The most at-home I've ever felt was within the tenets of Unitarian Universalism: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
This principle was echoed, once I found Alcoholics Anonymous, in Steps Two and Three:
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
There is a common theme here: to each seeker their own pursuit of truth and meaning.
I needed this. For I was someone against whom religion was used as a weapon, during my formative years. As I've shared, it was a living hell growing up in Appalachia being someone who was divergent in so many ways. Because of this, those who belonged to the predominant faith saw me as public enemy number one.
Going through this as an adolescent was hurtful, horrible, and confusing in ways greater than I can articulate. Coming out on the other side, in the looking back, this fills me with such sadness because the kind of pain that was inflicted upon me by those who did so in one particular name of God, they're still at large. Only now, they have big, loud platforms on social media to blast this energy at those who are but young versions of who I used to be.
This is bad for a variety of reasons, but the chiefest reason of all: people who act in hate while doing so in this particular name that God is called alienate people who potentially, like me, perhaps need Them more than they even know.
Paganism always came very naturally to me, and it still does. In ways that I'm still working on fully being able to explain, my own personal conception of gender identity is feminine in a way that's much more like Creation and much less like the cis definition of female. I've always had a fluency with the natural world; I came into this world with an old Wiccan soul because that's how I was made. I identify with the Mother of Creation.
The "Christeo" addendum to my pagan self wouldn't come until much, much later.
I grew up as neurodivergent, a person of a divergent faith, and queer in several different translations in rural Appalachia at a time before the internet, with no support, and yes, to those of this culture, this resonated to a number of them that this must mean I had a demon.
Yes, I'm not exaggerating when I say I experienced people try to cast demons out of me. I was even accused on one occasion when I was sitting in church with my parents of trying to put a curse on the preacher. That's just the way they saw things. I'm not even going to sit in judgment about it at this point. This was their worldview, and I've let it go. I just happened to have the misfortune of being stuck in the middle of it until I finally escaped to college. But I digress.
Because of the attitudes and bigotry with which I was assaulted in the name of the God of the Bible, I didn't end up feeling angry and hurt by the people engaging in these actions. At the time, I certainly did, but in the long-run, I directed that anger and hurt at this particular religion, at this particular name of God.
Honestly? How could I have done anything less? All I knew about this religion, according to these self-appointed ambassadors, was that God hated me because I was queer and I was going to hell; God hated me because I was a witch and I was going to hell; God really, really hated me because I'd had sex and lost my virginity and boy oh boy there was no undoing that so, yep, I was super duper double damned to hell...and so it went.
Everything that had ever been helpfully pointed out and clarified for me by these people was that I not only had no place in their faith, but in fact, it was all fire and brimstone for me from there on out.
Fast forward almost two entire decades. This would be how long it would take before I ever learned the first thing about how the vitriol they were spouting had literally NOTHING to do with what this faith was actually all about.
I need to pause here to take a moment and reiterate something: this type of person isn't at all consigned to rural places. They are everywhere. They're still alive and well, still doing the same damage.
I think the common name for this type nowadays is "Fundie." I really do try to avoid resentment, find forgiveness for all things past and present because, if you know anything about sobriety at all, you know that this is an integral part of staying sober. But I have to say, I struggle with feeling a lot of disdain toward this type not only because of how much they hurt me, but because of how much hurt and hate they are continuing to put out into the world... and how it is worse today in a lot of ways because at least then these fools didn't have a global platform.
If you're someone who is at all attracted to my books (which I hope potentially at some point by the time someone is reading this are actually published), then you'll already know without my having to get into great detail the type that I am talking about.
Fun fact: Jesus Himself didn't even have the patience for them.
I'm not joking. I'm not even conjecturing.
And yes, brace yourself... I am about to quote some scripture. If you are in a place where you cannot abide this, I understand. If you are able to endure this with an open mind, please read on.
This is what He had to say:
"Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you—but not what they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others." -Matthew 23:1-39
“Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” -Luke 20:46-47
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Alright, let's consider this for a moment. This describes every single person who ever heaped hatred on me in the name of God.
And furthermore... it also describes the present-day Fundies who have appointed themselves as ambassadors of Christianity and sop up likes, subscriptions, shill merchandise, push for self-promotion all day long on social media platforms.
Jesus even got specific about that, too:
"Be careful not to do your `acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." -Matthew 6:1-7
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All in all, the Fundies are everything that Jesus clarified that He doesn't approve of...while paradoxically, according to this set, they're righteous and the rest of us are, you know, damned in varying degrees.
I've been on a social media blackout for two years. And, as I've expressed, I am writing my books and this blog under a pen name. A huge part of these choices is one which is very intentionally spiritual. It is in alignment with the reason that Alcoholics Anonymous is "anonymous":
"Back in 1948, Bill W., our co-founder, wrote: 'One may say that anonymity is the spiritual base, the sure key to all the rest of our Traditions. It has come to stand for prudence and, most importantly, for self-effacement... and to each of us a constant reminder that principles come before personal interest — such is the wide scope of this all-embracing principle. In it we see the cornerstone of our security as a movement; at a deeper spiritual level it points us to still greater self-renunciation.”
I came to first accept and then appreciate the fact that I could never publicly identify myself as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous if I were putting my face and my real name out there. It would violate the most sacrosanct of all traditions that have held the organization together for almost a hundred years.
Then I went further, because... Honestly? Who I am doesn't matter.
Who I am, how I survived to even be where I am, I do not believe that this is something that I even did. I believe that all of it is the result of God as I understand Him working through me. And over the past six years that I've been sober, this caused my priorities to shift.
These Fundies are the modern day Pharisees. And if my mission, the whole point of my novels, the whole point of my life today is to help others...if I am going to be effective at all in doing so, then I have to get me and my ego the hell out of the way...or else I will be no better than any of them.
Over time, I learned that true Christianity has NOTHING to do with what the loudest, most hateful of these Fundies as I was growing up, and the reigning proverbial Instagram Pharisees of today. Once I had done healing in recovery, and I followed the Big Book's suggestion to approach all religions with an open mind, I discovered that Jesus wasn't at all what these fools tried to act like He was. And there are plenty of parts of the Bible from which I can draw inspiration and use to weave into my own spiritual conception.
As time goes on, I'll likely talk about Big-G God. I may share verses from the Bible that resonate to me. But I want you all to know: this is but me still working out what my faith means to me, my still engaging in an active free and responsible search for truth. You must by all means pursue your own.
I would just ask that you consider what I've just shared in the event that I do get into something that has inspired me from the Bible. Please understand that it doesn't mean that I'm one of those haters. I'm not. They hurt me as they may have hurt you. I'm just simply finding myself and this is only a small piece of what is helping me pursue peace and meaning.
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