R-e-s-p-e-c-t, Find Out What It Means to Me

The other day, my Dad asked me what I thought Jesus’s message was after I complained about my brother’s everyone-is-ungodly-but-him approach to theology. I answered without having to even think about it: “That everyone is equal and everyone is a child of God, but some people don’t understand that, so you have to keep on fighting ’cause it’s what Jesus would do.” It was the first time anyone in my family had ever asked me what I thought about religion or God, instead of telling me what they thought I should believe. What struck me the most was the respect inherit in asking instead of telling. It’s such a small act, really, to ask instead of tell, yet it was most definitely a profound moment in my relationship with my Dad.

I’ve never had much of a relationship with my Dad. Growing up, when he wasn’t at work, he was emotionally distant. After a lifetime of him never really being there, it seemed normal to me to act as if he wasn’t. It was only after moving halfway across the country that Dad and I actually began talking to each other and getting to know each other as people. What I’ve learned is that my Dad and I share a lot in common, most of all our ponderous nature.

The entire issue that had caused me to call my parents in the first place started when my brother compared gay people to dogs and said that they were not the children of God. I wrote him to tell him that he was wrong and that I didn’t want to hear his hate speech anymore. This conversation eventually culminated with my having to call the police for harassment after being told that, as a lesbian, I deserved capital punishment. What could’ve ended disastrously opened up lines of communication between my Dad and I and caused us to have a more honest relationship. In fact, Dad said he was going to speak with my brother about the things he had said in the name of God because my brother called himself a preacher, but wasn’t even acting Christian.

What is Christian is to respect other people for who they are and to embrace diversity. What is Christian is to fight for equality, no matter how threatening your opponent might seem. Accept other people for who they are. Don’t tell them they deserve to die or that they’re going to hell or deserve any sort harmful thing to rain down upon them. All of us have to live on this planet together, so we’d might as well get along.

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

The Hour I First Believed

For the past several months, I’ve been considering entering the ministry. The biggest problem with this is that I’m a Quaker and there’s not a minister. In fact, Quakers believe that all are to be ministers. I floundered with this burning desire within me–perhaps enter the non-profit sector instead? Perhaps take some history job and volunteer on the side? No. No, I want to spend all my time helping others. I want to make that my priority in life. After a series of conversations with a friend currently in seminary, I began to more realistically consider the idea. It seems right to me. It seems like what I’ve been called to do all along, to minister to people in one way or another. As I was painting tonight, Willie Nelson’s haunting version of “Amazing Grace” came up on my music shuffle. I listened to it, painting my starry night. I’ve always loved the line “the hour I first believed.” I have no idea why. Perhaps because it denotes coming to where someone is presently after a long journey. I thought of myself as a minister after years of atheism from having grown up in a fundamentalist church. If I am to become a minister, I will have to speak, to relate Jesus and the Bible to daily life, to perhaps even tell bits about my own life.

As I listened, I found myself thinking differently about the line “’twas grace that taught my heart to fear.” I thought of my childhood. No, it most certainly wasn’t grace of any sort that taught me to fear. It was my brother, with his swinging fists and probing hands, his regular death threats and cruel verbal abuses. Many times, I thought death would be safer than living in the same home as he. I resent fear, for fear is controlling and abusive.

Dictionary.com defines fear as such:

1. a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.

2. a specific instance of or propensity for such a feeling: an abnormal fear of heights.

3. concern or anxiety; solicitude: a fear for someone’s safety.

4. reverential awe, esp. toward God.

5. that which causes a feeling of being afraid; that of which a person is afraid: Cancer is a common fear.

Why must reverential awe toward God be denoted by the same word that can be defined as anxiety or “distressing emotion?” No. Many times growing up, I heard the phrase “to put the fear of God” in someone. Even as a child, I was confused by this phrasing. Was God some big bad bully that would come down from the heavens to beat us up if we didn’t behave correctly? Why should we worship and revere a person like that?

