We Women and Patriarchal Potentates

I've interacted with many women,
Many of them from my distant past.
It has left me in a state of confusion:
As we claim the same religious base.

Can each of us have been taught the same,
While acting out the values so differently?
How many of us have had the courage
To stand strong and proud in our dissent?

I have been most upset with those who
Sneak around behind their "God's" back,
Pretending to follow the religious rules
That damn those they claim as family.

What friend or family denies bread or drink
To those holding hands with them on their path?
How can one say, "You must believe what I do,
Or I will not serve you my words or my wine?

It seems to me that the way to see into a soul
Is to sit and share the bounty of our earth,
Inviting all who pass our celebration
To bring their gifts and graces to the table.

No one has to believe in the goodness
Before they are allowed to taste a morsel;
Let each take a taste of everything offered,
Accepting all that pleases their own palate.

It does not harm my tastes or beliefs
If those sitting beside me disagree with them.
I am simply happy that they have allowed me
A glimpse into their, to me, exotic tastes.

What if we were all strong enough in ourselves
To enjoy differences that we don't fully understand?
What if we could say what you like isn't for me,
Without offending the giver of the gift or grace?

How much better our world would be
If we honored the values of each other,
Knowing that business and personal beliefs
Require different sets of rules and regulation.

I may never like the person who pays my salary,
But I must honor the values of his responsibility.
In my life outside business, I can experiment;
Responsibility, over myself and children, gives authority.

Mothers should have authority over their own children,
And fathers should preside over their own responsibilities.
But we should not listen to those who assume authority,
While offering no commensurate personal commitment.

I'm through with women who are "She who will be obeyed"
And the males who think they are patriarchal gods.
Relationships based on responsible compassion attract me;
There seems no religion that is based on that model.

Dare I Bungee Jump?

Why did I not remember so many women and so many names?

It was as if I had spent four years with only a handful of their faces.

Did so few of my high school class sisters impress me enough to imprint,

Or were only the best and brightest memories forever preserved in me?

One woman who I thought was extremely close to a grammar school friend

Seems to have lost all touch with this woman I thought was her sister.

A woman that I barely knew thanked me for a long-forgotten kind word;

Some seemed to still hold disdain for members not then seen as like-minded.

Does following a parental path and staying in one single-minded society

Forever lock us into childhood with our fears and beliefs held then?

Can one become truly reborn, destroying all past instinctual inclinations?

At what age do we become cast in stone, without ability to metamorphose?

These women who did not impact me enough to impact my memories:

Can I meet them again and have none of us affected by previous contact?

Do I have the desire or the energy to stretch myself any further 

Than the relationships that I already consider my reasons to live?

Is it our mission on earth to stay within a certain community,

Or to reach across boundaries and include all those we can attract?

Should I simply wait for those who seek out my companionship,

Or is it my duty to seek out opportunities that encompass the earth?

I may never know the answer, but I do seek to honor those

Who have worked at becoming part of my life and spirit.

May I never turn away one who wishes me a kindness;

To do so would surely deprive both of us of a new lease on life.

I will continue to expose myself to other human experiences

As long as there are people who invite me to come along.

This causes me no small bit of anxious anticipation

That I may create a climate where I owe another restitution.

May my deathbed be surrounded by only those who love me

And are ready to forgive me all the ways I have harmed them.

I want them to know that I did not seek their forgiveness

Only because I did not know that they wanted this from me.

I live in fear that I will harm others with my presence,

Often wishing that I could live alone in a dark cave.

How else can I feel sure that my life's energy will balance,

Leaving no more pain than peace from my presence on earth?

Ah, here I go again, as my mother said, with my great arrogance,

Believing that my actions could make a difference in this world.

Where am I to go from here, now that no vulnerable creature needs me?

I simply close my eyes and ears and jump off a spiritual cliff.

My Metamorphosis

We are all priests as we honor each moment,
And make sacred each moment to which we are born.
Mindfulness is the method by which we worship,
The Universal Energy manifested in physical form.

Sacred Spirit is not limited by time, form, or space;
It is possible in all that we are and that we perceive,
Like a shape-shifter, one moment as a flower,
And at another, the baby sacred sex has conceived.

The Sacred Spirit, as held in bondage by religion,
Worship being denial of the abundance of earth,
Has stripped humanity of awe in physical creation,
Making sinful our own perfectly innocent births.

They have replaced compassion with judgement,
Preaching earthly perfection of their own design.
They imagine some vocations as wages of sin,
Their leisure as signs that they pleased the divine.

Collaborative work seems to be the only heaven,
All the earth honoring the contributions of others.
Isn't it time that we go back to the beginning,
Before competition between sisters and brothers?

