Spirituality these days is often marketed like a solo journey with a crystal starter pack. You meditate alone, journal alone, light your candles alone, and if anyone disrupts your peace? Cut them off. Block. Banish. Repeat.
But what if the spirituality of isolation they are marketing to us is not very spiritual at all? Throughout my years of practice, I have consistently found that true spirituality fosters connection. Connection to yourself, community, and the world at large. Visible and invisible. It says, “We rise together, or not at all.”
Courtesy of Eron Vito Mazza.
There’s a lie baked into a lot of modern spiritual spaces, especially the kind that come with hashtags and influencer filters. It’s the idea that healing is something we do in perfect solitude, becoming more “aligned” while the world burns outside. The truth? You can’t vibe your way out of oppression. You can’t sage away capitalism. And you sure as hell can’t manifest your way into liberation without other people.
Building community is a spiritual practice. It’s hard work, messy work, but it is sacred all the same.
Sometimes the magic is sharing groceries with someone who’s struggling. Sometimes the ritual is holding space for a friend mid-breakdown. Sometimes the offering is mutual aid. This, too, is sacred. We’ve been tricked into thinking spirituality should be clean and quiet and cute—but queer people know better. Sometimes the true might of spirit is revealed by showing up tired, pissed, and real. That’s when spirit actually shows up.
Don’t get me wrong—solitude has its place. I love a bit of “me time” in the bath as much as anyone. But I’ve never felt more spiritually charged than when I’m in the middle of a protest, chanting with strangers who are suddenly kin. Or in a circle with a group of like-minded witchy folks, all of us ugly-crying during a ritual no one expected to hit that hard.
Our ancestors didn’t survive alone. Our queer ancestors, especially, knew the sacredness of interdependence. Chosen family. Codes of care. The underground networks of survival. That is spiritual technology. That is ancestral wisdom.
I won’t lie: community is uncomfortable sometimes. People are messy. Boundaries get tested. Egos show up. But that’s part of the alchemy. Real growth comes from being witnessed—and witnessing others—in all their sacred chaos. We don’t ascend by floating off into our little bubbles. We evolve by getting real and working together.
So let’s cast spells for each other. Let’s build altars that hold not just our desires, but our collective needs. Let’s make care a ritual and connection a sacrament.
Because the world doesn’t need more good intentions made in isolation. It needs more community-minded intentions made in community.
This is the new sacred standard: love without performance and Community as devotion.
And no, you don’t have to do it all, or do it flawlessly. You just have to show up.
We rise together. Or we don’t rise at all.
