–Here is my mock essay– note this is only the beginning of an essay.  It ends really were I would need to do a lot more reflection and pan out and make connections.  But here you are.—

 

How I Found the Holy Spirit in Witches

I hate to admit that the first time I heard “Defying Gravity” was on the TV show, Glee.  The central character, Rachel (a very talented and a very self-centered albeit well meaning high school student) challenges her diva-fabulous and yet actually pretty grounded) friend Kurt to a sing off. They sing “Defying Gravity,” which has is notorious for having a high F that’s very hard to hit. In the sing off, Kurt is doing well, but the last note throws him, and it’s clear that Rachel is the winner. Of course in later episodes we realize that Kurt messed up on purpose because he recognized that Rachel needed to win. In concerts and albums, you can hear the actors for this song sing the song as a duet sans any mistakes, and it seems to have a spirit not of competition but of working together in a way that allows both singers to go beyond limits.

I became particularly interested in the version of the song sang by the actor who plays Kurt because I like his voice. There is something tentative in his tenor, something daring, something that is doing something it shouldn’t be doing.  It’s like a bumble bee that shouldn’t be able to fly with such tiny wings, but it manages to fly just perfectly.  And his voice seems to do just that to me–fly.  Of course that something odd and imperfect has to do with gender bending and queerness. I wasn’t always thinking about those ideas when I was listening, but I was thinking about what it means to be a freak and to be lonely and to be unsure of what you think might be something wonderful about yourself. For a long time I just listened and sometimes lip synched dramatically when no one was looking.

One day I was at mass, and a priest was trying to explain the Holy Spirit.   “Crazy things happen when the spirit hits,” the priest says.   He was particularly talking about how Catholics in America can be very stoic and unfeeling in their expressions of faith. “We are scared of the Spirit because it’s how God taps into who we were meant to be. It’s how we become more than we can understand as humans. It’s not orderly. It’ll shake us up.” I wanted to be more than I thought I was currently, or rather I wanted to be more than I thought the world would let me be, so I listened to the priest, but to be honest it didn’t totally move me.  I didn’t cry. I didn’t stand up and shout “I want the Spirit.” I didn’t even ask God for help to receive this great thing even though I did want to be shaken up, but later that evening, almost out of routine, I was listening to Wicked. And when I heard the lyrics “Something has changed within me,” my whole body tightened, and I couldn’t think.  Something had changed within me.