Q05

Have you had any particularly spiritual experiences this past year? How has this experience affected you? "Spiritual" can be broadly defined to include secular spiritual experiences: artistic, cultural, and so forth.

Yes, moments alone with my tiny daughter, where I have felt life itself coursing through me from all of our ancestors, straight to her. It is enobling and dignifying to feel like the link between past and future, nursing this tiny person or moving with her through the natural world. Recently, we were walking alone in the woods at dusk when two Great Horned Owls began to hoot on branches overhead. We paused to listen, and my daughter hooted in response. I felt a profound connection with life itself, with wild creatures and all parents - be they human or owl or bear.

I guess if I'm thinking of arts and culture, what the constitution means to me was a powerhouse experience-- as was To Kill A Mockingbird. Perhaps even more 'spiritual' than as an audience member might be the self-actualization I feel when I'm doing a set- or more specifically, right AFTER i do a set. I'm loving the comedy even as it makes me regret all of my professional choices to this point but still-- glad to be challenging myself at this stage of life even if I don't get a netflix special!

Israel was a spiritual experience. Poland was a life changing experience. I could go on and on about those times, but they have changed how I react to anti-semitism and how I defend the country that I love.

The realization that I’m nonbinary and the euphoria that comes with being recognized as such.

I midwifed my mother through her death. We are not religious, nor did I feel any sense of something beyond. But I did feel an extraordinary human connection, an act of giving without receiving. A sense that the body is as mysterious as it is knowable. That the journey between life and death is a mountainous undertaking. That love has no end.