Walking back to the retreat house from a morning mass service at St. Benedict’s Snowmass monastery, Buzz saddled up to me and asked if he could disrupt my silence. It was day 5 of a 10 day semi-silent centering prayer meditation retreat. Buzz and I had conversed at the dinner table the night before, dinners being one of the few times retreatants were welcomed to break their silence. Though I walked into the retreat expecting silence and was therefore, at first, annoyed at the prospect of conversing with others, I checked-in with myself and decided I was open for some chatting with a fellow retreatant.

“After everything you’ve been through, how do you keep your faith?” Buzz began.

The night before I had divulged my history of sexual abuse and self-mutilation (cutting) as a child, as well as my spiritual journey and how I came to find myself at Lama Foundation. Being the open person that I typically am and not thinking much about my past in the sense of the trauma but rather as a story to be told, Buzz’s question took me off guard and forced me to think about something I had never given much consideration:

Faith.

I attended mass each time it was offered during my ten days at Snowmass. I found it to be a profound and beautiful experience. Obligation or conviction were not the reasons I went. I truly adored worshiping in that beautiful space with Mary gazing down on me and the monks’ chants echoing through the foyer. Mass centered me, helped me feel grounded and alive. I even chose to take communion (the policies at Snowmass being a bit more lax than most Catholic institutions) because I saw it as an invitation from Jesus to go within myself, acknowledging Jesus’s presence inside and to leave my ego behind. By taking in the bread and wine I was literally taking in Jesus, altering my DNA, aligning myself with this Divine presence both in and outside of myself. I attended mass in faith. Faith is something better and bigger inside myself waiting to be awakened. Faith is the knowing that there is a Divine Light that turns on when I see Jesus in myself, when I reflect on who I am and why I want to live in this world.

My reply to Buzz that morning was that going through what I’ve gone through actually brought me faith. Having the resistances I had against the church and therefore taking a big step away from the dogma and rules offered as if people were made for the rules and not the rules for the people, I was able to open myself up to experience God in many other forms. Rather than the white bearded dude in the sky above and separate from me and not at all within me (or even with me for that matter, for the God I learned through Christianity was a God always condemning my life choices and experiences), I became engrossed in the Feminine Divine, finally seeing a God who looked like me, a God who walked my walk and knew my experiences and loved me through them. A God(dess) I could have some faith in.

Windows in the meditation room in Snowmass, Colorado.

I continued finding this God(dess) in the people I interacted with on a 3-month Greyhound Bus journey: in the dingiest locations across the country, in ex-convicts faces as they headed back to their family after 5 years in prison, in the teenager who was escaping small town Texas for acting school in Los Angeles, in the new-age hippie whose perspective and knowledge of Universal Love opened my heart in ways a church gathering never did or could for that matter.

I then found God through a sexual encounter, something the church is so obviously terrified of and often condemns (a subject for a whole separate blog post that deserves pages of attention). Through having a (first) positive sexual experience—opening my world to healthy God-created tantric practice—I was able to heal old sexual wounds that the church was never even willing to look at with me. Laying in bed, bathed in sunlight beaming through white curtains, I awakened to the fact that this act of love-making is God. It is pure proof that God loves me and wants me to be whole and happy. From this experience of healing deep sexual wounds I was able to take a massive step towards wholeness. It gave me faith.

After that sexual experience I started seeing God in everything, especially myself. I finally got a glimpse of that Divine spark in my own heart, which then turned into a flame and kept growing as I continued to carefully place kindling of prayer, meditation, and daily spiritual practice on it. I kept letting the Spirit lead me. I let go of who I thought I should be, or was told I should be, and instead allowed Spirit to mold me into who I am. I began listening to the Truth screaming from my soul, wanting to be heard. I renewed my faith in both God and myself.

Slowly I worked back to Christianity through studying other religions and contemplative practices. By seeing God through the lens of Hinduism, Sufism, Islam, Buddhism and New-Age non-conformist thought, my eyes were once again opened to the Truth within the Gospel, the Truth that often isn’t shared in institutional settings. I realized Jesus Christ was super new-agey (thanks for pointing that one out to me, mom!). And then I realized I was part of a lineage—the lineage of Jesus Christ. The more I looked into contemplative Christianity, especially the works of Father Thomas Keating, I started getting it. Jesus wasn’t hanging out with the Rabbi and church leaders, nor was he with the radical activists literally fighting the powers to be. Rather he was going inward and finding the Truth. He preached the Beatitudes, spent time in silence, and experienced a relationship with God as evidenced through him calling God Abba. Jesus related to God on a personal level—not one in which God was the rule maker, but one in which God was within Jesus and Jesus was acting out that Divine Wisdom as the grounding center of his being. Jesus wasn’t living in the mind, spouting off theological concepts and rules. In fact Jesus rebelled against the rules—he performed miracles on the Sabbath, walked hand in hand with women, healed the unclean. He explored humanity, the human condition, saw each individual as Beloved and helped people see how heaven on earth could manifest itself through living with God.

The beautiful Mt Sopris in all her splendor and glory.

Seeing the Gospel in a new light, this is how I keep my faith. It’s a faith much bigger than the “Pharisees,” today’s church leaders telling us how we should be and condemning us for who we truly are. It’s a faith much larger than church walls, Sunday morning services, and the law. It’s a faith that allows me to stand up for what I know to be Truth and a faith that allows me to confess when I mess up or have acted out of my human conditioning and ego, and not feel guilt, shame or embarrassment about my humanness. It’s a faith that doesn’t beat me up for my sins, leaving me bleeding on the side of the road to be ravaged by the birds. It’s faith that allows me to know I am Beloved, regardless of the choices I make. It is a faith that knows Love is the greatest commandment. It’s a faith that brings me back to myself again and again and again. A faith that allows me to sit in silence and stare at my fire for hours in the evening, without fear of what I could be or should be, or where I’m going or where I’ve been. A faith that encourages me to stay present, and when I’m not present, a faith that reminds me how to become present again. It’s faith that holds me to Remembrance.

And that is how I still have faith after everything I’ve been through. This faith allows me to write about Truth and to continue on my quest for Knowledge, Wisdom, and most importantly, Love. This faith shows me the beauty in individuals who come across my path, like Buzz, and ask me profound questions guiding me closer to Truth.

If there’s anything to take away from this, it’s that the most important faith you or I can hold on to is a faith that allows us to accept the gift of being offered a place in this incredible Universe.

*All photography by Rachel Halder at Snowmass, Colorado