The Messy Middle: Part Three - Spirit
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So here we are in the “Messy Middle”. We’ve looked at body. We’ve looked at mind. And in this final instalment, we’re going to cover what might be the messiest of all. Spirit. Actually, full disclosure, we’re going to talk about spirituality.
Spirituality, now there’s a word. What automatically comes to mind for you when you hear it? A church? Nature? Books in the self-help section with angels on the cover? Whatever it is, I bet it’s something that’s changed, since you were a younger version of yourself. And if you’re like me, spirituality might be something you’ve given more thought to as you’ve entered the “Messy Middle” that is mid-life.
The Father, Son and the Holy Spirit is probably something most of us are familiar with – the Irish readers at least – as it is one that was drummed into us at school and weekly at Mass. When American friends of mine here in New York ask if I went to “Catholic school” – something that over here carries a status above Public School for many – they laugh when I tell them when I was a kid in Ireland, it was just called “school.” I’m not trying to be funny when I say that and I do know that obviously there were a few non-denominational schools around, even back then. But what I’m trying to convey is that Catholicism wasn’t seen as a choice, really, at least not in my life. It was just there, a part of life that was a constant presence, like say, the sea.
Like many teenagers, as I grew up I found myself bored at Mass, questioning these things I was being taught, paying more attention to who else was there – by that I mean the boys in the back – rather than what the priest was saying.
And around the same time, we had a new religion teacher at school who seemed to encourage a new take on things too. He played music for us – At Seventeen by Janis Ian and From a Distance by Nancy Griffith – and I remember watching Beaches and The Mission in class. We talked about things that were interesting – relevant – things seemed to have nothing to do with religion at all. When he set an essay for us to answer the question of whether we believed in God (a brave thing for a teacher in a convent school to put on the syllabus in the late 1980s) I vividly remember writing about living next to the sea and watching the waves and the changing colours of the sky. I remember the ending I wrote, being scared to write it: Looking at all of those things, how can I not believe in God? But I don’t know if believing in God and believing in religion are the same thing.
Thinking about it now, I was right to be scared - it was a ballsy thing for a 16-year-old to write and I give credit to my teacher for creating a space for me to feel safe enough to write it and I give him even more credit for giving me an A. Maybe that’s why I remember it so vividly. Maybe it was the only thing I wrote in school that was really true.
After school – after I left home – my life diverged from that of religion entirely and, in fact, from much thought of God or spirituality at all. During my 20s there was just too much to contend with – getting a job and starting a career and getting on the property ladder and, oh yeah, a lot of nights out as well. Weddings and funerals became my primary reason to enter a church and for events like that, the setting felt fitting – the smell of the incense, the smooth wood under my fingertips providing a mix of gravitas and nostalgia that was right for these milestone occasions. If I’d gotten married then like many of my friends did, I probably would have done it in a church too. I probably wouldn’t have given it much thought.
I’ve written here before – in the “Messy Middle” series and other pieces too – about how things started to change for me in my 30s and this has been true in all areas of my life, including my thoughts on spirituality. Right before I turned 30, my mother had a heart attack. It was shocking, totally unexpected. She was a woman in her 50s with seemingly boundless energy; she didn’t smoke, she ate well and hardly drank. And yet, I when my father called in the middle of the night on a Sunday in mid-February, that was exactly what had happened.
As my ex drove us through the silent streets to St Vincent’s Hospital it seemed unreal, even more unreal was the sight of my father’s car – a man who has never broken a rule in his life – abandoned across the yellow criss-crosses outside the entrance to the A&E right next to a big No Parking sign. As a doctor told us that the next 24 hours were critical, I felt as if, of the three of us, I was the only one who understood what he was actually saying – and not saying.
Night ticked achingly slowly towards morning and eventually, I sent my father and my ex home and waited in the empty waiting room, watching a replay of a Ronan O’Gara try on repeat on an all-night news channel. And when that got too much, I went in search of coffee but found myself instead taking a turn away from the cafeteria and towards the chapel where I got down on my knees. Above the altar Jesus was on the cross, where he had always been. I buried my head in my hands and prayed for my mother to live.