This was the God I grew up with. We weren’t close. Sure, I attended Sunday school every week and sat through thousands of boring hellfire-and-brimstone sermons before fighting it out with my family where to go for supper. We kept in regular contact like some stalker that doesn’t understand restraining orders. As a teenager, I tested God’s limits. No matter how many times I dared him, he didn’t strike me down dead. Looking back, I realize I didn’t understand God at all, really. I knew the corrupted version of God that I was taught, the one that sent all women to hell and wouldn’t listen to their prayers; the one that commanded that men could beat their wives and children to keep them in line. I knew a God that had allowed me to be hurt so many times in his name, until I didn’t want to hear his name anymore, and until I was a young adult and much more serious about leaving this world for the nothingness I imagined.

Yet, it wasn’t the only version of God I knew. As a young child, my mother had told me about another God, a different God entirely, who had the same name and was a key character in the same book. Her God loved the children red, yellow, black, and white. Her God hadn’t sent my younger-older brother to hell, at all, the way Daddy’s God had. She said Jesus was taking care of him for us. His tombstone spoke of a garden up in the sky, and God needed a beautiful flower, so he plucked my brother from Earth. I watched my mother carefully tend to grass around his tombstone like fixing her child’s messy hair. I watched more and more framed cross-stitched patterns adorning the walls all over our house because Mom wanted something to do with her hands. God has plans for everyone, she said. God took my brother because it was his time, so we shouldn’t be sad, she’d say, usually while crying.

“And Grace my fears relieved.” I firmly believe that Jesus walks with me, and this is how I’ve managed to survive this long. Whether it’s God or whether it’s all I’ve been through in my life, I don’t scare easily. I protest because it’s what Jesus would do. If I’m going to live in a world with so many injustices, then I’d might as well try to make a difference while I’m here. Back in Jesus’s time, lepers were considered unclean and had to live separately from others. Jesus didn’t care. In Matthew 10, he sent his disciples to scatter the countryside and “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.” Jesus was not afraid, so I should not be afraid.

Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home.

There Will Always Be

Growing up, I was taught that there would always be war because the Bible said so. There would always be injustices in the world and people would always be unhappy until the Second Coming of Jesus, until the final battle between good and evil, when many will meet their doom, trumpets will sound, all of the dead shall rise, and the righteous meet in the skies. Therefore, our efforts should be put on saving souls to believe that Jesus is magic the exact way that the man in the pulpit believed Jesus is magic, so that the appropriately saved 144,000 didn’t unnecessarily rot in hell for all eternity, do not stop at Go, do not collect $200.

You’re poor and you stop at church asking for a bit of money or food. Are you a member of the Church of Christ, non-instrumental, Campbellite? Do you attend regularly? If you meet all of this criteria, then of course our dear secretaries or elders will help you; otherwise, allow me to turn you down, bless your heart, you heathen. Would you like to come to Sunday services, and did I mention you’re going to hell? This, indeed, was not merely reserved for strangers, either. When an F4 tornado destroyed my town when I was eleven, I suggested to my Sunday school teacher that our class (read: me, since I was the only one in it) should do something to help. She allowed this only if I could think of a family that was Church of Christ, which I did.

What is such an action supposed to teach a sixth grade child? That some people are better than others? That some people are not worth help? That there are some people we just shouldn’t care about because they’re different, and that being different is almost like bringing disasters onto oneself?

Neglecting problems in this life as a matter of dogma because the hereafter will be so wonderful is lazy and, frankly, unChristian. Christ gave his life for his beliefs, but some of his followers can’t even give a warm meal to a hungry family ringing the church doorbell? I seem to recall a story of someone turning a few loaves of bread and some fish into a feast for everyone. Who was that? It’ll come to me . . .

Once, as a child, I informed my parents that they should treat their children well because it would be they who picked out their nursing homes. There is much to be said, as well, for teaching your children well, for if you don’t, this may one day be turned on you. I believe that children should be taught to love and respect other people. I believe that children should be taught to help others in need, regardless of how different that person might be from themselves. We all have to live in the same world, and wars can only bring death and hatred, while God is love. Why not bring that love to the here and now?

