Sunday Topic: Religion and Spirituality

Religion -

1) the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.

2) a particular system of faith and worship

Spiritual -

1) of, relating to, or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.

2) of or relating to religion or religious belief

See? There is a difference!

I've always seen a difference between the two, and understood my need for them in separate manners. Religion is the structure in which I express my spirituality through the lens of culture/time/current ethics or morals. Spirituality is the core truth, the message and the importance it has on me. Spirituality is the code/the message, Religion is the way the message is presented and the ritual I use to express it.

Religion shifts and changes with the culture and time that uses it. Christianity today is vastly different than Christianity 100 years ago, or even just 50 years ago. The message/truth/code/guidelines/expression of reality that Christianity proclaims hasn't changed; what has changed is how we interpret it and how we express it. Christianity in America is different than Christianity in Germany, same day but different culture. At the heart, both cultures draw upon the same information and resources but due to the lens of society interprets it vastly different.

Spirituality however, that is something I feel a bit more fundamental. It is the thing we understand in our hearts as right, it is the moral/ethical code we follow to be a better person. It is those beliefs we have that defy explanation or assumption, it is the way of living that feels right. These are fundamental cores of our nature, the things that are "real" to each of us. These have to be expressed, they defy our understanding in an animistic way, and thus we create filters to understand them. These filters are built out of our cultural heritage and thus the message will change...into Religion.

Can you have pure spirituality and no religion? I think some people do, but they are rare. Isolated monks, spiritual guru's hidden in the wilds, these are people who have no tie to culture or the times and express their spirituality through an unfiltered/less tainted lens. But for the rest of us, our spiritual needs become expressed through the religion we choose to follow. I think it's a good thing to understand that.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

Artist Life

Artist Life is...

. Being unable to eat, sleep or even control your breathing due to the INTENSITY that you feel you must create art.

. Being nervous about spending $0.99 on an app that will provide a few hours of entertainment, but you cannot pull out your credit card fast enough for a multi-book binding of three 14th Century cooking manuscripts for $100.00.

. Having to pause moments of your day to jot down notes or ideas, as brief bouts of inspiration hit due to random circumstance.

. Meeting a fellow artist, and spending hours just enjoying the shop talk and sharing of knowledge with a new friend. But when someone asks you later who you were talking to...not remembering their name because you realize you forgot to ask it,

. Hating the things that people praise the most, because you feel the praise is unjustified.

. A whole host of superstitions from years of work that infect your every move when creating art. Examples being specific chairs you must sit in to write, temperature/humidity to compose music to, just the right amount of clothing in the right spots to feel inspired to write.

. Seeing the world in a completely alien way than most of the population...and the learning to cope with that separation. 

. Flying into a rage because you could not properly explain to your loved ones the vision you have, the artistic mindset you wish to impart.

. Weeping at the chance to spend weeks of your life slaving away on a project that will perhaps only be experienced by people once, to be put on display for a majority who will never know the pints of blood poured into the task. 

For me, the biggest thing is seeing the world differently. And it's not so much a physical change in what I see...I see the boats on the water just like everyone else. It's just so much more than that.

I see the boats on the water, water stained gold and red with the light of a dying day. The water surges up the side of each ship, bleeding the promise and dreams of deeds done that day before becoming swallowed by the black night and the promise of death. Each ship drifts along, sailing despite the dying day, continuing its journey despite setbacks because it is confidant that with death must follow a new life and a new day. Some boats are pure of heart, some shadowed in an inner darkness reflected out, some striving for that purely human element of the middle which we must all arrive in. Some sails are unfurled to learn what it can of the knowledge of wind, some lowered to trust their own steering of the rudder. Always sailing, forever along the ocean of life and death. 

This is Artist Life.

Facing the mirror

St. Val's feast had me facing something terrifying. I was uncomfortable the whole time, anxious and nervous. I think this feast was the hardest thing I've done so far, because I had to face my greatest challenges in it. I had to face myself during this, I had to face my own failings and mistakes. I had to realize my own limitations, further more I had to realize when I was sabotaging myself. This feast helped me realize all that.

