JE#7, Religion

I was raised Catholic for a while, but then.... ... mmm, nah. After my mom started working, there was no one to take us to church, so we just stopped going. I didn't mind, church is boring. So, from childhood up til my late teens, I was pretty apathetic towards the idea of Church, Catholicism organized religion, whatever. However, when my best friend passed away, that's when I became bitter towards the idea of God. People (especially the cholos and the older people who knew my friend) would always mention God: pray to God, Jose is with God, this is God's way. That didn't make me feel better though, that didn't make me feel good at all. Why would God give me a best friend like that just to slowly tear him out of the seams of my life? I saw him die slow in a hospital bed, losing the ability to speak with me, tubes tearing in and out of his skin. Is that what God wanted for him? Does God want me to feel this way forever? Fuck you God, I don't appreciate this. This hurts. 

So, God doesn't make sense to me. I'm not going to pray for him.

I do consider myself a 'spiritual' person. Me and my best friend started doing danza azteca together, and through danza I began to understand spirituality for myself. Danza is prayer for our animas and for everything and everyone that makes this world; Tonantzin our mother (in every way that she appears), Teztcalipocatl and Huitzilopochtli, Xipec Totec, all their distinct and beautiful energies as they run through ourselves, the cantos and danzas that tell stories of the Chichimecas, of Mikiztli, the crosses that lighted our way but also blinded, giving our sweat and energy back to Tlaloc and Ehecatl and our inner and outer Kalli... I can go on forever. I hope I keep dancing forever. Because that is how I say hello and thank you to the spirits of the past, to the indigenous bodies that kept this tradition alive, which my friend Jose is now a part of. This is how I say thank you to the winds for being calm or fierce, to the water that pit-pats on my head on winter mornings, to the sun for warming my body, to the photosynthesis of plants that keep this Earth fed and green. This is how I remain connected to them, by dancing for them, by giving back to it all my sweat and physical energy. "Thank you for this energy, I am here to return it to you so you can use it and reciprocally, so you can fill me with new energy and life."

(All this being said, I miss danza. I have been too busy at school... ... ... Um, tocthli has always been one of my favorite nahuatl words and animals. tochtli! tochtli! tochtli!)