Early on. Episode one or two. I don't remember which.
Rebecca and I were talking about being spiritual but not religious. The phrase people say when they want to stay open. When they don't want the labels. When they want distance from the parts of religion that have hurt them.
I asked something like: Is this just laziness?
Are we choosing this because it's true, or because it's easier? Are we exploring, or are we hiding? Are we doing the work, or is "spiritual" the word for not doing the work?
It was the kind of question you ask when you don't think it applies to you. You ask it the way you bring up someone else's blind spot. As a thought experiment. As a thing to discuss. We started the podcast partly because of that question — to make our spirituality tangible. To give it shape. To do the thing instead of just naming the thing.
Rebecca is doing it.
She is building D'Vine. She is reading. She is asking. She is making something out of her faith, in the actual material world, with her actual hands. The podcast for her is not the work — it's the byproduct. The work is happening underneath.
I am watching her do it.
I am jealous.
I am not supposed to say that. The right thing to say is that I am proud of her, that I am rooting for her, that her growth doesn't take anything from mine.
All of that is also true.
It is also true that I am jealous.
I am jealous because she is closer to something I keep saying I want to be close to. I am jealous because she has converted the question into action and I have not. I am jealous because she found a thing she can do, and I am still circling around what I might do.
I keep saying spirituality matters to me.
I keep not making it tangible.
I read about it sometimes. I post about it sometimes. I show up to record episodes about it. And then the rest of the week, it is not where I go. I go to work. I go to the next project. I go to the next thing. The thing I keep saying matters most is the thing I keep handing off to next week.
What does it say that the thing I claim is closest to me is the thing I do least about?
The word for that is lazy.
I am writing it down because if I don't write it down I will round it off into something kinder. I will call it a season. I will call it protecting my energy. I will call it going at my own pace.
Some of that might be true.
Some of it is the language I learned to use to stop having to look at the thing.
I asked the question on the podcast like I was asking about other people. I am asking it now about myself.
Is this just laziness?
I do not know.
I do not know if I am being lazy, or if I am being faithful in a quieter way I cannot yet see. I do not know if the distance is wisdom or avoidance. I do not know if my not-searching is itself a kind of searching, or if I am using that line to let myself off the hook.
I have not done the thing that would help me find out.
The thing that would help me find out is to actually search. Not metaphorically. Not in conversations. Not in essays. To actually do something — read the book, sit in the silence, show up to the practice, build the habit, let it cost me something.
I have not done that.
That feels like data.
I keep telling myself I will start.
I keep saying next week.
I have been saying next week for a long time.
So this is where I am.
Watching Rebecca do the thing. Sitting in the guilt.
Maybe I am lazy. Maybe I am scared. Maybe I am tired. Maybe spirituality has been taking a back seat because I have been letting it. Maybe I am letting it because I do not know what to do with the front seat.
I do not have an answer today.
What I have is the guilt.
I am sitting with it (I also have ADHD so a lot of the times I'm also not sitting with it).