without a boundary of what is the 'right' way to say something?  Now that I still call myself 'Christian' in so many ways, desire to follow the example of Christ and be filled with the Divine Spirit but can't possibly adhere to judgment and shame and assumptions of rightness.... now what do I say?

Do I say the things that are expected by those who think all of religion is a crock?  I mean, I don't.  So I can't say those things.

Do I speak the language I understand best and risk being misunderstood as a judgmental, self-righteous proselytizer?  Never.

So how do I talk about the spirituality that I hold in a way that brings joy?  That brings light?  That doesn't keep half the world out?


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Time isn't linear.  It's freaking horizontal.  Or whatever the sideways is of the way we normally think of it.  The reason the idea of dimensions and alternate realities excites us so much is because we pass through them everyday by passing through time.

They are always existing slices of existence.  We pass through hundreds of them as we pass each moment.  A forever and a once-upon-a-time within every existence.  Holy freaking crap.  It's all going to happen the way it's going to happen because it was designed to.  Looking through maps, maps of 2 dimensions many many times ago, many dimensions ago, searching for the point where we met before.  Where all the generations ago of us knew us before time.

What even is that?

Believe.

I'm fallible.  But the fact that I am capable of believing at all is rather remarkable.  I may not always believe things that are true, and sometimes I may place far too much importance on a belief, but I believe.  I have deep-seated trust that is rooted in I know not what. 

How do I believe? 

What is believing anyway?  That is a question I could likely answer somehow, with definitions of trust and faith and acknowledging facts about the unknown, but the question of how is far more puzzling.  I rest my confidence in a Higher Power, an Ultimate Truth, an Ever-changing Mother, a Powerful Father, an Entity which Encompasses Creation, and I am believing.  I do it without thought to its rightness or wrongness because it is neither.  There is simply, within my heart, within the world, within the Heavens, God.

God exists.

You may not believe so.  And that may be as true for you as it is for me that God is.  Somehow that doesn't matter anymore.  I feel no compulsion to convince you, for my belief does not stem from an assumption that believing makes me better, more advanced, or more spiritually evolved than you.  It does not cause me to think that I, with my belief, will land in paradise while you rot in flames.  You are my equal.

I believe in You.

Perhaps that is the greatest evidence of God's existence - for me.  You exist, and I believe it.  You, with your mind and your soul, me with my heart and my spirit.  We are.  Right here, on earth, in this space, in this time, we are. 

i am.

With time as complete insignificance, unfettered by borders, walls, diplomas, or signatures, I exist.  I existed. I will exist.  The present does not, it is simply the changing of the past to the future.  Yet still i am.  Not I AM - the changeless changing One, complete and always growing in my soul - but me, i, the human soul and flesh and mind.  I may be one tiny piece of this world, in the smallest corner of the expanse that God fills, but i am.  And I exist to revel in the space I am given, the expansive power that surrounds me, the world of humans i am lucky enough to inhabit, and the Beauty of God.

Hell yeah.

In so many ways I have changed.  But in so many ways I've also stayed exactly the same.  Sometimes I look over my life and things that feel like they happened just last year happened almost 10 years ago, and other times last year feels like decades ago itself.  Life is all tangly, isn't it?  At this point in my life, being almost 26 years old - perhaps the 'prime' of my life? - I feel as though every experience and belief and moment of my life to this point has been balled up and squished into who I am today.  I may not be the Pagan Christian 16-year-old, nor the confused 18-year-old trying to learn how to make friends at Bible school.  I may not be the fundamentalist Christian of my 21st year of life, nor the confused and questioning girl of 23. 

Apparently, however, one's neurons finish fusing in your mid-twenties.  So my brain is finished, I guess.  Now I just get to keep filling it.  Maybe now I can see more clearly who I truly am.

Am I Christian?  Yes.  Am I "always exploring"? Yes.  Do I love climbing trees and feeling the wind in my hair?  Absolutely.  Am I better at making friends?  Hell yeah.  

Drama

I used to think there were just dramatic days.  You know, those days when you have some crazy run-in with a store manager, have a work kerfuffle, a scheduling conflict, and find yourself running late for your 5th appointment of the day and short on caffeine.

Except now that I'm living life in the real world (AKA, I'm an adult who doesn't exist in a bubble), I'm discovering that pretty much every day has a significant amount of drama.  Because humans.

Humans are crazy, I tell you!  And I have first-hand experience since I, too, am human.  Humans trying to coordinate with one another makes for some pretty dramatic moments.  Goodness, grocery shopping can become quite the drama!  Not to mention money, which I'm finding is quite a pesky nuisance, especially when it comes to earning enough of it in a relatively short period of time (like, when rent and car insurance and utilities are all due at once, oh and then there is tuition due.  Oops.).

I'm also realizing that a whole lot of what's out there passing as 'sophisticated' is just a sham.  It's really just people who are awesome at faking it, making a fancy design and throwing together some serious wordsmithing (Starbucks, anyone?).

Also, selfies?  Nobody looks that good.  Makeup and filters, that's where it's at.  We're all just little bitty drama queens with phones.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I mean, we might as well share our dramatic lives with some other crazy humans, right?

