Rivers and Roadways

In my dreams, my niece is driving us down a winding road through mountainous terrain as the trees call their colors, reds mixing in with lingering greens against a pale blue celestial expanse, golden leaves, too, all of fall’s offerings whispering of crisp air, hintings of magic twinkling through the scenery. And she’s being her thoughtful self, inquiring as to whether or not I’m up for her mind ramblings. Of course, I am. Somehow I manage to respond despite the fullness of color and feltness of beckonings from mountains and trees calling me. And she begins to speak as the yellowest vibrance reaches my eyes. I remember my heart breathing a sigh of kinship known, of finding home in the expression of another soul, of one so alive with wisdom and curiosity sublime.

Then we’re seated across from each other in the daylight, outside once again. But wait, were we outside while in the car? That is exactly how it felt. And our conversation continues. Would that I could reproduce the words, but what is communicated reaches deeply into my moment even now as I reflect, as the dog yawns loudly in the next room, as music flows softly into my ears and the door opens, leash clasps rattling the usual greeting with Apollo’s clicking nails advancing on the day. In my dream, my niece’s spirit reaches depths of me so accustomed to being alone the words to convey such communion don’t exist. She gave me snippets of herself, layers of our ease with each other and strands of eternal unity at once tailor-made for all humanity yet uniquely spun and weaving, woven into my own tapestry of comprehension and creation, of quiet and fullness. She was being with, being with herself as she shared of herself and in so being, with me, imparting a potent stillness within myself that opened my heart and arranged my mind in a peaceful reception of grace, of beauty, and of both our bond and of myself. And of the world.

And on that energy, with such fullness, I awoke to the dawn. Sitting with the images, sifting through their import, my heart feels our union healing, restoring layers of my own curiosity and my own wisdom that were not so much lost as they were jumbled and confused by my explorations and work of healing, finding memories so jagged and dark that the effort to reclaim the little girl drowning there eclipsed my sense of life’s song, and of synchronicities calling us all home to the within of the mother and father heart of God, the depths of the lover heart of that same divinity basking, emanating wholeness. And a ride in a car along a curve-rich roadway with an ancient soul I’ve so often known, lifetime after lifetime, transports me both home and onward into the dance of knowing and creating deeper meaning from life’s many and often overwhelming reckonings. I am stilled and moved, enriched and hungry, hungrier than I’ve been in a while now, the sort of hunger that opens the senses, digs out the ears of my heart and mind, my soul resonating fullness reaching for the stars, the moon.

And as I shifted in my bed before rising, the call of a train rumbled into my reverie, a hand extending through residual dark as it slowly retreated in the dawn of a new day. Trains have always bellowed out their hellos to me in the night. I’ve claimed them as a kinship, as a reminder of my union with everyone in this beautiful and daunting world. Their unique and almost shrill insistence that I am not alone reminded me, as I nestled in the warmth of morning, of how sweetly life’s details may reach us if we’re gifted with the connections and unions most nourishing, friendships so often encouraging us to hold on in love, to reach out with hope and to rest into the beauty of being who we are despite all the memories and goings on that might scare us away from our strengths and from the truth of our wholeness in love.

Where would I be today, every day, without the love healing my most ravaged layers of being? Each new day confirms for me, particularly as I traverse this path of healing the type of wounds, rape wounds, so often disabling, so often literally wrecking lives, each second confirms I am a miracle moving through space and time, that the divine has stalked me nearly constantly or I would be dead. I know it as surely as I hear the call of birds in the morning and the sound of trains in the darkest night. I know I would not be here if I had not been loved by forces I cannot see but know exist for all humanity to receive. But I also know that we aren’t all wired to receive such without instruction, and I know that despite the bounty of such forces, we all need the real and muscled closeness of arms around us holding us tight as we shake through the worst frights, as we pick through remnants of memories, seeking clarity. We need to be with each other, not only in spirit, but in presence, in physical closeness as we weave our lives through the mountains and greet each other across tables under trees freeing us from the lie that we’re alone.

And if we’re especially fortunate, we’ll know the beauty and love of nieces, of nephews, of daughters, of sons, of mothers and fathers chosen, of lovers and friends bestowed. We’ll know our unity with all humanity through the magical works of divine appointment, those sweet encounters in dreams and in our waking lives when we reach out to reconnect, when we hold our arms open wide to receive. And we’ll seek treasures in the night, even the darkest nights, and there we’ll find the within of heaven’s richest offerings.

