on loftiness on spiritual transition
Lofty:
Elevated
in
spirit
or
character
One Report is spiritually-minded content for and by young people. This publication is borne from a reflection of the teachings of the Baha’i Faith and many of our contributors are Baha’is, but not all. The goal is for One Report to offer space for people from all faith backgrounds and beliefs to discuss issues of faith and spirituality. In a time of turmoil, One Report hopes to be a source of unity and collaboration. It is an opportunity for young people to learn from one another and share reflections that feel relevant, pressing, stirring, and elevated. Thank you.
One Report is edited by Anisa Tavangar with Maya Mansour. Images in this issue are by Havilah Gautschi & Negin Jasmin.
the power to decide Written by Tom Kochtitzky
There’s a feeling I chase. It feels like I’m on the very front of a moment A cosmic power at the continental divide, diverging flow To know is to decide We all take the next step, only slowly so we know it’s right. That’s the god/ess I believe in. The one that’s in all of us pushing us towards the right moment in space. A belief affirmed by unequivocal moments of beauty derived from chaos. These are the moments we are made by. The moments we remember the most. Thoughts we draw from to define the core of our beings. The true content of wisdom. Sometimes I find myself digging as deep as I can, exhausting myself into a delirium reminiscent of true discovery in an effort to find my next horizon. Skipping steps and false progression, progress without direction, a facade. False concepts and unattainable goals. Eventually, reality catches up to me. I wish faith could feel shared without a label. It does sometimes but it’s subtle. When you
smile to yourself and someone smiles back, random acts of kindness, a child waving to a stranger. Moments small but powerful like a secret code for a revolution. Small reminders you’re on the right path. When I’m truly on the right path there isn’t really any judgement about it, only astonishment. Shocked that somehow I’m in the right place and time to move myself and those around me forward. Everything feels quiet. Simple. Clear. Even in chaos everything stands still for a moment. These are the moments I live for. “The nuns taught us there are two ways through life … the way of Nature… and the way of Grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow. Grace doesn’t try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy... when all the world is shining around it... when love is smiling through all things. They taught us that no one who loves the way of grace... ever comes to a bad end. I will be true to you. Whatever comes.” -The Tree of Life(2011)
"Aim for the highest cloud so that if you miss it, you will hit a lofty mountain." Maori
proverb
on the nature of conversion Written by Sean Thielen-Esparza
“Do you want to come over and learn about this spiritual empowerment group for middle schoolers?” Against my better judgment, I went with a stranger to her house. I thought I was being recruited into some kind of religious conversion program. I didn’t really care. I’ve always accepted the absurd situations that the universe sends my way. Ultimately, it didn’t matter because there was nothing anyone could say to me that would convince me to believe in God. Four years ago I met the woman who introduced me to my faith. From the moment I met her, I’ve remained engaged with the faith in various capacities until one day I silently made the decision to convert. I often think about my motivations for declaring faith. I made the decision last year and my reasons have slowly settled into something that feels sound. I converted because of the people in the faith who seem to embody the very essence of God. It’s a complex, somewhat unnerving, realization that I’ve been hesitant to admit to myself. Something feels controversial about admitting your faith is rooted in the material plane— that your relationship to God is a proxy by way of humanity. That feels like a heavy object resting against a nearly healed bruise. Rather, I used to feel that way about it. Recently, I’ve found peace in the sureness that I was indeed correct.
The friends that I’ve made, the strangers I meet every day, and the people I’ve known my whole life collectively bring me closer to what feels divine. My reasoning is quite simple now. It’s less about coming to terms with that fact and more about accepting this relationship that I have to God. My practice doesn’t have to be universal, it just has to be honest. In this context, it doesn’t matter what my faith is called. My practice is rooted in my community and with the individuals that emanate a hue that can only be classified as divine. I have deeper insight into myself because of them. I feel closer to God because of them.
