Where do you end up when everything seems hopeless? When you don’t know who you are anymore, when you don’t know what to do anymore, when you don’t have the capacity to think straight anymore, when nothing & no one makes sense anymore? I think this place, whatever it may be, can tell you something interesting about yourself. In moments like this we tend to go back to “factory settings”, if you will. The bare existence with nothing else than primal questions. I am talking about the stage when no distractions can make you forget about the void & longing inside you. It feels like everything is over for you, no good nor bad things will come, it feels like the end of the deadest end of ends.

     Hopelessness is the saddest thing that can happen to a human being. It is the closest we can be to a zombie. Breathing without hope for anything is worse & more painful than simply being dead. My worse-than-being-dead-end led me to kneeling in front of St. Jude Thaddaeus, patron of desperate & lost causes, in a gothic cathedral, lighting a votive candle. That is apparently my autopilot setting.

     I would not call myself a religious person, however I was raised catholic & it was my main way to express spirituality for a long time. It has changed during my life quite a lot. And somehow, when I had absolutely no idea where to go, I went to a catholic church, to the saint who specializes in hopelessness. I did not even think about it, it was not a result of any serious consideration. It was more like inner guidance. Do I believe that St. Jude is somewhere listening to me & actively helping to support & lead me out of misery? Well, yes & no. In Greek mythology he would be a goddess instead of a saint & her name would be Oizys. Romans would call her Miseria.

     If anybody makes themselves at least a bit familiar with various religious systems in human history, with an open mind & basic understanding of cultural shifts, merges & appropriations, they must come to the conclusion that their truth is only “the best” because it is simply “the most theirs”. They give it the meaning & feeling of their own personal faith & call it the truth because well, no one likes to be wrong. The Catholic Church needed to be more than flexible for its taste to accommodate for Slavic pagan beliefs, so people would eventually shift, in many cases most reluctantly or simply just superficially. As a result, many holidays & symbols are intricately interconnected. The Old Testament God is more like Greek or Roman gods than the lovely Father I was raised to pray to, with all the sacrifices, anger, jealousy & wars, no other cheek there.

     Religion that I was raised in & all the others are a result of a collective imagination of all humanity, of the same longing for bigger purpose & making sense of our own existence. This is the power of it. If we can think of such an almighty beings, such captivating stories, we are capable of such devotion, then we can pull ourselves from the darkest pits of mind. This is what was calling to me from the gothic cathedral – the strength of the people who started building it 835 years ago & all the others who also carried their hopelessness there.

     Ultimately, we have the power to create gods & utilize them. Personally, carrying my pain to something bigger than me, somehow makes me bigger than myself. Maybe that is all there is to religion – consolation fantasy. God’s voice may be an internal humans’ voice. Does it make it any less powerful? I would argue that, on the contrary, it makes it even more mighty. If we have this kind of primal guidance in us, then we have a great potential to not be miserable.

     Religions give us the words to at least describe & express the inner state of being. When I ask St. Jude to guide me, it means I am lost. When I thank the universe for protection, I am grateful that I made it safe back home. When I cast spells or manifest, I crave something. When I call out to any deity, I feel lonely & powerless. And yet, in the midst of “looking up” there was one sentence that I was repeating to myself during waves of anxiety: “It is only you happening in front of your eyes & so, I know, you will be alright.” Those words are my friend’s response to my message describing me drowning in my own tears, not sure of my own name.

     I needed higher power but I also needed to be reminded that I am the higher power. It is not a manifestation of a spell that counts but the force behind it.