Navigating Abstract Spirituality Together
How can navigating abstract spirituality together as a family be so tricky? What is the main misconception with regards to spirituality? In this episode of the Reclamation, The Reclas: Justin, Tonya, and Neva revolve their conversation around having a collaborative spiritual space as a family. There is a lot of confusion around the concept of spirituality within the household. One of the common mistakes is imposing on family members the beliefs that were pre-established in the kin. Also, Tonya and Justin convey the process of handling and starting a conversation with Neva about this matter. Tune in to know more about abstract spirituality and how to allow ourselves to forge a relationship with God.
Neva Lee Recla:
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Reclamation show. I am Neva Lee Recla, I’m here with my mom and my dad today. Today we’re going to be talking all about navigating abstract spirituality together. What, what, what! That’s like, that’s a mouthful.
Justin Recla:
Abstract who?
Tonya Dawn Recla:
Who? Where? What? Where’d who go?
Neva Lee Recla:
So as y’all know, we’re really big in the superpower realm because we’re the superpower network. And we’re huge on everybody having their own experience with the divine. And we create a really awesome container for people to do that. And we do that in our household too. We discuss everybody having different names for what God is, or what spirit is or what the divine is, or what mother, the father is. We have a bunch of different names for it, and we get to operate in this really cool collaborative space together. And we all do it very differently just within our household and of course, within the network.
And I think this is such an important topic because I know there’s so much confusion around the concept of spirituality. I think it’s a common misconception or just the idea that when your family believes a certain thing, you have to believe the same thing. Or there are some people who don’t even know how to have these discussions together, what it is. And so we’re going to talk about this today because I think we’ve kind of mastered that space for us at least. And so maybe this can be beneficial to so many y’all listening to this.
So, mom, I’m going to pass it on to you first. Obviously, you raised me and you know I’m very big in the hippie, woo woo, spiritual space, and stuff. And how do you as a parent handle those conversations with your kid? Especially when you haven’t fully figured it out for yourself.
Tonya Dawn Recla:
That’s a great question. I’m actually going to take you back just a little bit further because I don’t know if you even recall, but your dad and I were really involved in spirituality circles and stuff like that. When you were born, I’m not going to lie, you kind of came out a Bible thumper. And we were like, “what?” You were fascinated with Jesus and Mary and Joseph and nativity scenes. And Justin and I are looking at each other, like “what? Whose kid is this?”Â
Because I was raised in the church, your dad had experiences in the church. But at that time, we had really kind of both fallen out with the church because it was just for all the reasons that we’ve identified, right. The intolerance and everything. I couldn’t stay in the hypocrisy with regard to what I felt like I was being guided toward with God. Not anybody else’s hypocrisy, like what was happening inside of me.
And here you come along with this fascination with Jesus. And we’re like, I mean, it was everywhere we went and I was a little embarrassed, right? Because in the spiritual communities, a lot of times the wounds from the church that people carry or in response to some of the atrocities that have been played out by Jesus can kind of be a bad word. Because of how that’s been portrayed, we’ll imagine then you’ve got this child who’s fascinated with it. I had a relationship, a rocky relationship with Jesus, but it was present. Your dad had a relationship with Jesus as well, rocky as well. And so we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to not be totally embarrassed taking you to like full moon ceremonies or lab walks when you wanted to talk about Jesus marrying Joseph.
Justin Recla:
When you’re telling everybody that your baby doll is baby Jesus.
Tonya Dawn Recla:
Yeah. Oh yeah. I forgot about that. All your baby dolls were baby Jesus. And you’d put them in the mang… I mean, oh my goodness. And so, but it was perfect because it reignited right after the initial like we’re going to be outed. Right. So imagine what you just got to experience in the sense of, when we got to experience the church sort of rejecting the spiritual aspects that we carry, right there was that experience. Well, we had had that from the opposite end, right? The spiritual community is not necessarily a more tolerant community to differences. And so what we’re talking about here is so crucial. And one thing I want to bring to light within all of this is that you were a child, right? And so how do you allow for a child to have a dynamic and engaging in a live relationship with God when one that’s an incredibly abstract concept, right?
And how do you help them personalize it without overburdening it with your growth and development that as you mentioned is still happening, right? Make sure that they’ve got some solid anchor into that lighted path, but not thinking in any way you’re going to know exactly what their walk with God is going to be. And then on top of it, you talk about these kinds of many faces and aspects of God. But it gets kind of trippy because that feels like polytheism to people and it’s like, no, it’s one God. But to think that we can possibly comprehend it, them, he, she, whatever it is, is insane unless we allow ourselves to experience these things in relationship with God. And so I know that’s not a real clear answer for folks, but it’s not a real simple-
Neva Lee Recla:
Abstract spirituality.
Tonya Dawn Recla:
Situation. Yeah.
Neva Lee Recla:
Yeah. I love the point that you made the Bible thumper. I definitely kind of pushed that out.
Tonya Dawn Recla:
Well, that’s like, I shouldn’t say this, but you know what I mean.
Neva Lee Recla:
I didn’t try to convert people when I was a toddler, y’all.
Tonya Dawn Recla:
You didn’t actually thump people with a Bible. You didn’t actually knock them over the head with it.
Neva Lee Recla:
Never know, man it could be a weapon. Yeah. So that’s a really good point, it can be really confusing. And I think now, especially as I’ve gotten older, I’ve had experiences within the far side of things, within the far spiritual space, within the far hardcore Christian space. When I go over to the far Christian space I’m being burned for witchcraft, or I go over to the spiritual space and it’s like, “oh no, you believe in Jesus?” Like there’s no good point. And I’ve had so many people ask like, “dude, you have a relationship with Jesus, but you also like burning patchouli and incense and stuff. Who are you?” It creates so much confusion in people and that’s a lovely space to be in because I get to experience it all, and we’re huge in fluidity. So we’re going to discuss that more on how we handle those conversations as a family, but we get to go into a quick break really quick.
But before we go into a quick break talking about abstract spirituality, make note of this, y’all. We have an amazing community called the Superpower Plus Community. And you can join the membership if you want to come to a place where you will be accepted regardless of your beliefs. And regardless of who you are, who you identify as, it’s a wonderful space if you just want to be accepted. We have monthly calls that we’re starting, we’re going to do new moon ceremonies, and I’m going to start doing Oracle readings and stuff again. So folks, we really do it all and it is possible, it’s not scary or anything. So go check that out after you listen to this, of course, or while you listen to this. So yeah, join us there. And we look forward to seeing you there and we’ll be right back after the break.
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