“Wherever you may be, death will overtake you, even if you should be within towers of lofty construction. But if good comes to them, they say, “This is from Allah “; and if evil befalls them, they say, “This is from you.” Say, “All [things] are from Allah.” So what is [the matter] with those people that they can hardly understand any statement?” [Quran
4:78]
leading with love Written by Ryan Schuman
Question – Answer. Heaven – Hell. Jesus – God. Much of my religious life existed in binaries like these. At the time I converted to Christianity, I needed the dogma, the binaries. I was desperately searching for answers and needed something to be true. Christianity provided a newfound sense of purpose and the zeal. I spent the past seven years practicing, studying, and preaching my Christian faith. Things are not like the past seven years anymore. I’m not sure if it was time, death, pain, betrayal, bitterness, or just plain doubt. In the words of my friend Levi The Poet, “Life tends to beat the binaries out of you.” Life has. Maybe life happening is what causes me to hesitate when my friends ask, “Are you still a Christian?” Just this week I asked a new friend, “Are you religious?” Hesitating for a moment she responded, “I am Muslim but I would
consider myself more spiritual.” I love this response. It felt like an invitation. I had to ask, “What do you mean?” I wasn’t able to allow presuppositions about her faith to interrupt the community that was being built. I think that is why spirituality draws me in. The practice is inclusive, leaves space for questions, celebrates diversity, and leads with love. I have been reading the Holy Quran the past few nights. Could I have missed out on this beauty? I am still a Christian but, like my friend, would consider myself more spiritual. These days I can think of a beautiful amount of words or questions that could fit between Heaven and Hell, even Jesus and God. The lack of binaries feels sacred and free.
"How lofty is the station which man, if he but choose to fulfill his high destiny, can attain! To what depths of degradation he can sink, depths which the meanest of creatures have never reached! Seize, O friends, the chance which this Day offereth you, and deprive not yourselves of the liberal effusions of His grace." BahA'u'llAh
“Is not God as high as the heavens? Look at the highest stars, how lofty they are!� [Job
22:12]
the lord almighty Written by Aaron Tungol
My father would whoop my ass if I can’t recite the old/ New Testament to him. My auntie would make me pray the rosary. Parents would make me go to Bible study. Whole time, I never liked church. As a baby, I would always cry when they brought me to church. Growing up, I was drilled with these statements of how Jesus was this, God was that, and Mary was a virgin that somehow gave birth to Jesus. As I gain more consciousness, I think of what the Bible says. It’s pretty fucked up. I’m not religious like my parents. I believe someone out there is superior to us human beings, but this being may not be the person that the Bible depicts. I have no idea, but I just have this feeling that they are there. I feel religion is fucked up in general, it gives people a safe place to think of what’s right /wrong.
“Let integrity and uprightness distinguish all thine acts. Be a home for the stranger, a balm to the suffering, a tower of strength for the fugitive” B
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contradiction to clarity Written by Havilah Gautschi
Being queer and growing up in a mix of very conservative Christian religions and the Quiverfull cult was already enough to make me realize that dogmatic religion wasn’t going to work for me. However, I have one very clear memory, I was probably around six or seven at the time, of my dad telling me the story of Job. I remember being so disturbed by it. God gambled with someone’s entire life and watched extreme harm come to this innocent person over a bet. I thought God was an asshole after that. I also started to notice a lot of inconsistencies and contradictions. He was supposed to be unlike humans, benevolent and perfect, but then he was also jealou— which is one of the toughest human emotions. It didn’t make very much sense to me, I spent a lot of time being scared and confused.
“I just remember feeling like this was so far from the way I wanted to live my life, even if it meant me going to hell. The brainwashing was so deep that I thought I might go to hell...”
I realized so much shame, repression, and horrible abuse came with this faith that I saw all around me, and was personally subjected to. I just remember feeling like this
was so far from the way I wanted to live my life, even if it meant me going to hell. The brainwashing was so deep that I thought I might go to hell for a long time, even after I consciously stopped believing in God. There was still a desire for me to believe in something though. I guess I felt closest to “God� when I was outside in nature, so I started learning about plants, rocks and rivers, and I started thinking about my ancestors from Mexico and Europe. At one point, they all connected to those things as well and that felt right and real. I guess I identify now as a witch. I don’t subscribe to any particular kind of witchcraft, but I pray, dance, sing, use herbs and my body to heal and to give thanks and to love. It has felt much more authentic and right for my spirit. I think about my ancestors a lot as well. Before the Christianization of Europe and before the colonization of Mexico, and I think they would be happy and proud of me.
