My grandmother, a born-again Baptist, used to tell me there was no such thing as luck, only blessings. Good fortune could either be orchestrated by a divine, anthropomorphic being or not at all.
I remember that I did not find this idea very comforting. It seemed to me then, as it does now, a supernatural version of the same paternalism I’d been trying to escape here on Earth. It seemed antithetical to what spirituality could do: make room for the intangible or uncertain. The random glimpses of otherworldly beauty, the spark of artistic genius, the chance encounter with a person who marks you forever. To be lucky every once and a while.
After all, colonization intervenes in the extent to which luck and spontaneity can exist in the physical world.
Man’s quest for absolute power demands predictability, conformity, monotony. A colorless circadian rhythm that reproduces the same life outcomes with the same precision. Systems so omnipotent they can predestine your health or income or pronouns. Here, architectural charm gives way to rows of identical high rise condos. The wonders of nature bulldozed for shopping malls. And the gift of human difference slowly dissolved by fear.
Man continuously suffocates magic in favor of the market. So the existence of luck feels like a mystical glitch; an aberration in spite of everything and everyone trying to control it. For me, the acknowledgement of chaos never undermined the blessing, the blessing was in the chaos itself.
I am not spiritual, but I look for spiritual experiences wherever I go. That is, to witness miracles untethered to a God or realm or practice. The feeling of being so precisely alive that death is barely a whisper.
It happens whenever my niece says something outrageously hilarious, and I almost do a spit take.
When I see falling snow under the glow of a street lamp.
In the deep conservations with people I love.
On my sacred morning walks to the beach in the summertime, when a cinematic filter colors everything I see.
Anytime I am being creative, but particularly, the times I push through the feeling of stuckness and into a state of flow.
In the impulsivity of risk.
In sex that keeps me in my body until it's over.
Traveling to a beautiful new city and the awe of novelty that finally clears my mental fog.
In organizing, resisting, and building among comrades.
The ice cold shock of grief.
Whenever I listen to this song.