Move in Faith
I love Jeen-Yuhs, a 3 episode Kanye doc. Two of which follow his happy days when he's on the come up, forced to prove himself time and time again to achieve his dreams. My heart warms whem seeing him with his mother. Some of the only times we've ever seen him happy. She filled him with with the confidence & faith to do whatever he desires, without a single doubt. I could only wish to have a morsel of the faith she has in him.
I keep coming back to a quote from the maker of the doc about this and it's instrumental in my thinking this year.
When you move in faith, all things are possible.
I'm not religious but in a me way(read strange, quirky & unusual). My mom is very religious and I grew up encouraged to follow along without ever being engaged to the subject. As if pure blunt force would attach me to it. Force x repetition led to a strong atheistic defiance in high school. But I've mellowed as I'm becoming a proper adult. The appeal of "people choose their own values" no longer holds. I know most will choose terrible, selfish and self serving ones, most of the time.
So I've been trying out agnosticism for a few years now. But much like Community I don't respect non-alignment. Just have a fucking opinion, I shout at myself as I have to whisper my religious non-non belief.
Since I need a belief in the divine in my life, I have to choose my beliefs. My previous favorite mandate:
No Gods or Kings, Only Man
It just isn't accurate anymore, assuming it ever was. Look around, the kings are stronger than ever. My atheism was build on rationalizations and the absurd optimism of the end of history. The neo-liberals have blatantly lied to me and I was too young and inexperienced to see it.
But we do not exist in the rational world I conjured. We live in chaos, where the worst people keep winning and seem desperately displeased with it. I have sympathy towards the christian belief that we are on this earth to prove our faith and do good for one another. But I dislike every organized christian religion I know of. The orthodox church which I was raised in is actively profiteering off the corrupt oligarchs that keep us doomed and their main enemy are LGBTQ people.
I'd like to believe god isn't offended that same-sex people love each other, but is offended that people dedicate their time to preventing them. I believe that hatred of those you find live a life you do not agree with is a much bigger sin than being attracted to the same sex. This was yet another huge reason on the pile, for why I turned to atheism.
But I have become more and more spiritual if not blatantly religious. I do regularly go to church, my town famously has 365 of them. I do love the history, especially the byzantine architecture and frescoes. I feel a sense of peace or inquiry when inside one, finding patterns in how the saints are drawn and the alphabet used (it can be greek, glagolic or cyrillic). You can tell when the church was build by artistic decisions alone and I love pointing that out, to the lack of interest of most people I'm around.
Butt despite actually going to church, I'm exploring. Learning as much as I can about diverse and distinct faiths. Being a nerd, I like starting off with their history. How much misery or prosperity have they brought humanity? Then move on to what do they believe and how have they spread it.
In the mean time, I will remain spiritual and nurture my belief in the divine. Though I will not get the community (which I find is the biggest reason people join a religion) I will improve my spiritual health (the second reason people join). If I find a concept, idea or practice I like, I will incorporate it. At least for a while. My faith will grow and evolve, a tapestry to weave my whole life.
Hopefully I will get more of that feeling, where everything is possible. I long to return to what I once lost. The sense of optimism, trusting that everything will be all right as long as I do what I am supposed to. Faith is the way towards it. At least for me.
As for Kanye, faith got him where he wanted to go. But either he wanted all the wrong things or the price was just too high to get there. Now he suffers. Be careful what you wish for and choose wisely.