a'ishah's writing

[aishah]

crossposted from my blog...

june 15th - scattered thoughts on contemplation, faith, and doubt

since i moved to lawrence, i’ve attended a couple of theology discussion groups. i love theology discussion groups but sometimes feel alienated as i don’t really get into the philosophy and rationalizing so much. i have a background in religious studies (not in christianity, though, which is the basis of most discussion groups i’ve found), but my own personal religious convictions are less based in rational thought or philosophy and more in personal, and usually irrational, conviction. i’m more interested in what people do and why, or in the touchy/feely, emotional aspects of faith. the intellectual side of things does exercise muscles that haven’t gotten much use since college, though.

last night i got to lead a discussion for the first time and i decided to talk about prayer. i was nervous, as it’s a more personal topic than many of our discussions, but i learned a lot from the experience and what other people shared. it also challenged me to think about the role of prayer in my own life, and my relationship with god.

during the discussion we talked a bit about why people pray…for example, praying for some outcome (which seems irrational to many folks). recently i was reading celebration of discipline by richard foster, which is a classic mainstream christian devotional book. (i am not as big a fan as i hoped i’d be.) in it, foster talks about how if your prayers aren’t being answered or you’re not seeing results, you’re just not praying correctly. this is hella problematic for me…one of the common religious tropes disabled and poor people run up against is that if we just prayed hard enough, or prayed correctly, we wouldn’t be disabled or poor anymore. it’s ableist and classist and it sucks. praying for outcomes, or prayers of petition, often feel arbitrary…sometimes we see answers, sometimes we don’t. for some people, this stretches the limits of rational thinking, and can even be a reason why they have a hard time believing god exists. (or if god exists, that we should bother praying to her.)

we talked about how public prayer can be a way to share one’s concerns and needs with others – at the church i’ve been attending, we do a thing called the “people’s prayer,” where folks share their concerns and petitions in the format of prayer, but it also helps us stay up on what everyone is going through in their lives.

someone also mentioned how prayer can be a form of working things out in one’s own brain, without distractions. i thought this was pretty cool in light of an article i found a few days ago, where the writer talks about “running with jesus” as a form of prayer. because of mental health issues (mainly dissociation), i have a hard time sometimes writing or talking with myself about issues, so i know there have been times when i’ve used prayer in this way – either through getting things out in a conversation with god, or writing a letter to god while journaling.

one of the things i brought up is how meditation and prayer can serve practical purposes…for me, it helps me mentally, physically, and emotionally – not just spiritually. i find i am less prone to anger and irritation when i do contemplative practices on a regular basis. this also serves as a spiritual barometer of sorts…sometimes (though not always) i can tell if something is going right spiritually by the meaningful changes i see in my day to day life. in islam, the five daily prayers as well as the practice of short prayers said throughout the day, dhikr (devotional practices), etc. all serve the purpose of remembrance of god. some of these prayers serve different purposes as well, but the main thread is remembrance of god in every activity – even down to, when we speak, saying things like “insha’allah” (god willing) for everything we plan, or alhamdulillah (thank god) for everything that happens, good or bad. that immediate, constant level of remembrance of god can be extremely helpful – not just spiritually but also mentally and emotionally.

i am frustrated sometimes as it feels in our communities there can be a dividing line between those who feel god’s presence or are comfortable praying with those who are not. we talked about this a little bit last night. i think this creates a false dichotomy of faithful/doubting, when in reality, most people i know (including myself) struggle with doubt. this dichotomy can also be hurtful or alienating for people who feel they fall into the category of “doubting,” or have never felt any certainty about faith. i have been wondering lately about how to go about bridging that gap or blurring that line so that people do not feel that it has to be one way or the other. or that religion, church, community, etc. are only for people who are “believers” and not “doubters” (or even “atheists). (or even only for people who are “believers” in certain specific things.) because fuck that exclusivity bullshit – we are in this mess together. at the discussion group i spoke more about my certainty of faith than the doubt i experience, but afterwards others’ reflections on doubt made me reflect on my own doubt, and also how i relate to other people who are struggling with doubt.

i have always felt drawn to religion and started learning about different contemplative practices when i was really young. i’ve done various forms of contemplative practice intensively on and off for a long time. i’ve been lucky to be a part of several different faith communities and have many spiritual friends and mentors along the journey. i’ve had experiences which i would describe as feeling god’s presence in my life, and i’d say having a close relationship with god is extremely important to me. i have struggled with reconciling many of my beliefs and identities with faith, and that has caused difficulty, but it’s never made me stop believing altogether.