I’m surprised in this moment, though I shouldn’t be, to find I’m immediately transported to the richest offering my heart conjures of all I imagine and know to be heaven’s offerings, and it is that of one man’s sacrifice. He was a man, truly. And he was divine, just as we all are. He lifted us out of the mire of defeat, of separation from the mother and father heart of God, of alienation from ourselves and from each other, of darkness so dire, of dejection wrought in destructive forces and he placed us, each one, on a path of possibility, of treading slowly but steadily towards the light. And he urged us to do the work. I find that he is not the Jesus the world at large proclaims him to be from time to time. I find that he is not the Jesus insisting we claim our Christian creeds and commitments, and so this is why I’m surprised to collide with him as I reflect here. I walked so far away from all the indoctrinated world of religion had told me he was, so far away that I thought I had maybe lost the right to even declare him. But here he is, with me, holding me up through my darkest night. And despite my letting go of Christianity’s Jesus, I realize he never left me, who he truly is could not be lost, not by any of us, whether we believe his encouragement, his most precious offering or not. Who he truly is has been confused and blurred by dogmas and doctrines, by fears and campaigns of control and greed. He calls to us from within our own most deeply human moments, those moments we take for granted and even those moments we have easily demoted to secondary status. Those moments when we might otherwise stop and take a deep breath, soaking up the stillness, noting the beating heart within. Those moments when we’re caught with a gasp and a piercing longing to be claimed by another so fully and completely that we are never the same. Those moments when we laugh deepest. All the times we reach out our hands to grasp another’s when the feelings overflow and heads meet in a benediction more blessed than Sunday’s program. Those times when we know our value is something so precious, so beyond all that our world allows at this point that we feel a howl trembling ‘neath the surface of the stoic face required to remain in the day-to-day demands.

Every howl, laugh, gasp, piercing longing, every beat of our hearts, every deep and shallow breath, rends the lie of separation when we know ourselves as the hallowed and holy humans we’ve always been despite the evidence to the contrary. And when we refuse the lie of separation from each other and from the divine. It is sometimes most difficult to see our preciousness when we’re tattered and torn by rape culture, by rape itself, by toxic gender norms and rejection of the soul of being human. We’re trying not to drown in a world full of genocide, war, poverty, oppression, violence, desperation. And all I can do is run to my dreams and to the light and the love, the love both within me and beyond me, the resonance imparting grace to take one more step and then another in the eternal now. I pray that we may all be greeted in our darkest nights with the truth of our unity in love so that we might begin a work of healing, a work I know seems impossible but I also know will be accomplished by those who hear and weep the call.

And yes, I hear a passage of scripture I cannot leave out of this expression: “Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:19

Here’s to nieces and curving roadways, rivers of healing, autumn’s leaves gracing our reverie and love’s reach relentless…

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Material Commitment

Material commitment. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while in Berlin, used the words, “material commitment” in the midst of several powerful assertions. Why does that excite me? It excites me because the material is where we show what we value. And we truly must create and nurture on the physical plane those truths that affirm and protect our value as a world of humans ready for love’s work.

Work. Material. Commitment.

If you look over at the piece of furniture to your left, your eyes see a material object, no doubt. But what your eyes don’t see is the reality equally real, equally present and that is what we cannot see but through a powerful microscope: all the movement that is the solid object still there to your left or your right. We could go so far as to call that movement we’re not able to see with our eyes, “spiritual,” if we want to do that. But we don’t have to do that in order to see that someone valued something and created an object as a result of that value. Our values birth urges, urges birth values, back and forth we go with a desire to create, to do, to make real. So, that object you see exists because someone felt an urge within to create a thing and a thing now is and the urge that prompted the creation is that which no microscope can reveal. And a microscope need not reveal the urge since the reveal is in the physically present molecular stuff created. Yet that urge is just as real as the jiving, vibrating molecular stuff of every object, and more significantly, every person the world over and every urge, every longing, every belief, every fear is just as real as the airplane flying overhead, as alive and significant as every bird singing on high and when we act in the energy of any urge, we are literally weaving that energy onto the physical plane. It’s as if our bodies are the needle or the hook, depending on your preferred maker’s instrument. And we weave each day, the energy we house within our beings. Though our weaving work may not be as obvious as a coffee table, airplane or lovely bird, our work is very real.

