Once I was told I'd be a priest.

and a soft launch 🚀

In lieu of a mini-horoscope this week, I wanted to share a soft announcement I’m really excited about! Starting in June (exact date tbd), I’ll be expanding my weekly newsletter. I’ll offer a paid version that will include a monthly in-depth horoscope for each rising sign.

I’ll focus on many of the same topics I tend to write essays about: spirituality, justice, rituals, community, and opportunity. I’m also interested to hear from y’all what topics you’d like me to dig into -- as always, the inbox is open. This’ll be a low cost way to get lots of deep astrology that (I hope) will feel personal and rooted in tradition. I expect there’ll be the occasional additional paid subscriber post where I can explore less firmed up or “safe” topics with a smaller group of friends and supporters.

More info to come soon, but know that everyone will get free access to this to experience before you decide if a paid subscription is right for you. Paid or not, your engagement here means the world 🌎 🌏 🌍

Hello! I appreciate all the kind words and engagement with my letter last week. I put more intention and reflection into what I wrote and I’m glad that showed. In the last week I’ve continued to think a lot about that topic, about religion and spirituality and its place in my life, as well as how it shows up in the rest of the world these days.

i got some film back — mostly errors, lots of photos on top of other photos, but there are some winners!

Some admittedly rambling musing about wanting religion and how I was once told to be a priest.

Somewhere along the line that I was in the Good Shepherd program at Notre Dame parish in Kerrville, Texas, I am pretty sure my catechist told me she thought I would make a good priest. 

This is a fuzzy memory and I kind of doubt she said it that way, the person in my memory wasn’t clueless in the way I think you’d have to be to put that much of an expectation on a child, but definitely at some point the idea was planted in my head. 

I never really took it seriously, but I’ve thought about it every so often as I’ve gotten older. I’ve moved away from Catholicism and theism, played with different spiritualities, and wondered a lot about “purpose” and what it means to discern your path. When I went to mass at some point recently with my mom I remember thinking about how the priest had a captive audience and I wouldn’t mind being able to give a homily every weekend (this is, I feel, a bad reason to want to be a priest). 

I understand what my catechist was getting at. I’ll get to it later, but it turns out this is in my chart pretty clearly. I like discernment, I like learning and teaching, and I like “what ifs”. I’ve said before that if being gay hadn’t pushed me out of the church I’d have run the risk of being a youth pastor. I am frustrated that I don’t have an easy way to spend time focusing on spiritual care and connection. I am envious of Christians who feel at home in a church, Catholic or otherwise. I am envious of Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and anyone else who has a social structure built around belief and who can put a face or a name or a ritual to God, regardless of what that face or name or ritual is. 

I know that I am likely welcome to engage in some form of all of the above communities and I expect I will do some exploring over the coming months here in Philly. Nothing’s stopping me. I heard from an ex-Baptist friend that an ex-Baptist man she’d met at Cinco de Mayo drinks had attended a local unitarian service with his non-religious girlfriend and he’d found it enjoyable. I’ll give anything a try once. 

But the impulse for seeking religion is funny. It’s cringe, so to you all I confess: I met with a spiritual director last Friday. It was a relatively short session, about 60 minutes and, for spiritual direction, lacked much direction. I went into the Zoom call without a lot of clarity on what I wanted and from his dimly lit Bay Area office, he tried to ask questions that would elucidate my goals. I think in some ways I just wanted validation that my interest in spirituality was reasonable. Still, the cringe remains. Religious services are a bunch of adults getting together and believing in irrational things together, possibly singing songs and holding hands. 

Thinking about all this reminded me of a quote from a James Tate interview about faith and god.

from the Paris Review

It’s the submitting to the slavishness that I think is uncomfortable to consider, it’s maybe even lightly humiliating. But I do think that often on the other side of humiliation there can be something worthwhile. 

There’s a version of this slavishness where it leads you to spend time in a community (who might be in mass with you every Sunday or might be down the street worshiping in some other way). This slavishness might support your connection to other people. While you slavishly tend to your connection with the divine, you slavishly work together to harass your elected officials until they maybe one day agree to tax the rich people who are also, in some way or another, in your community. Perhaps one day you find yourself slavishly linking arms with others, people who may or may not have been to mass ever, and you are doing your best to physically block the police from forcing their way through to arrest and remove young people who are slavishly trying to evoke a response of compassion from their university, a simple divestment from making money from companies that make bombs to blow up people. 

I think there’s room for all this slavishness in one world. Whether we want it or not, we are slaves to suffering and so we are slaves to deciding what to do about it and if one of those ways is by exploring the divine in community, so be it. What makes me feel conflicted about this is that I can sense my inner child’s wariness.  Attending any church at this point feels a little like a betrayal, like my adult self is choosing to ignore the disconnect and pain that I felt as a young person. I take that feeling seriously.

So, a tiny bit of astrology at the end of this letter: I see this grappling as a pretty obvious manifestation of my Saturn return. My 12th House Pisces Saturn is in a very exact square with a 9th House Jupiter in Sagittarius. Jupiter and the 9th House point to religious traditions, to the hierarchical structures behind them, and to philosophy. While I don’t think my next move will be to enter the seminary and walk my priestly way, I feel Saturn demanding some serious attention here.

This brings me to some questions I have for you. Have you maintained a connection to the spiritual community of your childhood? Left it all behind? Swapped to another? Returned to it? I’d really love to hear from you how that has unfolded and how it’s felt. At this point, it feels a little like a trap I want to walk into and test out. 

If you have questions about what Saturn suggest in your chart, let me know! I love to answer the odd question here and there and if you’d like to arrange a sixty minute chart reading I offer these at a rate of 80 dollars. Always happy to work out a deal if that’s not doable by you.

Cheers to you all 🧡🧡🧡

from the same interview, irrelevant here, but my whole poetry philosophy.

some additional sweeties from my recent roll of film.

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.