more questions: spiritual/religious rituals/holidays
icon: "garrulous(a photo of my lips with the skin greyed out and the lips overlaid with a green and blue fractal pattern)"
(from here)
do you currently have any spiritual practices? are you developing any in particular at the moment? have you abandoned any recently?
Yes. Art, self-reflection, meditation, energy work, spell-writing, etc... I'm sort of developing a few: trying to get back into meditating at least weekly, and sending energy to Hannah daily. I haven't abandoned any recently.
what rituals in each phase did you connect with the most?
The ritual that was the most useful for me as a teen was reading the bible for 15 minutes every morning right when I woke up. It worked as a sort of psychic shield that blocked out the overwhelming, chaotic, negative energy of other teens around me.
the least?
Mostly I didn't participate in rituals that didn't mean anything to me. The only one I did was communion, and I think I mostly did that out of defiance (because people put rules on it and I felt God wouldn't). I never felt like there was any magic to the wafers and grape juice. Had we all torn off a piece of bread that was passed around, I would have felt that was magical (and still would, as microbe sharing is a sacred act to me).
have holidays ever held any spiritual meaning for you?
I never cared about any except Christmas, which meant lights, presents, and people making more effort to be kind to each other. I thought about Jesus all year long as a kid, so it wasn't a religious holiday to me. I did like that people treated me with more respect around christmas because they started feeling guilty about how devout I was and they weren't.
has that changed at all as you've grown?
yes. I learned what winter Solstice was and the lights, presents, and kindness transferred right over to a holiday that was far more suited to what I actually wanted to celebrate (the return of the sun). I will attend christmas celebrations with Topaz' family but it is Solstice that is my holiday, my sacred time.