for me, this also stems from other experiences in my life. i don’t think i’d have survived many of the things that i have been through without faith in god (or something – i have not always been a monotheist). for me, also, faith – as well as social justice work – has been a way to cope with years of depression and suicidal thinking. i have a strong set of principles/beliefs that form the backbone of, well, my desire to get up in the morning. my depression is much much better now than it used to be. but still in order to survive and thrive i have to have a clarity of purpose in my life. otherwise, in my experience, everything goes to shit really, really fast. i am fascinated by what drives people to get up in the morning (or afternoon, whatever), because it is very difficult for me. i think for many people it is possible to have a sense of purpose without faith, but for me, my religious beliefs underpin many things in my life, including why i do social justice work. in a nutshell – because i believe resisting oppression is an act of faith, perhaps even (for me at least) a joyful obligation.

at the same time, i doubt…a lot. i have chronic impostor anxiety about a lot of things in my life, including faith. i often question the sincerity of my intentions. one of the things i am grateful for in islam is the discussion of sincerity of intentions/sincerity in prayer – it has given me a framework within which to examine this issue and work on it, but it’s definitely still a struggle. i think no matter how religious one is or how much certainty one has, impostor issues or issues of sincerity always crop up. the experience of praying and wondering if Anyone is actually listening, or if it really makes a difference, is also common one for me – although one of the things that helps me with that is having had a strong feeling/sensation of god’s presence at a few times in my life. so when i do feel very alone or that prayer isn’t working i can remember that sensation. with the strength of doubt i have sometimes, i’m not sure how i would manage to keep faith without that memory. dissociation is a huge problem for me (it is a symptom of eating disorder & post traumatic stress issues, and no matter how well my “recovery” is going it never fully goes away) – this can also affect my faith a lot of the time. it is hard for me to communicate with god when i can’t even communicate with myself, or when it feels like there’s no self there to communicate with – when i feel irreparably disconnected from who i am.

i also have so much resistance. this probably sounds funny, but contemplative practice is like exercise for me. a lot of the time i have to make myself do it and try really hard to ignore that tape of “this is stupid, why are we doing this, i’d rather be watching netflix, this is pointless, no one’s listening, there are more important things to do, i don’t feel like it,” etc. i feel better when it’s over with and when i notice results, but a lot of the time i have to force myself to start and force myself to continue. in buddhism this restlessness and resistance is called monkey mind. for a number of reasons, i have a hard time even wanting to tame monkey mind…it can be difficult to distinguish when my mind is just throwing up crap, or when i have a strong feeling of resistance for a specific reason, or when it is an act of self-care not to make myself do things. and there’s the part of me that is so sick of “shoulds” in my life and has that attitude of – i don’t want to do things just because i don’t want to do them, and why should i force myself? for me, the idea of legitimacy as far as this goes feels really ableist – i don’t like trying to label certain impulses as “real self-care” and other impulses as “lazy.” but parsing out what is what, and not beating myself up or falling into internalized ableist traps while trying to cope with monkey mind, can be really difficult. time and practice have helped but this is something i still struggle with.

i often wonder about great religious figures, or even religious leaders in our local communities. it seems that doubt is rarely talked about. when it came out after mother teresa’s death (perhaps it was before? i don’t know a lot about the situation) that she had experienced long periods of doubt and disconnection from god, people were shocked. recently, i was reading a blog where someone wrote that we (everyone but religious leaders especially) shouldn’t question our beliefs intensely or share doubt because it might lead people away from god. personally, i think it’s not worth believing in something that can’t be questioned. and it’s possible, if you are trying to evangelize (this is not my goal, but seemed to be the blog writer’s), that talking more about doubt and disconnection from god could help bring people who are currently feeling isolated to god. or at the very least it might make them feel more accepted and humanized within our communities (this is my goal).

i wish we had more conversations about these issues in our communities. i wish people were more sensitive to doubts – i think often in religious communities there’s a sort of peer pressure to put on a face of being certain in your faith, especially if you’re in a leadership position or if your membership in the community depends on sharing certain beliefs. one shortcoming i recognize in myself is my tendency to emphasize my certainty of faith, which can sometimes come out in ways that are insensitive to folks who aren’t so certain. and it can erase the shared struggles of doubt that we experience (and also perhaps invalidate or erase the ways in which our experiences of doubt are different). perhaps talking about this more can help people overcome some doubts – perhaps not. i do think it would strengthen our relationships with each other and our communication and honesty around things that are deeply personal and important.