What we call the knowledge of good and evil
May be the advent of jealousy and competition.
Humans can choose to reclaim collaboration
Before we create our own earthly oblivion.

We must stop believing that a few will survive,
When our lack of compassion destroys our earth.
All creation is interdependently formed,
Giving each creature equal intrinsic worth.

It is impossible for anyone to predict which action
Will tip The Eternal Universal scale to its end.
I prefer to live each day as if it is my last,
And treat each life form as a trusted friend.

I am ready and willing to become cosmic dust
That nourishes other life forms in the universe.
My personal metamorphosis of matter
Seems to be the reason I was given birth.

I have no dreams about how my energy evolves,
As I had no control over the form I was given.
I only work to bend my aura toward the positive,
And contribute this energy toward universal heaven.

Post-Parenting

It is time that we stop waiting for eternal forgiveness,
When we have hurt so many on our journeys through life.
Eternity is that which we already shared with others on earth;
It's not begun at the point at which we swear eternal sacrifice.

We all make mistakes, while some intend to visit evil on others.
Repetition is always the difference in how we impact eternal life.
Greed is the greatest of all evils visited upon our earth;
The confessions of parents won't, for children's ills, suffice.

Each child has ears that hear and eyes that see their parents;
The examples of parents are those that they're lionizing.
It matters not what the church and community leaders profess;
Parents lead their children by example, not by proselytizing.

Stop, all parents, from correcting your adult children;
Admit to your wrongs, and ask forgiveness of them.
Free them to follow the paths they have been given,
And hope that, in adult humanity, to be their friends.

Homo Sapiens and Full Humanity

When we stay quiet in the face of abuse,
We are accomplices to the criminals.
The psychology set has renamed
This crime, as behavior, they enable.

When will we stop allowing the smart,
And the wealthy over-educated
To excuse their own evil actions,
And those of children they created?

Unless one is born with a damaged brain,
Or has suffered frontal lobe damage,
There are no humans who have
No ability to act as more than savage.

Even brain damaged children can be taught;
Most are still brighter than one's pets,
Because they can mimic the examples
Of one's human parental partnerships.

Society must stop excusing feral behavior
From animals that choose no self control
We have diminished the dignity of humanity
Pretending no choice against evil actions' pull.

Do we want a society where humans continue
To lock ourselves into ever smaller cages?
Drugs, alcohol, and greed are not diseases;
They are choices that a human freely engages.

We must stop running from evil actions;
We must take humanity back from psychology.
Religions have hidden behind sin for too long;
We must stop accepting their apologies.

We now have a society that pampers their pets,
While ignoring desperate human pain.
This is the wage that has been sown by those
Promoting that responsibility has no gain.

I applaud humans who bear no children;
They have heard the modern-day prophecies.
Homo sapiens, instead of blessing the earth,
Have become the earth's most fatal disease.

Rise up, all of you who believe in creating earth
As it is in heaven. We must stop waiting.
Fear of the future only paralyses humanity.
Earth is, in responsible compassion, for the taking.

The greatest scientists can no longer, all knowledge, pretend;
Princes, priests and prophets have become mystified.
Collaborative community across the universe is the answer.
That no one tribe can control the gods cannot be denied.

It is easy to continue looking back to lesser ancestors,
But humans have long-known that we are sacred vessels.
Eventually, all who accept this sacred position in life
Will live the story that Pentecostal wisdom tells.

Religions, their prophets and priests, have no control;
Full humanity is available to all those who choose it.
Humanity continues to choose our lesser animal instincts;
Un-exercised, our humanity, is in danger that we'll lose it.

Only responsible compassion defines us as human;
Protecting our tribal members is an animal instinct.
We must hold each other accountable for our actions,
No matter what our tribal members may do and think.

This is the way that humans have moved above instinct.
Free will to choose our own individual behaviors
Is the evidence of evolution in homo sapiens.
Humans are the only animals that can be earth's saviors.

What We Believe

If God is who many say He is, I know He isn't true;
He has too many of the selfish ways that humans do:
He wants us to leave our children unattended to worship Him;
What we work so hard to achieve, He destroys on a whim.
He produces children to be sacrificed to assuage His wrath,
Allowing the cruelest rulers to lead us on His defined path.

Just as people are given hope to live in peace on earth,
He gives the reigns of earth over to a new era that is cursed.
The followers of His son are now guilty for His son's suffering,
And now must live through the punishment that this sin brings.
His humans were never meant to live in peace in this life;
We were created, to this hungry god, be eternal sacrifice.

Should we believe that any generation will be given the keys
That will finally this, eternally insatiable godhead, please?
I think not; I don't believe Eternal Sacred Spirit is a godhead,
Ancient symbols for what innocent humans were taught to dread.
I believe The Sacred Spirit is meant to be eternally mysterious,
Only manifested in the responsible compassion of all of us.

