I've had a lot on my mind the last while. I've been going through a pretty strange time - a deep, soul-rolling 4-month long meditation, of sorts. A religious reawakening. A baptism by fire. A bizarre metamorphosis, like waking from a dream into a strange girl's life. It's been paradoxical. I have never felt further from sex, yet somehow nearer to my desires. I've never felt so singular - so precisely individual and alone - nor so vast: so close to the swirling spiritual realm that flickers and hums on the edge of my periphery. I can feel God's cool beauty along my jaw, I can feel His power down my spine, I can feel His astounding love in my blood vessels. It is so sublime that I am inebriated by the grace and forgiveness washing over me. I can't tell my friends about it, because I woke up one morning and realised I don't like them anymore. I can't tell my therapist about it because I can tell by her eyes that she wouldn't understand. Only my brother and my friend M has any idea what I'm talking about these days. It's difficult to be so... me. It's always been like this: this alone. I somehow got the idea that I was born with the knife already in my abdomen - inherited from my previous life, that it was buried in there and forgotten by God and the Angels, and that's why I could hear Him sometimes in my sleep. My entire life has been one long series of sharp, unrelenting reminders that I have something dark buried inside of me, something special and powerful and forgotten. My secret. Now I've spent many many years digging into myself to dig the blade out of my body. To absolve myself of _____ . To cleanse my body from _ ___ . To make myself less _ _____ _ . To look at it, in the light. To hold it in my hands. To be able to decide - to choose it, or not.
But (surprise!) there is no broken blade. All I ever found at my deepest, darkest centre was my beating heart, and it is not sharp, or dark, or bad. It is just a perilously soft little animal heart. Its only sin is its seductive colour, its vivid engorgement, its sincere submission, its eternal, grotesque, innocent flinching. But that is not its fault. I can't keep saying sorry for things I didn't do wrong.
God and I were in a fight for a long, long while, so forgive me for confessing that I was lost without him. I've learned a lot about forgiveness, and the cosmic truth of this world is that our love for God is God's love for us. The forgiveness I was resisting, struggling against, writhing in - it won't go anywhere. The minute you give up the fight, give it over to the Heelal, to God, to the Cosmos, to Love - it is right there waiting for you.
Isn't it so wonderful how precisely the secular world and the lost christian's problem aligns, with the same inherently true solution: how am I supposed to forgive myself? Well, give up the shame. Turn around, and face it. Sit with it. Look it in the eye, and realise that it is empty. Give up shame. Cast it out. It corrupts your soul, it lies to you, deceives you, tears you apart, pulls you into its depths, distracts you, distances you from Love. It punishes you, but does not absolve you. It reprimands you, but does not forgive. It leads you right back into its own clutches, endlessly down into depths of self-hatred and endless more layers of thick, thick shame.

Cast that shit aside. The answer is: You are forgiven. You have always been forgiven. You will always be forgiven. Your body is forgiven. It is perfect. You do not have to do anything special. You don't have to go looking for God. He's right here. Step into the light. Feel it's cool relief. You are forgiven. You are absolved. Think of someone or something you love unconditionally - think of how you would forgive your brother for anything. Anything at all. Or your father. Or your mother. Or anyone. See? It's already inside of you. It has always been there, because it is from God. God is inside of you, but also inside of everyone else. God is the forgiveness, the grace, the Love. Take it from me - I spent a long time trying to outrun it, but I was underneath my skin and pumping through my heart and in my laughter and everywhere I saw beauty. When you forgive yourself, it becomes increasingly difficult to live a life that doesn't align with peace, and virtue, and love. It becomes nearly impossible to continue to make bad decisions, or to put up with the very things you were ashamed of in the first place. Your life becomes simple, and beautiful, and full. To my knowledge, this, and hardly anything more, is Christianity. All the rest, I've decided is not worth my attention. Only this, and whatever truth spirals from this core truth.

"Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves, the same body that keeps the score." Be gentle with your sexuality. It is precious and it is yours. It was meticulously sculpted by God, just like the rest of your intricacies. Your body is supposed to feel. It is perfect. The point is: feel everything. Every. single. thing. God is at your fingertips and he created everything in this world. It is yours to move through, so long as you spread love, and accept love. Do not destroy love, and do not spread shame, stay in the light and let yourself be alive, and beautiful. Feel God everywhere, and live, brimming with gratefulness and awareness, in his divine grace, and love and light.

You are loved
(love without end),
Amen.