Lindsay Sudeikis is an educator, advocate, facilitator giving voice to what is unseen, unspoken, and longing to be included. She is immersed in catholic mystic tradition, sufism, elemental dagara wisdom, and scholar-activism. I have worked with her in the context of her Ancestral Healing work, which has been transformative in my life. As well as several of her beautiful online courses. Her spiritual guidance also called my attention to the practice of Lectio Divina and to the beautiful ritual technology within mass, using the power of water, fire, bread, wine, ash. So, when my mind wandered a bit during the homily of the Assumption Vigil mass, I knew a conversation with her about Animist Christianity would be nourishing. I hope it stirs something within you as well. For the full conversation, which is so rich, and includes a brief tale of the Sudeikis family business of sketch comedy in the convent as well as on Saturday Night Live, please check out the video, but I’ve included a few highlights below.
Part of the philosophical and mystical orientation that is in my bones comes downstream from my Irish kin, my Lithuanian kin, probably my Slavic kin too. That’s the deal, being on the stream of, a lover of wisdom, which is what a philosopher is. A mystic being smitten by wonder, allowing space for that. When the web of these two worlds Animism and Christianity, it was like obviously, of course, the two are together and are complementary and aren’t disparate and aren’t siloed…My wondering as a philosopher not a theologian would be, “At what moment was Christianity stripped from the heartbeat of the world?” The world, it could make me cry. Of course the world is so alive with Ruach, with that primordial breath, of the almighty, and of the liminal, and of the subtle. Of course!
I think there is a deep wondering around that wound of ‘When did we as a Christian people, as a Catholic Christian people, forget about the beating heart of the world?’ The rivers and the mountains and the stars, our beloved plant kin, and the earth beneath our feet.
I think mainstream Christianity has some wounding around human supremacy, whiteness, letter of the law over spirit of the law, policing who can approach our Lord in Holy Communion and who can’t. Mainstream Christianity, I think in some ways, bless and mercy, there’s a profound relational accountability and reckoning that needs to happen with some of the real cultural wounding and harm that has been perpetuated throughout not just through the last couple decades, but through centuries.
Animist Christianity in contrast to a more mainstream one, is again allowing for the beating heart of the world to take precedence. Of course the rivers matter, it makes me emotional, and of course they did to Jesus and Mary, of first century Palestine Israel, which is why the River Jordan and Sea of Galilee play such integral roles. Jesus and Mary were going to fetch the water, of course the rivers mattered. Even the first miracle, public miracle, the wedding feast at Cana, when water is being turned into wine. Of course the mountains mattered to our Lord in a way that was intimate and near, of course they did, because the mountains are alive and well.
And so, how can we remember, and I hear people use the word rewild, what Christianity, what was oozing from Christ and Mary and those Palestinian, Syrian, and Egyptian desert mothers and fathers those early lovers of this whole Christ mystery, this revolutionary way of being in the world that is really about “All are welcome” not just if you were born into the tribe of Israel.
And I just want to share that all of what I’m speaking from, to the best of my scholarly capacity, is doctrinally within Christianity. I’m not being heretical. It’s curious because so many within the tradition of the church. Those who were shapeshifters and troublemakers and politicized, were supposedly unorthodox. To only then find out after they died oh, actually, Hildegard was right on the money with what she said. It's John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Philip Neri, Thomas Aquinas, that’s the lineage I want to be a part of, please God. The ones who are supposedly heretical and yet actually rooted within the tradition, trying to remember the tradition into the heart, the vastness of ‘All are Welcome’ and all parts of ourselves and all dimensions of our lives are welcome. And I don’t know if mainstream Christianity is hitting that note, so many people don’t feel seen or dignified or celebrated or revered, and I want to be in that camp when I breathe my last, that people felt seen and dignified by how I hold them, not judged. Jesus has a lot to say about those who judge, it’s really the only time he gets harsh is for those who think they have it all figured out.
So much of, I have a friend in my life, she would say, it is all about relationship. The plants that you have or when you’re brewing your tea, or when you’re taking a stroll in your neighborhood, just being in relationship, tending, relationship just like it does with humans, with our beloveds or with our family or with our kiddos. It’s tending, it’s dynamic, tender, it’s alive. I would suggest for anyone to just begin there. Is there a plant you have at home? Is there a stroll you can take in your neighborhood where you can be in more conscious relationship with the tree, life that’s there, with the waxing and waning of the moon, or when you’re cooking to be really with the kale or spinach or butter. When you’re making your chamomile or peppermint tea. It’s about being in more conscious relationship and tending that if there’s a local body of water.
