(TW)
This will be a long yarn, and one that won't necessarily make sense in a linear way. I'll tell a long story because all of the parts are important...chocolate chip cookies aren't chocolate chip cookies if you forget the chocolate chips. I tell this story not because my experience(s) is so unique, but because I'm sure there are lots of folks who can relate to parts of my story.
My family wasn't religious. If pressed on what religion we were my parents would answer that we were protestants. However; although I had been baptized my family had never stepped inside a church other than for a funeral or wedding until my teens. Shortly after we had lost the family ranch to foreclosure when I was 13 and we had moved to a trailer court just outside of our little village my mother started confirmation classes, and I eventually joined the confirmation class. The most important part of why I mentioned the loss of the ranch is because the ranch was my life. The land was the bones of my bones. Since 1st grade I couldn't wait to quit school when I was 16 so I could just work the ranch with my dad, and I had no desire to ever do anything but hide at ranch, safe from the outside world. The ranch was my life, my safety, my peace, my salvation, my connection to something bigger than myself.
After we lost the ranch my dad's mental health declined as his drinking escalated, and not long after he started racking up DWIs. And not too long after that a judge lost patient's with him and said he had to go to treatment. While at Heartview for his court-ordered treatment, my mother and I joined him for Family Week...a week of groups, education, and Ovid the screaming interventionist/counselor. One night we were given the assignment to write our "your drinking has affected me in the following ways" letter. When we went back to the hotel that night I sat down and diligently wrote my letter, excited that I was finally going to get to have my voice heard. For the first time in my life it wasn't about my "poor mother" who had to put up with my alcoholic father. Finally, i was going to get validation that my life had been affected by his drinking too (not to mention my mother's mental health). But after returning from meeting with Ovid my mom reported that I was to change my letter to say what hers did. My letter went in the garbage to my mother could have her own words validated. Once again, there was no room for me.
The importance of all of that is that when I started confirmation classes the Pastor actually listened to me; he appeared to value my opinions, my words. We had many great discussions about the Bible, spirituality...and heavy metal! I felt valued, I felt heard, and my new found religion became my anchor in a sea of chaos.
Just before I turned 16 my mother decided to move her and I out of state as my father's mental health had continued to decline as a result of his drinking; he disclosed to my mother that the voices in his head were telling him to shoot her. The decision to go away was a good one, but it also meant losing my anchor. And it was a year of being alone with my mother with no support system, and no buffer. It was being all alone in a trailer in a strange town when I discovered my mom had taken a handful of Ativan... again, staying awake all night watching to make sure her chest continued to rise throughout the night because when I roused her she once again laid down the threat that the "social workers will take (me) away" and put her in the mental hospital, besides, she "does this all the time" and knows how many she can take. How many times could I do that? She gets to wake up and go back to "normal" while I carry the trauma, and terror alone. Just pretend everything is normal. Toward the end of the school year my own thoughts of suicide were growing. Each night after school I would walk the neighborhood in hopes of finding a rope that had fallen off of someone's truck so I could hang myself. After weeks of searching I finally decided the method didn't matter, instead the next time my mother would be out of the house for a few hours when i was home I would use any means necessary. But then I had a dream in which I felt the presence of "God" and I was given a sense of peace, and also the sense that if I ended my life it would not end my sense of isolation. Whether it was divine intervention or just my own psyche it saved my life. And I drew on that moment of connection to Divinity for years when the hopelessness threatened to drown me.
After a year we returned to my home state, and I moved in with my father. And I was able to return to my old church. There was a new pastor, but once again I found someone who spent many hours discussing religion with me. In my conversations with Pastor V and Pastor L I learned three things: 1. the only thing you need to do in order to go to heaven is to state that you believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins...doesn't matter what you've done in your life (yes, even H!tler), just say the magic words. 2. gay people are going straight to hell. Doesn't matter how good of people they are, how many times they say they believe; nope, they are going straight to hell. 3. Pastor L introduced the concept of predestination, and his belief that in contradiction to #1, very few people were going to heaven (himself included), that it took someone "special" to go to heaven. Fortunately I hadn't figured out that I was a lesbian yet, although I still thought it was bullshit.
What did come of those conversations though was the belief that I had to be special, pure to go to heaven. I wanted to dedicate my life to God, but I couldn't be a pastor because I was female ("god created women second, so they couldn't lead a church" {wtf}), and there were no Lutheran nuns so I had to find another way to be special in the eyes of god. So I dedicated my virginity to god- I would retain my "purity", because somehow that equated to "godliness" in my head.
So, I closely guarded my sacredness, my virginity. But then an unfortunate incident occurred, and so not only did carry the shame of the earthly act that had occurred, but I was (in my mind) no longer special in the eyes of god. God would see me as nothing but a whore since I had learned well the lesson that everything was my fault. In the eyes of god I was shameful, and unworthy of his love and grace. The anchor begins to crack.
A few months later I had my first kiss with another woman and realized why I had never had the same feelings about boys/men as my peers. And that night I lay awake praying, and crying, and finally came to the conclusion at the end of my dark night of the soul that if god would condemn for who I loved, and not by the character of my life and heart, that he wasn't the god I wanted in my life. The anchor fractures.
After putting a gun to my head one night in a tsunami of grief, I reached out to the chaplain who had worked with me and my dad during his dying process. I started going to her church in hopes of finding the spiritual connection I had once had. Sitting in a pew finding joy in the birds returning for spring, flitting from branch to branch just outside the window; and only finding emptiness and loss of connection in the words droned out from the pulpit.
The final severing from Christianity came when my church "friends", my spiritual community declared upon my coming out as a lesbian that I was a sinner and had no place in their lives (but of course, they would be praying for me). The anchor disintegrated.
My leanings toward Earth centered spirituality began as a child growing up in what felt like the magical domain of nature, though I hadn't the words to describe it as such. And I had lost that connection to the magic when we lost the ranch, but as I had sat in the pew on Sunday mornings having my heart lifted by the birdies, I started to reconnect to the magic. There was no google when I started upon my pagan path, and very few books, and certainly none in my school's library. So my initial wanderings on this path focused on what I knew from growing up on a ranch, closely connected to the land...stewardship, and connection. Listening to the wind, feeling the heartbeat of mother earth.
My connection to specific deities has been relatively recent, only within the last 12 years or so. But even as my spiritual connection had deepened, solidified, so to had my hunger for spiritual community grown. I engaged with the local pagan community, was a part of a Grove for several years, but struggled to find "connection" and "community" in our 8 times a year rituals. And with the problems I saw in patriarchal toxicity in the Mother organization I had to admit as this last year died that so to had any benefit that I had gotten from the group, and I walked away.
In what was meant to be a networking reconnaissance mission I found myself sitting in a Christian church once again. On my first visit I was welcomed by an open heart filled with a palpable love in the human manifestation of a petite little woman named Mercy. And so I came back again, and again to a church whose service opens with the words "welcome to all regardless of who you are and where you are in life's journey." Welcome. A church who "is committed to work for justice for all people and for the environment", a church whose vision includes the "desire to be an inclusive community that shares Divine love as a path to peace and justice in the world." Fortunately the service focuses more on the message than the scripture, so I can handle to Jesus, and big reason I keep coming back is that I came to the conclusion that I would rather have a spiritual community that shares my values if not my beliefs, than a community that shares my beliefs but not my values.
I don't know that I will ever rebuild my anchor, but perhaps I've found a safe place to dock for awhile.
