I have a confession to make.

please forgive me.

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me, in grad school.

Confession: I’m going to grad school.

I’m starting in a M.A. in Theological Studies program this fall, which is the kind of news that people often have to really try hard to react to positively. I think that’s because this decision is unintelligible to lots of people. I don’ think many have a blanket bias against a M.A. in Theological Studies, so much as they don’t get what it’s for, what it’s about. I’m only slightly clearer what it’s about than they are, frankly. Saying you’re going to study theology in 2025 is a lot like saying you are going to study astrology in 2025. Or that you’re going to study traditional medical herbalism in 2025. Or or or. Well, I’m going to be spending a lot of time doing each of these things through the rest of 2025.

Somewhere along the line, after researching countless programs in counseling, psychology, education, and policy, after beginning and then leaving one “top tier” public affairs program, and after chasing an educational high through more certificate programs than I can count on the digits of one hand and one foot, I’ve given in and am getting a degree purely out of deep interest and a gut sense that it’s something I want.

It’s not often that I feel a “gut knowing” or at least not often that I acknowledge it, but I’ve gotten better at clocking this over the years. Slowly, I have realized I can use my soft feelings of self-protection to understand when I care about something. We could armchair psychologize this and trace it back to being in the closet, guarding another precious desire, but maybe it’s unrelated.¹ In any case, I’m often shy to talk about decisions or interests when they feel important. I’m shy about things that feel personal and meaningful, that is to say, when they feel fragile.

I’d been thinking along these lines already when I came across this quote from the Systematic Theology textbook that I’ll be using in an upcoming class: “Theology is a fragile discipline in that it is both academic and related to faith. As an academic discipline, theology shares all the scholarly goals of other academic disciplines: it strives for historical exactitude, conceptual rigor, systematic consistency, and interpretive clarity. In its relation to faith, theology shares the fragility of faith itself. It is much more a hope than a science.” You could substitute “astrology” for “theology” and I think it would equally well describe how many of my friends feel about their work with the stars and about where they sit in the lineage of astrological work.

One could make the case that such fragile academic disciplines are perhaps inherently flawed or weak. I could also make the case, and hope to make the case over the many years I keep learning and writing, that work built on hope, however fragile, is vitally necessary for any kind of future we should hope to have. Sure, at some points in my life I’ve rolled my eyes at the idea that religion has any use at all. Specifically, when I hear people say things like “I don’t need religion to tell me to care about people. You shouldn’t have to worry about hell to want to do the right thing,” I recognize a feeling that I had at some point when I was younger. A fundamental rejection of what read to me as a false certainty in rules handed down from on high. I rejected these rules especially around the time that I was trying to square my homosexuality with the ways that people treated me before and after they were aware of it.

What’s the point of entertaining a worldview that harbors so many fragile, brittle, dangerous men and women? Because, I think, there is something to be said for, something to be learned from, the hopeful faithful who persist within those spaces. Those people who you might call mystics know that there is no simple truth.

In Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s words, “there is no exhaustive presentation of truth; there are simply lines of penetration through which we can see a still unexplored immensity of the real opening up for us.” As we wind down the first quarter of the 21st Century, as we look down the road into an impossible to decipher future, we will need to develop our capacity to hopefully, faithfully stumble on. Of course, this is not a skill that the religious mystics have a monopoly on. I just happen to be interested in understanding it within religious practice. It’s also well practiced by artists, political and social rebels working from the margins, and anyone who, in one moment or another, rejects the nihilism that tells us we have no worthy future.

I want to quote the philosopher of science, Ernan McMillan at length here:

“The poet uses a metaphor not just as decoration but as a means of expressing a complex thought. A good metaphor has its own sort of precision, as any poet will tell you. It can lead the mind in ways that literal language cannot. The poet who is developing a metaphor is led by suggestion, not by implication; the reader of the poem queries the metaphor and searches among its many resonances for the ones that seem best to bear insight. … The metaphor is helping to illuminate something that is not well understood in advance, perhaps, some aspect of human life that we find genuinely puzzling or frightening or mysterious. The manner in which such metaphors work is by tentative suggestion. The minds of poet and reader alike are actively engaged in creating.” - McMullin, A Case for Scientific Realism, pg. 31

I was pointed to the above quote by that same theology textbook. The connection that the writer was making was that, like in good theology, poets and scientists know that co-creation is something that can lead us forward in the search for truth. This idea, resonant with Teilhard’s belief that theological theories are examples of our stumbling clumsily toward a better unity with God and with Robert Bly’s concept of “leaping poetry,” is significant even for those who turn away from religion, because it helps answer the question: “what should we do right now?” By my interpretation of McMullin, the best thing to do would be: something.

Do something rather than nothing, because that something might be the step that leads to the step that leads us out of cycles of harming one another. Don’t let yourself fall into the space, the rigid, lonely space that those brittle religious men and women reside in. Easier said than done, but necessary all the same.