"It is through your deeds that ye can distinguish yourselves from others. Through them the brightness of your light can be shed upon the whole earth." Baha'u'llah
light obscures light Written by Juliet Cangelosi
The first time I allowed myself to question my religion was with my roommate on the floor of our apartment, surrounded by freshly ripped cardboard and acrylic paints. The two of us had matched experiences— religious upbringing, religious college, religious friends. Our similarities departed at the point where she stopped believing in God altogether. She told “I sway and danc me that she still believed in some toes while my fav kind of force beyond humans. Hard to explain, she said. She chose to call this in the background “love.”
hold me through car, late one nigh several month’s w knowing for the fi that I will be ok.”
My religion at the time— a deep-inthe-blood kind of Christianity— felt innate, inextricable from spirituality. To question it was to question the core of myself, and it was terrifying. Yet there I was: reconsidering, scribbling almonds in oil pastels while my artist friend talked me through the basics of color theory and her spirituality that existed apart from religion. This apartment was the last place I lived in my home, the South— a region that, in my experience, often spins Christianity into a suppressive, closed-fist culture more than it puts real, genuine love and spirituality into practice. My friend’s apartment was the first place I felt safe asking questions, and with that, a whole world
ce God down to my vorite song pulses d. God’s arms my friend in her ht, while I cry out worth of sadness, irst time in a while
opened up. Like seeing the stars in the night sky without manmade lights to obscure their glory, I could not unsee the vastness. Today, I struggle to call God, “God”— the word itself is a binding contract that ties to the human tongue an experience that is simultaneously deeply personal, profoundly universal, and utterly unexplainable. I moved to a burgeoning northern city. I wanted to set myself in a cultural epicenter and watch God, love, the universe— whatever limiting language I could assign to the sensation of my racing heart— move through humankind. I discovered and continuously rediscover spirituality in art, music, sexuality, friendship, love, everything in between, and everything beyond. I see God’s warm smile in the sun rays on my kitchen table. I sway and dance God down to my toes while my favorite song pulses in the background. God’s arms hold me through my friend in her
car, late one night, while I cry out several month’s worth of sadness, knowing for the first time in a while that I will be ok. For as long as I can remember, God was real to me. God was real, and they were big— far bigger than the tallest crosses that stood within the Methodist churches I grew up attending. I always say I’ve been going after the same truths my entire life. While I no longer move within concrete or abstract religious structures, I’ve never felt a pivoting within my spirituality. I’ve always known love, always known something grander and far more powerful than myself. Nothing could shake that belief. My religion gave me a strong foundation— the same foundation I eventually stood on firmly to question religion and let it go. In the end, it is a stepping stone on an infinite path, as I continue moving incrementally closer to the same higher love I’ve known my whole life.
a forever feeling Written by Negine Jasmine
“I have homework”, “my stomach hurts”, “I’m tired”, a few of the hundred of excuses I would come up with when I was around thirteen, just so that my parents wouldn’t make me go to the Islamic Sunday school by our house. I listened to Avril Lavigne in class with my blue earphones during Arabic class, which were twisted and dangled under my tight hijab. As I grew deeper into my teens, my relationship with Islam continued to become distant and subdued. I was religious because I partook in the acts my parents wanted me to do but not because I wanted to do them on my own. It wasn’t until the first year of college that I became interested in the religion I thought I was so familiar with. Growing up in Arizona was challenging because there weren’t many like-minded
people around me, so I’d spend hours in the library of my university, just flipping through pages of Islamic art, architecture, and poetry. I think it was at that time that I realized just how thoroughly beautiful Islam was, and how that was a beauty I wanted to be a part of. It’s still funny to me that it wasn’t until I opened a book about the art in Islam that I found my way to the religion that I grew up with, but in a total, complete, unfamiliar, exciting, and new sense. I began to do my own readings about The Prophet and all of the women who encapsulated being Muslim so divinely. I began to reconstruct the way I viewed Islam and started to see it as it was: a religion about forgiveness. After all, the first line in the Quran is “In the name of God the most Gracious the most Merciful.” I sat deeper and deeper in that notion until Islam naturally began to feel like a lifestyle to me. It was something that felt good to me. Something that made me want to be better; to myself, the people around me, and to the earth. Last year I went to Istanbul by myself. I was awestruck by the mosques built around me and excited by the sound of the Azan (call to prayer) that swam around me. For the first time ever, I felt like I was really close to myself. I prayed, not for the things that I wanted out of this life but for this feeling to last forever. Alhamdulillah.
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