Bloglet: On Easter

I don’t know why I felt called to write this today, but I did. I think a lot of my internal battles around faith have led me here & I thought a few of you out there might resonate with what I have to say.

First of all, I just want to remind each of you that your faith is your own. The level of belief or non-belief in whatever you believe in is entirely your journey to have outside of exterior influence & in fact I’ve often found that “exterior influence” tends to make my personal faith wane. No one is entitled to your spiritual journey except for you. Naturally, as the title would suggest, this little bloglet is coming from my own christian-centric journey. That being said, if you are someone who finds the act of going to church on Easter performative or disingenuous I would honestly advise you to not go. Faith shouldn’t feel like a chore & despite what Ragetti says in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Curse, I don’t believe that you “get credit for trying” at least not in the sense of attendance points. Likewise if you are someone who finds the church space uncomfortable, unwelcoming, or alienating, I would advise you not to go. You should feel welcomed & celebrated to come as you are, not as someone else would want you to be.

I personally am someone who finds churches, more often than not, falling into the above categories. I tried & tried for years to make them stick because of the way I was raised & it all just felt so superficial. I know that’s a massive generalization on my part, I’m simply speaking from my experience. I also know there are going to be many people out there who give me the “well, not my church, you should try mine” & if I’m being honest, it all just sounds like a sales pitch to me. If you’re someone who has found genuine community in your church, I’m so happy for you, truly I am, because that should be the goal, but for so many of us, that’s just not the case.

So, as someone who identifies as “Christian,” a phrase I use cautiously if you’ve read my other blogs on the topic, how do I celebrate Easter if it’s not from a church pew or a cushioned folding chair set up in a shared space? I celebrate Easter by seeking out God in the places I often find them. I celebrate Easter by immersing myself in the wild places; the forest, the ocean, the mountains, the meadows. I celebrate Easter by engaging in the passion of human beings; food, culture, closeness with those I love, music, the things that allow me to sit back & sonder, to see humans in the greatest expressions of joy, gratitude, & fulfillment. I find the signatures of God in nature, in genuine connection, & in the purest, most freed expression of what it is that makes us human. As Alan Moore wrote in his acclaimed graphic novel, V For Vendetta, “God is in the rain.”

I’m writing this today because I know there are so many of you out there like me, who see the disconnect between book & practice & find it jarring to try & squeeze into the mold of ‘the church goer’ on this holy day. I know there are many out there who are clinging to remnants of their faith because you desperately want to but your lived experience has been contrary to what The Bible says it should. I know for a lot of you today can be painful, especially for those of you who have lost or been ostracized by friends & family by actually practicing the words of the book. I am here to tell you that you are not alone, your experience is valid, & I understand what you are going through.

I want to challenge those of you who are clinging to the fragmented, tattered scraps of your faith to spend a portion of your day finding your reflections of creation wherever it if that you feel them. Bask in them, be grateful for them, & for the connection you share & live your life through the lens of unconditional love as we have been called to do.

The Happiest of Easters to those of you who follow the way!

He Is Risen!

Object Writing: Atlas

Deception, pain, punishment, these are all the things that brought me to where I am now; set between the crushing weight of atmosphere & the unrelenting density of earth sprawled out before me. I shift uncomfortable, the literal weight of the world on my shoulders, my knees bleed from the sharp mountain tops forced beneath them. My existence has become suffering, destined to stand tall & strong for an eternity watching life & time slip by. I am cursed, infinitely cursed all because of the need to support those who raised me, who cared for me, who gave me power & purpose in this world. I have been ripped from my lofty throne & thrust into the servitude of Gods that don’t serve me or mine. It is here that I am destined to spend my forever burdened with keeping two loving bodies from one another, doomed to be a passive member of creation, a watcher, a monument of strife, a beacon of warning. I heft the sky father farther away from my mother earth & bear his weight reluctantly all while life goes on without me, all around me, oblivious to the sacrifice I have been forced to make.

Blog: Is It Worth It? Let Me Work It.

The more I observe society the more commonality I find amongst us, especially, I feel, where people my age are concerned. We struggle with our with, our inherent value & worthiness that we bring with us into the world. I think growing up in the 90s & later, the 2000s, our worth was minimized. We were given participation trophies, shown that the work we put in didn’t matter, that we’d still receive the same level of prize. We were thrown into jobs as teenagers that had us working minimum wage jobs where that minimum wage never increased despite the value of a dollar decreasing. We were told we were special then shown the exact opposite.

Worth is definitely something that I’ve struggled with myself, I haven’t felt worthy of success or happiness or whatever else. Why? Lord knows, but something in me was ingrained to believe that I was only worthy of being considered a human being when I had found success. When I no longer struggled for money or had to fight to make headway in the music industry, only then would I be worth of the name I carry & the feelings of success or happiness I have.

