It all started with my grand parents. Their books. How they saved my mother, younger sister and I. To all extents and purposes, at the age of six I "woke up" one day at their house and began a journey of discovery.
Of course the journey started six years earlier with my birth. I have a few memories of those years. Not many. But true ones. Decades later my mother blanched and reached for her cocktail when I shared one of them. She had hoped that I had been too young to remember.
But I have never forgotten the sound of screams, the sight of blood, and a baby crying. I don't know if it was me or my younger sister. On some level it doesn't matter. We were all hurt, including my grand parents. They were torn apart by fear for their daughter and grand daughters. That is why my grand father and Uncle John came and rescued us one day. That is why I woke up to life at my grand parent's house. That is why I couldn't learn to read fast enough.
Learning to read saved my mind and life. I could disappear from the fear and sorrow that I now know was the legacy of violence, PTSD. Yes, children do suffer from it. I was able to pour myself into books and my grandparents had shelves of them. I couldn't get enough of their house and explored every inch, including the attic. And there I discovered a treasure trove, one that sparked my life long love of fantasy and science fiction - my mother's old Oz books by L. Frank. Baum.
Learning to read gave me something else equally important. It gave me role models to follow. It gave me stories of children and adults who overcame tremendous odds. It gave me examples of love and compassion, of fear and sorrow, of courage in the face of evil. The books let me know I was not alone in this world. Reading allowed me to explore large questions about life and death, love and hate, meaning, morality, and more, something I have never stopped doing.
So why am I writing about this? What does this have to do with Jesus? What does this have to do with anyone outside myself? My preference would be to not write this at all. But this past Easter Week, Indiana Governor Pence's support of the erroneously named Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the resulting push back, tipped the scales. It was wonderful to see so many Christian denominations stand up to such hateful bigotry. At least some people noticed that there are more than just one kind of Christian, in spite of right wing theocrats decades long efforts to silence other Christians and make them invisible.
I don't consider myself a traditional Christian of any kind. I haven't attended church in decades, nor do I think the Bible is something other than a book written by human beings. I view the Bible as many things, including a Rorschach test, one that reveals far more about the reader than any divinity. What has been revealed by the Theocrats' use of the "Good Book" says everything to me. I find their use and abuse of Jesus to justify their bigotry and lust for power utterly offensive.
But then, I find the use of any religious, economic, political, or philosophical system to do harm the same way. What someone does or does not believe doesn't matter to me. How they treat others does. Jesus isn't a god to me. He's another role model. He's another human being. He is someone else who was hurt and yet rose above it. Someone who cared about others, no matter who they were, especially the children - all the lost, broken, and forsaken. And I was all of those things. Like Gandhi - I like Jesus very much, but not far too many people who claim they are Christians.
Like so much of my life, Jesus came into focus at my grand parent's house. One day, a beautiful creche sitting on its own table by the side door appeared in the entrance hall. Sun light streamed in through the windows, warming the carefully made figures of Mary, Joseph, the Wise Men and the baby Jesus.
I stopped dead in my tracks and could not stop looking at the infant in the manger. I knew he was going to be hurt and wanted to protect him, wanted to save the "savior." The child I was could not bear the thought of another child being used so poorly, so selfishly. That is what it seemed to me at the age of six. I didn't want him dying for my sins and I was pretty sure I must have had a great deal of them. I was marred, broken, struggling and knew I could not save him.
Instead, he helped save me. Not in the fundamentalist, literal reading of the Bible, sense of the phrase, but in a deeply personal, humanistic, one.
In my life time I have sung Bach in a church choir with tears running down my face, cursed God for his narcissistic cruelty, been called a Bodhisattva, a witch, and a tree lover. In my life time I saw a child version of myself calmly climb up onto God's lap to sit down and tell him her concerns, what she had to do, and the tender care with which he listened.
In my life time I've been told by "good" Christians that I'm damned to hell. In my life time I've been told by others that I'm engaged in fairy tale thinking and afraid to examine my beliefs. In my life time jettisoning God and being star stuff was more than enough. In my life time, I lifted up my naked, bloody, battered and broken self to God, demanding to know if he could love "this," for whether he could or not, I had to.
In my life time, one day the resurrection story of Jesus became something else. It was no longer a story about one man or even the supposed son of god dying for our sins. It was the story about all of us who have faced times we were certain would destroy us. It was the story of how we are not alone with our pain, fear, and sorrow. It was the story of how such things are not all there is to us or life. It was the story of how we can and do rise again in spite of what we thought would crucify us.
In my life time, I would re-read Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings once a year to help make it though my child being in and out of hospitals. When fear for my child became too much, I needed the reminder that there was hope, that in spite of it all, we could go on.
Sam's speech in Peter Jackson's movie, The Two Towers, is as much gospel to me as is the Biblical commandment to "love one another."
As a child, Nancy Drew was a revelation. No battered woman she. She gave me an example of what it was to be an intelligent and brave young woman. The list of books that have informed my life could go on and on.
Jesus, the Buddha, Tolkien, Baum, and countless others have and are helping me find my way through this living. My grandmother's flowers, her trees, the walks through the woods, all spoke to my child heart. They have never stopped doing so. The natural world is simply my heart's home. When it hurts, I hurt. All of it, the books, the love of leaf talk and earth wrangle, are part of an ongoing journey, one shared with many.
I have gone on far too long and imperfectly. But too much is at stake to remain silent any longer. Good people of faith or no faith at all need to come together and speak up. Perhaps this will help in some way, a small reminder that whoever you are, you are not alone, and that there is some good in this world worth fighting for. You are part of that goodness.
We are, after all, on this journey together.
Blessings to you all.