What are we up to here?

Alex

You know those conversations that are like a good meal? The ones that have all the best parts—storytelling, personal engagement, intellectual stimulation, a topic you’re passionate about. Where all participants in the conversation have an equal and valued voice and keep chewing and marinating on the ideas raised long afterward. Where you don’t want the conversation to stop; where you feel your soul filled and your mind expanded and your heart touched.

One of my very favorite things about being with you is that I feel like one of those conversations could happen at any moment and I can’t wait for the next one. It will be about faith, or identity, or where we came from, or the world we are dreaming into being.

Creating a written and public space for some of my favorite conversations means I get to chew on them more. The act of writing gives me the chance to develop my thoughts further than I get to when I’m talking with you. I want to be able to create that space and intention for myself, and I also want to be able to invite others into the conversation.

I’ve been thinking lately about how being in relationship with another person can be in and of itself a spiritual practice. Opening yourself to a real connection with someone means taking risks, calling your highest self forward, opening yourself to the infinite ways of being that the other person might inhabit and experiences that they may bring to the table. To believe as I do that the spirit of the universe lives in all beings, each conversation is an encounter with the divine.

Teo

I can picture your excited expression when reading your dinner conversation analogy. It made me smile. Your eagerness to engage and to listen, to sit quietly and patiently while I try to articulate wisps of concepts I have kept close to my heart and to do this all without judgment have been the very things for which I am deeply grateful on a daily basis. I have been craving conversations around living faith, spirituality, and queer and gender identity in safe space that also allows for passion and action. My hope in creating a more public forum for the conversations we have ongoing in the car while you read to me, while making dinner or walking the dog is to honor the depth and meaning of those conversations in an intentional way and to invite others into our conversations without having to cram everyone into our very small apartment.

My hope for this blog is to share with the world what I get on long car rides all the time. Powerful conversations that call me to my highest self, that help remind me that my faith is a lived experience rooted in connection and service and all in a spirit of elemental kindness and playfulness.