I grew up Catholic and went to Catholic school for my entire life, so when I hear the phrase, “Rise from ashes,” I immediately get the song, “Ashes” stuck in my head. My guess is that a lot of people in/from the United States who went to Catholic school or had devout Catholic families remember that prominent Ash Wednesday song. (Ash Wednesday is the day following Mardi Gras — the reason for Mardi Gras in the first place). My spirituality is expansive, to say the least. I don’t narrow it down to one religion or system or practice. And yet, I don’t exclude any of the many religions, systems, and practices that inform the many ways I connect with god and feel my own spirituality.
There are many pieces of Catholicism I have released. And yet, a lot of my spiritual and cultural sensibility is still pretty … Catholic. I was taught that “Catholic” means Universal. I’m also pretty fond of the teachings and mission of Jesus — he was the first revolutionary I encountered. My Catholicism is a deeply personal thing that I don’t mention much. I don’t attend mass and I don’t run around declaring it — which, to be clear, I did in a very outward way for a very long time. But it was one thing throughout my life that gave some sort of external definition to my identity. That is, I embraced Catholicism because it was the closest thing I could identify to a “culture” of my own.
Let me give you some background. I grew up in times and places where culture and ethnicity were extremely important. By ethnicity, I mean the culture and/or nationality of your ancestors — not race. I lived in times and places where people were “Irish” and “Italian” and “Polish” and knowing and embracing these ethnic identities was important. There are many conversations about racial hierarchy. Diaspora and race are central to my theoretical work and my life. I am frequently a racial minority in places where I live, work and play. So I am surrounded by discussions of colorism — the hierarchies of skin shade within communities of color. This is the phenomena from which the idea of “passing” (as white) and the importance of trying to pass originates.
These same sorts of hierarchies existed in the white communities in which I was raised in terms of ethnicity. The challenge for me, though, was that I didn’t really have an ethnicity. I have ancestors who are English, Irish, Scottish, French, German and Norwegian — and none of these was especially central to my upbringing. I wasn’t taught that I have a particular cultural or ethnic identity (which, on the flip side, is an outgrowth of my privilege). So, even though I was the same race as most of the people around me, I felt like an outsider. And every year when we would do some project in school where we had to come in and talk about our “nationality” or “ethnicity” (nevermind the fact that most everyone’s nationality was American), I struggled. What was I? Who was I? I was from many people and I wasn’t taught that any of these places was important or that there was a particular culture that needed to be upheld. Furthermore, many of my peers growing up had parents, grandparents and great grandparents who had emigrated from the countries whose cultures they were taught to embrace. But I am somewhere between a 13th and 15th generation American in part of my lineage — so I couldn’t claim the “ethnic purity” or authenticity that so many of my contemporaries could. And yet, I couldn’t say I was American because the indigeneity of my ancestry is European, not American. So, what was I? Who was I?
I started going to Catholic School when I was in the 1st grade and my family didn’t really go to church before that. For Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten, I went to a Quaker school (the long-term American part of my lineage is Quaker), where I learned Quaker values. In Kindergarten, I had a Jewish teacher and she was allowed and encouraged to teach us her culture — so I had an early Jewish education at my Quaker school. I started Catholic school in the Diocese of Arlington — arguably, the most conservative diocese in the country. In Virginia, I was considered a Northerner. When my family moved back to the Philadelphia area, I had a very southern sensibility. I had a southern sense of movement, of cultural understanding, a southern sense of time. But — I also had a southern sense of Catholicism. Moving felt deeply disruptive at the time. And, in retrospect, I leaned on ritual to ground myself — whether it was ritual I created for myself or ritual that I learned in Catholicism. After all, I was the fifth grader who, on Holy Thursday, insisted that her mother and brother join in a Seder meal at lunch time. Remember — I had a Jewish education before I had a Catholic education, so maintaining the roots of the ritual was important to me. Ritual was important. Ritual made me feel safe. It’s consistent. It’s grounding. And it was my culture.
