Selfie as a Spiritual Practice (And Some Poetry News)
Yes seriously lol
A Note on Not Having Written So Long
I’ve been meaning to write for a while. At first, I was simply swamped with work. Then, as things calmed down in my schedule, news coming out of Palestine and Israel made what I intended to write about feel somewhat irrelevant and small, so I delayed even further. These few days home for Thanksgiving, however, felt like a good time to get down some thoughts in writing while I have the chance.
Before jumping into the little essay I’ve been meaning to write, I wanted to begin with an acknowledgment of the organizations that have been meaningful to me these past few weeks, both in terms of information/education and opportunities to contribute towards peacemaking and humanitarian relief. Churches for Middle East Peace is an ecumenical Christian organization that has been advocating for ceasefire as well as U.S. attention to deeper roots of conflict in Palestine and Israelite and long-term solutions prioritizing the well-being of all civilians. Their Executive Director gives daily updates, which I’ve mostly been watching on the organization’s Instagram, that include information fromlong-term partners in the region and encouragement on how we might respond (especially how Christians might be called to respond).
As an Episcopalian, I have also been following the work of the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, which supports Anglican ministries in the region, including the Ahli Arab Hospital. I know many of you reading have already been following the news, educating yourselves, and advocating accordingly – many much more devotedly than I have – but I hope these resources will remain helpful, especially for anyone looking at how to respond from a framework of Christian faith.
Now without further ado….
Selfie as a Spiritual Practice
A few months back, I saw some snarky comments online about selfies, and the people who take and post them. To be honest, I took it a little personally, especially the implication that people (though let’s be honest, this criticism is mostly aimed at women) who embrace the selfie are shallow, vapid, narcissistic, self-obsessed, etc. For anyone who’s managed to follow me on basically any social media platform, you’ll know I’m a great lover of the selfie. “Prolific” selfie taker and poster might be an appropriate description. You can see how my love of selfie has been consistent through the years in the pictures above!
My love of the selfie developed for at least one practical reason: I am terrible at keeping my eyes open when someone else is taking photographs! I was reminded of this over the summer at a friend’s wedding when other photos graciously offered to take photos of me. Few photos taken by someone else ever seem to compare to the ones where I’m able to see myself as I’m taking it. But I know the draw is also deeper than that. I’m going to suggest today that the selfie, looked at through the right lens, might even be a spiritual practice.
I had a chance to think about the deeper reasons behind my selfie habit a few years back during Lent, a season when many Christians often give something up or take on a practice as a way of spiritually centering themselves leading up to Easter. Like many parish clergy, Lent is one of my busiest times of the year, so I haven’t been too enthusiastic about the prospect of giving something up really taxing. Instead, I’ve gotten creative. So, yes, at one point, I embarked on 40 selfie-less days! This gave me ample time to think about when and why I gravitate towards taking them.
For me, selfies are a way of forging connection and sharing my life, both with close friends/family and a broader community. Selfies mark different occasions and locations. They can showcase something as mundane as an afternoon at a favorite coffee shop or something more out of the ordinary, like a vacation. They can capture something personal – a get-together with friends – or something professional, for me, often at some church setting or event. Depending on the circumstances of our lives, the chance to share our daily lives through selfies might take on more importance than it might for others. For instance, when we’ve moved somewhere new, perhaps far from loved ones, selfies give a chance to include people in the goings on of our our day-to-day lives who may never get to see them. For people who live alone or who are single, we don’t always naturally have the built-in experience of someone asking about our day every single day or going home to someone we can share the day with, even if we have many supportive friends in our lives.
To share the boring and beautiful parts of my life (and the boring-beautiful parts) is to assert these moments are worth sharing…worth someone else’s care and attention….not because my life is uniquely interesting or worthy of documentation, but because every life is. It is a human craving to be known and seen. The selfie accepts this instead of fighting against it or denying it.