And sometimes without realizing it, as a result of our many feelings, desires and urges, along with our creations, we have made commitments. We find that somewhere along the way, we committed to beauty, to creating beauty. Or we committed to expressing truths. And we get to such commitments by way of a series of very human experiences. We explored possibilities and we became aware of what we require to live in this life as authentically as possible. Through such explorations we arrive at a sense of our values and we recognize the commitments required to protect and nurture those values. Some of us may not realize it, but we commit when we consistently act on what we value. So many of us do this day in and day out, we lose touch with the fact that much of what we do was birthed by a commitment. Our lives feel more habitual than intentional. We literally require times of stillness to reconnect with our values, with our commitments. And for those of us with a more global sense of who we are, as we focus on our commitments, we realize the times constrain us and insist our focus be on our value and on the rewards of committing to the absolutely beautiful value of every human being on this planet. It doesn’t look very hopeful these days. Our backs are to the wall, in a very real way. How will we make real in this world the fruit of our commitment to our value? We’ll get there by seeing that just as a carpenter has the power to create a world of beauty simply because s/he wants to, we, too, have that power with every effort we put forth in agreement with the boundless value of every creature on this planet. And it starts within the one heart, your heart here and now. And you, me, they, we cannot do it alone. We are asked to see, in this age, how connected we truly are and in that seeing we can be encouraged by the love shown on the streets of Minneapolis in defiance of hate and, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, in the cities like Berlin and so many others all over the world where people refuse hate and build from love.

Because her values compel her forward into life, into appointments and many crucial events, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is weaving the truth of our value through her words and her actions as she boards a plane and lands on the other side of the world. And as she speaks truth, insisting on all our value. We, each one, literally do the very same thing daily though we aren’t often aware. My prayer is this: that we awaken to the energy we weave and begin to ask ourselves how we might be wholly who we are in love so this world can birth the age to come, a time of love and peace and plenty for all. What are we weaving through time and space? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reminds us all that we create with every tick tock slice of time within the world we are placed and if we commit to a vision of love, we can create a beautiful world for us all.

So, calling all would be weavers of love…if you speak my language, you know what I’m saying here. Let’s not see our elected officials with the broad strokes of political partisanship. Let’s see them on a more molecular jive as they move their bodies through the timeline we all reside. Let’s see their actions, weigh the accumulation of their intentions and hold them in prayerful support that they be held by love, that they be led in truth and that we, too, be thus committed to the wellness of all humanity.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wakens my heart to truths that fell into a slumber in the tides of some surreal life challenges. And I know she will continue to do this everywhere she goes because her heart is on fire. And I will say this to anyone who thinks they know she didn’t do a thing the “right” way or think she should’ve done thus and so or she did well and oh, or said this and that in such a way: her whole life is speaking and the message is undeniably authentic and life-giving. If you or I were judged by any who misunderstand us, we would be bereft of the love we must all realize materially and spiritually in our lives, a love that gives room for us to become and grow into all that love calls us to be and create. I would hope to be as courageous and consistent as Ocasio-Cortez.

Read the full quote below and ask yourself where you fit into this work of love.

“We all need to buckle up. That is the moment that we are in. But if there is any place that shows that good people can prevail over the horrors of inhumanity, it is Berlin. It is Berlin. And it is so many other places around the world that can be a front line to show that we can overcome and we can defeat fascism by a class-based solidarity that champions all of us. I think about this, I think about this, and I’ll end with this note, but I think about this very often because, of course, the universal health care systems in Europe are the envy of every American. And it is truly such a revolutionary environment that you all grow up in the universality of health care, because it really is a decision and an affirmative material commitment to everyone’s basic humanity, to human dignity. And to me, it is not a coincidence that universal health care systems across Europe were established in the wake after World War II. They are directly connected where you had all of this destruction, in all of this rubble that was built on a politics of persecution and division, but when we decided to move past that, we built material systems based on universality, affirming our human dignity. And I think it’s so important for us to recall those lessons for today as we confront many of the shadows of those similar movements.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Ocasio-Cortez is saying that, at the worst of times, a people responded to the devastation of war and hate by affirming value in love. And they did it politically. Amidst the rubble, the spiritual rubble. And we are, all of us, in a swirling whirlwind of rubble of every kind. We need to know ourselves in the center of the storm as the love we have been created to be and become, create and nurture. And we need to ask ourselves how intentionally we are living our love, and all that we claim to value as we go about our days.

