Why does desire get such a bad rap?
For years, I assumed the official video for Take Me to Church was the mesmerizing Sergei Polunin version. (Here. You’re welcome.) A few days ago, I saw the real official video.
The official video is a heart-shattering, gut-sickening rendition of what happens when denial and shame seek to judge love and longing. I highly don’t recommend watching it.
It took me to a spot that’s angered me since I was a teenager. That spot screams one of my deepest personal truths: No society, church, nor any individual, has the right to tell me who I love, who I want, what I love and want, or how (clearly, this assumes consenting adults).
Society and its ridiculous rules have tried to dictate our heart’s expression toward who, what, why, how and how many since time immemorial. There was even a law in England and Colonial America against witchcraft that included “no use of spirits to elicit affections.”
Shoooooewwee, we women are so dangerous with our wanton ways, they had to outlaw seduction.
Which reinforces the common notion that desire is bad.
Why isn’t desire bad?
Not one among us in the human race can help who or what we love and desire, any more than we can control the fact that we currently live on Earth, not Mars.
Which means no one gets to judge your passion. Though, God knows others’ll try.
You, too, can try to follow their rules. You can overanalyze your desire. You can lock it up with logic. List all the reasons why, what or who you want is “wrong,” why you “can’t” or “aren’t supposed to.” And you can armor up your heart.
But in the end, the heart wants what it wants, all the same.
And count on this: that pesky spark of authentic desire will rear its head at a highly inconvenient moment, to boot.
Take Me to Church, for real.
Three years ago, I had the great fortune of being offered access to what became my church. The abandoned, haunted Old City Jail, along with all of its inglorious members (dead and alive).
I got to secretly spend day after day, night after night, with my hidden-most desires – talking to dead people – and to living people about talking to the dead. I sat in the dark and grime of a collapsing structure with a lot of exciting fear of the unknown, letting my treacherous imagination run wild, and allowing all of my insecurities to bubble up.
In the process, I’ve had more than a few profound, humbling, vulnerable experiences there – that put me right in the messy muck of my deepest desires.
I hear from people over and over again in readings, that they don’t know what they want.
Every person knows what they want. It just takes courage to recognize the precious desire that somehow got labeled “forbidden” or “wrong” or “unavailable.” It takes a little more courage to act on it, shape it, and allow it to feed you and propel you forward into a more you version of you.
True desire is the only way we get down to the place where we can authentically commune with one another, and with our own hearts and souls.
So, I wish every single person reading this gets taken to church for real, where love and desire and passion flourish with reckless abandon, and where all shaming and judgment gets tossed to the wind as the false demon it is, and carried back to hell where it belongs.
PS. Sergei Polunin – the greatest dancer of our time, perhaps ever – stopped dancing for a while because he got fed up with other people ordering him around. He now works to support himself and other performers in doing what they want, rather than what they’re told.
Don’t be shy with your precious heart. Book a reading.
Book a reading if you need help connecting with your heart, with the heart of the souls on the other side, or just need a little courage. I look forward to connecting with you.
