God in a new dress
why the spiritual is not a luxury, but another silent rebellion
This morning I opened my notebook and found something I jotted down from a book I read some time ago, I put no reference (to whoever wrote it please come forward!).
“All religions are a form of institutionalised mythology”
It motivated me to explore the spiritual, a word that has, in my opinion, acquired a superficiality that does not belong to it. What I simply mean, is that which we can feel but not touch, that which is hidden in the darkness, underground, in our stories and our emotions. The spiritual, or creative, as I see it, requires patience and introspection and is inherently feminine.
I don’t intend to cover all spiritual practices and religions, that would be a Herculean task, I merely want to journey into what I have encountered — in books, practice and in culture- that will hopefully reveal its political significance. When you see the word spiritual from this point forward, please know that the word can be replaced by whatever is relevant and comfortable to you. Some suggestions: God, Mother, poetic, introspective, emotional, erotic, dark.
A journey inside
Religion plays such a fundamental role in human history, influencing cultural pillars, being the catalyst of wars and hatred, as well as waves of solidarity, compassion and a sense of unity like no other.
I grew up in the cradle of Catholicism, in Rome; religion’s power was all around me. I was baptised because it was something you did, people married in a church, and I had to attend Catechism until I was 9 (then was thrown out for asking too many questions). My parents, not so religious themselves, let me be.
When someone mentioned the word “spiritual” I thought of religions. I was fascinated by the love and compassion preached by Catholicism, yet did not understand the lack of choice for women on their bodies, or the fact that every priest was a man. I also didn’t like that I was being told a story like it was something I needed to be convinced about. Most of all, as a woman, I never felt comfortable in the patriarchal structures of the religions I was exposed to. And so, I left the spiritual on the side, dormant.
Most of all, as a woman, I never felt comfortable in the patriarchal structures of the religions I was exposed to.
God in a new dress
A few years ago, needing to find more than a physical connection to myself and the world, I went searching for another type of spiritual. As a human who needed to heal, I searched for something beyond my humanity, and still today I think that human’s search for the ethereal has a lot to do with healing.
I found in myself an innate curiosity when reading about Aphrodite and the sea, Oya and the wind, the genderless Yoruba Gods, the Hindu God that exist in duality; Shiva the destroyer and creator. I felt in touch with the present when I burned paper after a ritual under the moon, or gathered rosemary and lavender for my altar, or connected with my ancestral lineage. God was wearing a new dress, and I liked it.
Reading about mythology brought me into folklore, storytelling, Jungian approaches to psychology and more. I believe that these are all part of a cauldron that we might associate with an interior, feminine and dark (in the best sense of the word) realm. As I delved into these readings and practices, I began feeling that my connection with the spiritual, poetic, internal, ethereal — call it what you will- in the society we live in, began to acquire a radical, revolutionary and incredibly necessary role.
The many faces of spirituality
In the writing of Alice Walker, the dance that poetry, spirituality, and social justice move to is beautifully portrayed. Walker practised meditation, God — or as she liked to call it “Mama”- is ever-present in her books, “as well as fiery resistance to any force that attempts to control or contain this juicy, abundant, and ever-present divine.”
Her books have elements of spirituality and ritual that I read as stemming from a sentiment of being rooted in origin and identity through injustice. We can even think of witchcraft as this desire to explore the interior, the slow, the poetic, to be absorbed in a slowness that is denied to us from a young age in a society that thrives on the profit of the system and the misery of the individual.
We live in a society that is primarily focused on structural, linear power, on the solution-oriented, the logical and rational. In this world, the feminine, the spiritual — unless institutionalised by patriarchal dogmas- cannot survive.
To take the words of the almighty Audre Lorde “ The principal horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional components of that need- the principal horror of such system is that it robs our work of its erotic values, its erotic power and life appeal and fulfilment”. What Lorde is trying to show us here is that the value that the emotional, interior, pleasurable, poetic, spiritual has in this society is much stronger than we think. I put these words together purposefully because I believe they are all rooted in feminine aspects of the self, inhabited by all human beings.
Indigenous people the world over use ritual in the worship of the land, placing value on the soil that gives us food, water and oxygen, everything we need to survive. Anything we worship requires respect, dedication and compassion, so perhaps it would be beneficial to worship ourselves, our bodies, the earth, the elements. This is where religious institutions often fail in my opinion; by giving us structures and dogmas, they take away our agency.
Anything we worship requires respect, dedication and compassion.
A reclaiming of the poetic is, as Lorde put it, “firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling.” It means reckoning our own fragility; it humbles us, it allows for compassion and this reflects on our relationship to “the other”. James Baldwin said about jazz -and music worship is a form of spirituality in my opinion- that it transmitted that “loving and realistic respect for the body, which Americans have mostly lost, which I had experienced only among Negroes, and which I had been told to be ashamed of”.
Reconnecting with the spiritual, the beautiful, the poetic, means coming to terms with our own fragility as human beings. To know that there is something bigger than (in) us, humbles us and gives us peace, it allows for compassion for ourselves and reflects on our relationship with the other. This, valued collectively, works to dismantle the hierarchical structures in place, it promotes human rights. Therefore, reconnecting with the spiritual is another revolutionary act or silent rebellion as I call them.
When this connection comes from a place of curiosity and humility, it also becomes a political act of love and respect towards our own humanity. Done with respect for its origins, with gratitude and humility, it can be truly powerful. To heal the individual is to heal the collective, and the only individual we can truly heal is ourself.
I am still learning, and there are so many problematics in this realm, not least of all cultural appropriation, but my intention here is to offer a reflection on the spiritual that hopefully will push you to dig deeper into that part within.
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