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| Marg Herder |
<Even after it was decided that as a lesbian I was not worthy of [God], of my church—even after I stopped attending weekly services—I still stubbornly showed up late at night on Christmas Eve…[The congregants weren’t] the ones who deemed me unworthy. That decision was handed down by a very few, the men who sat in front, wore the black robes, and loved the sound of words...it started getting harder to go. As time passed, church stopped feeling like my home, stopped feeling like my intimate sacred place. It started feeling like my presence was an unwelcome intrusion in someone else’s celebration. The reality of how “Christian[ist]s” felt about people like me was growing into a crushing weight in my chest…As the choir sang, and the ministers spoke, and the candles flickered, for the first time I saw Mary in all of it. A young woman in need of a safe place. A young woman denied entrance. A young woman giving birth to the Human One anyway, in an inauspicious tangle of blood, fear, and pain…I’m thinking about it because it’s where I first noticed Mary. And I need her now. I need to sit with her as the music fills all the space between the stone walls and my soul. I need to feel her abandon, her determination, her willingness, as well as her human weakness. I need to feel her gently take my hand, and ask if I will stay, if I will sit with her after the last note of the postlude has faded, after the people have gotten in their cars and driven away, after the candles have been snuffed, and the sanctuary becomes again, as it so often is, empty and dark. Because there, in that place, at that time, I would dare to speak my secrets, quietly, haltingly, and she would speak hers to me. I’d tell her how I’m confused by this incarnation. How I skirt around the edges of surrender because I’m scared and hurt so much of the time. How I don’t understand a way to abide the pervasive violence and anger crashing around me. I’d tell her how ashamed I am that I can’t figure out how to forgive all the people who deny me a place to rest, who send me away alone. I’d tell her about my desperate need to have my pain be known, be seen, be felt. I’d tell her how I want those who have hurt me to know the weight of the burdens they have laid upon me, before I put those burdens down. I’d admit to her everything about me that I know isn’t right, isn’t attractive, isn’t helpful, isn’t loving, but is authentically who I am. And she would listen, and nod, and release my hand so I could wipe my eyes, but then gently take it back into hers again. And after I had finished speaking, in the darkened sanctuary on Christmas Eve, she would softly speak to me, telling me how she learned to set everything aside: her life, her pride, her family, her plans, and most of all, her fear. She would pray over me, asking her child, Christ/Sophia, to help me do the same. And then, right before I stood up to return to my life, she would stop me, just to make sure I understood the most important part, the part everyone has missed all these years. In finding the courage to become who God created her to be, she proved that we are all worthy of giving birth to the Human One, each of us. And that, Mary would say, must always be accomplished in an inauspicious tangle of blood, fear, and pain..>Originally posted here: http://bit.ly/1mBGwkP
Marg Herder is a writer, audio artist, photographer, and feminist spiritual seeker. She currently serves as Director of Public Information for EEWC-Christian Feminism Today.
http://www.evangelicalsforsocialaction.org/
http://www.margherder.com/
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