MINISTRY

“Sometimes naming a thing—giving it a name or discovering its name—helps one to begin to understand it. Knowing the name of a thing and knowing what that thing is for gives me even more of a handle on it.”

Octavia E. Butler, from Parable of the Sower

~

I’ve always felt what I might describe as a relationship with my name. 

Gabriel; this is its own living entity. This is the word that conjures me, and the more I learn about this name and how it has been used across time, language and practices of faith, the more I come to learn about the nature of myself. When we invoke a name, we too invoke the idea of the word and all that lives within it.

Our very existences are themselves carriers of meaning. We store DNA that contains all of our lineage back to inception. We accumulate experience and retain the lessons learned through memory. We have consciousness, and the ability to create and innovate within the laws of our nature. We transmute existence directly into existence itself. 
We are god making gods make God.

This capital G is a unique conversation unto itself, and I leave it here to linger, not to act as the knower or educator on this matter. I simply know there is significance in a name; it encapsulates an individual, while simultaneously holding a sort of kinship with everything else that has been called the same, be them identities or ideas.

This too is the nature of God, is it not?

~

Of all aspects of the book’s composition, I struggled most with this final essay. I still can’t all the way describe why I felt compelled to end the book this way, but I know that it’s important to give poetry a landscape to live in. By that I mean, there is a certain subjectivity to reading poetry, and even writing poetry, that is essential to its very nature as an art form, but what we’re really dealing with when it comes to poetry is the definitively awesome manifestation of word.

The name of this book, among other more obscure things, is an obvious oxymoron; a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction with each other. This particular example was crafted to bring attention to the inherently oxymoronic nature of all written language, and how the origins of words themselves are intrinsically inseparable from faith in, or worship of, what we attempt to amalgamate into the idea of god.

The experience of having a relationship with god, and what this word has the potential to represent, beyond a divine name or category of mythical character, is deeply personal. There is no model for spiritual connection that works for everyone, and each person’s experience of god differs from the next, even among common faith groups. This is the magnanimity of god the word, and what allowed the word to be; which is equally as indescribable as it is unimaginable.

We use words as a means of developing shared models of language to exchange these numerous objectivities we have, which has thus altered what it means to be objective, for some at least, from the philosophical projections of subjectivity, to the one unified and illusive objectivity that science pursues. It is misguided to mistake words for what they represent, and it is dangerous to betray one’s own words through the implication of one's actions. Everything we say is a covenant.

~

I was always a faith based child, even if I didn’t have language to communicate my experiences then, and had no one model through which to conceptualize reality. Instead, I had every model, encouraged by my parents  to learn about different religions, and cultural practices; rooted in a belief in science, but guided by my family’s generational interest in the metaphysical. So although I did not grow up practicing any particular religion, I was primed to be an eager student of religion itself, even before I myself awoke into this world.

Before I was born, even before I was named, my mother asked a family psychic to give a reading for my life to come; as it’s been shared with me, she simply said I’d grow up to be a minister.

If you look up minister in your internet search bar, it may show you that the noun form is primarily defined as the following:

1. member of the clergy

2. (in certain countries) a head of a government department

3. [archaic] a person or thing used to achieve or convey something

Neither of these first two are things I am, nor have any intention to be, and both are ultimately in reference to someone’s position in a society. But then there is the [archaic] definition, the root, which is always the one I’m interested in. By this definition, I am most certainly a minister.

As it often goes in the English language, minister is also a verb. If you take that same internet search result, you’ll likely find it defined as:

1. to attend to the needs of (someone)

2. to act as a minister of a religion

Duties of someone who acts as a minister of a religion vary depending on the faith in question, but generally always include teaching of beliefs, leading services, and providing spiritual guidance to the community. There is no limit to what a religion could be; it could have a following of one or one million; it could be new or ancient; it could be named or nameless; but it will always require some form of faith.

Religion, so the internet declares, is simply defined as: the belief in and worship of a superhuman power or powers, especially a God or gods.

There’s that capital G again, and a distinct separation of the plural and the singular. What’s more, by this definition, science could be accurately described as a religion, and those who work within the discipline as its ministers; for what is more clearly a singular network of superhuman powers than nature, and who are those tasked to steward it?

All people abide by some laws. These are agreements that they have assigned absolute power to. Some set out by the implications of modern science, some from scripture. Some look to their state to determine the laws that will rule them, some reject those dictates due to disagreement with their justification.

Justice is another example of a word and idea that is embedded in our unique understanding of god. For, each time we convey our sense of justice, through action and speech, are we not engaging in ministry?

