Hey everyone!
It's been a while since I've posted. The thing about working and being in school is that it sure keeps me busy!
(To begin - I am responding to the questions that a comment brought up for me, and want to make it clear that my wrestling with ideas, not judging Cathy or Cathy's words as right or wrong.)
Cathy left a comment on my last entry about framing something as a spiritual practice. Cathy wrote "For myself, sometimes I can deal with stuff better if I put a frame around it like spiritual practice (recognizing that that's a really privileged choice to be able to make)".
What do other people think about the assertion? At first reading, I'm not sure how making something spiritual is a privileged choice. Perhaps because I think everyone, regardless of their degree of having/not having privilege, has (or at least should have) access to their spiritual selves, be that a relationship with God/dess/s or other forms of divinity. I would hesitate to say that my privilege allows me to engage with my life, think critically about my life, more so than anyone else. At the same time I do want to recognize that I have had access to education that informs this work - but I don't think formal education is necessary to understand ourselves and spiritual beings.
I would also like to make it a bit more clear what it means to me to frame something as a spiritual practice. For me a spiritual practice is anything that brings us closer to God (divinity, etc). So framing something in such terms moves it out of a secular space and into a sacred one. There are moments when letting someones anger roll off of me are sacred, because I allow the "rolling off of me" to happen because I ally myself with God and because I acknowledge the humanity and divinity in the other person.
My expeirince is that people who deal with the results of oppression (systemic, institutional, personal) can have vibrant and enriching spiritual lives. They are able to see their lives as doing God's work. At one of the churches I attend there are people praying for their family members addicted to crack cocaine, they pray because they don't know where they might be living come the end of the month, they pray because their brother, sister, cousin, child, nephew, father, was shot. They are there praying. And prayer is a spiritual practice. I think about people in South Central LA who started krumping as a way to deal with their lives through spiritual practice.
Maybe I'm way off base here. It is entirely possible. Maybe there is privilege at play in my choice to engage my job at starbucks as a spiritual practice.
Thoughts anyone?
In Faith,
KTM
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3 comments:
Hmmm, thanks for the thinking! I dashed off that last comment quickly, and I appreciate your thoughtful articulation.
I think what I meant by framing something as spiritual practice you say much more eloquently: "There are moments when letting someones anger roll off of me are sacred, because I allow the "rolling off of me" to happen because I ally myself with God and because I acknowledge the humanity and divinity in the other person." That's what I meant.
In terms of privilege, I by no means meant to say that folks facing multiple oppressions don't access the spiritual! I do, however, think that having one's basic needs met and not needing to worry about them all the time allows more space for reflection-whether at work or elsewhere -- it frees up brain and heart space to consciously enter spiritual space. Granted, many folks also use moving into spiritual space specifically as a way to survive as well.
Ok, now I must go back to my work (which is not a part of my spiritual practice, and does allow me the luxury of an internet connection to read your blog sometimes!)
A couple of short things:
"So framing something in such terms moves it out of a secular space and into a sacred one."
It's an interesting observation... that mindfulness and peacefulness are not secular... or can be made non-secular.
Also, were you calling prayers of deep need an aspect of "vibrant and enriching spiritual lives"? Or are these instead their only hope left?
I'm new at this.
-Charlie
Some thoughts about privilege... It seems to me that in a sense many choices a person makes and has the agency to carry out are privileged choices. AND I also believe that it's the naute of privilege to resist being named as privilege. This said, I'm not sure I would consider access to the sacred a privilege. Maybe this has something to do with my concept of privilege, which is "unearned access to power and resources," often, I would add, at the expense of someone or something else. When thinking about the non-material realm, it gets a little tricky for me.
One interesting "test" for recognizing one's own privilege was offered by the instructor in one of my classes, which is "how does my privilege oppress someone else?" While there are certainly other ways of thinking about privilege, and while I probably am not doing justice to the person I'm paraphrasing, the idea that privilege is something that not only gives (to some) but also takes away (from others)....
Ah well, plenty to think about here.
Thanks for the thoughts so far,
Laura I.
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