On with it…

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At One and the Same Time

Paulo Freire’s articulation of the human condition, of the divide between human solidarity and alienation, whispers to me of the grueling mission of working out our own salvation in “fear and trembling”, as the scriptures state. In his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire states:

“The oppressed suffer from the duality which has established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic existence, they fear it. They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalized.”

I stop here with these words and reach deeply within my own experiences of having been ravaged by violation and oppression in my childhood and beyond. The work of healing requires intimacy with these truths expressed so perfectly by Freire. We must literally face the danger of becoming a shell of who we truly are unless we own that our living has become, or might’ve always been, a reaction against the internalized mechanisms of oppression formed in the badlands of trauma. Our thinking, our comprehension of ourselves and others is held captive by the minds of those who grasped us and shaped our sense of self, of other and of the world by their violence against us. I’ve found many internalized strongholds of self-accusation, self-annihilation and outright fear of who I am stemming from the decrees and energy directed at me by those who wanted me to forget, to never recognize their hand of oppression and violence in my life. And the damnedest thing is, I’m seeing how these constructs against the oppressor within pose as my most discerning self, the one surest of my frailty or my inadequacy or my shameful power, and even my beauty.

Freire goes on to say:

“The conflict lies in the choice between being wholly themselves or being divided; between ejecting the oppressor within or not ejecting them; between human solidarity or alienation; between following prescriptions or having choices; between being spectators or actors; between acting or having the illusion of acting through the action of the oppressors; between speaking out or being silent, castrated in their power to create and re-create, in their power to transform the world.”

And with those words I’m lifted up to an altitude perspective where my vision encompasses all the intersecting threads of choices, fears and shame extending through and entwining with life after life after life the world over, institution after institution after institution after…after every human and every human construct. These threads unite us all, a tangle surreal, though we were already united in our value, however ignorant of it.

The oppressed are everywhere. We are, until we can reach into the fathoms of our losses, our traumas, our generational afflictions, suspended in a slow motion suicide while careening through the timelines so thin, so quickly consumed by history. I think of my sisters and how we, each one, morphed into reactions against tremendous violation and horrifying oppression and how we then turned it on each other in the ways families can become cauldrons of reaction, of actions desperate and even depraved. It, if you look on the whole of it from up high there in the air, appears hopeless.

And yet. We have found ways to heal our wounds in love. And love, as a muscled, visionary, relentless, courageous, undaunted force most creative, most transformative empowers us, each one, to seek and to find discernment and healing. Who am I really? Who am I when I’m no longer afraid of my power, my beauty, my voice? And why did I ever believe that which is beautiful is bad? Violation of a certain type creates such a mindset. And that mindset then determines to erect a “do not disturb” sign on a life languishing in hope for tribe, for unity. The irony bites. But love and unflinching determination to unearth all the corpses crying out within our being wrests us from the bitterest ironies. And eventually, as we work to lift some of the heaviest of weights, as we envision a work of restoration, much like the work of surgery and physical therapy, we gradually move ourselves into authenticity, into being who we are in love. But we cannot afford to overlook the wounds more deeply embedded into our souls.

And to say it is a work of “fear and trembling” is not to exaggerate. I’ve quaked, sobbed, shook and shouted my way through some memories so unreal and seemingly unending and the work continues. And I hear, “it is for freedom Christ set us free…” and “I am come that you might know my Father…” and a passage speaking of the “love of Christ” surpassing understanding and I find myself embracing a work of salvation wrought first by one who walked this earth, one human and holy, just as we all are in love, just as we all are when we face fear, shame, and the death wrought by trauma and the ravages of alienation. And this is the Jesus I always knew though he had morphed into the oppressor by way of those internalizations only trauma etches on the earth of our being. People of every color and creed have experienced Jesus as the oppressor ‘though his life shouted freedom and love, his words whispered of union and truth. And he was presented to me via the minds and hands of those who’d brutalized my soul, eventually brutalizing my sense of the flesh and blood, bone and hum of Jesus’ most beautiful self, of his wholly being human and Divine.

