Well, I’m Officially Part of the Clergy Now!
9.11.2024: Welp — I'm officially legally ordained now!
Minister / Clergy / Pastor / Reverend / Chaplain. Feel free to laugh, but it's true, and more a reflection to commemorate a decade of spiritual discovery. The label matters less to me, as in addition to being a daughter, sister, friend — and digital design studio owner, creative technologist, innovation director — (and SO MUCH MORE — like cat mom, improv jazz pianist, aspiring pilot, espresso enthusiast, artist, lol you get it). But beyond all that ... I'm a mystic having a human experience.
Through my work as a creative entrepreneur and my studies of contemplative spirituality in our technological age, I have sought to integrate the wisdom of ancient traditions with the challenges of contemporary life.
This journey hasn't meant abandoning my digital career; instead, it's expanded my horizons. I intend to help people spiritually while continuing my path as a technologist, designer, and creative innovator. This shows that one's career is what you make of it and that creativity truly knows no bounds. Skies the limit
Why did I go from Google to God, then?
You see, for the last few years, I've been on a deep mystical journey. From the depths of recovering from a rare illness a decade ago and experiencing religious trauma from a nurse in my isolation unit at the time, that experience had me pause my design job for 9 months, while monitoring my health for 11 months total so I wouldn't die, yes literally. The experience ultimately led me to follow a life of intention, pursue my bucket list with a passion, and start asking the big life questions. I quit to start my own dream design studio (and this month I'm celebrating a successful 10 years!) and began to claim spiritual freedom in something bigger than myself outside conventional dogma. And yet, throughout all my work in tech, my journey has been marked by both profound joys and profound sorrows, each serving as a crucible for spiritual growth in searching for a better way. It led to deeper transformative experiences in recent years, where been drawn deeper into the contemplative collaborative path with the all that is. I recognized that my career without a mission was just an idol, and laid it aside to have it mean something more than making mere money. I was meant to serve.
I can trace back this calling while attending grad school to answer my burning question: can one merge spirituality and deep-seated holistic well-being with today's modern technology age? So I entered NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program on a scholarship, and created an online education startup to help creatives succeed, mindfully. I embedded universal non-dogmatic principles to help people during their own life transitions. I became a certified coach. I was able to teach at NYU, and also spoke to students at Pratt, SVA, Parsons, Working Not Working, and CULTUREHUB.
Other wellness projects included crafting AI art imagining how the infinite might view time through landscape drone photography, producing brainwave art installations where individuals literally modified their physical spaces through EEG headset monitors, and detecting contemplative brain patterns through their focus on tactile objects to create calm with 100 pound stress blankets.
I recorded contemplative walking meditations, produced AR filters providing wisdom quotes from some of our greatest thinkers, and designed motion graphics of encouraging affirmations. I won a spot in Female Founders twice, was accepted into the NYU Entrepreneurship Institute Startup Bootcamp where I was 1 of 20 people chosen to continue on my work, which led up to a Y-Combinator Stint. After NYU, under the umbrella of my own studio, I led a design team at Google NEST to work on future smart-home wellness products.
Ironically my first day of "funemployment" after leaving Google fell exactly on 9.11.2023, so on that date I launched an anonymous organization (hello, this one at Fayth.Org!) where I've shared my story. In doing so, I've provided resources to help aid those in the 12-step recovery community who have experienced spiritual trauma.
I've found that sobriety is not all about substances, for we are ALL addicts. One can have issues with technology, emotions, childhood dysfunction, or even people pleasing, the list is endless. Or maybe they simply cannot handle all the hardships they see around them, and fall into despair. It's this darkness that needs to come to the light. The hard work so few want to endure, but those who are true seekers pursue.
Since 12-steps seems to be so heavy-laden with religious rhetoric and I've often felt like an outsider, I have found sharing anonymously very cathartic.
In my recovery ministry centering around religious trauma recovery, I documented my ongoing deconstruction and reconstruction, where I break down apologetic theosophy, religious mind-control cults, the affects of dictatorship on human psychology, and wisdom philosophies to discover the truth that lies within all mystical practices. My discoveries do not conflict with anything other than fundamentalist dogmatism and religious extremism, which I have come to deeply believe is toxic and strips life of its inherent dignity.
So today, on 9.11.2024, it's been exactly 1 year since starting my digital ministry, in which I had no formal schooling other than the hard knocks of life, 12-step recovery, and even my visit to the Middle East last summer on a spiritual tour -- luckily returning just as the war began to start up.
In doing all this, I'm granting myself the dignity to make all my studies in clergy official! So yes, this is legal. As I embark on this new chapter, I am humbled and honored to serve as a spiritual guide. May my life be a testament to the transformative power of faith, love, and compassion.
Fast forward to this week, where I've been accepted into a new monastic order through a program called “Socially Engaged Mysticism” at the Center for Spiritual Imagination. I'm also engaged in "Breathing Under Water" with Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar and ecumenical teacher of the New Mexican providence, and "Mystical Sobriety" with James Finley, an American author, clinical psychologist and former Trappist monk. All these steps combine deep contemplative wisdom with 12-step recovery methodology for on-going conversion of life. Contemporary prophetic gifts of liberation are present in their work through luminaries like Howard Thurman, Desmond Tutu, Wangarĩ Maathai and Martin Luther King Jr. who beautifully combined the gifts of deep contemplation with just action and social and ecological change.
Beyond being able to now solemnize legal marriages, my ordination allows me to exercise a host of rights and freedoms made available to all ministers. I can start my own digital church, create new ministries, create good in my community in new capacities, as well as perform baptisms, funerals, house-blessings, baby-namings, and a number of other ceremonies.
As someone who lived an hour away from NYC on 9.11 and later lived in the Financial District overlooking the buildings of the 9.11 memorial, this date has come to represent so much. It's a part of my story that has influenced my journey and my commitment to healing and spiritual growth.
Living just an hour away from NYC on 9.11, I witnessed firsthand the devastating consequences of religious extremism. Later, residing in the financial district quite literally overlooking the 9.11 memorial as it was being built, and reflecting back at my own story of spiritual trauma, I can no longer ignore the ways in which poor theology traumatizes individuals and communities. As a creative person, it's my duty to communicate the truth. I've come to believe in the importance of using faith as a force for love and compassion, not division and harm: at the pulpit, through all people, and most especially in our digital age.
I might share more of my story on other posts, but just wanted to share this officially here, at least to remember it in the future myself. Thanks for reading!
