But the real mystery and magic lies in those quasi-mystical moments, portraits of extreme focus and total relinquishment. We might feel more comfortable calling this “meditation,” but I believe the right word is in fact prayer. […] unmoored, without its usual object, God, but it is still focused, self-forgetful, and moving in an outward direction toward the unfathomable (which the mystic will argue is God). It is the L word, at work in the world […] for the secular among us, art has become our last best hope of undergoing this experience.  

.zadie smith.

A few days ago I found the old journal I kept back in Glasgow, during what was to date my most cognitively dissonant stretch of time. It was jarring to see how thoroughly a desperate and ongoing conversation with the god I was terrified to not believe in was woven throughout those months.

And much of that pain and confusion and devastation was due to such wonder and beauty and gorgeous challenge all around me that felt so expansive and true, and struggling with the conviction that my too-deep-for-tears responses were somehow wrong. I could not reconcile the two, I still cannot.