Everyone carries their own true self in their own way, in their own words, and in their own time.
—Cassidy Hall, Queering Contemplation
CAC team member Cassidy Hall reflects on our impulse to ask questions of those we see as fundamentally different than us:
“When did you know?” “How did you find out you were queer?” “When did you first realize you liked women?”…
We usually ask questions like this—and sometimes over-ask them—because we’re seeking our own comfort or self-understanding. Our questions might come from pondering the vastness of the Divine’s image upon, within, or all around us. But I’m all too familiar with the harm of certitude, assumptions, and internalized dispositions toward norms and expectations.
Even if we let go of the need to know or understand, our society still obsesses about naming, claiming, and defining. As I worked on my documentary film about Thomas Merton, I listened to audio clips of his stream-of-consciousness thoughts from his hermitage, and I especially resonated with this line: “I know in my heart that I do not need to be defined, I do not need to define myself, and yet I have this allergy of definition.”
Like most of us, I’ve spent a large chunk of my life figuring out, naming, and identifying the things around me…. But when we reach to trap anything in definition, we also trap ourselves. A desire to define or know does not give me permission to ask questions simply to satisfy my own curiosity. Rather, the desire to name, define, or identify is a different invitation altogether. It’s an invitation for me to examine and hold openhanded my own definition, my own name, and my own identity, over and over again….
We are ever evolving, ever becoming, and ever unfolding. Identity is an ever-moving target, and any conviction that the self is singular or fixed is limiting and often even harmful. Instead, we can hold what we think we know about ourselves with open hands. We can allow ourselves to become, which offers us room to breathe and blossom…. Contemplative life beckons us to the same: encouraging us to loosen our grip on ourselves, those around us, and the Divine.
Hall encourages us to seek a deeper understanding of ourselves:
Knowing is elusive and closes down potentials outside of certitudes or declarations. What’s more true, more curious, and more exciting is the infinite deep dive into who we are as ever-changing human beings. For those of us who are allergic to definitions: Can we turn inward to unfold our own becoming and blossoming?
This stepping into the spaciousness of our own being will help us hold questions, and also invite questions in. Our curiosity can run wild in the spaciousness of possibility. The infinite expanse of who we are is a place to offer our own unfixed and unmixed attention, a place of prayer, a place where the contemplative life thrives.
References:
Cassidy Hall, Queering Contemplation: Finding Queerness in the Roots and Future of Contemplative Spirituality (Broadleaf Books, 2024), 97, 98–100.
Image credit and inspiration: Beth Macdonald, untitled (detail), 2022, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. An estuary reveals a world that is more than just land or water, but something beyond them both.
Story from Our Community:
I have long felt my orientation as a gift from God. It has allowed me in many ways to intimately experience “being in the world, not of the world.” Despite being raised an Episcopalian, I have found resistance to my sharing of my experiences as a gay man. I have many times had to hide my light—the Christ-light within me—under a bushel. Fortunately, though much darkness still exists towards me and those like me, the dawn of accepting queer people is breaking, and we are better able now to share our Christ light into the world. We are strengthened in our hope and encouraged in our expanded learning to become our true selves to the glory of God.
—William P.