As are we all…whether we embrace religion or embrace the truths present within those human constructs, constructs inspired by Divine awareness. On this side of a growing awareness of a deeper walk with the Divine all I can say at this point is this: Do not call me Christian. Do not speak to me of sin. Speak to me, instead, of the love and the relationship, the union within, the dominion of freedom and Divinity found in the deepest wells of our being, that deep calling unto deep, making us whole as we face the work of becoming who we truly are…in love and beauty. If all some of us ever desire to realize in our lives is a vision of Christ as symbol and his life as guide, if we can take that and apply it in love, facing the shame that binds us, we will find that we are at one and the same time, both human and Divine. Many people within every religion, and even within agnosticism, do the work of salvation within their souls via a process so closely resembling the Christ process we really cannot afford to lay claim to the one true path, can we? We are, ultimately, each one of us a part of the One in love and we carve our paths from the soil of our experiences, hopefully finding that unity Christ so deeply longed for us all to experience whether we embrace him or not.

On with it…

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Earth Begging

In the woods somewhere
sweet swaying songs bear witness
to wounds deep, the worst sort
of gutting, how large the teeth,
and how far I’d seeped and seeped
and seeped completely down in seed
and in a gone-ing, a yawning crypt
held and holding eruptions,
creations’ secret reddest colors
for deeply hewn stutters fluttering
across a canvas as yet unknown
‘til my heart knew
and out I flew into one,
and one and one, (yet still One)
and yet still not knowing the known
and the hiding
from a creature lunging,
a bite’s longest reach
still bleeding,
but an ancient design called,
a bridge eternal healing,
deepest love promising,
then subsiding
‘til the singing resurrection,
a transformation from tomb
to tower to long desperate hours
within hours and hours blending
miracles wending, sending
every inch of me calling,
falling up and all over every spec,
dot, bindu, wreck not wrecking
as the beckoning out
of richest colors wrought whole
and healing a song
to raise the dead,
to know the unknowing
into love flowing
rivers, a heaven on earth begging…

photo/expression by j. ruth kelly, 2017, 2025, all rights reserved

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Wander Here

photo by j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved

Wonder, dear, wander here
where will and mystery meld
a history awaiting your discovery.

Beckon transformation’s song,
fiery orange paired
with faerie floral,
and your soul will know,
grow the you held by
your tenderest self,
the one back in time still
holding sway with music,
twirling grace and heart open
to a Creator your path
eventually stripped away.

Backtrack, backtrack, backtrack
and take your hand there in mid-air
as hope retakes your truth,
the deepest knowing of love
bestowing life to all and healing
to those who weep the call.

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Roe v. Wade…

Over two decades ago on May 4th, I was in labor for the first time. At that time, I still held to the programs indoctrinating me from the age of 4. Such indoctrination included what was then, and is today, known as “pro-life” or anti-abortion. With Roe v. Wade awaiting what appears to be its demise, I feel the significance of May 4th deeply.

It would be an understatement to say that I have changed on many levels. Having left the moral incoherence that was my evangelical childhood, I look back on the woman in labor. She did not realize it, but the birth of her first child would usher in a revolution, a Psalm 23 manifestation via the divine feminine, a restoration of her soul. As she pushed, and waited, pushed, and waited, the birth of her own true self became inevitable. A truth and beauty bundle, looking at the world through one eye while squinting the other in the harsh hospital light, my firstborn would begin the process of innocently and easily shattering everything I had constructed as “me”.

I look at what fundamentalism requires of a person and the toll it exacts and I can sum it up in one word: madness. But it’s a madness that creeps. Its insidious effects multiply silently over the years until the capacity to discern disintegrates. It begins with a sense of being right and of seemingly knowing what is right and righteous, but is warped as it passes through the lens of human dysfunction, misogyny and bias. You’re so right about how important life is that you have no qualms with jailing life, or condemning a pregnant woman to die for her fetus. The likelihood you’ll ever see this sick distortion is slim since challenging it would result in a domino effect of many other challenges to a whole system of identity you’ve erected a life around. And you’ve probably been accused of having a demon, directly or indirectly, if you’re habitually assertive as a woman or vocal about situations you think need to change.

