Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

This is a Christian prayer but it's not one of the ones I grew up with. In fact, I was an adult before I heard it, but I think it's beautiful. One of the great things about it is that it's so universal. It's mainly about what we should all strive for if we want to live spiritual lives. If you practice a different religion, have different beliefs, or even if you don't believe in any sort of higher power, I think it can just be slightly tweaked (perhaps just change out a few words) for you to use it too. You could view it as a prayer, a spell, a poem, or even a mantra for meditation and self-inspiration. It focuses more on being a good person with inner peace than anything else. In my mind, that's what our spirituality should focus on, rather than which deity or method of worship is the "right" one. All spiritual paths have more in common with each other than people believe. I'm going to try to live by these words as best I can.

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace!

That where there is hatred, I may bring love.

That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness.

That where there is discord, I may bring harmony.

That where there is error, I may bring truth.

That where there is doubt, I may bring faith.

That where there is despair, I may bring hope.

That where there are shadows, I may bring light.

That where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort, than to be comforted.

To understand, than to be understood.

To love, than to be loved.

For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.

It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.

Happy Hauntings!

As promised in a previous post, I'd like to discuss beliefs on ghosts and the afterlife. I figured since we're in the Halloween season now it would be the perfect time to bring it up!

Everyone has different ideas about what they believe happens after you die and I've realized that individual people's beliefs don't always match up to their religion or lack thereof. For example, I know atheists who believe in ghosts or believe that if they talk to their loved ones they can still hear them, but they don't believe in god or any kind of divine entity or creator. I know Christians who believe in reincarnation or who doubt the possibility of an afterlife at all. It's very interesting to me that when it comes to ideas about ghosts and the afterlife, even people who normally subscribe to one particular religion tend to hold different beliefs than what their religion tells them is "right".

I've always sort of believed in ghosts, probably because my mother also believed in ghosts and raised me to believe in them as well. In fact, for awhile I was convinced that the house I grew up in might have been haunted due to some weird experiences I've had there. I've also known quite a few people who have been absolutely convinced that they have seen, talked to, felt, or otherwise came in contact with a ghost. One incident that always stuck out to me was when my aunt claimed she saw my grandmother's ghost talk to her while she was in the hospital. My aunt had just been in a horrific car accident and she said that she saw my grandmother (her mother) and that my grandmother told her "not yet". She said once she heard her say that she knew that she was going to survive and she did, but the word "yet" seemed ominous both to her and to the rest of us. A month later after surviving the initial crash my aunt died from a blood clot caused by one of the surgeries she had to have following the car accident. My whole family became convinced that perhaps somehow my grandmother was able to buy her some extra time or knew that she had a limited amount of time left but wouldn't die right away. This wasn't the only incident like this that I've heard of, in fact, I know many people who have similar stories. All of this served to back up my beliefs in ghosts, but for awhile I went through a period of being a skeptic and I suppose I still sort of place myself in that category. It's hard to believe in something when you haven't seen it with your own two eyes.

This desire to "see it to believe it" led me to decide to go ghost hunting with a few friends of mine. We went to a place that once served as a home for the elderly, the mentally ill, and the poor, but has since closed down. Many people claim it's haunted and my friends have gone there multiple times with equipment like video cameras, k2 meter, laser grid, radio scanner/spirit box, etc. and have said they saw ghosts and talked to them. So this past spring I decided to go with them. It was an absolutely amazing experience. Two of my friends saw the arm of a ghost that looked like a shadow reach out into a hallway, two felt a presence behind them and the spot where it was got significantly colder, and we seemed to be communicating with a few of them using the spirit box. There was one hallway where reportedly both a rape and a suicide happened and when we were sitting in that hallway everyone in our group said they could feel a horrible presence, myself included. I can't even begin to describe it. It was hard to breathe, I felt nervous, scared, anxious, a weight on my chest, the feeling that we weren't alone, and a feeling of absolute dread. I started to feel nauseated even. It was one of the worst feelings ever and it was the only place I'd ever felt like that. I kept hearing noises that could potentially be explained, but just didn't seem normal to me. The rest of the place didn't feel like that at all, it felt fine, like as though if it were haunted, they were "friendly ghosts" but that hallway was pure dread, negativity, and fear. I still somewhat consider myself to be a skeptic, but that hallway alone sort of makes me classify myself as a believer, because something was absolutely not right.

