How does one begin an autobiography about
spirituality? What I think of writing is
a “religion” autobiography, but is that really spirituality? My search for
spirituality continues, so the autobiography is quite incomplete. In many ways, my spirituality does in fact
begin with my early religious experiences.
My family was one steeped in fundamentalist christianity
and white supremacy, which in my mind still go hand in hand. Not the same white privilege that all white
people enjoy through no accomplishment of their own, but the inherent belief
that white people are supreme. Superior
to all others and possess the manifest destiny to not only conquer the world,
but to save it as well.
The church I was born into and attended until beyond my
marriage was called the Church of the Nazarene.
So named I suppose after Christ of Nazareth, the original Nazarene. The church was one of legalism, based
completely on performance. The belief
system was one founded on “original sin.”
Everyone was born wicked, wrong, and sinful and in order to gain
redemption, Jesus Christ was the way, the truth, and the life. No one came to God other than through
Christ. Salvation was full and free, but
must be asked for and once found could also be lost.
Salvation was not guaranteed and if you sinned, than you
must ask again for salvation. At some
point (a point I never reached) one could arrive at “sanctification.” To my understanding, this kind of meant the
second level of salvation; that once this has occurred, the person no longer
sinned. (I may have this understanding
wrong. By the time I reached the age
that this was part of my thinking, I had begun to think the entire process was
a crock of shit.) My church believed in
baptism has an outward sign that one had died and been reborn through the
resurrected Christ.
From a very early age I attempted to “be” a good
girl. To behave accordingly and not
sin. For a female, this behavior
included submission to my parents, the
church elders, and any other adult simply because they were an adult. Age
automatically made them wiser. My father was the church treasurer and sat on
the board, my mother was the pastor’s secretary and cleaned the church on Saturdays. We attended church twice on Sundays and again
for mid-week prayer meeting on Wednesdays.
Annually there was a week-long revival, which we attended nightly. What exactly we were being revived from is
still unclear.
The sermons were geared toward making people feel like
failures. Feeling as if you were not
good enough. That just being you with
all your human foibles was somehow wrong.
Every Sunday the pastor led an alter call for anyone who wanted to get
saved. Without fail, the song we sang was
“Just As I Am.” “Just as I am without
one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me.”
I can still hear the haunting tune in my head. Several times as a child and young adult, I
was “saved.” It never stuck. I lived my entire life as a backslidden christian.
After several failed attempts at redemption, being voted
out of church membership for having divorced, and re-thinking a lot of
teaching, I left the church with a pretty big chip on my shoulder and a
sizeable contempt for God. Many times
throughout my life I have lain awake in the dark and screamed out to god for
proof of his existence. (In my world,
God and all related to him were white males.)
Equally as many times I have cried out in the dark about how much I
hated god. Actually said “Fuck You” and
told him to stay away. Even more times
I’ve blamed myself fully for the wrong turns my life has taken for having said
those words. Deep in my soul, it is hard to let go of the belief that I told
God to fuck off one too many times and he has truly turned his back on me,
rejecting me beyond hearing my cries for help or the need for proof of his
existence.
Do I actually believe this? Honestly, I don’t know. I would like to say I don’t, but sitting
here now writing these words, I feel sadness in my soul. Some belief, some regret, some thing still
lingers there. I want to know a connection with a source of peace and power
greater than myself or something I can name. I want to trust in something that
I cannot see – have faith. Trusting in
things I can see, feel, and smell is difficult for me. Trusting in humans who give me their word is
something I struggle with on a daily basis. How then do I trust in something
that is not tangible?
The search continues for the ability to trust something
outside myself, and at times to even trust myself. Early teachings haunt me, leading me to
question myself and my ability to reason. Fear enters my being at the mention
of “women’s religion.” This means wikka
to mean, which means an attachment to satan.
Whether or not this is true, I have no idea. I’m afraid to explore.
Hell has a hold on me.
I fear eternal damnation more than I fear that there may be no god. Like almost all things christian, this is not
rational. Intellectually I know that,
but emotionally I cannot escape the feelings of fear. Every once in a while the thought that today
may be the day of the rapture and I’m going to be left behind, enters my head
and I wonder what the world will be. All
these earthquakes happening recently are signs of the end times. And then, I think that’s why George Bush is
president again because christians have an irrational fear based on irrational
beliefs and elected an irrational president to carry out an irrational system
based on manifest destiny. And we wind
up back at white supremacy where this all started. A vicious circle of fear and irrationality
that keeps my mind anything from quiet, my spirit far from content, and my
intellect saying fuck you to the entire system of belief outside myself.
