hello, I'm back

a reintroduction

Happy spring, friends! I hope you’re all happy and healthy. My family and I are doing well. The baby who has kept me away from the internet lately is almost six months old now and she’s such a dear treasure — a true princess, doted on all day and night by the whole family, including her big brothers. 

I haven’t had much time to write since the baby was born – this is my first substack email since the fall, aside from a little thing I dashed off around Christmas. It’s a little frustrating because this baby sleeps very well at night (a miracle, my first two didn’t sleep through the night for years) and so I do occasionally feel like I have two brain cells to rub together. However, she still, almost six months into her little life, wants to be held nearly all day every day, sleeping or waking. It leaves me with very little free time, and I’ve been prioritizing other things. I’m writing this newsletter in a fury while she takes a rare nap in her crib. 

I haven’t had much time to write, but I’ve also been hesitant to pick up this Substack again because I’m not sure where I want to go in the wake of The Contemplative Tarot. “Christian tarot” has been my brand on the internet for several years now. I’m so proud of the work that I’ve done and I’m proud of the book, but I finally admitted to myself last week that I’m not very interested in writing about tarot anymore, at least for right now. I use tarot to think about God, and I’m more interested in God than tarot. I still use tarot in my spiritual practice but I don’t have any desire to center my public writing around it anymore. That felt like a scary thing to be honest with myself about, but it was also freeing! I can allow myself to pivot now. 

As I come back to this substack after about six months away, it feels like a good idea to be honest about how I’m pivoting. This substack is free and I don’t pay attention to subscriber numbers – this is where I happily work out my little thoughts and I’m trying not to feel beholden to any audience I might have, though I am glad that you’re here!

The thing that I’m really interested in – the thing that I’m always orienting myself towards – is an experience of God. I’ve always loved mysticism, not because I am particularly mystical but because I am the opposite. I think the Christian mystics’ romantic ideas about God are beautiful, and I want that too, and it’s extremely difficult for me, and so it’s what I obsess over. 

What I loved about tarot is that it was an interesting contemplative practice, a tool for helping me to pay attention in prayer. I think that what I’m more interested in now is how to pray all the time, or maybe how to take that attention that I find in prayer and apply it to every moment. These are things I’m always thinking about: how to orient my body towards God, the physicality of faith, praying without ceasing, inconvenience as a spiritual practice, anything that fights against gnosticism, the whole world as a manifestation of the glory of God, etc.

I’m not sure if or how these interests will come together. That’s what this substack is for, letting you peek into my brain while I try to figure it out! As an aside, I do love that I came to Christian hermeticism via tarot, specifically Meditations on the Tarot, and that the ideas I’m interested in now feel very hermetic. As another aside, Way of the Heart is one of my favorite substacks and the author wrote a helpful little post about Christian hermeticism. So it doesn’t feel like my interests are pivoting completely, just moving forward. I’ll be reading more Tomberg this year and maybe exploring Meditations again.

One of the things I’ve been doing lately is keeping a running mental list of moments in my actual real life where I’ve felt. . .something. I hesitate to call it God because that feels embarrassingly lofty, but maybe it’s just pleasure or rightness, and for me it’s been helpful to bring myself back to the present moment over and over again. Here are a few:

• the way my daughter wants to touch hands with me, palm to palm, when she nurses

• not taking my phone on walks and getting lost in the woods with my dog

• the constant interruptions of my children, little metaphorical monastery bells calling me to a bodily prayer, and how I’m better than I used to be at responding patiently 

• the first 90 degree day of the year, sweat prickling behind my knees and in the creases of my elbows 

PS pre baby #3, I was sending out emails monthly. I can’t commit to that right now because my family life has to come first and I’m tired of cranking out content, but I’ll be here when I can be!