The only time I ever felt anything even slightly like that hallway was when I visited my grandparents' house after they had moved out. We rented out their house after they moved in with my uncle and one of the tenants had a friend who worked in construction whom my dad hired to help remodel the house. After a bad breakup and a period of depression, he hung himself while working on my grandparents' house. After that, the whole house seemed to have a bad vibe to it. I can't explain it, but it didn't feel like home the way it did before. The room he killed himself in especially felt cold and "off". However, even that was no where near as bad as that hallway. Nothing I've ever experienced in my entire life ever felt like that hallway. It was terrifying.

My mom actually has a few experiences with ghosts and even demons, so she claims, but I'd like to make a separate post on that dedicated specifically to myths and beliefs about demons. For now I'd like to pose the question to all of you: Do you believe in ghosts? If so, have you ever had any experiences with ghosts? Let me know in the comments!

P.S. I hope everyone is having a great Halloween season! I'm going to an amusement park with my best friend tonight for their Halloween "fright nights" which means roller coasters and haunted houses all night long! I'm so excited! Oh, and happy Friday the 13th too!

Chosen Families

Warning: This post is long, nerdy, and sappy. So move along if you don't want to read that. But if you've ever found yourself in the position where you've been abused or disowned by your family or had family issues so badly that you lose your connection to some of your relatives, it just might be the post for you. Also, it's more of a mental health and relationships type of post, but I feel like focusing on that stuff is good for your soul and figuring out how you define those types of things is connected to spirituality, however loosely.

Society warns us not to put too much time into consuming entertainment media. We can read articles of professionals lamenting the amount of time the average person spends on the internet or watching television. We ironically read articles on the internet and shared on our facebook feeds of baby boomers complaining about how much time millennials spend on their smart phones or on social media. To be honest, that has always been hilarious to me. Who are you to judge? You're right here too doing the same thing. However, I can agree that all things are best in moderation. More importantly, if we are going to consume media, we shouldn't do so while absent-minded and bored, we should think critically about the media we consume and view it as a mirror of society. We can stare mindlessly at the television or we can learn from it. We can be inspired by it. That's the path I choose. So I'd like to spend a few minutes discussing some of the media I enjoy and how it has affected my view on life.

Growing up, my favorite television show was Roseanne. It always reminded me of my own family, with loud, out-spoken women, loving yet frequently arguing family members, all struggling to get by financially who don't quite have their life together. It's simultaneously relatable and hilarious, which makes it unsurprising to me that it was one of the most successful sitcoms of all time. Of course, that show focused on a typical family unit: married parents, a biological sister and mother of the sitcom mom, and the married couple's three biological children. Marriage is part of the typical family unit, so when Mark and David both eventually married into the family, they became part of the traditional family unit in that way. However, David joined the family long before he officially and legally became a member. Roseanne let him live with them when she saw how verbally, mentally, and emotionally abusive his own mother was. She allowed him to stay there even when Darlene, his girlfriend and their daughter, broke up with him and moved away from home herself. He became a chosen member of their family and as much their son as any of their biological children.

Another one of my all time favorite television series is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There have been many academic papers and books written about this show and it's huge cultural impact on our society, so much that the field even has it's own name, "Buffy Studies," and has had it's own academic journal compiling the writings. This show has certainly affected my views in many ways, including my views on feminism and spirituality/faith. One concept from Buffy which has been focused on quite frequently has been the idea of "chosen families" evident in the series, as well as in many other of Whedon's works and other television series in the same genre.

The main character, Buffy Summers, has a biological family, of course. She has her mother Joyce Summers whom she loves dearly. Their relationship hasn't always been perfect, what with Joyce kicking Buffy out of their house in season two, a decision which she immediately regrets, and with leaving her daughter alone on some holidays, such as Thanksgiving in season four. Buffy also fears that her parents' divorce may be partially her fault and it is undeniable that their need to relocate was due to events that happened after she was first called to be the Slayer. However, her mother was both a part of her biological family and her chosen family. Their bond was strong and loving, as the bond between parent and child should be. Her relationship with her father was no where near as tight and in later seasons of the show he was only mentioned, never seen, as he didn't even make it to his former wife's funeral. Buffy's little sister Dawn is an unusual case, in some ways her biological sister but in other ways, not true family at all. She was created out of Buffy's dna and all memories of her were fabricated, but as far as Buffy was concerned, she was family and fully her sister.

