Red velour cushions couldn't soften the hardness of the sterile wooden bench I was sitting on. Next to me was a woman sitting perfectly, not moving a muscle. Her Pill Box hat pinned perfectly to her hairsprayed hair with a bobbypin, and her lipstick a bright pink on tight pursed lips. Now that I think about it, most of the women looked like this in the Episcopal church that I attended as a small child. Scattered amongst men in suits and children dressed in their Sunday best, the women of the congregation looked...well, they looked perfect. In fact, they were straight out of the movie "Pleasantville" or "The Truman Show". Even at the young age of seven, something did not feel right.
Fast forward to the age of fifteen and now at a Presbyterian church, things weren't much better. The clothing was a little more subdued but the attitude were the same, though carefully (or not so carefully) hidden beneath a fake facade of "family" and "community" and "caring". I was the one who in confirmation class who was the trouble maker. Always asking questions and not accepting an answer as fact.
Interestingly, aside from the rare historically accurate response I would get, not much of what I learned had any factual basis. Yet, I was the one wrong for questioning the religion I |
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was being raised in. Again, I just felt that something was not right. Christianity was not right for me, it didn't fit.
Four years later I found myself living in a different state attending a college that was extremely diverse. I met tons of individuals that I considered "earthy". Some were interested in Native American beliefs, others Buddhist beliefs, some identified as witches. I was in heaven! I met a woman who said she was a witch. While I was immersing myself in my new found religious freedom away from family things started happening to me. I began to have visions of spirits. I could see the energy surrounding people. But the most profound was being able to interact with these spirits. At the same time, the precognitive ablilities I had as a child began to return. Just as I was discovering the path that lay before me, that chapter of my life ended. I couldn't focus on my education, my grades were slipping and concentration was impossible. I blocked all these new and wonderful abilities out of my life in order to concentrate on school. I moved away, got married and had my first child, never looking behind.
All the while, something was missing and I knew it. Deep down I knew what it was and it
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was calling me home.
My life changed after friend gave me a book titled "Book of Shadows" by Phyllis Currot. I read it in less than a day and thought, there are other people out there like me!. In the five years that followed there have been lots of spiritual ups and downs. I discovered my path. I battled personal demons and struggled with my beliefs - as we all do. I laughed and I cried. I learned to hear the whispers on the wind and see the goddess in everything I touched. I felt the god touch me when my back was warmed in the sunlight. I shared pains of childbirth under the light of the full moon with my sisters who had before me. I became whole once again.
I still struggle on my path - we all do. I remind myself that it is our journey of self-awareness that enables us to connect with the divine. I remind myself that I am not alone. That, like many others, I have that longing for home, a place so far away that it can be touched only in my dreams.
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