Long time ago, I was that gifted kid in class. I was the one who was ahead of every lesson, I could pick up and sight read music for nearly any instrument, I was reading at a college level by 5th grade and I was always on top. I didn't have to try, I didn't have to really work to be successful. Not until 7th grade, I ran into my first challenge then when I was put into the 8th grade advanced math course. Suddenly I had to try, I was just...average. I failed.

I couldn't handle it, the failing. I began to think that maybe I wasn't smart, that I couldn't do all these things. That I was just this fraud...that my life to that point was wrong and a lie. So I stopped trying. I started holding back, I chose to take no action and let things just happen. I began to rationalize that if I didn't actually try then I would never really know how well I could actually do or know how badly I could fail. I took the easiest route, I avoided challenges and just let myself fail through inaction rather than make an effort.

I did this for so long, that it just became my MO. I took the easy roads, I let the chips fall where they may instead of trying and I just let life rule me. I made so many poor choices through inaction, that I began to believe my own bullshit. Even when I joined up with the SCA the second time, what I did while fun was no real challenge to me. I could just...do it without trying. So I did things for fun, and nothing was amiss. Then I hit Fall Coronation 2015.

I devoted a year of my life to that feast. I studied Japanese culture, I read their mythology and history from pre-history to Edo. I learned about their poems and their songs, their wars and heroes. All of this so I could understand a new cooking style, to understand a culture that was incredibly foreign to everything I've known. I got to the feast after a year of work...and I did a good job. I made plenty of mistakes, the list if I were to get into it would be huge if I were to be frank, but it was still a damned good feast. It wasn't my best, but for the first time in a long time I really tried and while I didn't quite reach that top gold rung I got a good silver pedestal. But everyone else...I couldn't escape the praise. I couldn't escape the constant well wishes and the regular compliments, and the more praise was heaped at me the more I began to resent the feast. I hadn't been the best, I had just passed, why was everyone making a huge deal about my failures?

I started another downward spiral. I started to rethink every success I had over the last five years and began to tell myself that even my easy successes had just been failures that people didn't realize. As I began to work on my next feast for St. Val's, I couldn't focus. Even working with a fantastic partner, I did not put anywhere near the effort I normally did into it. I expected to fail, I expected that it would be ruined and thus I put almost zero effort or work towards it. I just couldn't muster the energy to care.

Then I was suddenly forced to care. St. Val's was to host Art/Sci, and I had to look at the 3/4 completed project I had left in rambles and face the fact that it was me who ensured it couldn't be entered. I had to fave the fact that the feast was going to be hurt because I didn't support my comrade, and my friends were gonna have a bad night because I was selfish and didn't want to admit that I lacked such confidence in myself. My friends know I have such little ego, so when I looked into the mirror that day the next thought that came was akin to a slap in the face.

I looked into the mirror, and realized I had been holding back for years because I was too afraid to really try. I had never really tried at anything for years until fall coronation, and I was willing to throw that all away. 

I was a flurry of work from that point on. I pushed myself to recover for lost time, I improvised recipes on instinct and potions/flavor profiles on just a fundamental understanding. Hell, I recreated a recipe I had eaten 2 years ago based on memory of taste/texture and a few tips on assorted chickpea recipes I found online. I gave it a real effort that last little bit of time, to just be good again. I made a huge number of mistakes, but I had a great team member supporting me and a great crew to work with all day. I faced my fear of failure instead of hiding, I gave it a real try for my friends sake. 

We did a real good feast, hot food was hot and cold food was cold. Everyone liked the taste, and everyone had plenty to eat. I had a great co-Feastcrat who worked with me to make a great experience. I had a great hall steward who did a fantastic job of organizing the hall and servers. I had great friends who supported me and helped me get through it. I got a chance to look in the mirror and realize that if I actually tried...if I put real effort into my passion without fear of failure...that maybe I could have my best feast yet.

I feel good. I got hurt, I got knocked down. But for the first time I realize that it's my fault for the pain, and now I can stand back up and keep moving forward.

An Crosaire has always been a place of beginnings, of renewals for me. Seems like it did it again.