However, Buffy's family was far larger than that. Buffy's family was a chosen family, made up of her friend Willow, whose own biological family was only seen once, Xander, whose biological family was shown to be quite dysfunctional, and her watcher Giles, who fulfilled the role of father-figure in their lives. Their romantic partners eventually also joined their "family" to varying degrees, including Cordelia, Anya, Tara, Angel, and Spike. This concept of chosen families was mentioned outright in an episode where Tara's biological and abusive family came to force her to leave with them and her new friends stopped them from doing so, claiming she was already with her family by being with them. After Buffy died in the season five finale, Dawn's primary caregivers included Willow and her girlfriend Tara who had moved into the Summers' house, Giles who remained a father-figure, Xander and Anya who babysat and drove her to school, and Spike, the vampire who looked after her and babysat her as her own personal bodyguard. Dawn was only a minor, yet was fully being taken care of by a "family" which consisted of no biological family. None of them were legally bound to care for her, yet all joined together as her chosen family to do so anyway. Even after breaking up with Willow, Tara remained a large part of Dawn's life. They chose each other as family and their bond was just as strong if not much stronger than their bonds with their biological family.

This theme of "chosen families" continued into the Buffy spinoff series Angel as well. Angel, Cordelia, Wesley, Gunn, Fred, and Lorne all formed a chosen family together and all acted as family toward Angel's biological son, Connor. Their relationships with each other had ups and downs and wasn't always great, but the same is true for biological families. Often, people view biological family has the people you have to love, but consider friendships to be different and drop them if there starts to be problems. However, this wasn't the case in Angel and it's not the case in my real life either. At the end of the day, their love for each other and their bond was undeniable and lasted until the end. This theme continues into some of Whedon's other works as well, such as the tragically short-lived sci-fi space western series Firefly and it's follow up film Serenity. The crew of the spaceship Serenity were very much a team of misfits thrown together primarily by circumstance but who formed a family out of each other. This chosen family included the captain, veteran, rebel, and criminal Malcolm Reynolds, his best friend Zoe who served alongside him in the military and who became his first mate on his ship, her husband Wash who served as the ship's pilot, Kaylee, a young woman who worked as the ship's mechanic, Jayne, a man who served as the gun-and-muscle of the group but who was sometimes lacking in morals and intelligence, and Inara, a companion (high class escort legally working as part of a guild or union) who rented a shuttle on the ship. They were joined by three passengers during the pilot episode: the aging preacher Shepherd Book, Simon Tam, a highly educated young man from a well-off family, and his insane, genius sister with special abilities, River Tam, both of whom were fugitives.

The crew and passengers of Serenity formed a chosen family of misfit criminals fighting against a corrupt regime, a theme certainly not uncommon in fantasy, science fiction, and other related genres of television, and found throughout several of my favorite shows. This same setup is seen in the science fiction/space travel television series Farscape, produced by the Jim Henson Company. John Crichton, a human from modern-day Earth (modern for that time anyway, the show aired in the late 90s-early 00s) and astronaut who found himself shot through a wormhole to a distant part of the universe and pulled onto a living spaceship full of prisoners-turned-fugitives running from a corrupt government who would form a chosen family with each other. This setup is also seen in the historical fiction television series Robin Hood which aired from 2006-2009 on BBC, which followed the legendary Robin Hood and his gang, or chosen family (known as his merry men in the original legends), made up of outlaws who found themselves in that situation almost entirely based on being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but who decided to join together both for their own survival and their desire to be heroes for others. Even in shows like Smallville, which doesn't resemble that same setup at all, the idea of chosen families can be found when the Kents literally find a stray alien child in a field who needed a home and took him in as their adopted son, when they symbolically adopted a few of his friends into their family, including Pete whom was trusted with his secret origins and abilities fairly early on and Lex whom did not have a functional family or good parental role models of his own. In later seasons, Clark's best friend Chloe becomes his chosen family, with them becoming closer to each other than most of their actual family members, and by the series' end with his upcoming marriage to her cousin will finally become officially family. Even after Clark has the opportunity to meet some of his real biological family, he still remains closer to his adopted family and his chosen family member Chloe than his actual family members. When Chloe's friend and classmate Lana moves in with her and her father, Chloe adds her onto a family tree homework assignment as her "sister" despite them not being biologically related or related through marriage, to show that she views her as part of her family, the family she chose.

