“You've spent lifetimes in convents and caves, but you've chosen in this lifetime to be out in the real world.”
A psychic said this to me on the phone, in the fall of 2014. It was my senior year of college and I felt alone in not knowing who I was yet, what I was meant to do. So I called him. When we hung up, my career path was as murky as ever — but he did offer a few juicy one-liners that I wrote down to return to later, like this one.
I understand what he meant better now than I did then. I couldn’t imagine that I had spent any time, even in a past life, in a convent or a cave. Now, of course, I get it completely. There is something very appealing about a fixed perimeter, a set schedule. (I know, of course, that those inflexible boundaries pose challenges of their own. I am too obsessed with my own freedom, and not quite naïve enough, to think that I would fare well under the iron rule of the abbey.) But the point is, I can imagine a past-life version of me choosing to commit myself wholly (or should I say holy, hehe) to a community of spiritual seekers with a defined set of rules, a certainty of purpose.
What I have in this lifetime, often to my frustration, is the purpose without the path. On my very best days, the pathlessness feels expansive and thrilling. On those days, the good ones, each step is not just on the path, but it is the path itself. (I’ll get into the unmoored, exasperated days another time.)
So many people have (reasonably) asked me, since I graduated from divinity school, what I learned there, and what I’m doing now. The answer I kept giving was: I started a book, and now I’m finishing it. It was almost true. I wrote thirty-thousand-or-so words that I handed in at the end of the year, and the exploration undertaken in those pages did not yet feel close to finished. But every time I have returned to my thesis since graduation, I grated against the idea of it ever reaching a terminus. I always put “book” in air quotes. Because so much of what I wrote about in this so-called book was my interest in practice, in process, in the challenge and thrill of paying close attention to the constantly-unfolding present. The creation of a final product, something I could slap a cover on and write a blurb for, felt antithetical to the subject of my inquiry. Writing a book would mean that it is possible to find an answer to the questions I’m asking.
So I’ve decided, instead, to open up my process to the world. Not to work toward some foreseen end, but to honor the nature of the topic and make something cumulative, exploratory, unpolished. This newsletter will include parts of my thesis, updated and reorganized and rethought. I also hope to include conversations with fellow travelers: folks who seek and cultivate awe in their lives in unusual or exciting ways. In this way, I hope to begin to draw the outlines of a spiritual community for myself, and for you, too, if you’re interested.
Talking about divinity school used to make me so nervous. I always felt the impulse to head people’s judgment off at the pass, reaffirm my known identity as a reasonable person, an intellectual. Don’t worry! I haven’t become some crazy fundamentalist!
But the truth is that most people don’t need reassurance. They understand what I am looking for — they’re looking for it too. I thought I had been raised without religion (a theory that was debunked about four seconds into my first semester), that I wasn’t part of a spiritual community. But I soon realized that I’d long been part of a vast network of spiritual seekers. Artists. Writers. Psychonauts. Environmentalists. Surfers. Activists. Musicians.
I learned a lot at school — I learned how to think about religion in a more critical, nuanced way, I learned how ingrained it is into every single facet of our society, in invisible ways that we take for granted. I learned a lot about how it has been wielded like a weapon, used as a tool of control and alienation. This newsletter will inevitably get into some of that stuff — it comes with the territory. But what interests me most, and what I hope to focus on, are the central questions of my life for the past few years, the same questions I asked in my divinity school application, and now have pinned on a post-it note next to my desk. How to live in awe? If I’m not going to spend this lifetime in a convent or a cave, can I make the whole world my place of worship?
There is so much more to say, which is why it’s such a relief that this is a project that will be ongoing and open-ended! Thanks for reading. If you have questions or comments, nits to pick, or love notes to send, you can reply to this email directly or leave a public comment.
Love,
Ellie
PS. Thanks to the Maine Cosmonauts and especially Brian Logvinsky for the open-source pun that inspired the name of this newsletter. Whoa is us! I love you all.