the spectrum of belief: part two, the drop of blood in a bowl of milk
a pastor, a nihilist, and a witch walk into a bar
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Hello dear reader,
Here I go again! Late, and yet thrilled I was able to finally churn this out. If you’ve been following along, this is part two of an essay series around the nuances of belief, being Othered, and soon, more on how I first made my foray into the realms of spirituality and witchery. Need to catch up? You can read part one here.
part II: the drop of blood in a bowl of milk
Trigger warning: This essay contains a very brief mention of suicidal thoughts.
I was a finger’s worth of whiskey past fifteen. Even in mostly-progressive California, even in the diverse cultural melting pot of my public high school, the public discourse had changed, swiftly and irrevocably. Though I was, for the most part, safe in my progressive blue state bubble1, I was always aware of the changing perceptions around what it meant to be brown.
In truth, I appeared ethnically ambiguous, and that hasn’t changed—which meant there was always the inquiry: “But where are you really from?” It would float up in conversation, only for my response to be met with a buzzing confusion, an amorphous blankness, as if that couldn’t easily be solved by merely finding the country in question on a map. But why should they know, I eventually concluded, not without frustration. It’s not like they teach that in American schools. We’re not even taught the sickening realities of the history of our own country.2
Besides, it was enough that they got the sense that I was Middle Eastern, and thus somehow soiled, by “virtue” of association. President George W. Bush made sure of that.
It was years before I would proclaim myself a witch, even as intuitive, though I always knew. (We were on the cusp of the Obama years; I was, like many others, assured that things would be Better Now.3) It wasn’t until Trump that I began actively to refer to myself—indeed, recognize myself—as such; as, well, all of the above.
That sounds like I’m giving him credit for catalyzing my self-recognition, which I have no wish to do. If there’s any “credit” I can give, it’s to those of us who dredged up reserves of inner strength hitherto unrealized in that time. Those of us who took our own fear and desperation and struggled, but were somehow able to find modes of connection with others—despite and because of it.
Even now that passage of time, but especially the first year, is wrenching to think about. I wouldn’t choose to relive it even if I was promised untold sums of money. 2016: the year I cried every day for weeks after the travel ban was announced, driving home from work with my head on the steering wheel in stop-and-go traffic, wishing I would just die already.
The year white men yelled at me in my DMs and then wouldn’t leave me alone for years after I accepted their hand-wringing apologies for reasons of my own sanity. The year when, on the cusp of the incipient movement, one of the guys I recalled, however unwillingly, while I wrote and shakily shared my #MeToo post on Instagram immediately blocked me afterward. The year that capitalized on numerous other traumas I’d rather not think of, piling up one over the other—the microaggressions and more explicit macroaggressions.
And the year that epitomized a tectonic shift in the cultural lexicon that also marked one long simmering within my own identity.
2022: Mid-October and we were sitting in my friend’s backyard, talking, drinking, laughing. I was wearing an oversized crewneck sweater, its sleeves so large they billowed; the front of the sweater was stamped with the familiar curved design of a ouija board, bright-white letters making their presence known against a black background. I’d French tucked it into a plaid schoolgirl skirt that touched just above my knees and worn it with Docs, something that looked like it could have been wardrobe design straight out of The Craft, just as I’d intended it to. (We don’t speak about the remake.)
It wasn’t long before the conversation swerved into the territory of religion. Namely, both friends grew up in Michigan and went to the requisite Catholic private schools for upper middle class families. This meant forced attendance of church multiple times a week, among other things. I fell silent, as I sometimes do when I have a lot to say and don’t know where to begin. My experience in high school was markedly different—not just from theirs, and not just because I went to a public school.4
So I sat perched in Emilee’s backyard, listening as she and Christian volleyed a distillation of their experiences at one another, my mind a whirl of so many layers of societal expectation. I thought of what is expected of us, laid upon us, especially during pivotal years of our lives—and how different that is from what many of us ultimately decide for ourselves.
That was something we could all agree on: Religion was good for one thing. It gave people a sense of structure from a young age. It created a steady framework of “something to believe in” during formative years. Whether or not that continued remained dependent on them—and on the decision to hold on to it. Or to return to it later in life, as many do, especially during periods of hardship and darkness. As has been true for me.
And yet, for these friends, going to private Catholic school led to them fleeing in the opposite direction. It resulted in them disavowing the constraints those religion classes attempted to enforce. The experience of being forced to attend church, suffer the lack of choice inherent in a dress code that was often demeaningly imposed, and more—all coalesced into a distinct and vehement disgust for organized religion.
We can say what we will now, on the other side of all the years that have piled up since high school, but no matter how different our experiences, in that way we both wanted and were traumatized by the same things.
Wanting: the acceptance of the group. The feelings of belonging. And the drop of blood in the bowl of milk—the conviction of the self as an outsider. The maverick moving within the hive mind.