My good fortune, the work of dismantling toxic programs created by fundamentalism, was made possible by the presence of my daughter, and then the relentlessness of that work continued with each of my children’s emergence. Humanity unfolded itself in front of me in ways I had never been allowed to fathom before. I couldn’t understand the attitude of suspicion and mistrust towards children for simply being children. From there, I could see myself as a child in the past, made to feel literally demonic for being human. Alongside these revelations ran the personal story of abuse one of my sisters was living in her marriage. So, I became the wicked witch advocating with/for her in our tribe. The collision of these factors broke me open. The friction with leadership in my life, the hypocrisy revealed how a woman was seen as controlling for asserting herself or not being agreeable and how this might translate to her guilt instead of the actual guilt of her abusive spouse. These layers simultaneously transported me to the epicenter of my own humanity, my early childhood and the question of authentic choice.

And eventually, though early on in my daughter’s life, I realized everything that had been communicated about God (by actions of parents presuming to embody divine right and by the group of Christians with whom they shared community), about the love of God, revealed a God who loved less than I did. But even in that, I recognized the possibility that the God I “knew” was not the God that is. So, instead of demolishing my idea of my creator, the revelation revolutionized my relationship with the divine. The only way out was through.

Fundamentalism at its core divorces the human from her humanity. And with that divorce, all types of devastation and loss become possible. She can wish to jail everyone who has an abortion, everyone who performs and assists in abortions. She can do this because she has no idea how precious her own life is and it is only when that preciousness gestates and is born within her that she can recognize the lie in the pro-life movement. Ironically, that recognition stands more in agreement with seemingly divine patterns and the value of life itself than any notion of pro-life could do.

One of the aspects of fundamentalism that keeps it perpetuating is the annihilation of choice. Choice and agency are often sacrificed when a believer gradually and consistently immerses herself in fundamentalism. Or even just in the sort of blind faith so many fundamentalists require of each other. And yet choice is what God has presumably given us. New believers are confronted with the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve were presented with a choice. It is that story that, obviously or otherwise, ushers in the work of Christ, the one who repairs the damage wrought by…Eve. It is that moment pivotal when God says “do not”, but Eve goes ahead and does. Her “disobedience” is the main focus. And yet, what was it with this God who knows all and is in control and yet still presents a risk and a choice? We could call such a God sadistic or we could call such a God cautiously optimistic. Except he presumably knew everything. But I digress. The very act of commanding away from one thing is the presentation of choice. And ideally, choice, among other factors, is what leads us to seek a walk with the divine. Agency enables our faith that it might have muscle and movement. Acts, not merely words.

But in fundamentalism one of the strongest forces at work asks that we not think too much, that we offer up our will to God, that we trust blindly. As mentioned earlier, blind trust is so prevalent it is often the definition given of faith in God. You do not question. So, God commanded thou shall not kill. And all of this is Eve’s fault. Her guilt is the background drumbeat of everything that happened that required Jesus die for all of us. That drumbeat defines a Christian however much she may or may not realize. That drumbeat becomes the rhythm of war, war against women, war against being human. Misogyny reigns supreme in fundamentalism. It eats away at the heart of every woman inhabiting such a program. And every woman ensnared thus seeks desperately to find her value.

For the pro-life fundamentalist Christian woman, there is no cause like pro-life since it immediately condemns the other woman, ignores the ambivalent if not malignant apathy of the man, and worships conception above the actual value of one human being. How else can we explain the ease with which these same fervent believers ignore child welfare? The pro-life movement makes for the perfect vehicle by which a woman can arrive at her own perceived superiority, her own seeming redemption, her own heroic grandiose notion of herself. People who need grandiose notions of self feel deeply inadequate. I would know, unfortunately. So, in one fell swoop, a woman can decide another woman or a group of women is to blame and simultaneously become an “agent” of needful salvation through condemning any who might thwart the prolonged gestation and resulting birth of a child. She can see herself as superior to “those women”. And even better if she, too, births her own. Women, within fundamentalist Christianity, are at once the damnation and salvation of the world by sheer “virtue” of the presence of a womb. On the one hand, the womb-bearing Eve damned us all, and on the other, the womb-bearing Mary saved us. That fundamentalists mostly take the Bible literally, the moral confusion required to live within such a construct is breathtaking in its devastation.