At times, stopping to take a selfie may mean taking time to find joy that may not be obvious or that might be completely elusive – to will the joy or manifest it/call it forward witha smile. If that joy is already being felt, stopping for a selfie – actively smiling! – is a moment of recognizing and basking in that joy. Studies show that putting on a smile does have effects, like lowering stress and bringing down one’s heart rate. Of course, I hope nobody thinks I am recommending selfies as a means of emotional repression! Critiques that selfies and social media in general promote a certain level of fake happiness are valid, to a degree. Very few of us reflect all of the mess and pain of our lives in our social media posts! Inadvertently, we might contribute to the insecurity of others if they compare the messy reality of their lives to the picture people paint of themselves via social media. Certainly if anyone was to go through a collection of my selfies, they wouldn’t be able to guess an accurate ratio of happiness in my life to stress, anxiety, insecurity, etc. However, I think if we are people who in other ways to strive to honor and claim the complexity and sorrows of life, there isn’t shame in allowing one particular medium – the selfie – to be a way we actively lean into joy!
Related to the claiming of joy, I think there’s power in the selfie since it allows us to control our own image, from its taking to its framing and sharing. For some, myself included, that level of control overself-presentation can help reinforce confidence, including about appearance. I can take as many photos of myself as I want until I find one that truly feels reflective of what I want to broadcast to the world. To delight in one’s appearance, especially when society wants you to be doubting that appearance (to sell us things, for one), can be a powerful thing. I am aware that there are plenty of people who have been more disparaged about their appearance than I have been, or ever will be. I cannot speak to the power of the selfie in response to fatphobia, racism, transphobia, etc. But I have lived in this world as a girl and a woman and have felt the impact of countless cultural messages that imply or outright say that what really matters for a woman is what men think about how she looks. To embrace the selfie is to let myself be the arbiter of what is beautiful or attractive and to assert that arbitration publicly. We can choose to believe that’s self-centered or shallow…or we can believe that we’re living into the tradition of the psalmist who called themselves “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139); we can believe we’re echoing the approval of God who looks at Her creation and calls it good throughout the opening chapter of Genesis.
There’s also an agency I think many of us exercise through selfies in crafting a narrative about our own lives. The life I’m leading now at 31 is very different from the life my teenage self or even my early-twenties-self would’ve imagined. First off: an Episcopal priest? That’s a curveball! Perhaps more significantly, I didn’t necessarily have a vivid imagination at that age of what my adult life could look like single, or without children. Through selfies and social media, I get to tell a story of what a life like mine is like, and can be like. A lot of people want to tell stories on behalf of or about single, childless women in their thirties (and our misery *eye roll*). People also may have stories in their minds about what a clergyperson is like, or looks like, or broader than that, what a person of Christian faith is like. Of course selfies and social media can’t tell the whole story of my life, but there’s something that feels significant about my version getting told - my joys and fullness being told.
In general, there’s something that feels important to me about being empowered to tell our own stories, in our own ways (in words, and pictures, and more). Along with so many others, I hold that God speaks to us through and in our lives, and that listening to our lives is a key to noticing the Sacred. If I believe God might speak to me through my life, then I also have to hope God might speak through my narration of it as well. Selfies are a part of that narrating!
Finally, I turn to the idea of the incarnation. Christians believe that God came among people, among matter, taking on flesh and entering into the tangible realities of this life. Jesus, God-with-us, engaged people on a bodily level, transfusing the bodily world with his holiness (or we might say, bringing forward the holiness already there) – healing people, feeding people, washing feet. Jesus still engages on a bodily level – being consumed, body and blood, throughout the world, again and again and again. Christianity is a faith highly concerned with physicality. Even our resurrection beliefs, depending on how they are understood, might emphasize a continued existence of the bodily form. An image, such as a selfie, reminds us that we are physical people….that we possess a body, that we have an appearance. Why should our acknowledgment and embrace of the physical self through which we experience life mean we should be taken less seriously? Why should it be used to denigrate or dismiss the less tangible things about us: our thoughts, our words, our art? To strive to present ourselves as only a mind or to only label the product of the mind valuable feels like an anti-incarnational stance.