Religions seem to be created to limit our understanding,
So that we each, like cattle, accept their tribal branding.
This may have served before the fullness of humanity,
But this does not promote peace in global community.
I refuse to accept an eternal Sacred Spirit that is limited
By faces, and feats that human perception has permitted.

I enjoy hearing the awe of innocent children's discoveries;
I prefer to accept, as sacred, what the young child sees.
Children see no unacceptable colors or earthly anomalies,
Until their authority figures show that we're displeased.
When we stop allowing our fears to define The Sacred,
We'll, again, be in the eternal Garden of Eden, and naked.

One Person's Saint Is Another's Sinner

I have huge objections to the declaration of some people as saints, as I know from experience that one person's saint is another's sworn enemy. This was the case with me and my mother. I accept that I simply brought out the worst in her, as did most of her motherhood ministry. Woe be to anyone for whom she felt the responsibility of leadership! Even homemade exorcisms were not beyond her attempts to drive the demons out of those for whom she was responsible. For this, she was never without much "holy" water.

As a very strictly devout pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic, she spent her life ministering to all the poor and priests in the parish, in which, unfortunately, she did not include her husband and nine children. We were left to fend for ourselves as she filled our home with drug addicts, whores, and unwed mothers. Daddy would come home after weeks on the road with his job and find no room for him in his own bed. When any of us objected, we were banished, many to mental hospitals.

Banishment was consistent with her religion, as Roman Catholic hierarchy regularly denies the sacraments to those who displease them. They even claimed the power to either hold open or closed the gates of eternal banishment into hell, which closely resembles a mental hospital ward.

My mother was greatly honored by the archdiocese in which she lived for fifty-five years, even receiving a medal from them for her services to their religion. Though she will probably never be officially canonized, many in her church parish and beyond considered her a saint. I have had to protect myself and my children from her "ministry."

Mama rejected the idea that any of her children who had left the Roman Catholic religion after much abuse at the hands of priests and others of the church, could ever live as "Christians." This meant that she was going to her eternal reward in heaven with her "God" without most of us, and she was okay with that idea. Daddy followed her religion, even as he beat us until we bled to purify us to the standards that Mama thought we should live, as dictated by their religion. He would be in heaven with her, and without most of us. How does a mother live like this?

I accept that my mother's ministry to others sanctified her and brought much peace to those to whom she ministered. I even have flashes of times when, to me, she passed on some of her saintliness.I have flashes of memories of my mother in the kitchen that make me feel at home with her. I still see her joy when her wealthy relations sent clothes that fit me perfectly, and when her wealthy aunt sent her money for a brand new coat for me. We went shopping together, just the two of us, and picked out a black and tan herringbone pattern wool coat with offset large black buttons and a matching scarf. It was so elegant! I see her fitting me for the dresses she made for me the summer I was sixteen, before I went away to a Catholic summer camp in Ashville, North Carolina.

I learned to cook through watching her and made that into a way to make a living. I learned to dress elegantly from watching how she reacted to my attire, and used that elegance to draw much money and other ministry to many worthy causes. I brought up two children who serve others every day of their lives with their open arms and hearts, while still prioritizing their own families. In her eyes, all of this was simply arrogance because I did not attend her church and worship her jealous, vengeful "God."

My avoidance of my mother was not because I didn't see her saintliness; it was because she continually pointed at my father, me, and my siblings as barriers to her perfection in the eyes of her church. "How could such a devout mother have such a non-Christian family?" she would regularly ask of other adherents of her religion. We were simply crosses that increased her suffering with "Jesus." Motherhood was her entry into heaven, with or without her children.

I believe that saintliness is a personal thing that we pass on through service to individuals. I will never understand the inability to see and speak of saintliness in one's own family and friends without it being sanctioned by a bunch of people who never really knew that person. I will also never understand the resistance to singing the praises of those who do righteous things with their lives, while we are never at a loss for words about the evil people perpetrate.

I embarrass many with my enthusiasm for their goodness toward me. They seem to think that any acknowledgement on earth for their efforts somehow diminishes the price that they must pay in this life in order to cleanse themselves for the next. I simply don't understand why anyone would worship, or even acknowledge, a "God" who would make them for such a lousy life.

I don't care who the Roman Catholic Church says are saints; one person's saint was surely, toward many others in their lives, a sinner. Nobody is meant to know how the scales were balanced by each person by the end of their time on earth. I am simply sorry that what I often attempt to do as good makes so many feel so bad. My mother probably felt the same way while she was performing her "holy" water "exorcisms."