On a humid Friday morning — mosquitoes and all — I found myself reflecting on a word I’d been circling for a long time but hadn’t quite named: misfit.
A fellow Substack writer, Bob Holmes, gave me the language I needed. The great mystics and contemplatives who came before us — Julian of Norwich, Hadewijch, Teresa of Ávila, the Desert Fathers and Mothers, Thomas Merton — they too didn’t fit neatly into the prescribed boxes of their time.
They held the essential principles of their faith, but they kept walking into open rooms. They refused to put God in a box. They kept finding new names, new characteristics, new expressions of an all-loving, all-embracing Mystery.
In this video I explore the spiral of silence — that quiet, isolating experience of sitting in a religious or social community, hearing something said, and staying silent because you aren’t sure your inner knowing is welcome. And what it costs us when we pretend to believe what we don’t, just to belong.
If you’ve ever felt that your faith doesn’t check all the right boxes, that your spirituality is too wide or too strange or too searching for the community around you — this is for you. You are in a larger communion than you know.
🎥 This video is free for all subscribers — a gift for this Friday, since there was no Wednesday post. If this kind of contemplative conversation nourishes your inner life, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support makes it possible for me to keep showing up in this space — mosquitoes, migraines, and all.