This theme of chosen families is seen across various forms of fiction including television series, movies (such as Guardians of the Galaxy for one recent example that I can think of), literature, theater, etc. and it is absolutely something that we can learn from and be inspired by in our own lives. I was raised to view this as normal growing up. My grandmother's best friend was a woman who worked with my grandfather and who was around the same age as her eldest son (my uncle). She was Italian, just as my grandparents were, and an immigrant who had much in common with my family. However, she had no biological family in the States. My grandmother fully and completely brought them into our family as chosen family members. She always told me she viewed that woman as not only a friend, but as the daughter she never had. She babysat and treated the woman's children as her own grandchildren and I grew up viewing them more as cousins than friends of the family. They were invited to spend every holiday and birthday with us and her daughter, who was the same age as my sister, even had her own bedroom at my grandmother's house which eventually got passed down to me. When I became best friends with one of my grandmother's neighbors, she started to view that girl and her sister as her own grandchildren and extensions of our family. When one of my mother's best friends needed a place to stay, she moved in and lived on our couch for months (we didn't have any spare rooms or beds). When one of my best friends needed a place to stay in high school, my mother invited her to live with us and she did stay for about a week. When my family was going through a very rough time with medical issues, my best friend's family offered to take care of me. They took me to school every day, I went to her grandmother's house after school every day, and then to her parents' house until my father could pick me up at night. They were the ones who ensured my homework got done, they were the ones who fed me dinner, they were the ones who watched after me. And now, they view me a part of their family just as my parents view their daughter, my best friend, as part of ours. My husband and I share a best friend who lived with us around the time we got married. Even when he lost his job and could no longer afford rent, we picked up the slack and he continued living with us. I view his children as my own family and will always do whatever I can to help them and care for them. When his youngest child was born and we visited them in the hospital, a nurse came in and he introduced us to the nurse as "the aunt and uncle" despite us not "officially" being family.

The fiction I consume has always reflected my real life in this way. Our families are not just the people we are biologically or legally related to, they are also just as much made up of the people we choose and the people who choose us. In my eyes, my family does not include some of my actual relatives. There are some who have never seemed to genuinely care about me and so they aren't part of my chosen family. Instead, my chosen family, the people I recognize as family, is made up of a select few of my actual relatives and a select few best friends. I wouldn't have it any other way. I would do anything for these people and I know they would do the same for me. These are the relationships that I care about nurturing. The relationships I have with some of my actual relatives are so distant or toxic that I know they aren't worth it. My relatives (I won't even call them family, they're just people I'm unfortunately related to) include a cousin who tried to kill my aunt and my sister, a grandfather who abused my grandmother so badly that he thought he killed her and left her for dead (both of those relatives are dead now), and a cousin who molested me as a child and regularly violently attacked his brother. Just because I'm related to them doesn't make them my family. My sister's biological father was a rapist who threatened to murder her as a baby. Being her biological father didn't make him her dad. I have some blood relatives who are or were absolutely amazing people who are part of my chosen family as well as my biological family and who I would always choose, even if we weren't related. I don't mean for this post to sound anti-biological family, because it isn't. The person I was closest to in the world was a biological family member. All I'm saying is sometimes our relatives are wonderful people, but sometimes they're the worst people you can imagine. If you're stuck with some of the latter, you don't have to recognize them as family if you don't want to. If you have friends that are way better, consider yourself blessed, and go right ahead considering them family instead. Doing so will improve your mental health and spiritual well being. In my eyes, my chosen family is my real family and I'm so grateful for every single one of them, whether they're my actual relatives or not. We might not get to choose our relatives, but we can choose who we love, and in that way, we can absolutely choose who we call family.