~

Every word is unique, and is unique to the language it lives within, all containing a multitude of connotations. As these words are exchanged, reinterpreted into other languages, and languages change, and again the reinterpretation is translated once more, the meaning of these words change as well. In most cases, these words accrue more meaning, rather than changing meaning entirely.

To translate a word means to express the sense of a word in another language. The person translating must implicitly have a sense of this word in its original language, meaning they must be able to fluently speak and comprehend its original language, in addition to the new language they’re translating into. However, nearly anyone reading this translation has no frame of reference for its nuances of meaning in the language of origin. This is semantics of the highest order.

Every true thing written, or spoken and then recorded, can only realize its initially intended meaning when spoken in the language it was first shared in, to those who can comprehend it wholly. Thus, every holy book, every philosophical illumination, every bit of alchemical knowledge, is dependent on its language of creation in order to be understood in its full nuanced complexity of implications and inflections. We’re trying to make sense of a revelation so far removed from itself that we cannot understand it as it was once understood.

~

Writing—this translation of practice, a means of communicating an approximation of truth—is nothing short of magic; the dark and light.

This is why, when it comes to describing my religion, my faith practice, the way I interact with god, I have always called it magic. Because even the most ancient meaning of the word refers to the practices performed by an ordained faith practitioner, of a sort that a stranger has no frame of reference to understand their practices, and over time that lack of understanding may turn to resentment or even hatred. 

Whereas religion is the belief in these un-nameable powers, as I see it magic is the active relationship with these powers. Besides, the word, and thus the practice, of magic predates any known records of the word religion by at least 1000 years so far as we can tell.

All semantics aside, what I want to acknowledge here most is this, no matter what models we use to conceptualize this life—whether we point to the holy books or the peer reviewed scientific journals for guidance—we, as a global society, seem to be arriving at the same ultimate conclusion.

For humankind, the end of our collective way of life on this earth is not only certain to come, but its arrival is most certainly imminent; the way this end, and the beginning to follow it, will manifest remains unclear—veiled, if you will.

Be it a divine prophecy, natural cycles of the universe, or a man-made nuclear meltdown, everyone seems to be acting like we are living through an apocalypse. Around the earth things are changing, signaling a massive shift in the fundamental laws of our nature, and thus, our ability to survive. We too will change, in ways we cannot even begin to comprehend now. Or rather, like all other language, we too will accrue more meaning, if we are wise in our transformation.

No matter what you believe, what we all share on some level is a fear of death. Perhaps we do not fear death for ourselves, but we all fear the loss of those we love. It is antithetical to empathy not to. If you love someone you cannot avoid this inherent fear of losing them. This fear of such existential pain is perhaps the thing that makes us most human. 

Or perhaps it is not the death that we fear most, but love. Confronting the true depth of what it means to love—I dare not even attempt such a thing here—this is the type of thing that can only be dealt with in the language that is shared between a mirror and I. 

Faith, the complete trust or belief in something, is a precious and fragile thing. But the experience of faith is of the utmost importance, and is in many ways the counterbalance to fear in what makes us most human. Having faith is what brings us community, learned abilities, even just the willingness to continue on each day. 

There is no life without growth, and no growth without faith. Yet still, I get stuck on the most human of questions—faith in what?

~

Circles are of the utmost importance to me, and my practice, so let me invoke one here. I chose to open this essay with this particular quote from Octavia E. Butler, for a few reasons. The first is its obvious resonance with some of the semantic concepts I’m working with here—there is an important difference between words and what they represent that we take for granted all too often—how language is something we use that simultaneously uses us, but without agenda.

The other reasons have to do with the story line in Parable of the Sower. This book was first published in 1993, but the story takes place beginning in early 2025, ending (a day before my birthday) in 2027. The young first-person protagonist, Lauren, embarks on a journey from her torched home in Altadena up through California, in a dystopian world that bares strange resemblances to our own (not least of which is a presidential candidate invoking an all too familiar slogan). It is haunting, vividly written, informative, relatable and wise.

Beyond the eerie parallels, what I also love about the book is the religion that she creates along the way, Earthseed, and the language she uses to grow it, rooted in her unshakable faith in the following verse:

All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
Is Change.

God
Is Change.

I’ll let these words speak for themselves, and will only add that if you have not read Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, and the sequel that follows it, Parable of the Talents,  now is the time to do that. I have profound gratitude to her, and all the other writers who teach simply by doing, who I have learned so much from and  are far too innumerable to try and name individually here.

When my sense of language communes with the language of others, I feel like I can, even if for just a moment, animate the title of this here poetry book into a lived reality. The complete, clear, all-knowing and all-encompassing power of creation, right on the tip of my tongue.