Poem: the church of christ

While I am still on hiatus until further notice, I’ve written a poem and feel like sharing it. Steal it and die, etc etc.

the church of christ

the woman in the mirror
stares at the bags under her eyes

they said daddy had the cancer
and her momma knew
he’d be called home just like her baby boy
on that heavenary phone

classmates gather around the corner
“she’s a bitch, and
she’ll always be a bitch,” they say

mother mary may i
watch another bible school boy
kiss  a colt one september morning
the way he had so often
courted his marching band trumpet
may i watch them
fall like camo comrades in a war for our souls

the sinner in the pulpit
says his savior did not die for me
while inviting me to save my soul

as i went down in the river to pray
i saw my life flash before me
like the chlorinated world that nearly drowned me
one branson vacation

did your lord deliver daniel
by doing crooked daily deeds
by making us meet our setting suns
down the barrel of your jesus gun

farther along we’ll understand why
you fuck your daughters
because they’re daughters of eve
and expect them to smile

can we need thee every hour
and be washed in the blood
of someone who loves me not
daisy petals at his feet

you raised me on a steady diet
of hate and silence
like granola prison bars
to eat away my soul
and make me anorexic for love

jesus loves me
this i know has a question mark

god is an accountant
keeping track of the revolutionary 144,000
straight white non-denominational men
lighting a cross on fire for family values

i’ll fly away on a jet plane
to a blue state that’s never heard of you
and never be your prodigal masochistic daughter
that knows she cannot pray
or speak
or think
birthing another adam to hate thy neighbors

TheKickable

Would You Stand Up for Jesus?

Throughout the United States, GLBT students face expulsion at many private universities. The Equality Ride aims to open up the lines of communication to change this.

When I tell people that I have applied to be an Equality Rider, the two most frequent responses are to tell me how awesome that is and to tell me how hard that would be. In the interview for it today, one of the questions was what were my concerns about the ride. To me, it’s not about fear. If I feared anything, it would be violence acted against me by those at the university or in the community. Yet, even this concern seems minimal. To me, doing what I feel is right is what is most important of all, and this goes beyond any concern for myself. In Matthew, Jesus said to not worry about our lives–about food, or drink, or bodily concerns, because life is so much more than even these most basic things and god will provide. Take no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. By putting my own comfort level and potentially my personal safety at risk for justice, I find myself closer to Jesus and my soul alleviated. I have every confidence that everything will work out well in the end.

Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

I’m taking this class over furniture and material culture, etc, in 19th century Britain.

And the thing is, I think I’ve understood math classes better. (Recall that I’m a historian, so math and I aren’t on speaking terms.) We talk about junk–superficial, materialistic junk–and that’s all it is to me: junk.

While the book and the professor and the other people in class are talking about working hard for pretty things and nice things being the end-all in life and, in 19th century Britain, being a sign of morality, and how Someone Else decides what we like and what we wear, and how everyone wants to be a model or an athlete, I sit here like an alien from outer space.

Are these people living in the same world as me? I look around my apartment and I see hand-me-downs, stuff from the dumpster, and cheap stuff targeted towards dorm rooms at Target and the Christmas Shoppe. I probably furnished my entire apartment for less than $100, not including my bed–an air mattress bought cheaply on ebay. As for my clothes, when I was growing up and when I lived at home, my mom and I made a lot of my clothes. Clothes in stores were too expensive or I didn’t like the fashions. I liked making my own styles and was/am frequently complimented on my homemade things when I wore/wear them. Freshman or Sophomore year of college, I asked my mom to make me a tiered skirt just like Chrissie’s in Three’s Company. The next thing I knew, everyone had to have a skirt just like it and wanted to know where I got it.
 
The only art in my apartment is stuff I’ve made, along with posters from the women’s center, a metal sign about hippies, a hand-me-down shelf from my sister, and a hand-me-down/antique Chinese checkers board and a license plate from 1952 or so with my hometown’s name on it. All the other, smaller things in my apartment I either made, was given, or bought on a trip . . . or came from a Happy Meal.
 
