Deeper Than the Holler

Been thinking about love a lot lately. Mostly been thinking about how tired I am that love is just supposed to be between two partnered humans or direct family. Like it's apparently weird that I love my friends, and that I tell them, to their faces (well maybe to text boxes or to their ears if they're farther away friends that I only voice chat or text with mainly) how much I love them, why I love them, and I mean it with the same seriousness as when I say I love my spouse or my family.

Life's too damn short not to love people. Love them. Love them, love them, love them, and tell them. Tell them loud, tell them quiet, tell them in the unexpected moments. Show them in a million ways.

Right now, me and some of my friends are watching She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (the new one) which I have never seen before. I *love* it. I love the range of body types and personalities and designs the princesses have, I love how everyone, good or bad is messy and imperfect, I love that there's character growth, I love all of it. (I love Scorpia and Entrapta and Mermista best so far, but that's like saying I love chocolate ice cream better than butterscotch - I love ice cream so much, the difference in preferences is slight.)

But you know what I love best? I love that the whole reason we are watching it is because I said "I have so much trouble watching new cartoons, there is so much going on and so much story to keep in my head and I keep forgetting about things, it's frustrating" and a pile of my friends went "what if we watched it with you? You could pause to ask questions, or to excitedly yell and handflap about stuff, or to say that you need a moment because a scary thing, or for us to remind you who is who, anything like that, and it would just be really fun to watch it again with you. Plus, we can turn the captions on so it's easier to follow what's going on." (For the most part, they've already seen it, I'm the only one who is completely new to it.)

I love that my friends didn't dismiss my accessibility needs. I love that they were like "yep we know you forget and get distracted and stuff, but that's okay!" So we watch it using Netflix Party, we take turns pausing for questions or "OMG DID YOU SEE THAT" or "whoa, need a second, that was a lot"  sorts of moments, and it's just...nice. Plus, the show is SO much fun, and it gives us a thing we can do together when we don't have a lot of spoons for our usual cozy gaming or whatever.

That to me, that's love. That's people seeing me in my all together true, loving me as I am, and working with me so I can experience a thing.

There are so many ways to show love. Especially right now, when the world feels so dang short on love, and so big on fear. Let's tip the scales a little, together. Find ways to show love, tell love, breathe love, live love - and let's teach each other that it's okay to tell each other how much we love each other. Because trust me, we all want to feel that.

The Old Voice Warning Me

When I like a thing, I tend to...really like it. Almost to the exclusion of everything else. When I was in my Hamilton (the musical, not the city) phase, I read Chernow's book about Hamilton (that was SO LONG), I memorized the whole soundtrack, I followed every Twitter thread and video and anything I could find that was remotely related. I listened to literally almost nothing else for months.

Then...at some point, I stopped. I was done. My brain wandered off to something else, and I haven't really listened to the soundtrack since. I still like it, I want to see the play eventually, but when I had the chance to join people in the random lottery style lineup for tickets for the eventual Toronto debut of it....I didn't really bother. (Saved me a bunch of money, I suppose, I heard tickets weren't cheap.) It's no longer a hyperfocus.

This is how I like things. I get into them, with my whole self for a while, then I'm done. I've done it with numerous craft projects (cross-stitch, crochet, among others), languages (Russian, mostly), I do it with stage plays (Hamilton, RENT, In the Heights (that one's still an active focus)).

When I found the Baha'i Faith...I kinda fell in with both feet. There are a few days around when I declared where I didn't sleep a lot, I was just kinda floating in a lot of reading and a lot of wondering and some very patient friends who let me ask them a lot of questions. I have read (and continue to read) as many books about the Faith I can get my hands on. (Yes, I did read Lights of Guidance cover to cover. It was actually pretty interesting. I learned a lot.)

I hyperfocused, hard. I wanted to know everything all at once. I still do, although I've kinda realized there's more than I'll ever know, or fully understand and that's okay. I read a lot and I tried to be everywhere and do everything and I reached a point right after the Bicentenary in October where my body was like "okay, enough, breathe a little".

So...I've been breathing a little. I still love Baha'u'llah and His message with my whole heart, I still go to Feast when I can and I usually have at least one Baha'i adjacent book in my book rotation (right now, it's Creating a New Mind, by Paul Lample). But maybe I don't go to every single devotional that's within reasonable transit distance, maybe I let myself read a few more romance novels before tackling more Adib Taherzadeh.

It's hard not to feel guilty. I keep hearing the voice in the back of my head that tells me that maybe this is just another hyperfocus. Every time I forget my obligatory prayer, or I can't make it to Feast, or I don't go to someone's devotional because I have something else I'm doing, I worry. I worry I'm just going to some day just...drift out of this.