Eating away at the heart of the fundamentalist Christian woman is this determination not to think or even question the inner tyrant/God. And when you’re encouraged not to think, you’re catapulted on a path of insanity, particularly moral insanity. Intellectualism is scorned, and by that fact, critical thinking is also lost. Besides, it is the thinking that got Eve in trouble. She entertained questions about God’s command. Hath God said? There’s no blind faith (hence no “authentic” faith) in asking questions of the great commander.

The program underpinning fundamentalism is the ancient equivalent of what any domestic violence shelter would identify on the power and control wheel. You will submit. You won’t question. You dare not even think there might be a question and you only do what the masculine deity deems doable. Also, have babies. Also, you owe God who delivered you from hell and damnation. But hey, freely you have received, freely give. Gaslighting 101.

While it’s not the cure for all fundies, having a daughter wrested me from the power and control wheel that had run me over all of my life. She was, and is, sheer delight dancing, asking, insisting, disrupting, being human. Certainly, for a season, she reinforced my pro-life vigor. But not for long. There is nothing like motherhood to strip you of any fantasy that you are superior, or immune to failing and there’s nothing like feeling compassion for your children to awaken you to your own need to show compassion to yourself, and from there, to the world. I became obsessed with choice in general, with what makes a choice and resulting life paths and circumstances authentic versus choices made under a situation of duress. It struck me that inhabiting a situation free of a measure of duress was nearly impossible, but it also struck me that authentic choice might be the holy grail for healing my wounds. Having watched my daughter dance around freely in the love of her parents, I recognized I’d never known such freedom and so my choices had rarely been authentic. From there, it became obvious I had work to do to birth myself.

Where philosophies of choice and freedom are concerned, I’m a work in progress. But I’m clear on one thing: the right to choose is what births authentic living and makes love possible. If my daughter wanted or needed, and I make the distinction intentionally, an abortion, I would volunteer to drive her, be there, whatever is needed. I am changed. There’s no part of me torn on that. Do I have preferences? Do I wish we lived in a world where abortion wasn’t even necessary? Hell, yes. But we don’t live in such a world. Abortion is an honorable, legitimate human need. But Roe v. Wade stands today threatened by forces political and religious, forces feeding off the inadequacy and erosive moral insanity spreading like poison in the hearts of confused, lost people. People who call themselves found by Christ and saved. The irony reeks. That I rage within myself at once condemns me, since I know the enemy well, and reminds me of how complicated we all are.

What makes a pro-lifer tick? The ones that vote for the political contortionists pretending faith who would sooner keep women in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant and people of color in chains, what makes them tick? A million little pivotal happenings and woundings and poisonous winnings make them. I can look back on many such goings on in my upbringing.

I’m reminded of moments when I mentioned psychology to my parents. They would invariably dismiss me in disgust, using some retort that included the smear “it’s so humanistic.” As far as I could tell, to be humanistic equated to evil, to all that is not Godly. It baffled me every time. The only conclusion I could draw was the only one provided me and that was that just being human was wicked and that is what we were perpetually being saved from every single second of every day we believed in Christ. If within that atmosphere you are parented by even just one parent who feels it their duty to smash you in the name of Godly parenting, you are going to end up a hot mess raging at the one issue that somehow dovetails with your desperate need to be seen and known as legitimate.

Fundamentalists, those in the trenches living their lives in delusion and hate all while believing quite the opposite, are also capable of love, even of critical thinking. However, at any point where their thinking might collide with their faith, all cognitive capacity is subsumed in the perceived superiority of *the truth*. And *the truth* is the sum total of a hatred of being human, a hatred so insidious it would convince a woman to wish imprisonment on women who’ve had abortions. The men in these issues are so easily understood, it’s not worth dedicating a whole post to their motives. Thus far we have not managed to market or sell birth control pills for men though they have been created and ditched due to the side effects they would cause. All the while, women pop birth control pills whose side effects are the equivalent and even worse. All the while, many men, I realize not all, loathe condoms. All the while, many men distinguish themselves in their obviousness.

One phrase in particular became one of the many crowbars wresting me from the confines of my oppressed upbringing and all the programs that upbringing asked that I carry into adulthood. That phrase: “God saw that it was good.” Saw that it was good and the evening and the morning were the 6th day. Over and over, the creator saw that it was good, that what was created was good. My brain then said, oh, so, my brain is good. My having critical thoughts, seeking to discern when choice is authentic is good. My questioning who translated and chose the texts that would comprise the New Testament is good. My weighing what motives influenced the compilation of scripture was good. And not only that, but if love bears all things, then God can bear my questions. And if God knows all and I hide my questions in fear of being seen, then I have less integrity than if I presented them with a bellowing, angry cry.

