ghost in the choir

Before practice nikki and i met up for a cup of coffee and one of our deep conversations that have proven to be a strong part of our growing friendship, in which one of us will bring up some thought and we'll fall into it like life depends on it. the issue of spirituality came up, as a mutual acquaintance of ours follows Krishna, and i feel like the rest of our set either could give a fuck-all for spirituality or has their own non-linear path they tread, and nikki was wondering where that distinction is between religion and spirituality since it's a subject she has little explored herself yet. i told her a story my dad told me of when he was a child and they went to his mother's methodist church, even though his father didn't really believe in it he went along anyway, until he finally saw how hypocritical it was and they stopped going. the following saturday the minister showed up preaching hellfire and brimstone and my grandfather listened quietly before explaining his precise reasons and then explained that it did not matter where you worshipped as long as you kept god in your heart and he couldn't do that under the church's stifling rituals. when the minister left he turned to my dad and pointed to his chest and said "you can believe in anything, as long as you remember that god is in there." which is why when my parents had a catholic wedding he went along with raising us in it, and later said that it was so we could learn that having belief in anything, the world, yourself, the unknown, was a good thing. i also told her a few of the stories from rilke's "stories of god," an early collection of edgy faerytales for children, of how people used to pray with their arms open to embrace god but when they put their hands together and built imposing steeples god grew afraid of all these pointy things, or how a group of children decided their parents had lost god and so put him in a thimble so they would know where he was at all times. personally i never could relate to the idea of some imposing old dude up in heaven. why should i? i had a twin brother who i could talk to, create whole worlds with, who was me. what did i need with some absent and abstract deity? my idea of god resides in the people (and things) around me, in myself, in those really deep conversations and connections we make as recognition of something deeper that is shared. and the strongest relationships i've had rely on a mutual expression of divinity. even if it's not called such. of course there is much to be said for the aesthetics and rituals of any established religion. a wealth of meaning that when practiced regularly can really set one out of the every day, the sense of displacement necessary to break us from our too-established patterns. but in order for any of it to make sense, or be fulfilling in that way all the drugs tv money sex fail to be, it has to be yours (or ours), a space that is created which is open to embrace the world, and not fend it off or tune it out. that rapt free flow of hearts and attention, of undistracted eye contact, not readily found in the thick of the maddening crowd. unless i'm on stage or writing, but then it's like preaching, and only at times as intimate. it is often like howling into a void, the space left by noise-clogged senses. throwing a ghost into the choir.