I’ve had more than a couple people recently ask me why I’ve suddenly started talking about my spirituality, and, as good questions often do, it prompted me to actually give some thought as to what my answer to that actually is, rather than replying with some short off the cuff remark that probably only shows one part of the answer.
As with anything significant, the answer isn’t just one thing. I’m kind of in the right place, with the right resources, and have been spending time with someone who prompts me to consider that part of life more frequently than I have in recent years. Let me deconstruct that a little bit:
First: Are you familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? If not, let me refresh your memory:
For years, I struggled with even just attaining the bottom two rungs. Everything above that got shoved onto a back burner. For years. Some things were on such a back burner that they were on someone else’s stove, all the way in another neighborhood. But, last year I managed to get a job that secured the first two rungs for me. With those two taken care of, I started to be able to chip away at the third. Thanks to joining the Flamingos, re-aquainting myself with Baltimore’s LGBT community, and meeting Richard, rungs three and four were now conquered, as it were. I now had the confidence and achievement to attain the friendships and relationships that help give my life the depth of meaning it has. With that well in hand, I now have the freedom (and mental/physical energy) to work on some higher level pursuits – creativity, spirituality, soul searching, etc. This is, actually, not the first time I’ve publicly spoken about my spirituality. The last time I had all my other “rungs” taken care of – when I was living in South Korea – I even kept a blog about it (called “Shut Up and Listen” – the title was a play on the Quaker silent meeting).
It’s also worth noting that the fact that I’m not actively writing about a given topic at a given time does not mean that it’s not something that is influential in my life. My spirituality is something that has been an active part of my daily existence for the vast majority of my life. It’s the background noise, the static behind my eyes, the context for the way I view and interact with the world around me. For someone who was raised in a household that banned organized religion, my spirituality is actually surprisingly well-developed and a pretty profound force in my life.
I just don’t talk about it much. Part of that is because I find it difficult to articulate them outside of being asked specific questions (which, if you have any, feel free to ask – I’m an open book!), but part of that is also because since my set of beliefs were developed without much outside influence, they’re intensely personal to me.
But, now that I’ve got a housemate and a boyfriend for whom spiritual practice is a significant part of their lives, I find myself both examining the role of spirituality in my life with greater scrutiny and talking about it quite a bit more as I do so. So, there you go.