We don’t talk about Bruno (or spirituality)

It’s a catchy song.

You might remember hearing it the last time you watched the movie Encanto. Or the last ten times you watched it if you’re a Disney family.

Encanto was an oddly endearing Disney film produced in 2021. It cast an eclectic collection of multigenerational family members living in a fictionalized, magical town hidden in the mountains of Colombia.

Who is Bruno?

Exiled from the family, Bruno hides in the walls of a colonial-style, sentient hacienda. “We don’t talk about Bruno” became the tagline for the family, and a singalong hit for every 3- to 40-year-old secretly desiring to join the Madrigal family.

Bruno and spirituality have a few things in common.

Bruno was a clairvoyant, gifted with seeing into the future. Some of what he saw, nobody else in the family wanted to see. Inside the walls, Bruno became a shadowy figure in the architecture of the house and the family itself. The cracks in both were invisible to so many, but visible to him.

In a sense, Bruno was responsible for seeing the truth until the family was ready to see its broken wholeness.

“We don’t talk about Bruno.”

I.e., “We don’t talk about all the shit we don’t want the world to see.”

Art created by AI + me in Leonardo.ai

Spirituality has meant a lot of things to me.

At Bruno’s age, I had an absolute disdain for religion and God. But by my late thirties, during my midlife-crisis proto-adult stage, I could talk to you endlessly about squirrely spiritual stuff.

And that was a great way to bypass what spirituality really is (at least to me).

Spirituality is a relationship with spirit that holds me responsible to who I am.

Being spiritual means you’re going to be responsible.

And be held responsible.

To yourself.

And this isn’t a religious thing. Responsibility isn’t right or wrong. Good or bad. More conscious or less conscious. More woke or less woke. It’s not about punishment. And it’s definitely not about judgment.

It’s simply this: are you fully owning your life?

All the cracks. And broken wholeness.

“We don’t talk about Bruno.”

“We don’t talk about spirituality.”

It’s my new mantra. Whoops, motto.

I can’t use spiritual words when I’m not actually talking about spirituality.

Squirrel.

But I am deeply sick of talking about spirituality. We can talk and talk about it and what it is or isn’t. But that doesn’t matter at all. Because most forms of that conversation avoid the real, responsible conversation.

Intimate conversations don’t come from talking at a spiritual level. Or not talking at a spiritual level. Or aspiring to some bullshit level of self-awareness endorsed by a guru-ized social media influencer. Or aspiring to some anti-spiritual sentiment with a middle finger to the endless Instagram overshares.

Real intimacy comes from a different place entirely.

How are you taking responsibility for yourself?

So don’t talk to me about spirituality anymore. Or Bruno.

Bruno and spirituality are just holding the cracks hidden in your walls.

I’d rather talk about the responsibility of being human.

That’s the harder, more real conversation.