[aishah]

something i wrote on tumblr recently...

for the last year i have been exploring a lot of stuff around my relationship with my body, my disabilities/illnesses, trauma, and dissociation. i have some ideas floating around in my head that i want to write about on my blog…especially about the trauma i went through in the medical industrial complex as a child and how that affected my experiences of sexual violence and my relationship w/my body. and just generally going through life. the allied media conference this year was the first time i really verbalized a lot of that in one sitting, out loud, to other people. i haven’t put all the words together in ways that make sense yet.

the dissociation issues i have…are really hard to deal with sometimes. it runs the gamut from not recognizing myself in the mirror to not really feeling it or being present in my body when people touch me to…not understanding that i have/am a self/body. sometimes it is a blessing, though, especially as a sex worker. until i started doing sex work, i always saw it as a negative thing, but now i think without it i probably wouldn’t survive working. i can get through long days of work using dissociation as a coping mechanism. at the same time - lately, i am really depressed and anxious and have a lot of other mental health issues going on in my life, plus work is extremely slow and stressful - and this thing that usually is a positive coping mechanism seems to lately be exacerbating the other things. or it’s the other way around - generally overall my dissociation is worse lately and that scares me when i rely on it too much to get through work. it makes it really difficult to shift in and out of the work headspace that i have.

maybe it’s just that i hate compartmentalizing and i’m terrible at it. maybe when work gets better, or my mental health situation gets better, the other things will improve, too. i’ve never really worked on the dissociation specifically in therapy, and i’m hoping to start therapy again soon (fuck yeah sliding scale training clinics), so…we’ll see.

& something i wrote after leaving amc (for our church blog)...

I spent the weekend at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit, and every time I leave Detroit, I come home energized by the brilliance of our communities and the power of our ability to collectively imagine our future.

Often it feels that in the day to day grind of life, work, church, and social justice, our attention is so deeply held in the immediate – a sense of anxiety about how we’re going to deal with the next crisis, the next workday, the next meal, the next legislative issue. There is immense value in focusing on the present moment, but the “tyranny of the urgent” can also strangle our ability to envision our future together.

Our imaginations are powerful and dangerous. Storytelling, which is a creative and imaginative process, is how we dream our world into being. The stories that are told to us shape our beliefs in many ways – the stories handed down from our parents, the stories we read in the Bible, and so on. The stories that are told about us shape our experiences and sometimes can even harm us – for example, the story that is common in U.S. political circles that the U.S. was founded on Christian principles and homosexuality is antithetical to those principles. The stories we take in shape our identities and our reality. But our ability to tell our own stories, use our imagination, and amplify the stories of others is what gives us the power to create change.

Storytelling, like time, is often thought of in linear terms. Two thousand years ago a man lived and his name was Jesus. His teachings were passed down and preserved and people created institutions around these teachings. Today, we use these teachings as texts to inform our processes of building community and creating change.

But what would happen if we imagined engaging with religious texts and other sources of inspiration as a creative process? One way of engaging with scripture and storytelling creatively is through the practice of Lectio Divina, which Josh preached on a few weeks ago. Through Lectio Divina, we read scripture meditatively and open ourselves up to the possibility that God is communicating with us through scripture. This can involve the traditional interpretations of the passage we are reading, but also goes beyond that. Lectio Divina, along with other creative and imaginative ways of using scripture, flips the idea of linear time on its head. The concept that many of the teachings in the Bible are relevant for all people in all time periods creates a situation where not only does the past inform our present/future, but our present/future can inform the past.

We can also look to other sources for inspiration when we think about envisioning our faith, our social justice work, and our future in new ways. This weekend we practiced using science fiction as a tool to imagine a future without prisons or police. For myself and many activists I know, science fiction – particularly the work of Octavia Butler – is a source of religious and activist inspiration. The practice of using popular media as a tool in this way is on one level a purely imaginative process – right now in our society it’s extremely difficult to understand how we would get from where we are to that future vision. On another level, though, this informs present work that people are doing to create community alternatives to dealing with conflict and violence. It is not just a pie in the sky vision of what the future could be like…it is also a deeply practical way of furthering current on-the-ground work.

This practice also has the potential to strengthen our faith and our relationship with God. Often faith is looked at as something that is handed down to us, not necessarily as a process in which we participate creatively. Approaching scripture and our faith with a creative mindset gives us agency in our faith and a sense of ownership over/engagement with what we believe. We can use different sources of inspiration that speak to us directly, from or along with the Bible and other traditional sources of scripture. Throughout history, there are numerous examples of people engaging with scripture and other sources of inspiration creatively. One example is that of feminist writers who took brief references to women in the Bible and expanded them to imagine what women’s lives could have been like in Biblical times, and what their experiences mean for women now and in the future.

When we say “God is still speaking,” what does that mean? For me, it means that we have the ability to imagine a future together that is affirming for all of us. And it means that using our imagination to play with traditional and non-traditional sources of religious inspiration, using them for our liberation, is a powerful act of faith. In what ways does God still speak to you?