There is so much happening in the world and in our lives at the moment. (And there always has been & will always be.) It's overwhelming to take it all in, and so we relegate / compartmentalize / avoid / deny pieces of information, feelings, experiences that we believe contribute to our overwhelm.
One thing I'm learning about my own being as I navigate THIS version of overwhelm is that it is so tied to grief. It is the grief of watching a genocide continue to escalate from the comfort of my home in San Francisco. It is the grief of watching my Mayor & my Governor become increasingly cruel & punish poor people without stable (or even simply without) homes. It is the grief of sitting with elderly neighbors in treatment programs who are kicked to the street each day with their canes having to keep on the move for fear of harassment by police until their program opens back up after 6pm. It is the grief of misaligned expectations between beloveds / comrades and the fallout of hurt from that misalignment.
Luckily (is it really luck?) for me, I have had to really sit with grief & call it my beloved over the last five years. I have had to hold its hand in the Oracle's Boat as it passes over the River Styx to the Underworld. I have witnessed it transmute itself; then transubstantiate me. As a result, I have been able to honor my role as a Queer Mystic and hold space-time for others to confront / comfort grief and allow themselves to be transmogrified by it.
Some lessons I've learned about grief as a Queer Mystic:
WE have a large capacity for grief. WE. Not simply you / me. WE. And it cannot be transformed without the aid of other relations, be they human or more-than-human. So seek connection / conversation: to / with the cosmos, to / with the ocean, to / with comrades / beloveds, to / with your own be-ing.
I have not been able to process my grief alone. My husband, John O, was beside me every moment of my father's cancer. My dear friend Vic aided me all through the process of officiating both my father's and John's best friend Dan's funerals. Two years after Dan's passing, my lover Keval held me at the spot where we sent off Dan's ashes allowing me the opportunity to fully grieve his passing with someone who never knew him. Orion guides me through the darkness of winter (and my depressive state) in ways that spark childhood wonder of Cosmic Mysteries. The gingko trees outside my home remind me that all grows with time and there is a season for everything, including dormancy and shedding our leaves / skin / ego. Each of these relations lessens my personal burden with / of / to grief.
There is no cure for grief, only the passage of time-space. It is how we approach this passage that can possibly aid us (the collective US, not simply me) in transforming our BE-INGS / WAYS OF RELATING into something that heals / mends / tends rather than further harms / traumatizes / oppresses.
While my relations may lesson my personal burden with / of / to grief, how I attend to them impacts what happens with that grief. Does it become something that creates ripples of harm out into your loved ones, who in turn ripple grief out into their loved ones? Or does it open opportunity for transformation and change that too can ripple outward (and even inward)?
During the last few months of his life, my father asked me to begin a process of writing and sharing letters between us so that we could publicly talk about our past misunderstandings and hurts and show his community how we are mending our relationship. I am grateful for this suggestion because it made his death (specifically a death most likely caused by chemicals he worked with as a groundskeeper / custodian) transformative. While I never saw him the last year of his life due to COVID, I was the closest I had ever been to him. We actually saw each other for who we were not who we projected the other person to be. This changed not just us but how I show up / be in this world.
The reasons for grief can be myriad and often include harm caused by systems beyond individual control (e.g. my father's cancer is due to chemicals not being regulated by the state thanks to advocacy by my San Francisco Representative). While we don't always have the capacity to sense / express our grief in transformative or healing ways, we can pause and become aware of how our presence / be-ing is affected by grief. This opens up opportunities to become more aware of how our be-ing interacts with the world, including our relations. As more and more trauma, war, violence, genocide, and fascism spread, it is important to tend to our relations as best we can when we can.
This is SPIRIT (aka art) WORK. This is also called a process / act of MEANING MAKING. There has been so much flattening of how we make meaning out of the queer complexity of being. Religion is in large part to blame for this. So too is science & whiteness & capitalism & cisheteropatriarchy & prisons & education & colonization. Meaning Making / Spirit / Art work has many other words for its being / process / acts. What grief has taught me is that the underlying principle of Meaning Making / Spirit / Art work is about witnessing ALL of it (the feels / chaos / thoughts / cosmos / inner voice / ghosts / memories / dreams / ...) and allowing one's being to be changed by it through engaging / questioning / conversing / inquiring / expressing with ALL of it.
My father was deeply & proudly Catholic. As he faced the end of his life battling a PREVENTABLE cancer during COVID, he looked squarely at death and became / transfigured into a catholic (the small "c" really, really matters here.) He saw how all that he'd been taught about Christ & Salvation made it so other worldviews were killed / flattened / dehumanized. He understood Christ & Salvation to be a root to the harm / oppression being inflicted upon the world. He also was firm in his beliefs about christ (yes, small "c"), and how christ had saved him many many times from despair & its pits & trappings. He would not let go of his faith for his faith was / is / will always be an expression of his spirit / meaning making / art. He also truly changed his beliefs about Christ & Salvation, and condemned how it was used as a way to oppress peoples the world over. He knew there was something way more universal (aka catholic, small "c") that bonded us to one another and that there were many, many names for it. He truly witnessed the queer complexity of being (life / death / cancer / oppression - he clearly knew his cancer was preventable and there was someone responsible for it) & changed / transformed / transubstantiated. He became both christ & catholic in ways that expressed an unflattening of perspective. (He even asked to not have his celebration of life / funeral at a church so as to affirm me / honor his unflattening.)
Religion & science & whiteness & capitalism & cisheteropatriarchy & prisons & education & colonization tell us specifically HOW to make meaning & WHAT to believe about its results. My father's story (and my own bearing witness to it) shows what is possible when we question deeply held beliefs (about life, death, being, evil, good, sin, salvation, worth, value, relations, the origins of the universe, ...) and truly remain open to possibilities / perspectives / change / transformation. We all do have the capacity to unflatten our beings & then choose to better honor / respect / affirm / love ALL of our relations (human & more-than-human.)
Right now, especially, it feels crucial & necessary to engage / practice / converse with this SPIRIT / MEANING MAKING / ART work because everything around us is forcing us into flattened perspectives, and the perspectives being flattened are the ones that are always being flattened / oppressed by religion & science & whiteness & capitalism & cisheteropatriarchy & prisons & education & colonization.
These are just a three of my stray wanderings / inquiries / meanderings / reflections (aka lessons) within this particular being in this specific time-space. And I want to thank some dear beloveds / comrades (you know who you are) who aid me in keeping soft & tender & open & yielding while facing the queer complexity of being.