I think a lot of that stems from growing up in church. No shame to the big man upstairs, I’m a fan, just not so much of the church world. When you’re living actively in the christian world there’s a lot of rhetoric around shame. We must be shameful of being inherently sinful or ashamed of the parts of ourself that some printing press decided should be included in the bible back in 1946 due to personal politics. We are told that we fall short of the glory of God simply by being born.

So of course so many of us struggle to find our worthiness. We’ve been told from a very young age that hard work & success are what brings us worthiness, but what happens when society doesn’t hold up its end of that bargain & your hard work just leads to more struggle instead of success or financial freedom? We’re told that if we want to be worthy in the eyes of the church or in the eyes of God that we have to hide parts of ourself or be ashamed of who we are. That no all loving God would accept you as they made you, that you have to fit the christian mold to be in God’s grace. That’s never sat right with me.

So many books that are published these days seek to resolve this issue. In “Rich As F*ck” Amanda Frances makes the bold claim that we are worthy of happiness & of our dreams simply because we are. You are worthy because you are. You were born worthy, raised worthy, & will die worthy of basic human rights, decencies, success, abundance, & happiness.

We, as millennials, definitely have a worthiness problem, fortunately it doesn’t seem to have carried over to Gen Z who appear to see right through the BS & are ready to come swinging. So many of us end up failing though simply because we do not believe that we are worthy of success. We self sabotage, we doubt, we make excuses instead of owning our inherent worthiness & just doing the damn thing with our chests puffed out & our head held high. We are so afraid of the fall that cometh after pride that we have completely depleted ourselves of any of it.

So here’s my challenge to you this week, in all honesty it’s probably something that’ll take more than a week but we gotta start somewhere don’t we? I want you to practice your worthiness. I want you to stop accepting the abuses you deal with at work or at home. I want you to demand to be paid what you’re worth. I want you to stand up for yourself & say “enough.” Why? Because you’re worthy. Why are you worthy? Because you are. Write it on your mirror, put a memo in your phone, put a slip in you car that says “I am worthy because I am.” & own it! Say it, repeat it, feel it, live it!

You are worthy because you are my lovelies, have a fantastic week, much love to you all!

-C

Blog: Coincidence?! I Think Not!!

…Let’s start here

Coincidences. Let’s talk about them. I’ve been thinking more & more about them lately, partially because they keep popping up in my life. Which is itself a coincidence. Or is it? You see the more coincidences pop up the more I think I’m beginning to believe in them less & less.

A dear friend of mine is a very successful life coach. He, in his years, has met many a successful individual & we were once talking about this very topic together. The reason we were discussing the topic was because we had met one another by coincidence. We happened to both be in a place we were seldom in, at a time we were seldom there at. He has since become friends with my friends & I with his! Anyway, back to the topic at hand. One of the people this friend has met in their life freely offered up the key to his thriving success. It’s one rule & it’s a very simple one.

There is no such thing as a coincidence.

This man’s philosophy in life & the thing in which he owes his success abides by that one simple rule. When met with something he would normally deem a coincidence he takes it as a sign & follows the coincidence to its natural completion.

This discussion took place between my mate & I years ago & for whatever reason….call it coincidence, it’s been dancing around in my head for the last few weeks. So I decided to lean into it! The crazy thing is, the more of these little anomalies occur in my life, the more I follow them, the more I believe in them as more than just a passing “huh” moment, the more of them seem to pop up in my day to day life. Usually the things that lead me to these moments are a pull I feel from within whether it’s text this person or go to this place or post that thing it always leads me further down the rabbit hole. The odd part of this whole experience is that I’ve started not only to lean into them but to believe that they will occur. I have gained a newfound faith in the reoccurring bizarre moments that make everything seem to click together.

So clearly I’m being contradictory to what I’ve stated above when I said the more coincidences happen the less I believe in them but with that statement I am speaking specifically to the exceptional nature of coincidences themselves. I’ve begun to believe less in coincidences & begun believing more in them being part of the natural flow of life.

I think a coincidence is merely a sign, a little nudge from God or the universe or whatever belief system you subscribe to that you’re headed in the right direction, that the path you’re following, the path laid out before you is the correct one. Clearly, the friend of a friend I mentioned above would agree with that. You see when we try to resist our lives & resist the things coming to us along our path we find the more the path will urge us back to it. Think of it like a rubber band, your fate, your destiny, your whatever awaits on one side of it where you are on the other end. The more you try to pull away, to divert your course, the more resistance you’ll be met with. If you go with the flow & lean into these God given opportunities you’ll face less resistance & have more & more, let’s call them coincidences, come your way. You’ll be living in the un-stretched rubber band free to move around without pull back.

We’re all looking for signs, screaming for them usually. But I promise you they’ll never show themselves in abrasive ways, that’s not how these things are communicated. Only in the silence, in the observation, in the instinct will you find your signs. Quiet your mind, trust yourself, trust the voice inside you leading you forward, it’s there for a reason. Coincidences are your signs from the divine. They’re the things you’ve been begging to have reward your faith. So don’t ignore them.