I often have the following thoughts on the occasion of “high” holidays. In the intense days before, during and even after, when travelling to celebrate the holidays with friends and family, and of course when organising activities for such holidays too.

Two things have shocked me and made me think.

The first is the excessive gifts and rituals around spending money…

The second is religion and what I want to pass on as a queer father.

I love traditions and understand the need for rituals. I come from a systemic background where our ancestors and cultural background are very much alive in the here and now, subtle but profound. Praying is a meditation. Spirituality for me is feeling part of something big, dancing the same steps, eating the same sweets, gathering as an act of gratitude and celebrating abundance. Most of all, spirituality for me is the sacred understanding of my humble place in the web of life. To respect nature, to love the other.

I have a Jewish background and my friend who is the mother of my son has a Christian background, but I can say that we don’t practice religion, and in my spirituality I am connected to the Divine Being rather than to a God that belongs to a specific religion. 

But culture is intertwined in everyday life. Schools, shops and streets are full of religious symbols, in Barcelona as in other cities.

And how do we fit in?

Queer co-parenting has a difficult position in relation to institutional religion. We have never been accepted by them and have learned to avoid their followers and the hate rhetoric and paternalistic approach to our “condition”.

But what kind of spirituality can we offer our child without the support of healing? Without drawing on our own childhood experiences and without fighting with the rest of the world?

In our workshops we work to get people to open up and look around, to notice the sacredness in our lives, the wonder of our existence. The feeling of oneness I feel when I practise tantra or yoga is something I cannot put into words. I think non-institutional spirituality today is so fragmented and so personal that it does not create a fixed structure of rituals, events or costumes.

My child will celebrate Christian holidays and if I try hard, some Jewish ones, but it all comes from the outside.

I am still wondering what kind of spirituality I can offer him. How can I pass on my spirituality to a child.

Do you have any suggestions?