Making the Mundane Holy - Ritual Making

NOTE: This post was originally published on my creative writing Substack June 2023

I managed to finish this day looking forward to my meditation time. This is a new, and absolutely brilliant first for me. I am…stunned? I am looking forward to spending time with myself? My beautifully imperfect and weird self? Strangely enough, I have no current expectation on the time spent. I don’t expect any revelations or spiritual visits. I suppose this is how we make the mundane holy, right?

As a recovered former Catholic who was raised Black, southern Missionary Baptist (whewwwwww, what a damn mouthful) the idea of anything unrelated to a church rite being named holy feels strange to me. Not strange in a bad way. It’s strange in a way that is unfamiliar. Out of practice. But, a naming that also feels like a homecoming. And, I know plenty of Catholic saints that made their mundane tasks holy, but this kind of holiness isn’t for anyone but me.

We are taught very early that our souls cannot serve our own purposes. They must be for a g-d. And, this g-d left us instructions in a collection of manmade writings that are often interpreted to oppress and condemn others. Our holiness is never separate from this g-d. In fact, thinking so is heretic and damnable. I have found this to ultimately be something that keeps us from living a whole, full embodied life. I have felt most of my life that there was something deeply wrong with me. I struggle to celebrate that which is just uniquely, and very weirdly me.

I am learning slowly that we all deserve so much more than that kind of living. I hope others might be able to find that within Christianity. But, after years and years of trying and failing, it is not the path for me.

I am holy. My mundane life is full of sacredness. I am holy. Every inch of me in all of my imperfect strangeness is holy. beautiful. sacred. And, it needs no outside validation from anything to make that true. So, I am off to spend 15 mins with myself. I hope you remember that you are holy and sacred just as you are, too.