Acts of Translation

Toward a Spiritual Autobiography

I relate to all religious practice through the process of poetic translation. There is a long, deep, and winding spiritual journey that explains why that is.

It’s not one I can sum up in a few words. There is a through line moving what, South West, North East? Sometimes it’s not so certain whether I’m moving down the surface of the globe, or whether I’m descending from the elevation of a peak. Other times I am stunned by the fact that my flow seems to be ascending, subverting one of our Earth’s most fundamental laws.

That flow comes from a series of participations, contemplations, rejections, searches, assimilations, paraphrases, reiterations, and assertions. And each one of these activities attempts to engage with something which can not be truly named, nor fully understood, and yet which is foundationally familiar, near to our hearts, on the tips of our tongues.

And as I’ve stopped and started in pursuit of understanding, I’ve almost always missed the mark, erring, and getting caught up in my own narcissistic solipsism. Sophistication always sounded better, and also always took me into places where I was one step away from the mean, the herd, the core of the clan. But it was also from this constant dissatisfaction that I came into new old ideas, and as I did so would begin to translate them, drop by drop, into the language of my original tradition and back again. Soon enough I was paraphrasing Christian language using a Buddhist lexicon.

There are reasons why my journey’s been this way. It started with my childhood home, my parents’ differing traditions, my education at a Catholic school, and my decision to attend University. All of these things led me to different ideas, and challenged me to try to make sense of them. This often involved taking one idea and translating it into the language of another.

The result has been fractal, hallucinatory, kaleidoscopic. It’s been poetry. In the coming months, I’m going to attempt to describe some of these experiences here. I make no promises, and I hope that if I stray from my endeavor you don’t hold it against me. I can’t be all things, even to myself. But I can take an interest in the clusters of things which have found manifestation in my personage throughout various phases and stages in this seemingly constant, ever-slowing round.