Sometimes Evolving Starts with a Pizza and a Mouse

By Traci Hubbard

A little girl asked her mother, "How did the human race appear?" The mother answered, "God made Adam and Eve and they had children, and so was all mankind made." Two days later the girl asked her father the same question. The father answered, "Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved." The confused girl returned to her mother and said, "Mom, how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God, and Dad said they developed from monkeys?" The mother answered, "Well, dear, it is very simple. I told you about my side of the family and your father told you about his".

I invite you, for a moment, to close your eyes and picture a spiritual journey—not the kind you see in Renaissance paintings, angels hovering and golden beams shining—but the ordinary, slightly murkier version most of us experience. If you’re like me, your path to spiritual illumination may have begun with pimples and pizza.

My journey began in Mama’s Pizza, a family-owned pizza parlour beloved by everyone, especially university students in Fort Worth, Texas. Somehow between an argument with my mother at home before we left, and when we landed at Mama’s Pizza, another step in my spiritual evolution began. You see, I decided to sneak my gray live mouse into my hoodie and then release my mouse onto the table who proceeded to run across the newly delivered 24-inch pizza, getting stuck in the middle with one foot up, dangling stringy cheese. The look in my mother’s eyes told me death might be near…but not for my mouse.  Somewhere between her Sicilian Death Stare and the other diners staring at me, my spiritual evolution began with me paying for that pizza, and the new one we ordered. Peeker, my mouse, was sequestered to the glove box in our station wagon.

You may be wondering how an intentional search for the Divine begins with a cheesy mouse, black olives, jalapenos, pepperoni, red onions, and Italian sausage in November 1974? Well, if history has taught us anything, the most profound journeys often begin when people find themselves in a sticky hot mess. Moses had the Red Sea and Paul had a burning tree. I had a newly disinfected table, an apology letter to the owner, and $40 dollars less in my piggy bank. Same difference.

The first thing I discovered, is that spiritual evolution seldom feels like a balanced uphill climb. It’s more like a slapstick comedy sketch, with you as the unconscious star. There’s a moment when you think you understand the rules—pray, contemplate, try to be good—and then life offers you what seems like a logical way to get your point across to your mother. I mean, come on! What is worse, my messy room, or a mouse stuck on our pizza? I thought my mother was the one who had a choice to make. I was mistaken.

On one ordinary December day during Christmas holidays, I decided to ponder life in my bedroom. I lit a candle, sat cross-legged, and tried to hold my hands in a yoga position while emptying my mind of how uncomfortable I felt. I mean honestly, I had to lie down on my bed and use pliers to zip up my tight jeans which in hindsight was red flag around my consciousness for sure. A cramp in my right calf interrupted my holy moment and my leg sprang out from under me like a rocket, knocking over my glass of orange juice, dousing the candle, and sinking deep into the thickest shag carpet man ever invented. For at least thirty seconds, which felt like an hour, I used a towel to try and soak up the juice. I knew it was futile, so I threw a large decorative pillow over the spot. Years later, Mom discovered the spot when she sold the house. It was still sticky in the middle. Both moments, the mouse and the pizza, and the seven-year-old sticky orange juice spot, introduced me to deep breathing.

What did I learn? Spiritual evolution is not linear. Sometimes it’s a rollercoaster that gets stuck at the top to give you time to dread the looming drop. Sometimes, it’s a zigzag of a mouse on a pizza pie, or a meander into the funeral home to see your grandfather in a coffin, and sometimes, it’s an “A HA” moment that feels electric, or sometimes an “A HA” moment feels like warm peace. I was beginning to grow up. I was changing and accepting who I was becoming. Ellen DeGeneres said, “Accept who you are. Unless you’re a serial killer.” Wisdom for sure.

Spiritual evolution is full of surprises. I encounter truth and wisdom in philosophical conversations with children as we discuss the meaning of life and I learn it’s when Barbies have shoes that match their outfits and making cookies with Mom. I get that. I can sink my soul into that kind of life-giving answer, learning that simplicity, authenticity, living in alignment in ourselves, and warm chocolate chip cookies are underrated spiritual values.

We search for answers in ancient texts, in a profound classroom lecture or sermon on Natural Evolution holding hands with a Creative Loving Energy who began the bang and sustains us through our bings and bangs.  Sometimes the truth comes wrapped in pepperoni, hot cheese and seven year old sticky shag carpet. Don’t overlook the messengers—sometimes, they’re covered in garlic or pulp.

If we’re going to evolve spiritually, we’d best bring a sense of humor with us. Otherwise, we’ll waste precious time worrying about being “right,” and not enough time enjoying being “genuine.”

