Amazon.com Widgets
Currently viewing the tag: "Honesty"

About Breakups

Written By on
Puzzle Piece Heart

Photo by Horia Varlan

The thing about breakups is that you’re never really out of each other’s life. It’s an illusion to think that you can just sever ties (if that’s what you were hoping for) and then… Poof! No more connection.

It never happens like that.

When I made the decision, and then the subsequent announcement that I was leaving ADF and handing over the work of the Fellowship, I knew well and good that this wasn’t (nor did I want it to be) a clear, clean break. It was the beginning of a transition; one that may have begun a little suddenly and unexpectedly, but still simply a movement from one thing to another.

I’m not quite sure what I’m moving to in my own life. I don’t suppose it’s time to know that yet. But I do know that there are several people within ADF who, as I write this post, are working to make the transition go smoothly for the solitaries of the Fellowship. A priest is writing a new liturgy, a priest-in-training is considering the role of Organizer, and a number of thoughtful, considerate people have stepped forward to offer their talents to the cause.

This thing is going to live on.

And my work with the Fellowship will continue until the transition is complete. There are file folders, user-names and passwords that will need to be given to someone else. I’ve got document templates and drafts, all of which will have to be passed over, too. Perhaps most importantly, I’ve got to let go of that sense of ownership or authorship.

This was never mine, the Fellowship. It was never a thing to be possessed. It was an idea; a new way of thinking about service to solitaries. And the idea is out there now. It lives. And, with an inspired group of people behind it, it will grow in new and unexpected ways.

Last night I wrote what I think might be my last post on the SDF website. I needed to speak directly to the solitaries of the Fellowship and put this transition into a broader context — one that felt relevant to me, but that also might inspire them into reflection about their own lives.

I wrote,

Our religious lives may revolve around a liturgical calendar (the cycle of the seasons, the Wheel of the Year), but my experience has shown me that matters of the spirit and matters of the heart do not happen in a patterned, convenient fashion. They happen abruptly, and they demand that we readjust our thinking in the spur of the moment. In the process of doing so, while we try to reclaim our sense of balance as the ground still tremors beneath our feet, we do the real work of a spiritual life.

We experience a good and meaningful labor.

So, my charge to all of you — all of you who have shown up to speak or who have shown up in silence — is to continue your own good and meaningful labor in my absence. Take the tools which have been provided to you and fashion something relevant for your solitary observance of the Solstice. Or, use these words to get you started:

My heart is forged of good metal.
My spirit strong, unbroken.
I lift my hands and celebrate
This season of good labor.

May all my work be done with love;
Love for myself and for my kin,
And for my Kindred, known to me
Inside my heart and in the world.

This is the day of breaking forth
Into the future, arms outstretched.
I greet Unfolding Mystery
Rejoicing in this life I live!

I cannot begin to explain how grateful I am to have had the opportunity, again and again, to contextualize my own life in this way, season after season, for the benefit of a broader community. I had no idea it would be so meaningful to serve, or that baring one’s soul could act, in and of itself, as a kind of service.

It isn’t always pretty, what goes on inside of us. It isn’t always virtuous, or noble, or respectable, or admirable. But if it’s honest, it’s worth something.

It’s worth a lot.

It’s worth living for.

Semi-famous Pagan Blogger / Semi-famous Recording Artist

Written By on

The internet runs on an interesting mixture of transparency and secrecy. Some of us tell all, and others build identities behind which to hide.

Some of us do a little of both.

I began writing under the name Teo Bishop in 2009 in order to provide me with the safe space to explore my evolving religious identity. My given name was wrapped up in other things, like this:

And this:

And even this:

 

Before I was a blogger named Teo Bishop, I was an artist named Matt Morris.

I’ve been doing music since I was a little kid, been a pro since I was a teenager, and up until the last year or two, I’ve done little else. Music has been my mainstay, my bread and butter, my life-long career.

But then I discover through writing this blog, and through all of the work I’ve done in dialogue about matters of religion, faith, and practice, that there are many means for being expressive outside of music. My non-musical work fulfills me in ways that the business of music never has. I love writing for Patheos and HuffPost Religion, and I’m developing new ideas about how I might be able to contribute to the betterment of the Pagan Community at large, and my religious community of ADF in particular.

I also love to write songs. When my blog goes quiet for a few weeks, that’s usually what I’m doing. My Indiegogo Campaign, which closed this last week, was an attempt to reintroduce and re-prioritize music in my life, and while it may not have succeeded in raising the funds, it was certainly successful in reminding me how important a role music plays in my life.

At some point, we must all come out. We must all be honest about how we’ve compartmentalized to excess, how we’ve created new masks — either out of fear or in an attempt to approximate privacy in a increasingly non-private society. We must recognize when it is time to integrate all of our disparate parts (T. Thorn Coyle might say that it is always time to integrate).

While my situation may look rather extreme — my relative fame in the music world necessitating a new name, a new series of URL’s and social network profiles in order to grow in my religious practice — I don’t think I’m the only one who has gone to such measures in order to explore the subtleties and complexities of their identity. We’re living in a rather strange time; one in which many, if not all of us are negotiating our identities for public consumption. Every status update is a mini-press release; every tweet a soundbite. Some of us apply a kind of close-scrutiny about what messages we broadcast to the world in a way that was once reserved only for major public figures and celebrities.

It’s all very bizarre, when you take a moment to think about it.

But my coming out is not simply an act of confession about another online identity. I’m choosing transparency at this time because I believe doing so may be the only way I can move forward in both my music and my writing. I was never two people — I was always, only one. There’s no sense in pretending otherwise. My nom de plum has become my legal name, and my given name a stage name, but the person beneath has remained throughout the process.

Teo Bishop has always been Matt Morris, and Matt Morris has always been Teo Bishop.

I offer this up to you, my loyal, inquisitive, insightful readership. I share these heretofore hidden parts of myself, trusting that you’ll likely google up a good bit more (it’s all there on the interwebs, after all). I trust that the act of being honest with you is worth whatever risk comes with it.

And I leave you with the song I’m perhaps most proud of, Eternity; a song which affirms that I am — we are — all of the identities that have ever been, that are ever being, and that ever will be. From the song:

“I’m telling you / with sincerity / that what you do / and what you be / is go’n follow you / like it follow me / and be with you for / eternity.”