my hippie spirituality

It begins with long hair, on my head and on my face, unkempt; and it manifests itself in the odor of my armpits often unadorned with deodorant, the hand sewn elbow patch on my thinning thrift store sweater, and a more often than not vegetarian diet. It begins there because these things have to do with me on the outside, and I believe spirituality has a lot to do with me and my body and how we interact with the stuff of the world that is going on outside of us. It continues in that my recent spiritual life has been one of less discipline; more of a barefoot, free-love, go-with-your-emotions style of (christian) spirituality. My focus has rested more heavily upon peace and love; shifted from the prove-my-point debates of the classroom, to poetry readings in a field where we all sit cross legged in a circle with smiles on our faces. Someone picking at the strings of an old guitar. And Jesus is unavoidabley central to it all, because this flimsy, free life of the spirit that I have been living has somehow sustained me and been sustained, even without the aid of drugs and sex, even with only a limited amount of rock'n'roll.