It's kinda scary to admit that, out loud. I talk about how the Faith has changed my life (and oh my gosh, it really has, but that's another story for another day), how I love my community, how I like that I have a way to participate within my own capacity for service with the newsletter and the social media bits. But I don't talk so much about how I am scared my brain is just going to decide I'm done, someday.

I know people will tell me that if it's important, it will stay. The way I've kept friendships alive and my marriage alive and my cat alive - they're important, beyond hyperfocus. The things that are part of the very core of me, those don't go away. I'd love to believe that my Faith is in there too, in the core of me. But I don't know yet. In the grand scheme of my life, I've been doing this Baha'i stuff for....maybe 3 percent of my entire existence?

I know the answer is to just keep on keeping on, the way I do. To keep finding ways to serve the Cause, to keep connecting with my local reality and my friends and my life, and to keep integrating the Baha'i concepts into my everything, as I've been doing. But I thought it might be good to also talk about being scared. I don't think we do that enough, admit we're scared sometimes. We all want to be good people doing good things in good ways that don't let people down.

So hi. I'm Ash, I'm not always good at this, and sometimes I get scared. Sit with me, if you're scared. We don't gotta even talk about it, we can just be scared together, and then we can maybe keep walking, lanterns held high, pushing back the dark.

You'll Always Follow the Voices Beneath

I read a lot. Like a lot a lot. As of earlier today, I've read 244 books since January 1st. My e-reader is always in my bag wherever I go, I read while I walk, I read on the bus, I read everywhere and I read super fast. It's just something I've always been able to do - I started reading really young, and I just...never stopped. I like books! They're my constant companions.

The only problem is, though, is that I read in my head. I very rarely have to read out loud in my day to day life, so I've never really thought about it - there've been a number of words where I am not always sure if how my brain reads them is how they should come out of my mouth, but I can mostly get by without worry. That is, until relatively recently, when I've been asked to read things as part of Ruhi circles, or during the devotional portion of Feast! All of a sudden I am tackling language out loud in a way that I've never really had to do before. And often, I'm reading things from the Writings, which means dealing with language patterns that are often unfamiliar to me - it's the language of revelation, modelled on the language patterns of the King James Bible, and sometimes my tongue gets tangled in the bigness of not only the words, but the concepts themselves. 

Not only that, I'm doing this in front of a number of people - if it's my Ruhi circle, it might only be a small handful, but if it is a devotional, it's a bigger handful, and if it's Feast, it means a relatively big handful (or maybe even both my cupped hands). I know my community is just grateful for my willingness to do it, but it trips me up hard. I read in my head with so much ease, but suddenly I'm in front of people and my tongue and my brain just struggle with working together.

On top of all this - I'm a very anxious human. So I'm often trying to read, and also likely wiggling/stimming/twitching/flapping/moving some parts of me at the same time, and also probably giving up on the idea of making eye contact entirely. All of my focus goes to making sure I give the words I am reading the respect they so deserve. I manage pretty well (although words like quintessence and omnipotence never fail to tangle my tongue.)

It's one of the weird moments in my life where I can really notice some of my more neuroatypical traits, and it's kinda jarring sometimes. I mean yes, I often end up with my fidget cube in my fingers at some point during the longer bits of Feast so my brain can pay attention, or I handflap when I get really excited (come on, how could you not be excited by the phrase "That time has come." from the 2019 Ridvan message?), but those just feel like extensions of my emotions or an attempt to make sure I'm giving people my attention and focus. When I have to read out loud in front of people, there's a little voice in the back of my head going "NOT ONLY are we reading out loud BUT ALSO people are gonna notice you're twisting and rubbing your fingers or tapping your feet or or or or or".

So a lot of this is just me...learning in public, I guess, how to accept myself in all of myself, in all of my most imperfectnesses. I might need to practice reading out loud (my cat makes an excellent captive audience), I might not ever be able to properly look people in the eye as I read prayers or quotes from the Writings, I might always be a twitchy kinetic stimming bouncing joy bean - and that's okay. I'm Ash, and I'm always trying. As Baha'u'llah tells us, O SON OF BEING! Bring thyself to account each day ere thou art summoned to a reckoning" - which to me has always felt like a reminder that I should always think about my actions, and always strive to keep a humble posture of learning, no matter what. So, I will keep reading at Feast, I'll keep embracing my handflaps of joy and the way hearing about some aspects of pilgrimage or the history of the Baha'i Faith literally making me have to lie down on the floor flattened with my limbs stretched out like a starfish.