Reclaiming a sacred practice

This continues to be relevant. As a non-Catholic, I spend an inordinate amount of time meditating in a small chapel in a cathedral on the Strip. It has quickly become one of my favorite places on Earth. Some days, sitting in my pew alone, I’m absorbed in the story of my life. I ask childish, angry questions that I didn’t know were still part of me, like a kid railing against their parents: “Why is this my life?” (My thoughts are literally in italic.) Other times, I’m more curious, and, shall we say, adult about it: “Here I am. Here are my resources. What do I do?” I pose all of this to myself, the universe, humanity—who knows. It’s a small but profound practice in listening for what might emerge from nothing.

Other days, I show up at the cathedral with no introspection. My mind is blank. I fidget, must consciously put away my phone, and am left to stare at the mosaic mural of Jesus and Mary and what I assume to be a host of angels. I consider the mural the way one might look at a painting in a museum, wishing for more profound thoughts and instead noticing how the angels appear to be wearing Maison Margiela boots, and how Jesus looks a bit like he’s rolling his eyes.

Sometimes I contemplate Jesus’s life and its violent end. He had 12 followers in his disciples; among them, one created huge drama that led to his death, as you know. How odd to think about this today, in the context of a society obsessed with amassing followers online. How uncanny that this figure, his parables and messages, practically dead language to us now could seem revolutionary again. Jesus bucked the establishment. He fraternized with the sick, the homeless, and sex workers, and was considered dangerous for it. While people make this point all the time, I’ve discovered it’s another thing to sit dumbfounded in a chapel trying to reconcile how legalistic and vile the message has become.

I am not an expert on the Jesus Movement that emerged in the late 60s in California, a fusion of evangelical zeal and anti-institutional identity. I’ve only read about it in essays and books. But that’s the Jesus I like to imagine—radical, transformational, coded as a rock star. My mom wasn’t in the Jesus Freak camp, but we did have Godspell on vinyl, and my sister and I loved that album to death. We also sang in the children’s choir in the Methodist church. We learned to tithe. We went to Sunday School. In the fourth grade, I memorized the books of the Old and New Testament in order. I got something for it, a prize of some sort, but I can’t remember what because I accepted the challenge for the love of literature.

Another question I ask myself in that church: why I’m always seeking to internalize the marginalized—why do I skulk around the edges of culture like this? I’m driven to understand. Regarding the cathedral: I wanted a place to be still, except I didn’t know I wanted this. I only discovered it once I arrived.

I bring all of this up (again) because the other day I listened to an episode of Pod Save America (“Kimmel Wins, Tylenol Loses”), in which the two Jons and Tommy were commenting on how progressives struggle to express a sense of morality and spirituality. Indeed, to utter the “s word” gives many on the left the ick.

Specifically, they had watched the televised memorial of Charlie Kirk and noted, as did almost everyone, that it was part political rally, part spiritual revival, and also a third thing: an appeal to the moral self. One said this: “There are all these young people who feel disconnected and disaffected—a void in their life, a lack of purpose—and [the memorial speakers] were speaking to that first.”

“I had the same notes,” said another. (I’m sorry I don’t know who said what; the transcript didn’t specify, and I can’t tell their voices apart.) “We’ve taken morality out of a lot of our political language, and it leaves us, in moments like this, on the left, with a tinniness in how we respond.”

Yes, it’s either tinniness, or woodenness, or a big fat zero. Nothing. No address of the personal moral or spiritual at all. This hasn’t bothered me before because I related to the emptiness, and other values felt more pressing. After politics invaded our sacred spaces, and I grew to suspect that this material life is all there is, I wanted no association, not even to identify as the clunky and fake-sounding “spiritual but not religious.” It had all become too cringe, and the commitment to the separation of church and state too critical to risk mucking up. But what I see now is that, over time, we’ve lost a diversity and depth of language to speak about spirituality at all.

I go to that chapel to ask what it means to live well and protect the well-being of others. I want mine to be a private meditation, though I love it when others are in the cathedral too, lost in their own worlds of wonder or pain or supplication. When so much of our existence is spent pushing, creating, balking, consuming, the practice of being with others in silence feels like defiance. I’m not going to let anyone steal entire territories of the human experience from me just because I don’t like their translation. I intend to keep listening to the unknown. Apparently, I will keep writing about it, too. It feels daring and fresh, like I’m risking something real.