Intercession. Growing up Catholic meant I would ask the Virgin Mary to intercede on my behalf. Whatever my little Catholic mind could conjure I could ask the Virgin Lady to carry to the Lord for his urgent actioning. As I got older, and much to my own tragedy, I realised how exhausting that must have felt. She is so close to absolute divinity but still human. Mary, unlike the Holy Son borne of her womb, is not divine, but extraordinarily close to divinity. She is close to them but she is not them. That is the Catholic child’s basic understanding of her myth.

I wonder how many things I have understood—through and through—yet lacked the ability to effect practical change? This is why I’ve always felt closest to Mary. Even when I became a lapsed Catholic, I never lost sight of her; of what it meant to be her; of her role; to be so full of goodness but exist in a system where that is not enough. You can bear the son of God, have his trust and ear but you are not a god yourself. We down here can know that those in power are deficient, and understand perfectly the consequences of this, but inanimate, unliving systems disproportionately hold back our ability to enact change. Some days, I wonder if pulling and tugging ourselves closer to Jesus is why we sustain so many incompetencies and perhaps whether we’re in the same sandals as Mary, without the holy bit, of course.

Like Mary we are not gods, but we are humanity. Perhaps, it is not a lack of a named role, but our inability to make sense of our existence. To work within its confines and not seek out a way to de-dignify it; to invalidate us within it; to reclassify it with the jargon of efficiency, market capitalisation and stakeholder value. To be us does not entail KPIs and OKRs, just as for Mary, it did not entail her changing water to wine or making the blind see.

For us both, it has been to be here and to listen to each other. One corporeal being to another. To understand our role and that while it does not measure up to a god or a computer it is ours, set by us. The richness of who we are is in our personhood and lack of divinity. It is in our grief, our need for sleep and dreams. It is in the breath we draw and the body that ultimately decays. That is our dignity and more than ever, we must enact systematic ways in which that is preserved.

That is my prayer now, and I know the Virgin Mary will faithfully intercede on my behalf. I just hope whoever receives it takes heed of what I have said.

Original Sin. I don’t think I’ve lived a day where I did not dream of something more. Sometimes, I think I’m hardcoded that way; in the womb predestined to grieve what I have not yet become. So, when it arrives I can barely acknowledge and much less live it. Because I know one day it will leave and correctly be described in the past tense.

I do truly believe that ambition is a sin. I think without it I might have saved a lot of relationships and been fine with stillness: with trees that do not sway, clocks that do not tick and love that is not reciprocal. Lack of ambition would mean that everything as it is would be enough. That relationships which do not cross boundaries are sufficient and best of all, I would not be curious or hungry. I would be full. I would not care. I would not feel the weight of my decisions. I would be okay. I would stay still, even when moving was the far better and justified action.

There is no freedom in my ambition.

Though, who and what I become without it is flattened and mute. Disengaged. Unloving. Moored. In my sinful, gluttonous ambition I encounter the free spirits left scattered on this Earth and my life is better because of them. My ambition, for all it is worth, has led me here—me bound to me, all me.

Make a Believer of Me. The visions come to me: I remember the yard, the swing, the cats and the yellow-walled dining room; I remember a green room, two beds not too far away and everything crammed in; I remember the mango tree and babies yelping; I remember that morning assembly, standing brave and reading them poetry. I remember feeling like there was a god in me. Not like a god, just one nestled in my being; I remember feeling; I remember fearing; I remember freedom.

You see, no church, or book or prayer or shadow ever made me feel close to divine beings. I felt them when I had to stand still, holding back any thought so as to fend off hesitation, so that I could feel the vibration of my vocal cords shaking the bones to my cochlea and hear my voice emanate and exist external to me like sudden sunlight. I have chased that rush through every medium: through the videos I edited in the many Augusts that feel a lifetime ago, or when I’d record comedy videos on my tablet or when I stood on a stage and strung words together hoping they were sentences and wrote them down on pages to post onto the internet. I felt God in those moments. I feel like something somewhere is pouring into me endless variations of what I could be and what my words could mean.

I know there is no end state.

There is no version of me that is divorced from this turbulent priest. To be haunted by ideas of more is possibly the greatest gift of them all. Because in it I find my own humanity, even as the world draws closer to a certain madness. It runs quickened towards its ultimate demise. I see myself in it too. All of me. I do not want to be a god or spirit or anything else. The blessing is to be human, all-too human.