I don’t care about materialistic stuff. It seems greedy and shallow and soulless. That, and I never had anything growing up, so I’m not used to having junk. Instead, I spend my money on arts and crafts and my pets and random tours of places in New England. I can’t bring myself to spend $8 on a plastic drawer set at Target to put all my art stuff in, so it sits in a series of cardboard boxes in my living room.

At one point in class, I finally cracked up (it’s a three-hour-long class–it was bound to happen) and started rambling about making your home in heaven, not here on earth. I think I made my fundie roots really proud. 
 
Between growing up not only poor, but in a fundie church, it just seems NORMAL to me to not care about materialistic stuff. My mom thought it was terrible when my sister started reading Seventeen magazine and got Granny to get her a subscription to it for Christmas (Granny didn’t know what it was, but if her granddaughter wanted it, it must be a Fine Upstanding Magazine For Young Women) when she was a teenager. She didn’t like the way it focused on looks and fitting in and materialistic junk. She said it Wasn’t Very Nice and was Dirty. She wasn’t a fan of the magazine Granny got for me–Nickelodeon–but because there wasn’t really any educational value and it was often gross. (I’d have to agree, but I was ten, which made Nickelodeon the most hilarious magazine ever.)
 
I’m used to never knowing who someone’s talking about when they mention actors or talk about movies and stuff. I don’t keep up with it because it seems pointless to me. It doesn’t seem like something to spend your time learning about. I have no idea what Brad Pitt looks like or what films he’s been in. I just know he’s famous. I’m used to people acting like I’m nuts when I’ve never heard of someone apparently uber famous. I’m used to making people mix cds and they haven’t heard one single song or artist before because I dislike most of the mainstream songs on the radio because they’re all about the same superficial shallow bs. I argued with a guy in class today who said that “all” rap made people stupid and said that some rap was actually really socially conscious, like k’naan, who moved to New York with his family from Somalia to escape the war there without even knowing English. (A great big booya to mister musically unaware, tyvm.)
 
Until I started this class, I was blissfully unaware that I was apparently residing on another planet. I haven’t felt this weird since seventh grade, the last time I was in public school and was made really quite well to know I was not considered Normal or Cool. While my classmates discussed the uber goal of making lots of money to buy stuff and even discussed this as the new goal of morality in 19th century Britain, I wanted to scream: but Jesus was a socialist! But it’s better to give away your things to the poor! But you shouldn’t think yourself better than those poorer than yourself (yeah, I cracked up again in talking about people who live in ghettos)! But everyone is equal! But! But!

But apparently my classmates were the vision of a capitalistic, hedonistic society, Fahrenheit 451-style. Do you like sports? Do you, Montag? Yes, sir, very much, sir. How about you, Winston a la 1984? Yes, of course, BB. Excuse me while I back away from the telescreen and write anarchist messages in this journal I bought on the black market.

I’ve never before felt like a Jesus Freak. I’ve always just felt like myself.

Today, I quoted scriptures against gross materialism and consumerism. What’s horrible is that I found myself holding back the part about how it’s easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than a rich man to go to heaven.

What If Biblical Characters Were One of Us?

As my bus passed the Catholic cemetery, I stared at the massive statues of Jesus and Mary in their usual robes and wondered, why are biblical characters always dressed for the time period? This makes it seem like inspirational people of the biblical level are long since dead. What would Jesus and Mary wear if they were alive today? I thought about this as the bus pulled away from the red light and pondered the sight of Jesus and Mary in a t-shirt and jeans.  Would this make us think of them differently? Would this make us behave differently? What if that long-haired hippie walking down the street with some sketchy-looking people was Jesus?

Birth of a Hatred

Today, I read the editorial of a small-town newspaper. This time, the editor managed todeny the Holocaust, support white supremacy, make a racist statement towards Obama, make another general racist statement, bash the GLBT community, mock lesbians in specific a second time, make an anti-Semitic comment, and label television, radio, and teen magazines as evil.
 
Wow. Where does one even start with that? He should get a ribbon just for the insurmountable level of hatred in one article. After much cursing with a ftm Jewish friend over it all, I still find myself unsure of what exactly to say except to just scream–maybe not even profanities, but to just scream.