Remember a time you tried fasting for spiritual clarity? By noon, we become enlightened to the fact that our blood sugar has dropped, and we are nauseated. By three o’clock, we are meditating on the holiness of Mama’s Pizza, the sacred mysteries around how oranges came to be and who invented the first juicer, or why the meanest girls in school never get pimples.

Laughter and humor are not an interruption or distraction from the spiritual path. I believe they are energy for our journey. When we laugh at ourselves, we release the hold of unhealthy ego and make space for grace. When we laugh at our blunders, we open the door for humility to take root. If we cannot find the hug of holy love in a moment of laughter, we’re probably dealing with spiritual rigidity and stuck in the muck of outdated human definitions and concepts of who the Holy is and why we are here.

Some of our most profound spiritual awakenings have arrived not as “Oh, that was written in that time, by that person, in that place with the understanding and discoveries they had during their human journey. And ever since the beginning of humans trying to understand how to describe and talk about the essence of the Creator, of divine LOVE, being with us, there has been a bazillion fumbles and Hail Mary’s along the way, ask any football team. In 2016, I began consciously trying not to push against what is happening in the moment, instead staying with and in the moment, looking for the teaching, for the lesson. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Driving alongside raging crazy drivers, or late pizza deliveries, and now the inconvenient art of crow’s feet gift me with the opportunity to meet the moment, the reality, with grace and serenity.

Living in Lake Country, especially in a forest overlooking a lake, more spiders have greeted me than I can count. Tuesday evening, my last evening with Amy, I reached for a new roll of toilet paper only to have a spider jump out from inside the cardboard roll and land on my foot. Offering a sarcastic salutation was my only instinct. Two hours later, while my daughter and I were sitting on the couch and talking, I felt a sharp pain on my left shin, and then a few more followed. I reached down and felt seven bumps that began to itch. I leapt off the couch, threw my blanket on the floor and grabbed Amy’s blanket off her, to which she said, “What the heck Mom, have you gone crazy?” I didn’t want to tell her that I thought a spider was biting me. I ran into my bathroom, threw off my sweatpants, shook them like a rattlesnake and a spider dropped out. It did not live to give its side of the experience. I wish I could say I responded with a gentle whisper to my daughter saying, “Oh, Amy, I believe there is a brown recluse crawling inside the left leg of my sweatpants and biting me, I’ll be right back Darlin, after I take care of the poor innocent thing.” My silent prayer as I galloped to my bathroom was, “REALLY! You called me to Spider Land to love people!”

Yet in that moment, my shin boasting a pop-up museum of seven red and puss filled bumps, I understood something profound: Spiritual evolution isn’t about being flawless in our reactions to life. It’s about showing up—confused, inadequate, exasperated—and finding grace in the moment.

Sometimes, though, spiritual evolution sneaks up on us during the ordinary. In the fall of 2001, I was in the Calgary airport going through security. The night before, I had cooked Italian for my oldest daughter’s 12 or so friends for her birthday. That evening, a normal bend of placing a plate into the dishwasher invited a full-blown throwing out of my lower back. So, trying to take my shoes off while going through security was like watching Tim Conway in a sketch with Carol Burnett when he played Mr. Wiggins. A seven- or eight-year-old little boy noticed my plight and bent down, taking both of my slip-on shoes off and placed them in my bin, saying, “Don’t worry, we’re all just trying our best.”

It was a simple act of kindness, but it echoed in my heart for weeks. Spiritual growth often blooms in the unspectacular, in the small acts of patience and kindness we offer—or we receive while we are in airport security wreaking of garlic.

If we think we’ll reach a destination in spiritual evolution, I’ve got some news: The journey continues past pimples, past the pizza and orange juice, past the funeral homes, and security lines, and yes, past the crow’s feet. Our spiritual evolution doesn’t end with one “A HA” moment of enlightenment. Each day brings a new lesson, another opportunity to fall upwards. We crawl, we toddle, we leap, and we lean. But every step—every laugh, every fumble, every moment of pizza-inspired wisdom—carries us forward.

May we embrace our messiness. My Yoga teacher said that downward dog would take one to a place of spiritual revelation. That’s a big stretch.

May we laugh as much as possible while we look for wisdom in children, in shared fruit, and in aware kind children helping us with our shoes. May we practice kindness, not because it doesn’t cost us anything, but because we understand the image of the Eternal Sacred is the essence of unconditional extravagant love. And may we remember that every step we take…every ordinary step, is sacred, even when it is sticky. May it be so, Amen.