Honoring the Dead

In most religions and even secular society, we tend to have some sort of funeral service when a loved one dies. I've been to some very traditional funerals, the typical Catholic viewing-mass-burial-wake combo, and to some slightly less traditional ones, such as a memorial service where everyone was invited to gather around the ashes of the deceased, talk among each other about how they knew the deceased, and then finally the immediate family made a few brief speeches and led a quick prayer followed by a lunch buffet. These rituals are more for the living than for the dead, they are to give us a sense of closure, and I believe that they help quite a bit with the grieving process despite the fact that most people claim that they "hate funerals."

For some of us, the grieving process and need for closure extends far beyond the week of the death. In my family we visit the graves of our loved ones for years or even decades to come to deliver wreaths, flags, plant flowers, etc. Most of my family members are buried in the same cemetery, all buried in the ground where we can put wreaths or plant flowers right over their graves. However, on my dad's side of the family, mausoleums are the preferred method of burial. Both of my grandparents are buried in a mausoleum in a very high plot that I can't even reach and my uncle was cremated and placed in a mausoleum plot in the same cemetery.

This makes it very difficult for me to be able to mourn them in the way that I'm used to. With my other family members, I can bring them a wreath or some flowers and it feels like I'm honoring them, I'm doing something special for them and bringing them an offering of sorts, and it helps me to feel connected to them. I realize that this is more for my benefit than for theirs, but it really helps me to do so. I'm at a loss for ways to honor my loved ones in mausoleums which is especially hard on me since the people I was always closest to were my grandparents and they are the ones that are the most difficult to honor after their deaths.

I've been trying to come up with some new ways to honor the dead that I can use with them and it seems like the perfect time to explore these further since we are entering October. October is of course the height of the Halloween season, a holiday which focuses on the veil between the living and the dead. Across different religions and cultures this time of year is a time to honor the dead. In Catholicism, the day after Halloween is All Saints Day, a day to honor the most holy of people who have gone before us, and the day after that is All Souls Day, a day to honor and pray for all our dead. In Mexican culture, the Day of the Dead festivities go from October 31st to November 2nd where they bring offerings to their loved ones' graves and pray for them (among other festivities). In many neo-pagan and wiccan faiths, the holiday of Samhain falls on Halloween and food is set aside for our ancestors, rituals are done to honor the dead, and the thinning of the veil between the living and the dead is recognized. Honoring the dead is a major part of many different spiritual and religious traditions and is also a very important part of our spirituality and mental health as the living who were left behind. I hope to draw on many of the paths I've studied for inspiration on ways to honor my grandparents.

Things I've come up with:

• Going to the mausoleum and silently praying the Rosary while standing in front of my grandparents' graves (they were Catholic so regardless of my personal religious beliefs, it seems like a good practice to honor them) and then quietly talking to them or silently talking to them in my head and hoping they can somehow hear me.
• Buying purple flowers, my grandmother's absolute favorite, but placing them on my table at home instead of bringing them to the cemetery where I have no where to put them. This way, I'm still going out and buying them for her to honor her and can go purchase them on important dates such as on her birthday. Whenever I see them sitting on my table I can think of her and remember how happy they would have made her.
• Starting a garden where I could plant purple flowers and tend to them regularly as a way to honor her.
• Starting a garden where I could plant some food necessary to make some of her recipes. So for example, planting tomatoes so I could use her sauce recipes to make it completely from scratch (yes, she was Italian, so her sauce recipe was a big deal). 
• Setting up an ancestor altar in my house to honor them. I could use a small surface to set up a picture of them, perhaps set out a few things that belonged to them such as the necklace my grandmother wore everyday, I could set up a vase of purple flowers, and a candle to light when I say a prayer for them or talk to them. 
• Getting a memorial tattoo. I've thought about this one quite a bit and I know exactly what I would want to get if I go through with it.
• Doing things that would honor them or that they liked doing. For example, I want to read my grandfather's favorite books, I want to try to improve my Italian and become fluent in it because that was their first language, and I want to visit Italy someday to see the places where they grew up, where they got married, etc. 
• Making and eating one of their favorite meals, especially if it was something that my grandmother used to make for me.
• Donating to a charity in their honor, especially if it's one that would have helped them while they were alive, for example an Alzheimer's research organization. 

I might try doing some of these things this month and I plan on continuing to look for new and different ways to honor them as well. What rituals and practices do you use to honor your loved ones who have passed away?