I nearly lost myself in the years and years of bellowing angry cries, parenting three complicated humans. And while this post might be construed as propaganda for women having children so they, too, might be born and wrested from their fundamentalist confusion, it is not. I am one person, former fundie. By no means do I make the argument for anything except this: fundamentalists are a terribly wounded, confused slice of the population who should not influence the outcome of Roe v. Wade, and if we’re to avoid this in the future, we may need to consider our attitudes towards them as human beings. Demonizing them will only feed their delusions of grandeur.

The problem with fighting for Roe v. Wade and choice is wrapped up in the fact that those who most oppose it do not even value choice in their own lives and most especially in their faith. Certainly, any state or federally declared mandate is something that will get their hackles up about their freedoms and choices because they can see it as an attack, ultimately, on their faith as it is an attack on their person and the two are one and the same. An example … mask mandates. That they can say, “my body, my choice” in that instance is proof of their insanity while simultaneously proof that they have been taught that their only allowed use of the right to choose is in protest of anything that might threaten their religion. For diehard fundamentalist Christians, agency and choice are only valid so long as they are utilized in defense of or perpetuation of their faith. The basic human need for autonomy is consigned to any possible crusade in defense of their beliefs. The amassed frustration crouches, awaiting any opportunity for expression.

So, when we scream in contempt, when we mock, when we hate their hatred, we feed their sense of righteous persecution. We throw fuel on the fire. There’s not one single word of contempt that drew me out of fundamentalism. Kindness birthed my true self and continues to this day. Critical thinking, as a gift from my creator, liberated my mind.

I’m not proposing that we not scream and fight against the lies bombarding our liberties in this time. We just need to look on our work to protect basic freedom as a work that includes a slice of humanity enchained in lies. It’s important to recognize that generational fundamentalist nonsense requires epic soul-level disruptions and awakenings to be ousted. Most of these disruptions ideally come through love’s work. I find myself at a loss as to how I might voice my valid rage over the onslaught against women’s rights without fueling the enemy who is my fellow human.

I don’t know the answer for how to avoid fueling the insanity fire except that I might avoid contemptuous, hateful, insulting expression hurled in their direction. I confess there are times it is impossible to be anything but those three destructive things. In fact, today I retweeted something about this very issue and referred to the lawmakers in Louisiana as demonic, life-hating, murderous jackals. There are times when the truth, when hurled in the direction of those who are fundie who have wounded you, will be brutal. That truth is made brutal by the fact of the offenses against you, not by your calling it out for the brutality it is. The line between truth that is brutal by default and truth that is contemptuously destructive is a fine one. I would know. I have crossed it repeatedly in my rage and in my experimenting with what advocacy does and does not look like. The good news? Love has found me on either side of that line and I’ve been able to grow.

The challenge is to not confuse contempt and hate for advocacy, the real sort of advocacy that facilitates liberty and hopefully captures eternal truth, truth like the fact that we are all of us, each one, immeasurably precious, complicated humans. No one, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, Wiccan, or otherwise is immune from fundamentalism’s poison. And my hope is that we will become more and more creative in our efforts to further champion a truly humanistic work. As far as I can tell, humanistic work best defines itself when that work encompasses a love whose natural by-product is the gradual dissolution of the ever-encroaching threat that is fundamentalism.

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The Worst Thing…

“The worst thing we ever did
was put God in the sky
out of reach
pulling the divinity
from the leaf,
sifting out the holy from our bones,
insisting God isn’t bursting dazzlement
through everything we’ve made
a hard commitment to see as ordinary,
stripping the sacred from everywhere
to put in a cloud man elsewhere,
prying closeness from your heart.
The worst thing we ever did
was take the dance and the song
out of prayer
made it sit up straight
and cross its legs
removed it of rejoicing
wiped clean its hip sway,
its questions,
its ecstatic yowl,
its tears.
The worst thing we ever did is pretend
God isn’t the easiest thing
in this Universe
available to every soul
in every breath”
Chelan Harkin
From her poetry book ‘Susceptible to Light’

photo by S. Isaac Kellogg, 2020, all rights reserved

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