own your hotness.

"See, Patrick, you've gotta own your hotness. Like, you've gotta owwwwwnn it. Why is there a stain on your shirt?"

Slurred the long-drunk philosophy professor as I walked into the kitchen.

He put his arm around me, pulling me towards him and handing me a glass of sangria. "See? We're a small, elite institution of very hot, very smart people, Patrick. Very elite, very hot. Own it," he hissed.

Later that night, "Patrick," the head of his academic department at my college and a fairly acclaimed scholar in his own right, started dancing around the house with candle sticks held to his chest (re: Madonna impersonation). Later that week, I found out that the reason he was getting such a razzing from the philosophy professor is that at the last party he had made a comment about the breasts of the philosopher's wife.

The great benefit of making it to the top of your department as a student is that you get invites to the faculty parties.

This isn't about the privileged world of high scholarship, though. It's about owning it.

Owning faith.

I'm going home in a week. Home to family, and friends, and mentors, and memories of all that was happening before I started kicking it in a Pentecostal megachurch with people who use phrases like "spirit-filled," and "hallelujah." Home to that mind that believed so certainly that though there are absolutes, we can't be certain of them. Home to the space that created me, and holds me still, in place with thoughts of "what if?" and "how can I be sure?"

I'm going home. And I'm... I'm..I'm something. I'm torn. I live in this fairytale of faith here. However bad the world is, however worried I am about the visceral realities of my life, I can show up on Wednesday at my own church or another, lift my hands to heaven, and feel His peace. No matter the problem, I can kneel and pray and meet Him and, in the most beautiful syllables, find my heart overwhelmed, restored. I can open His word, and see something astounding I've never seen before. I can believe that this "spirit-filled" existence is the life I am to lead, by right, by rule, by absolute and breathtaking redemption. My cheeks are wet--I can feel them--as I write this because I know that I'm living something beyond good.

But this is so far from the life of faith I had. It's so far from the life that some of my closest friends would have for me. I chose the phrase "spirit-filled" as an exemplar for my new friends not only because it's common, but because I'm coming to think that it is an essential, a defining feature of the difference between who I was and who I am. Between who they are, and who we are.

I don't mean that as exclusionary language (and I'm not unaware of the psychological processes it speaks to), but factual. There is something about this "spirit," and something about His filling. I used to live in a world that God had started, and let go--a world His in name, but not in Spirit. Now, I live in a world in which His spirit runs rampant. God is alive. The laws of this world bend to His will. Gravity is intact, and the rest is up to grab, friends.

I'm not sure what pastors and theologians mean when they use the phrase "spirit-filled." I don't know what it's slang for, and I may be mis-using it when I do. But I know that to me, it means power. It means believing that the Holy Spirit guides me, over and above my intellect, to do crazy things like talking to strangers in coffee houses. It means those treasured moments spent in perfect concert with a living God. It means knowing that He'll be faithful to my prayers for things like courage, and sacrifice, and humility, even as I'm knowing that I cannot trust myself to love Him always.

This isn't just an intense version of the faith of my past. It's qualitatively different. When I think of Christmas with people who know so much of me, and live a very different faith, one that seems so powerless in comparison to the faith I've seen in the Pentecostal fold, I hear my own voice...

"You've got to own it, Ashley. Own it."