Behind the screams, I wonder where his hatred began. Where did he learn to hate? In discussing this with my friend, he suggested that the way someone was raised decided who someone hated and the level of this hatred. But what if the aforementioned hateful prick was the brother of someone who protested for peace and justice in the world? What if the sister of a evangelical fundamentalist hell-and-brimstone preacher was a Quaker who wanted to dedicate her life to helping others? How could one family produce such radically different offspring? Also, if they sold tickets to Thanksgiving dinner, would anyone show for the epic battle of the millennia? (Hey, you have to think of these things in a commercialistic society.)

What determines whether someone will decide to hate or to love his or her fellow man? I think the way one is raised most definitely has something to do with it. If your parents are hateful, you will be raised hearing their beliefs. If you’re raised in a culture in which everyone you’re exposed to hates the same people as your family, it stands to reason that you will be more likely to adopt the hatreds of the people around you than to go against all that you have known. In my examinations of human nature, I’ve found that people often go for what’s easiest. But why is hating others easiest, and, if hate is easiest, why would someone ever choose what is easy?

Yes, that editor is my brother. I once asked my mother where he learned to be so hateful and she transferred blame onto the public school district. Yet, I attended public school until seventh grade, and I am the polar opposite of my brother. If I were to ask the public school district in question, the finger-pointing would only continue to everyone but ourselves. I think all hate can be boiled down to fear, ignorance, and insecurity. After all, if one’s hatred continues to oppress another group into the position of second-class citizenry, that person can feel somehow superior. When things go wrong in his or her own life, the hateful person can try to assure him- or herself that at least s/he’s still better than x. But, is s/he, really? If someone’s entire existence revolves upon the hatred and oppression of others, how can this person ever be at all superior in quality? Worse yet is when such a hateful person is a preacher and spreads his/her hatreds upon a greater population through a position of influence or power. A religious group gives the hateful person a place to act out disparities to create women as a lesser sex dependent upon men or to limit other races joining a group, such as the Mormons did until the 1970s.

A quote from my brother’s editorial:

Why are homosexual groups allowed to go into public schools to entice your children into experimenting with their lifestyle and why are you labeled a ‘homophobe’ for objecting to it? Thankfully, we live in an area where there doesn’t occur–but folks, it’s closer than you think and the wolf will be on the door someday. Be vigilant and watch what your children are being exposed to. Turn off the TV every chance you get. The same goes for the radio.

I’m sorry, but people interested in fucking your children are called “pedophiles,” and they’re usually straight white males. Also, please spare me the Biblical imagery of the devil (“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” – 1 Peter 5:8). I’m afraid the “wolf” idea goes back to Little Red Riding Hood. Congratulations for getting that mixed up with the Bible, though. As for turning off the tv, I would agree–most especially for your own children, as they’re in dire need of literacy.

Why is lesbianism become the ‘in’ thing for so many young girls today? The sodomite deathstyle is revolting. Whatever happened to the days when one could look at Romans Chapter 1 and see that it is forbidden?

Yes, you see, because everyone wants to be a persecuted minority. Also, thank you for quoting Romans 1, which refers not to loving gay relationships, but pagan orgies. Thank you for not taking that completely out-of-context. Also, sodomy is a very vague word most successfully translated to refer to bestiality, so thank you for also not taking that out of context, either. Also, I’m pretty sure anyone with eyes can “look” at Romans 1. Just saying.

Why are those standing up for white rights branded ‘white supremacists’ and ‘racists’ while others are always called civil rights activists regardless of how blatantly hateful behave? [sic] I really don’t like listening to anyone gripe about their rights, but really, what is the difference?

The difference is that civil rights are for everyone, you idiot. The difference is that civil rights activists don’t emphasize one race over another because doing this is racist, as you so wonderfully demonstrated by your ignorance.

What Does It Mean to Be a Peculiar People?