Here is what I didn’t say. I didn’t reveal the only experiences I had had at church, nor did I share the game of “playing dead” that the camp counselors used to gather all the kids together to enact. We had to lie perfectly still on the floor of the church, as still as if we lay buried six feet under, waiting for the person who’d been randomly chosen to play Jesus to come around and wake us.
The question I didn’t ask, but have been considering, since then and for much longer: Doesn’t there, like everything else in life, exist a spectrum of belief? And if you exist entirely on one side of this spectrum, aren’t you like one who exists on the other—more alike, indeed, than either would like to admit?
An unfaltering adherence to your own belief, either in a fatalistic God, or that there is nothing to believe in: It’s something that the blind believers and the nihilists have in common. In a way, they both cling to an impulse to destroy.
Of course, there is nuance on this spectrum; that is the reason for its existence. An atheist insists only in disbelief of God or gods, for example, while a nihilist opts for the route of condemnation. Perhaps their view can even be considered less prejudicial than the devout evangelical Christian: They condemn all existence, while the ultra-conservative pastor preaches that only those not included in God’s flock of children should be condemned.
There will always be a hierarchy here—a dictate as to what kind of faith, and how to go about the practice of it, is deemed socially acceptable. That, too, is a part of the spectrum of belief. In fact it’s the foundation—however volatile, at least under the heavy and unforgiving hands of history—it is built upon. And because it’s there, even if it goes unspoken, there will always be those who can and do nurture and advance individual thought, and who choose for themselves where their own moral principles, mythologies, ideals, and lived experiences fall within the larger system.
We know that civilizations have always been formed around certain ideologies. And at the heart of those doctrines are the people who made others believe them, who carried around the seeds of their ideology, clutching them in times of famine, war, and calamity, ready to sow at any time—or else fling them into the wind if they had to. To allow these seeds to be born away, far from the spot in which they once stood.
This is undoubtedly part of a much larger conversation, but it’s also one that begs the question: How else could a vast majority of people carry on their legacy in the past? History was not often kind to those who were not chosen—either by way of being afforded wealth, or through some combination of luck, talent, and social prowess—to be born up and immortalized among the masses.
It makes sense, then, that most people found themselves within their congregations, and desperately clung to the prevalent way of being—even if it included religious teachings that were, more often than not, enforced on others, and that shunned any differing lifestyle choices. Countless saw no other option. How else could you do it, indeed, than by amassing a brood of children on which to bestow your every last gene and mode of belief, flawed or not? If you were lucky, you’d eventually grow into a position of (significantly) more power and pass that on; your descendants would then follow suit, und so weiter.5
And, as the wheel continued to turn, the premise, in a way, also recommenced, even as the years did their work, and eventually society entered into more agnostic ages. If you subscribed to this lifestyle, all you had to do was embrace a community of faith, and a Church that promised you protection from evil, that promised you eternal life after death. Or so you thought.
I write this not to stand on any preachy and sanctimonious soapbox, but simply to find my way into a kind of understanding. I don’t seek to demonize (heh), not the least because I find it exasperating when people look at me funny for sharing my own convictions6, heretically as they would be construed in these circles. (Read: despite the fact that they would have burned me at the stake several hundred years ago. Despite the fact that some still would today.)
It’s ironic and yet unsurprising that as I seek clarity, I’m met with more and more questions. I prefer the concept of religion as a framework, and faith as existing on a spectrum, because it proffers the kind of nuance that the confines of modern binary thinking do not allow for. I can look at the underlying threads that form the greater pattern, while still feeling completely nonplussed that I was made to feel I could never be a part of it. That so many others—like myself and otherwise—could not, either.
And I know what I’d prefer to pass on to my own future children. I’ll give you one hint: it won’t be that.
Then again, so does the atheist or the agnostic, though the latter may still take the kids to Mass on Christmas morning. The nihilist won’t be having any.
For those of you celebrating American Thanksgiving, wishing you a restful holiday. Though we all know Thanksgiving is problematic for more reasons than one. That said, I couldn’t possibly be more relieved to get a break.
And I’m grateful—really, truly, and embarrassingly earnestly—to all of you for continuing to read my newsletter week in and week out. It means so much. ♥️
Lastly, happy Sagittarius season! Post on that coming soon.
xx
Kimia
I’ll admit to my privilege here.
Thanksgiving, of course, being only one of many things glossed over and anesthetized, made pretty so that their evils could be stomached.
Admittedly, some of the policies instated and decisions to be made regarding the Middle East during Obama’s Presidency were far from perfect, including his decision to remain silent during the 2009 Green Movement protests in Iran (one he recently apologized for).
One day I’ll share more about what I mean by that, but that day is not today.
See also: nepotism as cultural mainstay. I think about this all the time, but it’s on my brain even more as of late. Just read this piece from Amy Odell’s Back Row newsletter, and though it’s geared more toward celebrity culture, not on religion, I highly recommend giving it a read: ‘Nepo Babies’ Need Better Talking Points.
Again, more on this to come in the next part of the essay!