Searching, seeking, questioning, and all the while, faith is present. My spiritual autobiography is continually evolving. There is a dynamic, restless nature to my inquiries. I can easily be impatient and demanding. Yet, I love the feeling of peace and calm so ready to envelop me when I sit still, slow down. It feels so good, too good. Do I deserve this?
Believing is something divine, bigger than myself has been a constant. Even without demonstrated results, my belief in what I call, at times the Universe remains steadfast. I have known how to read for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories of reading on my own, I was a kindergartener. I had just returned home from school, and my mom handed me a brand new book. It is a large book with illustrations, its new-book-smell intoxicating. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle, the same author who became famous for writing A Year in Provence. My instructions were clear: sit down, read the book, and come back with any questions. For the record, I don’t recall having any questions. Also for the record, I don’t recall being concerned about where I came from.
My relationship with books deepened with each school year and summer break. Summers starting after kindergarten, I traveled to North Carolina by myself and stayed with my grandparents. I am an only child. The summers were tricky because both my parents worked and my Pasadena grandmother was also still working full-time. I did not like going to camp, and the options for daycare were limited. Visiting my grandparents was a wonderful combination of swimming, walks on the beach, doing the weekly errands in their small town, and complete, utter boredom. One game I would play with myself as my grandparents tended to their lives was to sit with my legs folded under me on a Shaker style rocking chair next to the window. I would watch the birds and clouds until my legs would fall asleep then I would hop up and try to walk on my legs as they filled with the sensation of a thousand pins and needles.
When I wasn’t devising strange solitary games, you could find me in the dimly lit, finished basement with its one wall filled with books. A portion of the bottom shelf housed the decades of National Geographic magazines with their yellow spines stacked horizontally in order. I read anything and everything in this library of sorts. James Michner’s Hawaii and Tales of the South Pacific, all of Marguerite Henry’s horse books, the collection of Little Golden Books that had been my dad’s, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Little Women, Little Men, Kon Tiki, too many to name. Some days it felt like an imposition to have to get dressed and go out for our errands or the standing lunch date with my grandparents’ Lunch Bunch on Friday afternoons. All I wanted to do was read.
The connection between my love of reading and my belief in God is obvious to me upon reflection. My mind was open to immersion in places and time periods I had never directly experienced. My imagination was my constant companion growing up. My early spiritual belief system relied on characters like God, the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and the disciples. In my young mind, they were real people in a story, simultaneously ancient and current. My prayers reflected the simple nature of my faith.
Belief provided comfort and a sense of protection from the chaos of my world. Belief gave me a toehold to belonging. Belonging was so important to me when I was little. We moved eight times before I was twelve.I attended five different schools during the same time period. We dabbled with sporadic church attendance. Our traditions were reinvented on a regular basis. The shifting ground of my life was exciting and unusual as well as tiring and unnerving. It is no surprise that the adult who emerged loves schedules. The adult who emerged can be too serious, finding comfort in work and dismissive of play.
Faith came to me later. Faith brings peace and calm to my busy brain. Faith can quiet the critic within who doubts my worthiness. I wish I could pinpoint the moment when my belief matured into faith, when my spirituality transcended the confines of my religious instruction. When my connection to the divine exceeded the limits of my imagination.
Perhaps it is not an accident that much of my connection to God, the Universe, Creator, or whichever name comes to mind is related to nature. My spirituality resembles a tree-growing, shedding old leaves, new buds unfurling in the sun, nourished by simple ingredients, reaching for the light. Roots reach deeper into the soil, communicating with hidden networks of myecelium. The delicate balance of that which anchors me and visible growth, exposed and vulnerable.
Shared by Kristan Swan