New family member!

I'm falling behind on updates for my blog, but for good reason! Yesterday I adopted another dog from the local shelter! She's our second dog and close in age to our first dog. Brooklyn is six years old and Ginger, our new addition, is eight. She's shy, kind of scared, but very sweet. We're not sure exactly what she is, but we believe she may be a mix of Chihuahua, Dachshund, and Corgi. She kind of looks like a little fox. We met her last weekend at the shelter, spent the week preparing for her arrival, spent a small fortune at Petsmart, and welcomed her into our home and our family yesterday. So far she's adjusting well to the change, as is her "brother" Brooklyn. Then tomorrow my husband and I celebrate our one year wedding anniversary! We've been together for over nine years total. I'm so grateful for our perfect little family! I can't wait until we're financially stable enough to bring human children into our family too.

Welcome, Ginger!

Nature

I'm still a little unsure of how I define spirituality for myself, but what I do know is that sometimes, when I'm out in the beauty of the world around us or looking up into the rest of the universe, I feel a deep spiritual connection to it. Sometimes the wonder and amazement of nature is truly a spiritual experience.

Nothing quite makes me feel this way as much as the beauty of autumn. A couple of years ago my best friend and I decided to take a fall foliage road trip. We live in southwestern Pennsylvania, but we got in the car, drove up through the Poconos, made a pit stop in NYC because I've never been before, drove up through every single state in New England and looped back down. It was truly the trip of a lifetime. We got to camp out right along the coast of Connecticut, went horse back riding in Rhode Island, visited some popular tourist spots in Boston, saw where the witch trials happened in Salem, visited many colonial era graveyards throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire, got stuck in the crowds surrounding a harvest and farm animal annual festival in Maine, spent the night in a cabin in the woods with a wonderful fireplace, saw waterfalls and plenty of covered bridges throughout every state, but by the far the best part of the trip was the Kancamagus scenic byway.

This byway cuts through the nature, mountains, woods, rivers, and creeks of New Hampshire and lets you out in Vermont. There are many places along the way to stop your car, get out, and take in all of the beautiful nature surrounding you. You can crawl over rocks, hike to waterfalls, take pictures, and take in the scenery. We made the trip around the second week of October so the fall foliage was in full bloom. I can't even begin to describe how beautiful it was and while we took many pictures, they can't even do it justice. You have to see it for yourself and I would honestly recommend the trip to everyone.

Traveling the Kancamagus scenic byway during the peak of the fall foliage was honestly and truthfully a spiritual experience unlike anything else I've ever experienced. I believe that pausing to appreciate the beauty of nature is absolutely a spiritual practice. Fall foliage was once described to me by my aunt as looking as though "God reached down with a paint brush and painted each leaf its own beautiful color for us to admire his work." I've heard many people describe nature as "wondrous", "beautiful", "amazing", and "evidence that there must be a divine creator to make something so incredible". Whether or not you believe that's true is a personal decision up to you alone, and of course there are scientific explanations for practically every beautiful thing in nature you can think of, but it's almost undeniable that something about appreciating nature can be described as a spiritual experience for many of us, including atheists.

One passage from literature which has always stuck out to me and helped to change my outlook on religion and spirituality is from The Color Purple by Alice Walker (which happens to be my favorite book, due in large part to its ability to change my religious views). In the chapter where the title comes from, the character Shug explains her views on religion to the main character Celie. She says she doesn't believe that god is a white man as was taught to her growing up. She believes that god is more of an "it" than a "he" or a "she" and that you can't find god just by going to church. God is already in every one of us and we have to look inside ourselves to find god. God is already inside of everything as well and god is all around us. God is in the trees, god is in the earth, and god is in everyone, connecting all of us and everything around us to one another. She also believes that god creates all the things we enjoy and we can praise god by pausing to appreciate all the things its created for us. She says she believes it pisses god off if we pass by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't stop to notice it and appreciate it's beauty, which god has created for us to enjoy.

That's something that I can honestly say I agree with. I might not be sure on what or who exactly I believe the Divine is, whether or not I believe it's a single all-powerful male god as is the predominant belief of much of modern Western culture or something else entirely, but the one thing I do believe is that one of the best ways to show praise and appreciation for the Divine would be to stop and appreciate its creation. Appreciation for the wonderful world around us, the people, the animals, and all of nature is, in my opinion, probably more powerful than prayer when it comes to giving thanks.

