Reclaiming Spirituality After It Was Weaponized Against Us with Phillip Picardi

United Bodies

For many of us, spiritual health is a facet of our health that we consider less, perhaps even give less weight to or spend less time cultivating. There are many reasons for this. Spirituality can feel elusive, confusing, scary, and unknown. It can bring up religious baggage, ostracization, and pain.

Religion is one of the most notable constructs of how people find and express individual and communal spirituality, but it’s also been used as a tool to oppress and commit violence. At a time when it feels like there is pain, suffering, and oppression everywhere we look, spirituality can force us to grapple with a lot of messiness -- in a way that can feel inaccessible at best, and offensive at worst.

Today, I’m speaking with Phillip Picardi, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, as well as an award-winning journalist and editor formerly of OUT Magazine, Teen Vogue and Them. Phillip was also the host of Crooked Media’s podcast Unholier Than Thou, where he explored all things saintly and secular and is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School where he received his master’s in Religion and Public Life.
A few years ago, Phillip embarked on a spiritual journey centered on reclaiming Christianity and in particular, Catholicism, the religious tradition that he was raised in and had given up on as a gay kid. Phillip knows firsthand that acknowledging and engaging in our individual spirituality, however you label that, or in whatever way that may look, can really serve us. Spirituality can ground us, give us purpose, and guide us, even if it doesn’t come easy.
Check out this episode’s landing page at MsMagazine.com for a full transcript and more.

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Phillip @PfPicardi

@KendallCiesemier

@Ms_Magazine