I do think connecting with your ancestors is a gateway to this remembering, in such a natural way. I can remember in my own case, when they’re connecting with their father’s father, that ancestral lineage, an elder downstream, eventually when they connect to those ancestral lands through that ancestral guide and elder, you start to ask what are the ways you connect to the sacred. Connecting with the local body of water, cooking in a certain way, listening to music in a certain way, the way you walk, so it is curious how connecting in a conscious and loving way with one’s ancestors, you start to naturally remember this animist way of the world.
And I think Martin Shaw, when we put our hand here (points to forehead as part of the sign of the cross), Abwoon birther of the Cosmos, the highest dimensionality of the celestial stardust from literally whence we come. To Iosa the son, to go into the depths, the oceanic depths, the earth, compost, dark, glorious holy, black soil, the left and to the right, all of the life that’s here, that’s such a beautiful reframe.
When Jesus, Iosa in Irish, Yeshua in Hebrew, when he uttered that very known prayer, what we call the Lord’s prayer. He uttered it in Aramaic, which was the spoken language of the time, and the Aramaic when he prayed that prayer there’s a beautiful way of how Abwoon D’Bashmaya really being in that cosmology of Aramaic and his land and the near East. When it gets to the end of the prayer, in English, we say lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Actually, a more scholarly accurate translation of those words, this is Neil Douglas-Klotz’s work from Prayers of the Cosmos. He says that the word temptation in Aramaic is lenyasuna which actually isn’t temptation, it’s more forgetfulness. Of course, Jesus would have left us this prayer, one of the only things we ought to utter is what he says. May we not enter into forgetfulness, how beautiful, rather how can we remember how interwoven we are. In the remembering, so many of our Muslim kin, like Zikir, which is the Arabic word for remembering, you remember God, then you find yourself being remembered.
How beautiful, may we not enter into forgetfulness and deliver us from, the word isn’t evil, bisha, the word is unripeness, deliver us from unripeness, which is such an animist, such a relational way of being. Of course our lord would have uttered, ‘Lead us from unripeness’, which hearkens back to the Song of Songs, the book of the mystics, do not stir up love before its time.
I could care less about temptation, I could give two s**** about temptation. As a spiritual director, as a mystic, and as an activist, I’m like lean right in, sweetheart, you know the body carries so much wisdom, Eros carries so much wisdom. Temptation, that’s just so puritanical and wounding language, not the language of our lord.
Abraham has a mother, for example, her name is Amtalai, and our Orthodox Jewish kin say it 17 times, utter it, pray it. What a beautiful, what if the story began there, with Amtalai, the mother of us all? Respect to Joey Soloway who really introduced me to some of that.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Lindsay’s upcoming course At the Intersections of Animism and Christianity: Tending Your Wild Heart. I have taken this course in years past and it is a beautiful way to connect to the wisdom of other beings and to tune into the holy during the holiday season at the dark time of year. The book All Creation Waits would also be a lovely companion to the experience.
Here is Lindsay’s description of the course: At the Intersections of Animism & Christianity: Tending Your Wild Heart— a 2024-25 Winter Course —
Themes cover:
Ancient Mystic Love
“Living Stones” aka Mineral Beings
Our Beloved Plant Kin
“Life-Giving Water”
Mother Mary & the Communion of Saints
“All-Embracing” & “The Revolution of Tenderness”
Re-membering Our Belovedness and That We Belong To Each Other
Each session is 75 minutes which includes simple ritual, diving into content, discussion, and embodied practice. We meet live on Zoom @ 10:00am ET on Mondays; 12/09, 12/16, 12/30, 1/06, 1/13. You also receive the recording for those who can’t join live. Feel free to email me with any inquiries. Here, we will come together to orient within the Catholic-Christian Tradition as Ïosa (Jesus in Irish) and Mhuire (Mother Mary in Irish) themselves orient. You are invited to pay as you can/desire for this course. Please send an energetic exchange to my PayPal account (sudeikis@omniasancta.org) or to my Venmo (Lindsay-Sudeikis).
This conversation with Lindsay inspired me to riff on the Nicene Creed, to make it a little more accurate in capturing my personal encounter with the divine.
I believe in the Birther of the Cosmos Maker of the Stars and the Seas and the Soil Of the forces we seen and understand And those we do not I believe in Yeshua The embodied form of God The highest dimensionality of celestial stardust Come down to Earth He came down from heaven Through the primordial breath of life And the God-bearer, the Virgin Mary He became man In solidarity with our suffering He suffered death and was buried In that dark, holy black soil To which we all return I believe in the Holy Spirit, The primordial breath of the world I believe in the beating heart of the world The Rivers and the Mountains and the Stars I believe Yeshua said, "All are welcome" And called us to remembrance, ripeness, and relationship To sink our feet in the Earth To bathe and drink from the Rivers To sing to the Trees and the Stones To shine like a Star in the Sky Amen
Animist Christianity: Connecting to the Beating Heart of the World