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My name is Aída (she/her) pronounced like the opera. I am originally from Cuba, my family left in 1963 after the Revolution. This is my ‘go to’ fun fact because if you were to meet me you would never guess I am Cuban. When people ask me where I am from it’s very entertaining to me to invite them to guess… Sweden? France? Russia? No one ever guesses correctly!
As far as spirituality and religion, being Cuban meant I was brought up with a really interesting syncretic spirituality. It was a mixture of African deities and practices, Catholicism, and strangely enough Sufi-ish nuns. It was from the nuns that I have learned to dance freely and in so doing feel the presence of the Divine embodied within. I also feel very connected to a riotous kind of holiness when communing with nature and for that reason I call myself heathen.
Since I can remember I have had several mystical experiences that defy explanation. It was my search for the meaning of these events that led me to turn to as many different groups, churches, and books on religion and spirituality as I could find. Most of the practices I came across I studied for quite a few years testing their efficacy and personal meaningfulness, then let them go when I felt the nudge to journey on. However, the study of Tarot is something I have been faithfully committed to for 40 years or so. And yet I am absolutely no expert as I have not engaged with it for divination purposes, nor have I endeavored to memorize the ascribed meanings. To me they are living archetypes or energies.
Having said that I have had the book since 2004 but have not been able to get into it. I joined this class because I am curious to see if reading it with a community of other like hearted souls will open for me a path of deepening devotion to the Great Mystery.
Aída, welcome! You’ve given me a new phrase to meditate on: “a riotous kind of holiness” — sounds like my kind of holiness! And I love the description of your faith background. That kind of interweaving is very much what I think is the *best* of catholic spirituality, and very much what undergirds the spirit of MOTT.
I’ve never been to Cuba but I want to go there some day, because Thomas Merton had a mystical experience in the Church of St. Francis in Havana back in 1940. Would love to visit that site (Merton had three major mystical experiences: the first one in Havana, the second one on a street corner in Louisville KY, and the third one at a Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka. I’ve only visited the Louisville site, but the other two are on my bucket list).
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