Do you remember that Instagram “activism graphic” that was going around a lot in 2020, the one that encouraged everyone to figure out where they fit into the change process? You didn’t have to be the one out there marching and overthrowing unjust regimes, the graphic said, because that might be someone else’s work! It takes all kinds! You might be better served by donating money or by helping your neighbors or by voting or by protecting your peace. Surprisingly, a lot of people chose to protect their peace and not so many chose to overthrow unjust regimes. While everyone deserves a rest at one point or another, it seems obvious now that a nation of people trying to protect their own peace is not so equipped to work together to protect each other’s peace. A nation of people trying to protect their own peace can quickly turn into a bunch of isolated, brittle people.

Bringing us back to that question about whether or not religion has anything to offer: it obviously depends. Religion and religious people have been present for most advances in human justice, I think, though they’ve been around for most human atrocities as well. Duh. Narrowing into the more useful question, maybe: does faith and interest in a supernatural or spiritual life have anything to offer us?

I had an impulse not long after the floods in Kerrville to consider them in terms of astrology, though I didn’t dig all that deep. Really what it was is that I was complaining to a friend that the past several weeks had been Very Bad, atrocious on a lot of disconnected levels and I asked that question: “Why? What the fuck is going on?” She gave the answer I get every so often now, especially from the people who know about my astrology interests, a late millenial/gen z version of “It must be God’s plan.” She said to me: “Maybe there’s something going on in the stars.”

I know that the ancients would clock the total eclipse that rolled through Kerrville last year as significant. The origins of astrology are, after all, deeply interwoven with the desire to predict and understand the flooding of another complicated river, the Nile. They have many other techniques, detailed ones, that I plan to explore and from which I mostly plan to keep the discoveries to myself. But why? Why do I look to astrology in the first place when the tragedy, the pain, is right here on Earth? Why would anyone turn to forces they cannot see and cannot identify for help or clarity when the tragedy, the pain, is right here on Earth? Why would anyone pray?

Quoting again from Systematic Theology, theology and ethics “practiced as discourse and dialogue understand not only that we exist in community, but also that our moral obligations stem from our responsibility toward the other and that we stand together a united cosmos and environment. The other as a religious and moral other makes claims on us not only morally, but also intellectually and religiously.”

I feel, in the same way I do when hearing the classic, “It must be God’s plan,” that the potential “fatedness” of terrible events is often not all that useful or important to think about when it comes to figuring out what to do. That’s not to say I have no use for fate at all, no use for fortune and for astrology. Clearly. But these practices are not, I think, all that good at telling us what we need to give to life. Instead, I think faith is perhaps best at developing your relationship with your own “beholdenness.” I think faith might be especially useful at developing your relationship with your connectedness.

One way I mean this is that spending time reflecting on both the positive and the negative aspects of life, wondering about their fatedness, exploring their astrology, is one way I can be mentally, emotionally, and spiritually close to my world. In the same way that meditating on a loved one’s sickness or sitting in a room together and praying for Palestine is more about holding that sickness and holding Palestine close than it is about changing their reality. I am interested in the ways we find to be close to the ineffable and how those ways can work with actions that support our living together here.

After the praying, after the astrology, after the meditating and the writing and the reflecting, there is still the hungry person who needs food. There is still the child who wants to learn, the hospital that needs building, and the exiled who needs welcoming. There is still the profit-hungry dominant class who must be either converted (from “them” to “us”) or dethroned. There is still so much work to do. Those contemplative practices do not replace the work so much as support the work. They enable the work and, when at their best, they remind us about hope, that fragile and necessary thing.

Thanks for reading this week and every week! I really appreciate you. As silly as the “#77 in Rising Faith and Spirituality” list thing is, it’s fun and it wouldn’t exist without your reading and engagement. More important is the affirmation that whatever mental stumbling around I’m doing here has interest and value to you.

For what it’s worth, I think I’ll be continuing along this thread next week, hopefully pulling together some more of that traditional Hellenistic astrological theory with the Christian mystical and contemplative tradition. If that’s of interest (or if it’s not!) let me know. I love to hear from you.

Some things to read (or watch):

1. Many years delayed, I started watching Derry Girls with my friend Annie while she visited this week and quickly I gobbled up the whole series. It just made me really optimistic, because young people are amazing and Ireland is amazing. If you haven’t watched, I’d highly recommend.

2. Martyr by Kaveh Akbar. I’ve long been a big fan of Kaveh, starting with Calling a Wolf a Wolf when I first got into poetry in college. Unsurprisingly his debut novel rules as well.

3. This disappointing news about our judicial system. I know it is not a surprise, but it’s still bad. Our government is being sold for parts in new and upsetting ways every day.

4. And, for fun, this absurd Catholic news about a Yeti mask and a non-blood-blood oath that altogether feels very standard for Denver, Colorado.

Always a lot of credit goes to the people who have been my teachers, both directly and through their freely shared knowledge, and so many books.

1. It’s not unrelated at all!