My mother did live – thankfully, is still living – and has as much energy today, 18 years later as she did then. And I’ve since learned that my prayer that night, has a name. “Fox hole prayers” I’ve heard them called, the type of prayer that comes at those moments in our lives when the unthinkable is happening, when our backs are against the wall. When we know we need the help of something greater than ourselves.
Maybe that experience paved the way for me into my 30s to become more open to spirituality, I can’t say for sure, but what I can say is that like I’ve written about in the “Mind” instalment of this “Messy Middle” feature, as I entered that new decade I felt more openness in my approach, the “def-in-ite” views of my 20s ebb away. When I took up yoga, I found that the classes that inspired me the most were Anusara which had a big spiritual component I wasn’t expecting. My teachers spoke about the concept of “flowing with grace”, going with the flow of the universe rather than fighting against it. I heard that my goal - beyond opening my hips in pigeon – was to align myself, my purpose, with the universe’s purpose for me.
I didn’t know if I believed it – I still approached most things with a healthy dose of cynicism – but by then it seemed like most things I tried and wanted had been at odds with what the universe or God or any higher being wanted for me, so I figured it was worth a try. As I started to meditate in the morning and write gratitude lists at night, I began to notice synchronicities which appeared to positively reinforce that I was on the right track. At the same time, I immersed myself more in my therapy and also in my creativity, valuing – perhaps for the first time – the role of writing as a practice in my life and uncoupling it from accomplishment and the desire to be published. If this sounds like this came easy for me – it didn’t. Most of my five minutes spent meditating were spent getting caught up in thoughts and then beating myself up for not doing it right.
But still, I did it. Still, I came back and sat.
Around the same time – a year or two into my deepening yoga practice – I decided to take a month off to work in Brooklyn on my second novel, despite the fact that my first was still unpublished. And one Sunday morning, as I munched on a sesame bagel at my local Forte Greene coffee shop, I found myself watching a crowd of people smiling and chatting as they headed up a set of stone steps into a building across the street. The building was in the middle of the block, identical to the brownstone houses on either side except, I realised as I looked again, it wasn’t. The entrance was wider, like two of the houses had been knocked together and there was a sign outside by iron fence – the building was a church. It didn’t look like any church I’d ever seen before and maybe that’s why, when I finished my breakfast, I found myself going up the steps and through the doors, sitting alone in a pew at the back.
Even as I was doing those things, I was terrified – that I might be kicked out, or worse, that I might be roped into some kind of cult that I couldn’t get out of. But neither happened. What I found was a reasonably full room with people who seemed to know and like each other – different ages, different skin tones – and a preacher who seemed like more of a facilitator than a leader. He invited people to speak and in between the readings and singing, members of the congregation shared things that were going on in their lives. There was a part where they wanted to welcome anyone who was new but I sat silently, I didn’t raise my hand, despite a woman smiling at me encouragingly. Towards the end, I started to smell coffee brewing and it became clear that there was going to be some kind of after-party – my cue to exit. Coming back out into the bright September morning, alongside the relief of escaping from having to explain to anyone why I was there, I felt something else too – a twinge of sadness at what I might be missing out on.
That church was – I believe – Presbyterian. I never went back but I never forgot it either and it was a few weeks after that when I found myself in another church, a Buddhist Temple on Canal Street. This time there was no service, only silence, and as I sat cross-legged on a cushion looking at the food offerings to the Buddha, I felt a sudden closeness to my favourite aunt who had died over a decade earlier, a feeling I’d never had before, as if she was right there, sitting next to me. I didn’t talk much to anyone about these moments, or what they meant. I think I was afraid of someone asking me what I was looking for in these places, since I didn’t know myself.
What I did know was that the more I practiced the principles I was learning in yoga, the more I meditated, the more I paid attention to life inside and outside of me, things were changing. Finally able to embrace my sexuality, I met a woman who I fell in love with and when I let go of the need to be published to make myself feel like a “real” writer, I was offered a publishing deal.