This is why when I'm outside at night, I pause frequently to look up and admire the night sky. I've noticed its especially beautiful on the nights when you can see a mixture of clouds and stars. This is why I often look up during the sunrise and sunset if I have the opportunity to do so. While I worked an overnight job causing me to often drive home during the sunrise, I've noticed the sky often has a beautiful purple color while the sun is rising which always reminds me of my grandmother because purple was her favorite color. I often try to look up during the day to see the shapes in the clouds and search for constellations at night. I always look at the way the snow clings to bare tree branches in winter and the way the snow glitters in the sunlight because I find those to be some of the most beautiful things about winter. When I visit the ocean and everyone has left the beach at night, I pause to listen to the sound of the waves rolling in and crashing on the shore. And of course, as many others do, I admire the beautiful colors and scents of various flowers in the spring.

There truly is beauty and wonder in the universe all around us and it is an amazing thing to behold. It's something that I personally consider to be a truly spiritual experience. Nothing makes me feel that more strongly than the beauty of autumn. So now that the leaves are changing color, take some time out of your day to go for a walk outside and just admire the beauty of nature whether you believe someone divinely created it or not. Trust me, you'll feel better for it. Spending time in nature is like food for your soul.

(And yes, those are pictures we took on the Kancamagus scenic byway. I'm telling you, they don't do it justice.)

Who am I?

In my search for self-exploration spirituality questions, I found an interesting article. The article says the most important questions to ask yourself regarding your spirituality are:

1. Who am I? 
2. Where have I come from?
3. Where am I going?

The article points out that most people fall into a trap of defining themselves based on things such as their job, their relationships, identities/labels, etc. But you are more than just "a student", "a teacher", "a daughter", "a husband", "a retail employee", "a chef", "a homeowner", "a gamer", "an athlete", "a college graduate", "an American", "a feminist", "a jock", "a Christian", etc. You are more than a list of labels. You are more than your job. You are more than the level of success society has decided you've achieved. You are more than your relationships to other people and you have your own worth outside of them. Many of these things can change anyway, but whatever you are, the core of your being is something that has always been and always will be. Who are you underneath it all? What are you? What is the nature of your being?

I'm going to quote part of the article here because I think this is an interesting practice:

"Ancient Asian wisdom traditions used a practice of inquiry as a way to discover who we really are. That is, the part of us which is Real and never changing. It’s a practice of self-discovery to help arrive at the spiritual core of one’s being. A guru (Sanskrit for teacher) would encourage students to ask, “Am I my body?” They were expected to answer “neti, neti.” “Not that. Not that.” My body changes perpetually and eventually will be shed like an old dress or a worn pair of jeans. So I cannot be the body. “Am I the mind?” My mind will lose its sharpness and its ability to think clearly. I may even lose my mind, so I am not the mind.
Am I my soul? Even the soul goes through periods of growth and change. In the ancient wisdom traditions, the Spirit or the atma, the unchanging essence that continues even when all else dissolves and changes, is Real. Therefore, they encouraged students to realize, “I am atma.” I am the eternal, unchanging absolute – and to identify with this. This is a powerful way to remain unaffected by the ups and downs of the life’s journey.
A good way to reinforce this is to repeat, “I am atma.” Or, “I am the unchanging, eternal Absolute.” Or “I am Love.”  This ancient practice anchors us in the deep wisdom of knowing our true nature and understanding ourselves as profoundly greater and wiser than what we may initially imagine. Give it a try and discover the depths and the power of anchoring in the Spirit as your true identity."

This is really interesting in the way it defines "spirit" as something separate from soul and mind. I think most of us define spirituality as something separate from our body, but we have a more difficult time drawing the line between spirit, soul, and mind. 

