Hatching
Personal queer authenticity + republishing a past Easter writing
Happy Disney Ostara, everyone! Sure, long-standing institutions have shaved off earthy edges of the "reason for the (pagan) season," but the adapted traditions followed today were developed through solving the obstacles in maintaining bonds long ago.
Today I'm revisiting writing I published a couple years ago on Easter. The themes hold up, a caveat on my relationship to "eggy-ness" is needed.
I find myself in an annual state of false becoming. Emerging from winter reminds me of false hatching at the end of Summer, then a low-hum of panic underlies the next six months. Think of a squirrel burying nuts for winter, only a grown human being starting as a breezy spring jaunt to a panicked November rooted in a sense that I have not done *enough* in the past months.
I find myself entering what I believe to be a stage of self permitting my soul's flight only to encounter a false ceiling. Cracking the barrier ahead of me, entering a world that slowly reveal itself a ceiling painted by what I've known.
Consider the definition of Imago:
Imago (n) --
1.) final stage of a winged insect
2.) an idealized image of another person, usually a parent, acquired in childhood and carried in the unconscious in later life.
I came across the delicious tension within this definition after filming the (ahem) 2020 award-winning critical darling genre-fluid solo-sketch Video EP Show For Ghosts.
As a person who came into solo-performance as an adventure in courageous authenticity, I am venturing I have not given a 100% honest and fully embodied performance in seven years. Maybe I only felt complete honesty in embodied performance throughout 2014-2016 somatic spiritual clown awakening. False bravado sneaks in where the heart holds fears, and the heart is a lonely hoarder at times.
In the thick of producing S4G, my writing and rehearsal ability was second to the ingenuity of distraction and indulging in a relationship that I didn't see a way out of... yet, I was able to *perform* transformation as I wished to be seen. It was not as I truly was, but “why be seen as broken and sad? Who has time for that?”
Today, I currently believe I’m not sad about the posturing anymore (though a new ceiling might emerge.) At this moment, I'm glad to see the subconscious selves emerge and fall way. Each reflection here and/or to myself inches me towards a self witnessed with complete and total acceptance of myself. The tactic this year is less panic, more stillness.
Original post below. May your Easter eggs hatch.
Resurrection, and leaving the party
My favorite part about the story of Easter is that Jesus rises again, and then peaces out a few days later.
Hanging out with the living as a resurrected person must be a drag.
The conversations must get monotonous. Everyone says “we thought you were dead” then act entitled to an explanation. The first folks get the long one, full of digressions and fun details about the afterlife. After a few more folks bring up the recent history of deadness, it’s clear there are not enough hours in the day to keep retelling the story. By the time he’s told a baker’s dozen, he’s sussed out what details are essential and trims the fat of the story. The next person he sees, an acquaintance asking if he’s walked on any good ponds recently, hears all the ineffable essentials distilled into an immaculate elevator pitch.
I swear, I didn’t want to write about Easter and Jesus and all this originally (I have other interests beyond contemplatin’ divine mysteries, ya know!) I’m a lapsed Catholic-current-pagan who is Universalist-curious. These bible stories and their remixing of pagan holidays rattle in my brain. I am seeking answers that feel “meta” to the whole she-bang (religion/ our existence.) Still, yesterday I couldn’t refuse a sense of synchronicity at a used book store and picked up a copy of The Laughing Jesus - Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom. This bit about resurrection stood out:
“The essential message of Christianity is that whilst we identify with the operate self we are dead and we need to come to life or resurrect. In the Greek used by the original Christians, the word usually translated ‘resurrect’ also means ‘awaken.’ The resurrection represents waking up… The resurrection is not something that happened in the past to Jesus. That’s just a story. Neither is it something that may happen to you after you die. That’s just a fantasy. The resurrection is something you must experience for yourself in this present moment by becoming conscious of your essential nature as awareness. A Christian text called The Treatise on the Resurrection announces “The world is an illusion. The resurrection [awakening] is the revelation of reality.”
From my understanding, it’s awakening to our own truth in a way that is transcendental of what we know in mundane waking reality. This use of transcendence aligns with the study of other world religions and shamanic practices. (“From my understanding” means “This is theological riffing, any clarifications are welcome.”)
The becoming of “one” with all underpins what I believe is an essential part of living for the chaotic good of all things. In a paradox, we exist opposite to the everyday world by being “one with the world.” A glorious crazy logic. There’s a similar leap of logic that comes with gender transition. In trans discourse online, people who have not realized their trans yet are called “eggs.” Death of the old, awakening of the new. Is it rebirth or… just birth? Dying is painful, but awakening from death must be excruciating, like a hangover for the entire mind, body, and spirit.
As I get further from religion as enforced upon me, I gain a deeper appreciation of what religion attempts.
Organized religions remind me of an ambitious-but-messy movie. There are a lot of ideas being thrown around. Some of them are really good, too! It’s easy to lose track of the throughline, and some b-stories are puzzling at best, but the inspired fans will seek answers that explain the choices. Do they seek out the humans who wrought the film, or do the fans dedicate their time crafting their own theories.
Does this mean that world religions are “cult classics?”
(2025 note - I feel validated by these last paragraphs as a Megapolis defender.)
Thanks for reading! Share what resonates, in joy or at the very edges of your agitation.