Recently, a small-town newspaper editor wrote about his terrible plight with being “out there.” By “terrible plight,” I mean that someone (his “fiend”), informed him that he was getting “out there” in his editorials, so he wrote about relishing in being different just like the Bible says to be. The thing is, the way I see it, he’s not the one that’s “peculiar” in the way the Bible wants Christians to be. He’s the hate-mongering, homophobic, racist, solipsistic jerk that Jesus tells us to never be. His “fiend” is the one in this situation that I would call different because s/he was brave enough to express his/her disapproval to someone so bent on there being no diversity at all in the world.

Am I “out there” in my thinking?

I contemplated that question for a bit. My immediate response was to laugh and tell my fiend that I was simply writing from a mainstream point of view. According to the greater majority of those who comment on my scribblings, my opinions are fairly representative of this part of the state.

Thank you for agreeing with me that the world is full of narrow-minded jerks like you. You’re not unique or freethinking at all the way Jesus was. You conform to Roman hatred. People like you killed Jesus for being different. How fascinating, then, that you should choose to quote Romans 12:2 as stating “and do not be conformed to this world.” If you’d continued this quote, after all, you would reveal that the full verse states “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” The way you put it, see, sounds like you should go out being weird for the sake of being weird.  What Romans says is to have an open mind and willing to change upon learning new information about what is good and godly. Further, if you’d continued reading that chapter of Romans, you would see that it reads much like Matthew. Romans 12:9 reads “Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.” After suggesting feeding your hungry enemies, Romans 12:21 states “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” Thus, this entire chapter sings like the Christian song: and they’ll know we are Christians by our love. Where is your love for fellow mankind?

The editorial before this one was all about “wicked” homosexuals and not supporting the National Education Association for their national conference choosing to endorse gay marriage (in June–way to get on that newsflash). I’d quote it, but it’s currently lining my bird cage. After 9/11, his editorial stated that Christianity should be made the national religious of the United States and that all others should either convert or be deported or killed. Exactly how is suggesting killing everyone different than you overcoming evil with good? After all, I seem to remember this strange commandment . . . how did it go? Thou shalt not . . . kill? Nah, that can’t be right. I’ll think of it.

I think a more appropriate verse for his editorial would be Matthew 15:9: “But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” The world is full of people like this editor, people that would rather create a god that hates all the same people they do than read the Bible and put faith in action and do good for others the way Jesus did–and this happened in Jesus’s own time among his own disciples, who, too, wanted to hate the lepers and the whores Jesus befriended. It’s my opinion that these are the types of people to whom Jesus was referring in Matthew 10:16: ”Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” It’s easy to persecute others, especially when people around you are already doing that. You just join in and hope you’re not the next victim. What’s harder is to stand up and be peaceful in a violent world. What’s harder is to say it’s wrong to persecute others and that everyone is equal and risk being a hate group’s next victim.

Growing up in an evangelical fundamentalist church, I heard every week that “we are called to be a peculiar people,” which it says to be five different times in the Bible. When I looked around me then, I didn’t see anyone different than those they accused of being “of the world.” In fact, most of the people sitting in the pews around me were a lot shiftier in their business dealings than others Of The World that I knew. (Case in point: My dad’s brother, a member in good standing of this congregation, tried once to sell my dad a hot stereo, and couldn’t understand why my dad had a fit at the very idea and said he wanted nothing to do with it, and he wouldn’t either, if he knew what was good for him.) When I looked around me, I saw people who said everyone else but themselves were going to hell for being different. I saw people who made fun of people in our own congregation for being a little eccentric, but always kind. I saw people who told my mother after my brother died that she couldn’t come to his funeral because she was pregnant, and just too broken up about it. I saw people who told me my brother, who died when he was only six months old from leukemia, was in hell because he wasn’t baptized, then turned right back around and voiced their opinions against infant baptism. I saw people who would reach over my mother, sister, and I to shake the hand of my dad and not even look at we women clearly carrying the sins of Eve. I looked around, and I saw people that looked nothing like Jesus to me, and whom I never wanted to become.

Yes, Jesus loves me, but that doesn’t mean his followers have that capacity.

