God Shopping

VAGINAL STATUS: Holy

This is my theory about how religion works: You go to the showroom and you pick one out.

Since no one knows the whole truth about the Bigness, we all conjure a version that suits our needs. It seems that trust in a larger Plan/ner is a basic human drive, and faith meets emotional and social needs as well as spiritual ones. I do believe faith generally helps people, that it’s good for us. But whether inspired or delusional every culture through all of history has come up with divine explanations to make meaning. Though some individuals always opt out of these explanations, building a cosmology is among the first tasks any emerging civilization completes; forming communal belief systems is what we DO.

So find the one that fits you. You want something reliable, not too flashy and not too expensive? Most American Protestant sects will help you out, I had a shine for Methodists. Need something to accommodate a big family? Mormons offer the mini-van of religions. Looking for an infinite number of chances to wreck and try again? Hinduism. Something fast and flashy for the social climber? Scientology. You want a classic, populist vehicle with a very strict instruction manual in 6,793 languages? You are a Catholic, my friend.

Most folks seek a religion that has a standard Home Culture feature and a built-in Family Tradition attachment. We almost always choose to be whatever our parents were, or upgrade into something that is at least a recognizable cousin. This is sensible and has a noble purity to it. We learn about the Bigness as children through the filter our People offer us, and that lens will always have the same magic to you that your threadbare Blankie does. We seek guidance and comfort from our Creator with a child’s heart. In hard times, in grief, in tenderness, in pain, we connect to the Spirit most sincerely through the first prayers we knew.

My Mama agreed (walking me to work the other morning) that we’re making it all up, though her Christian tradition is centrally important to her and she’s never driven anything else. She says it‘s important to feel connected to her roots and her family, and the hymns are special to her. Plus she likes the focal picture she has of God and Jesus, they seem like kind and protective caretakers.

But it is a choice, of course. And – just to stretch a metaphor a little bit more -- plenty of us do find that the vehicle our family used doesn’t go where we need to travel. Some folks really do start from scratch, lay out all the contenders, try the rites and read the scriptures of several faiths. For lots of us, though, we get called toward a faith by some need that our family’s tradition did not meet.

I needed a religion that was about women, because that’s the primary way I filter the world. I chose the path most attached to the untold history of women, a celebration of female power dark and graceful and holy, practiced by women for millennia in service to their communities, a faith that values transformation, justice, balance, healing, and compassion. Something earthy, sexy, shameless, pulsing and POWERful.

So that’s how I became a Witch.

But I’m in a mixed marriage, doncha know. Princess has chosen herself a path over this past year or two, and it’s a lovely group of people who I think are very good for her. She’d never have believed it her old self, but she’s in total NRE* about a RELIGION.
And the winner iiiiiiiiiisssssssssssssss:

Independent Catholic!

It’s gay Catholic, in practice, how hot is that? They are dead fucking serious about reclaiming the traditions and she is soaking up the holy revolution of it, it lights her up. She feels finally at home. It’s lovely.

She’s decided to get baptized.
And that’s another post.

*NRE = New Relationship Energy...common term among poly folks that acknowledges the time when you first get together with someone/thing new and you are kinda psycho because of how into them you are. You are sweet and annoying, no way around it. Just FYI.