Monday, July 23, 2012

What's a Woman to Do?

One of the craziest things I've ever done, I did when I was about seven years old. I decided that if anybody I loved was going to hell (and I was pretty sure that my big brother was on that path, considering how "bad" he was) that I couldn't be happy in heaven looking down on them suffering. I made the decision that if all my loved ones weren't in heaven with me, I didn't want to go. I was also pretty sure that all the people in heaven were going to be as boring as my big sister who was a "saint."

This started me on my path to perdition, and I'm still stuck in a hell of my own making. I've spent years, frantically trying to "fix" my family so that I could be with them for all eternity. Now I'm not sure how to stay out of the pit that I dug. The friends who have fortified me with their faiths are tired of hauling on the ropes that have kept me from fully failing. It is time that I allow them a rest. After all, my family is not their garden to tend, and neither is it any longer mine.


I have struggled mightily to come to a peaceful path on which we can all take our time getting wherever it is that we are going. I believe that the Bible is full of the same sorts of stories. This is why I write my adventures and want to hear those of others. I only wish that my faithful, faith-filled friends would stop being convinced that those who don't swallow every word spoken or written by the prophets of the past dooms people like me.


I'm comfortable with not "knowing" what "God" looks like or "sounds" like on a universal level. (I used to believe that "He" spoke Latin.) It matters not to me whether the mother of Jesus ever had marital relations with her loving husband. It also matters not to me whether Jesus was simply a very well-behaved man while he walked this earth. I don't care whether it was actually "god" who told Abraham to sacrifice his son. I do believe that it was definitely a "Holy Spirit" (perhaps Abraham's own wife) who turned the course of religion by stopping the flesh sacrifices to the gods.

I believe that we "Chosen" people are to seek justice in this world, and that anyone who has truly loved another with unselfish actions is contributing to "Peace on Earth," and that this is the fulfillment of " No greater love has a (hu)man than that we offer our lives for each other." Communion, for me, has nothing to do with wine and wafers. It has everything to do with celebrating our lives together.

And, I believe that while many of those I love seem like they are living (or lived) hell on earth, they will never be fully in hell as long as there is even one bit of their love left in those who were (are) loved by them.

Go in peace, you are all blessings to me. I only hope I'm strong enough to contain all the celebration I feel when I see those I love. When I let it all out at one time, people are scared, rather than comforted. What's a woman to do?