When I started Catholic school in the 1st grade, we had just moved and I was so fascinated with the rituals, the stories, and the culture that my parents thought I was going to grow up to be a nun. My first school was pretty old-school in that they actually practiced what was taught in Religion class. The beauty of growing up in a conservative religious community for me, was the conservation of ritual. The solemnities were important. We prayed the rosary. And, of course, we prayed the Stations of the Cross every Friday during Lent. Even though the shape of my spiritual practice has changed (at least in its outward appearance because it was always much more expansive than I could articulate), Lent (the season commencing with Ash Wednesday) is still my favorite solemnity. It’s where I first learned the power of fasting, where I first practiced eating a plant-based diet (alone — when I was, like, 10), where I first learned the power of 40 days of devotion. And the Stations of the Cross, “The Passion” of Jesus’ life, is where I was first introduced to the particularities of the Spiritual Journey. The Stations of the Cross are 14 particular events along Jesus’ journey to death, which of course, ends (and begins) with resurrection. This spiritual journey is the central topic to all of my personal and professional work and I could, and do, use so many different systems and metaphors to describe it, work through it, and help other people work through it. The Stations of the Cross are:
1 — Jesus is condemned to death
2 — Jesus carries his cross
3 — Jesus falls the first time
4 — Jesus meets his mother
5 — Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry his cross
6 — Veronica wipes the face of Jessu
7 — Jesus falls the second time
8 — Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
9 — Jesus falls a third time
10 — Jesus’ clothes are taken away
11 — Jesus is nailed to the cross
12 — Jesus dies on the cross
13 — The body of Jesus is removed from the Cross
14 — Jesus is laid in the tomb
I am writing this during Lent, finishing it during what I grew to know and love as “Holy Week”. And as I find myself somewhere between death and resurrection, as I find my own identity shifting in so many major ways, I can’t help but think, once again, about how the journey of “The Passion” is everyone’s journey. It’s the Fool’s journey in the Tarot. It’s the journey of countless gods, goddesses and mystics across time, space and tradition. On the road to liberation, enlightenment, salvation, we all fall and fail, we all have people who assist us along the way, we are all forced to bare our naked and pained selves to the world in some kind of way, we are all betrayed by everyone we know and we all have to bury the spiritual and emotional bodies that can’t take us into the next life. You have to lose and/or let go of everything. You have to lose your entire identity — sometimes, many times. Through the process of being reborn, we lose attachments to what this world — and the many structures within it — tell us we have to be, given the physical bodies we inhabit.
In high school, one of my nicknames was “Nunny” because, by then, I was the one who was convinced that I wanted to be a nun (by no pressure from my parents — it wasn’t until much later that they disclosed their early suspicions). Within the context of Catholicism, being a nun is not the worst thing for a woman. I know extremely educated, incredibly intelligent sisters who are freer than a lot of non-religious women I know — even in their bodies. They are on the cutting edge — doing, thinking, saying, and owning things that most Catholics, women or men (in the United States, anyway), couldn’t imagine owning alongside their religious orientation — or even apart from it. They’re connected in different ways. How I understood what it meant to be a nun was that they were not beholden to any man (the original definition of the word “virgin,” as in the guardians of the Hearth goddess, Vesta). Spoiler alert: I didn’t become a nun! And I don’t anticipate becoming one anytime soon. Yet, as I progress through the final burning and rising I’m experiencing now, I realize that not much has changed. It’s a return to knowing that my ultimate relationship is with God — with the great spirit, with that which is greater than I.
Growing up, I didn’t want to be/couldn’t be beholden to any man because I was concerned that would disrupt my ability to carry out the mission I’ve been sent here to do (since I saw a lot of women who seemed to give up their lives and missions to support their husbands and raise their children). As I wrote about in the last edition of “Love and Profit,” this idea that I had to choose between living a purpose-filled life or being in a relationship infiltrated my way of being for quite a long time.
It didn’t occur to me at that time — being limited by and bound to that one particular structure — that it could be possible for me to maintain my wild uncontrollable love for the wild uncontrollable energies/spirit that inhabits everything and everyone (including me) — and be in a relationship, that a relationship could actually help facilitate my ability to do my work in the world. Most importantly, that constant fight between my inner feminine and masculine made it almost impossible to achieve my true destiny.
Relationship is not ownership, possession — it’s the very opposite. The point of being in relationship is not to give away your power, but to own your power and bring it together with another person who is fully standing in their own power. Your power is not in another person. Your power is in your spirit and that which is greater than you. Power is in the soul. It is not in the ego — the ego doesn’t understand the balance of power between two complete energies. And yet, the human ego is necessary to feel protected and safe enough to let go of the ego (physically, emotionally, spiritually and intellectually). Safety is critical because I’m not sure you can take unconditional love out into the world if you don’t have the safety of first having it within you and with another person (any person — not necessarily romantic connections). Not even Jesus did that — which is why I think Mary Magdalene is so critical to Jesus’ life and message (despite the troubling narratives that often surround her).
So that is the end of one story. And the beginning of another. That is what this transformational work, this spiritual journey, is all about. The old narratives have burned — about what I am, about who I am, about how I have to show up in relationship, and most importantly — that I have to seek for an identity or culture outside of myself. I am rising from the ashes as a person whose inner relationship between masculine and feminine energy maintains a dynamic balance. I am rising from the ashes as someone who doesn’t have to be everything but is expansive enough to hold everything she is with sophistication and grace, as someone who is learning to live in divine partnership with herself, as someone who is learning to be committed to herself, her mission, and that which is greater than she. And, no doubt, that also means that, like Ani DiFranco sings, “Love ain’t far behind …”
“We rise again from ashes,
from the good we’ve failed to do.
We rise again from ashes,
to create ourselves anew.
If all our world is ashes,
then must our lives be true,
an offering of ashes, an offering to you.”
~Tom Conry