According to this story, who you really are is not your body, which is something I've always agreed with. Your body is your vessel, but it can change over time. Your health can change, your weight can change, your strength can change, your age will change, and your overall appearance can and will go through several changes. Others might define you as "the fat one" or "the hot one" but those descriptions are not who you really are. Many people go through a crisis as they get older because with the wrinkles, thinning hair, changing body shapes, etc. comes a crisis of identity. They feel they are no longer the same person they were when they were young and fit. If you have health issues or get into an accident, you may no longer be able to do the things you used to do. I've seen this firsthand with people. My grandmother defined who she was by her love of dancing, being a housewife and stay at home mom, and hosting family events. When she got older, it became difficult for her to clean, it became too much work to host family events, and she couldn't dance any longer. My mother defined herself by her activities and appearance. When she was younger she was a stripper, a Burlesque performer, and a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. She loved dancing, taught tae-kwon-do, and was a fairly active person. When she got older, she went through an identity crisis over her looks, leading her to pursue a never ending string of fad diets and to get a face lift. When she was run over by a car and had to have multiple surgeries on her leg, she could no longer dance, do strenuous exercise, or wear heels without intense pain, which further distanced herself from the way she used to be. My father is a drummer and has always considered that to be a part of his identity, who he is at his core, so when his health issues, multiple surgeries, and organ transplants forced him to take a break from all of that, it ate at him. Finally, the question becomes, when our bodies die, does everything else we really are underneath it all die with them? Or does our very essence of who we are continue on in some way? This brings me to the next topic...

Does our mind live on? The things we know, the things we think about, our memories? Another important part of my father's concept of who he is would be his Italian heritage, same as with me. When his parents, brother, aunt, and uncle all passed away, we both tried clinging desperately to our traditions and recipes to try to keep that part of our identity alive, but there weren't many people left who shared that with us. Certain recipes or stories from our family's past were written down, but others are lost. For him it was even harder because there was no one left in our family who spoke Italian as a first language anymore. His cousins are all fluent, but when they talk now it's always in English. He lost another part of who he was, or at least how he defined himself, but as with everything else, it's temporary. 

My grandfather had Alzheimer's very badly and toward the end he couldn't remember who was alive and who had died, he couldn't remember that he no longer had his cat and kept looking for him, he sometimes couldn't even remember his own children and grandchildren. I believe that our experiences in life and therefore our memories help shape who we become, our opinions, our ideas, our personality, etc. Therefore, his memory loss was very difficult for me to deal with. If he could no longer remember so much of his life, was he even really the same person? If he couldn't remember or recognize his sons, was being a father still a part of his identity? Perhaps this is why the article says we shouldn't define ourselves by our identities, our relationships, or our mind. All are temporary. However, this is one thing that I absolutely struggle with understanding and I'm still not sure I agree with it. My grandmother had severe paranoia at the end of her life. She even believed my mother and I were trying to kill her. She constantly said she saw or heard people in the house and even called the cops a few times because of it. When she started losing her mind, her relationships shifted in a way. Most of the time she still loved and trusted me, but then there would be times when she genuinely believed I was out to get her. Was she still her? Was she still the same person? Or when my great uncle died, he was practically unconscious and unable to speak for days beforehand. I don't know if he could still understand anything happening around him. Did the real him die when his body died, did the real him die a few days before his body, or did the real him live on after his body passed away? These are all questions I struggle with answering. I'm not sure what I believe. 

Finally, we move onto the difference between soul and spirit. I've always used the terms interchangeably. In some eastern philosophies and religions, they are defined differently. The soul goes through growth and change, but the spirit is an unchanging essence that always continues on. I feel like I need to do more research and give more consideration to this concept because I haven't really encountered it before and I'm unsure of what I think about it, but I do find it fascinating. I'm also not entirely sure I agree with the concept that who you really are must be an unchanging part of you underneath it all. Perhaps what we really are is an ever-changing, growing, and evolving soul that is a result of everything we think, learn, and experience in our lives. 

This is certainly an interesting concept, I'm just not sure I agree with it, because I've always believed that who we are and our very personality is a result of everything we've experienced in our lives up until that point. Although, I suppose that individualist outlook is fairly common in western thought, which is how I was raised, whereas many eastern religions and philosophies tend to view these things differently. Perhaps I only view it that way because of how I was raised and where I grew up. What do you think about it? Who do you think we really are? Does who or what we really are exist separately from our body and mind? Do you think that our soul and our spirit are the same thing? If so, do you think it's also the same thing as our mind? Let me know your views in the comments!