To put the spirituality of selfie in more personal terms, I want to share a poem with you all that I wrote in January 2021, called “Cosmic Latte.” (You’ll want to Ctrl + F my name to find the poem.) The poem set out to capture a moment of hopefulness and joy experienced in those relatively early pandemic days. I had taken a short, solo trip to North Adams, MA and enjoyed one of its museums. This poem pivots towards a selfie I take with art installation as backdrop: “...the ‘cosmic latte’ lights don’t feel empty, / but warm….And I like the picture / I take below them…” I had really struggled with feelings of isolation early in the pandemic. This trip was the first time I had taken any vacation days since the start of the pandemic and was my first time traveling outside of my town. I remember feeling like I was coming back to life again!, The selfie became a token of that feeling of hopefulness and renewal, just as the poem itself is a token.
When it comes down to it, we each have our own relationships with technology, social media, and our appearances to figure out. For some, selfies might mean little at all; they might even be anxiety-provoking. But for others, selfies can be sites of value and meaning. They might even be called spiritual or theological! Of course, on some other level selfies might be interpreted as silly and fun. As play. Those things that bring more playfulness to our lives generally feel Spirit-led to me….which is perhaps its own post for another time!
Poetry News – Podcasts & a Pushcart Nomination!
Since I’ve last written, I’ve been honored to be the guests on two podcasts. I’d love if you gave either a listen, both as a support to me and to these wonderful creators who welcomed me into their virtual spaces. If you have thoughts on anything we’ve talked about, let me know! I’d love to hear!
(un)common good with pauli reese – a wide-ranging conversation including poetry, ministry, & comedy as topics of conversation! I read a poem from Woman as Communion
video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QSXgD-KiYc
audio: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3sPiSkQ5oPNMew0yepYciR?si=r-R3BsLjTdi8mZrfER9sUw
My Bad Poetry with Aaron and Dave – a fun dive into two poems I wrote as a high schooler, ending with a more recent poem from Prayer Book for Contemporary Dating
https://open.spotify.com/episode/30pTo2u2QrtuW6WO875OEn
I’ve also had two new poems published!
“Pep Talk for the Mother-Self Who May Not Get to Live” at Stone Circle Review, which was just nominated for a Pushcart
https://stonecirclereview.com/pep-talk-for-the-mother-self-who-may-not-get-to-live/
“Dear Ruth, on the Occasion of Regretting Vulnerability,” find it in print in the December issue of U.S. Catholic!
Both poems are part of a new manuscript I’m very slowly working on, so I’m excited to have them out in the world. I hope you enjoy.
Old But Important (Chap)book News
If you’d like to support my poetic work in general, please consider purchasing my first full-length collection Jesus Merch: A Catalog in Poems or my chapbook Woman as Communion. My website links to a variety of places you can purchase, though either should also be able to requested from any of your fav local bookstores and/or your local library. Looking for a free taste of my poetry? Check out my first chapbook Prayer Book for Contemporary Dating, through the lovely Ethel Zine and Micro-Press, as a free PDF!
Special sale note: Jesus Merch is available with free shipping from Bookshop.org through the rest of the weekend!
If you have read and enjoyed any of these works, goodreads, Amazon, and storygraph reviews mean a lot, as does sharing a poem you enjoyed (with credit) on social media or otherwise spreading the word.. And if you got this far in this post – thank you so much, truly. Writing this on the day after Thanksgiving, I am truly so grateful for all the encouragement and support my writing has gotten over the years. Thank you for helping me see my writing as a ministry and having a place in the world.
Until next time,
Megan
This is just wonderful! I love how you have made this point so powerfully!! Yes to selfie as spiritual practice 💯👍