I was in the flow of something, it seemed to me. Maybe for the first time, myself and the universe were aligned, things were going the way I wanted.
So when I made the decision a couple of years later to move to New York – to move in with the woman I had fallen in love with – it was a hard pill to swallow that my desires and the universe’s were no longer dovetailing. In my vision of my new life, I was working teaching creative writing – something I’d always wanted to do – and writing my third novel. I applied to every teaching position I found online – the New School, Fordham, NYU, community colleges, even after-school programs. Without a visa, I didn’t expect it to be easy, but I did think there would be some traction, some opening, but no. Unlike my experience job seeking in Ireland, most of the time I didn’t even get a “PFO” or any kind of acknowledgement at all, so it felt like sending out applications into the abyss. There was no sign of any kind, except, perhaps, the sign that I should stay put. My faith in alignment, in the universe, was on shaky ground and when my girlfriend – someone who still has a stronger belief than I do – urged me to keep the faith, that this was all part of the plan, I struggled to believe her.
Looking back at that time, I can see now, how narrow my vision was, how prescriptive a view I had of how this would work. And it wasn’t until I read online that one of the positions I’d applied for had been offered to an eight-time published novelist with several awards under her belt, that I began to realise how unrealistic my expectations were. It was enough to make me make the tiniest of shifts in perspective, to cast my net more broadly. I knew I didn’t want to work in a corporate environment and I knew I couldn’t work full-time and fulfil my publishing commitments. So I decided to take another direction I’d always been interested in, to see if I could find a part-time role in a charity, somewhere I’d feel fulfilled and still be able to write.
The day I made that decision, I applied to three jobs online. One got back to me later that same day, via email. The charity was the largest emergency food programme in New York City – a soup kitchen –where they served over 1,000 meals every day. When I read more about it, I saw it was run out of an Episcopalian Church and not just any church - it was a church 20 blocks from where I was staying with my girlfriend, a church where we saw a concert performed by a choir her friend was in a few months earlier. I remembered sitting in the front row, listening to the music and looking around at the vaulted ceilings, the walls so much less ornate than a Catholic church. Through the stained glass window I had seen the light grow dark and afterwards, I had told my girlfriend it was the most beautiful church I’d ever been in.
Even if my yoga practice hadn’t trained me to watch out for signs, and synchronicities, I would have noticed that one. Or that my girlfriend knew several other people involved in that same church in various ways. It turned out that the church was well known for its liberal values, that it was one of the first bastions of support for gay men during the AIDS crisis of the 80s. Unbeknownst to me – who had up until now been closeted at work – all but two staff members were gay and many of the volunteers were as well. Against the odds, the Executive Director was familiar with the process of sponsoring people for visas and was willing to embark on the arduous process for me, a part-time member of his staff of 11. And if these signs weren’t enough, they were looking to reactivate a creative writing programme, to help soup kitchen guests nourish their soul as well as their bodies. And so I got to teach after all - not, as I had imagined, young, confident undergraduates, but homeless or formerly homeless men and women who at 50-something, 60-something, even 70-something were taking their first steps on their own writing journeys. Students who inspired me, who I was humbled and grateful to teach.
That was almost a decade ago and even though I’ve had two other jobs since then, that experience has become a touchstone for me, something I return to over and over if I find myself confused or struggling to get the outcome I want in a situation. It reminds me that my role is to keep my mind open and my eyes open too. Since I stopped going to church for my job, I am back to often setting foot inside one when it’s a wedding or a funeral. When my wife and I got married, we incorporated our own vows with a celebrant who was not tied to any formal religion. I still practice yoga, I still meditate, I still journal and write gratitude lists and I still find it hard to define spirituality.
And in the end – or at least here in the “Messy Middle” – in many ways, I think my 16-year-old self was right. That while it can be about religion for some people, spirituality is not about religion for me, it’s about something much simpler than that: the awakening of my own spirit. It’s about connection – to my inner self and to the outside world – because I’ve come to understand that I can’t do either, can’t have either, without having both.
Yvonne Cassidy, October 2022
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