There Is Much to Do

Growing up, my family never missed a church service on Sundays. Often, we were made to go even if we were sick. We might have been too sick to go to school the next day, but the fate of our eternal souls rested on sitting in those hard pews for hours being bored out of our skulls each week–to miss one service was to risk an eternity in hell. So, it was with great disdain that my dad took me home one Sunday shortly after Easter when I was about eleven after I’d passed out in the church bathroom and thrown up all over myself upon regaining consciousness. Despite that I was wearing a white dress covered in my own vomit, I had to argue for several minutes in the auditorium as to my genuinely needing to go home.

As much as I might not like it, my fundamentalist childhood has shaped who I am today. When I’m sad, I often sing religious songs to myself in my head. No matter how much hurt these songs are laced with, they’ve still always been oddly comforting, even in the depths of my years of atheism. No matter how many cruel things I can remember being said or done in the name of god, I can still remember good things from my fundamentalist childhood too.

This morning, on a bus downtown, a song suddenly came to me after pondering something else. It’s a song I’ve spent quite a bit of effort trying to track down online, only to find that it’s very old (thus, not sang by most churches, just like a lot of the songs from the church of my childhood) and goes by many names when I actually can find the lyrics to it. In our songbooks, it was called “Lord, Send Me.” I’m almost certain of this. It also goes by the name “There Is Much to Do” and “Here Am I, Send Me.” On the bus, I found myself automatically recalling all the words to the first part: There is much to do, there is work on every hand; hark the cry for help comes ringing through the lands . . .

This is one of my favorite hymns because it reminds me of my Bible school teacher from fifth grade, Ms. Ruth. She was an eccentric, senile octogenarian who was placed in a nursing home before the end of my fifth grade year. When I was ten, I despised her. I didn’t have a good reason why, mind. I thought she was the weirdest woman on earth the way she acted like she was high on Jesus or something, while I pretended to do my Bible school work, but was actually drawing little birds and trees in my workbook. If Jesus made people act like her, no thanks, man. You can keep your Kool-aid. I remembered her telling me repeatedly (well, it was new to her . . .) her favorite Bible verse: Isaiah 6:8, the here am I, Lord, send me; the famous missionary verse. She closed her eyes and looked up at the flourescent lighting, quoting the verse with a faraway smile and extending her wrinkly arms up to the ceiling as if reaching for god himself. It was at that moment that I was pretty sure this woman was the craziest effing person I’d ever met, thank you very much. She opened her eyes and looked back at me, so at peace with herself with having recited the verse, and told me how amazingly brave Isaiah was for having such faith. He was willing to give up everything for god. He would’ve gone anywhere, done anything, unafraid of the consequences because he had such faith in Christ. We, as Christians, should be so brave as well to stand up for our beliefs–to stand up for what’s right in what can be such a cruel world–so that one day god will come down and we can say “here am I, Lord, send me.”

While I sat there staring at the clock that Sunday and every Sunday of my childhood, I never forgot her enthusiasm for this verse. Later, I mocked her as a crazy old lady to my mother and she reprimanded me severely for it, telling me to not call people that and informing me that she was a very nice person and she was sick of people at church making fun of her because she was different–because she wore ’70s thift store clothes and walked everywhere, because she was so happy and excited about god. I never forgot that lesson, either: the lesson of accepting people for who they are, and not judging them–or using disabilist language to describe them. By this time, Ms. Ruth was in the nursing home, and I never saw her again. She died when I was a teenager.

Each time the congregation sang this song–”Lord, Send Me”–I felt angry. Ms. Ruth was only ever herself and was always so excited about Jesus, but all the church people could do was laugh at her behind her back. The woman who taught me that we should stand up for our beliefs was mocked for being so excited about her own in her own church. Sometimes, I think about that song and what she taught me, and I’m glad I knew her, if even for a little while, and even if I was completely ungrateful at the time. Her lesson was two-fold: to be brave, and to be yourself. Those are two of the most important lessons anyone could ever teach. When I hear people make fun of Christianity as a whole or when I am protesting something I find important, I remember Ms. Ruth, and she is Sent.