Jon Arterton and James Mack
It’s all about LOVE-
My quest for connection with my spirit has been a very interesting one. Growing up in a strict fundamentalist Christian family, I accepted my parents’ ideas of what spirituality is. As children, I’m told we all do that. The evangelical Christian doctrine of salvation through Jesus Christ became my set of core beliefs. No questioning, that’s what everyone believes, right? It seemed at the time that this set of beliefs served me quite well. My life was good in my own small world. It wasn’t until I was nearly an adult that I began to question the beliefs handed down to me from my parents. Of course, coming to terms with the fact that I was gay played a big role in my new uncertainty. If I was who I knew myself to be, and accepted that, I’d be condemned to an eternity in hell. But what was I supposed to do? After years of asking God to change me and make me like all the other boys I knew, He either wasn’t hearing me or I wasn’t asking the right question.
There was such a huge divide between what I felt inside and what I’d been taught all my life, that my only choice seemed to be to abandon any attempt to reconcile my spiritual beliefs with my reality. So, for nearly fifteen years, I ignored my spiritual self, choosing instead to focus on my career and other aspects of life as a young adult. Thankfully, when the time was right, I moved to Provincetown, and, needing a place to begin singing again, found the Meeting House Choir. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was the beginning of my spiritual awakening. As I sang in the choir Sunday after Sunday, and was exposed to the wide variety of truths found in many different religions, I began to reconnect with the fact that I am a spiritual being, and to recognize that I was created perfectly just as I am. One of the most important lessons I had to learn early on in this awakening was that God (or the spirit, the creative force, the goddess, the universe, fill in the blank…) is inside me, and, yes, is me. I can trust it. The spirit in me is perfect, just as it is…I don’t need the rules of an organized religion to tell me what to believe. My beliefs come from within, from open communication with my spirit, my connection to the divine.
What I’ve come to believe is that we’re all born perfect. Then as our minds become more and more inquisitive, we begin to learn. We’re taught by our parents, teachers, and the world itself. Unfortunately, much of what we’re taught is not the truth. We’re taught at an early age that we’re not good enough as we are, we need to act differently if we’re going to be popular and succeed in life. We’re taught that what’s outside us is right, and we must change what’s inside us to conform if we’re going to be happy. We’re taught to act like everyone else if we want to fit in. With all this in our heads, it’s no wonder we develop a negative self-image, knowing that the real me (as we see it) is no good, and can’t do anything right. My spiritual journey thus far has brought me here: I strive to listen to my spirit continually, and rather than listening to the many lies I agreed to believe many years ago, to be motivated by only one thing-love.
-J.M.