Because all of us have plenty of drama from day-to-day, and so we can look around and smile to ourselves and remember that hey, that guy in his fancy car, that lady who looks so classy, they're just faking their way through the drama too.

Enjoy the ride!

When We Rise

I just got to the end of the new series "When We Rise," based on Cleve Jones' book.  Perhaps it's rather cliche for me to begin writing just after having seen a gripping film, but here I am again, affected by an idea, by a whole host of ideas, and contemplating my own existence as a result.  I'm overwhelmed and awestruck at the immensity of how my life has been affected.
the new series "When We Rise," based on Cleve Jones' book.

Just a year ago even, it was all so fresh for me, so new.  When DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) was overturned in the supreme court, I don't even think I realized at first.  It was just another day.  I was in Canada, I was about to leave for Europe, and I had pushed my own queer-ness to the back of my mind for the time.  I wasn't ready to go back and work through it, even though I'd known so many years before.  But what I didn't realize on June 26, 2015, was that just one year later I'd be planning my own queer wedding to the woman who is now my sweet wife.

I remember the day that British Columbia got gay marriage.  2003.  I was just 11 years old, and I was told that it was a very dark day.  I didn't understand what that meant at the time, but, apparently, equality was not considered a blessing.  In 2005, all of Canada had legalized same-sex marriage.  It took another 10 years for the United states to make that decision.

What I didn't see before today was the immensity of the struggle it took to get there.  The marriage of two women was made legal just in time for us to make use of it.  And we walked down the aisle and chose to love each other.

Still.

I may never have marched on Washington.  I may never have been stabbed in a back alley for my sexual orientation.  I may never have felt the stinging separation between lesbians and gays.  But that does not mean I have been immune from the sting of discrimination or hatred.  It does not mean that we have not spent long, dark nights crying, begging for things to be different.  I was thrown out of college for who I love.  I endured harassment, hate mail, and deceit because I am different.  I lost a lot.

But while choosing to be honest about who I love has been difficult, I have also gained so much.  Not only that, but I have grown immensely.  My faith has been challenged and endured.  Their attempt to thwart my future has only been met with my finding out even more of who I am (I'll be more than they dreamed I could be).

I'm not giving up.

Journeys of a Question-Asker

It began with me loving nature.  And I think the question-asking sprung from there.

Everybody has a story.  Why don't we listen more?  Today I'm thinking about mine.  I heard someone else's.  Now I'm left with bigger questions, but I'm grateful for them.

Why am I here?  Where will I go?  How is it that I'm still riding this river, this journey that flows through peaceful channels and over turbulent, cascading waterfalls.  I've been a Christian much of my life.  But I've also been a Pagan, a Wiccan, a Hindu, a Buddhist, and always a Question-asker.


So I ask those questions.  I won't feel bad for it.

“There is so much deep contradiction in my soul. Such deep longing for God - so deep that it is painful - a suffering continual - and yet not wanted by God - repulsed - empty - no faith - no love - no zeal. Souls hold no attraction - Heaven means nothing - to me, it looks like an empty place - the thought of it means nothing to me and yet this torturing longing for God. Pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything. For I am only His - so He has every right over me. I am perfectly happy to be nobody even to God. . . .

Your devoted child in Jesus Christ,
Mother. Teresa” 

Why do I worry over my questions when I see, within the chaos in this world, so many beautiful answers.  So many beautiful moments.  So many terrifyingly incredible waves of catastrophic glory.  So I am left here wondering, reveling in the chaotic masterpiece of my soul and the souls around me.
Let's listen to the masterpiece for a moment, let's stop to hear the sound of the beauty in the hypocrisy of our own hearts.  Maybe those questions will be the most beautiful sounds we have heard in a long, long time.

Sheila

Bulimia Update: One Year Later

Trigger warning: ED behaviours.

Today this memory popped up on my facebook feed.

Bulimia Update, January 17, 2016.

It's been a whole year.  It's bizarre to realize how far I've come and how much has happened.  At the time I said that going 4 days purge-free was common, that I'd even had a couple purge-free weeks.  Now it's weeks and months that are common.  In the past 3 months it's happened once.  It's no longer a daily struggle.  Yes the thoughts do enter my mind, but I've learned how to deal with them.  It doesn't mean it is never a struggle.  There are days - especially those alone days.

Still - most of the time, I'm fine.  Why?  First of all, I've been on medication for almost 2 years, and that has helped enormously.  I've also been in therapy on and off, and that has also been a huge blessing.  I learned more healthy coping mechanisms.  I came out.  Let me tell you, the amount of stress and pain from being closeted is absolutely monumental.  Unspeakable!  So while there was a lot of pain and struggle that was born of coming out, it was the beginning of the end of the constant inner pain.

So today, I press on, learning more about myself, my world, grateful for the progress I have made because, to quote myself a year ago,

"I'm making progress.  Yes, there is hope.  It is possible to overcome.  But it's a journey, it's not just a single step."

Another step has been taken, and I'm so grateful.

-Sheila