Testify
Vanita Leatherwood
I don't remember what started the conversation. All of a sudden my partner is saying: “I worry about you. Do you even believe in God? You don't read the Bible – nothing.”
“What are you talking about; of course I believe in God.” Why am I even responding to this? I've tried so many times to explain my take on the whole religion thing. “What, because I don't fall in line with the idea that god has a gender? Because I prefer to use the pronoun ‘she' when I refer to god?”
“I don't know. I don't know what you believe.”
Maybe she senses I'm saying god with a small “g.”
But come on it's been three years. Three years and she doesn't know what I believe. Three years and she doubts my….my what? Worthiness? Goodness? Character? Why, because I don't go to church? Their Church? The Church. The one that says I am an abomination.
Look at her studying the Bible. What does she think she will find in there that is not in poetry; music or in my eyes?
Ok, maybe that's a little over the top. But I keep hoping.
I know exactly what she believes though – I'm going to hell because I'm a moon howler.
I believe in horizontal prayer
cross-training kindness
sympathetic rhythm
and
hallelujah in candied yams.
My journey to Goddess took me through genuflections and shaking with the Holy Spirit. My partner's confusion and fear for me only a repeat of all the puzzled faces I've encountered as I tried to find my way.
During my youth my summers were spent with my grandmother in the south. Sundays meant lace scratching your neck, lace stockings clamping the heat close to your body, hands laced in gloves. On Sundays we walked laced and buttoned up to the A.M.E. church. It was always full of women. Big women. Perfumed, floral-hatted women. Women enraptured by the word of the Lord, by the word of their preacher, enraptured in the sounds of their song and the moaning that connected and enveloped them. Mrs. Henderson was one of the women who was very fond of jumping up from her place in the pews with her arms flung toward the church ceiling. She would shout to the congregation, “I got the need to testify, yall! Just a week ago. I was down on my knees. I said Lord, I'm hungry, my children ain't got nothin to eat. Lord I need your help. Waddin nothing but a day later somebody left a box a food at my door! Praise the Lord. He is on my side. When nobody else was there He was right with me. He is the way – the only way to salvation!” I was nine years old. I didn't understand why she was shouting about the Lord or why she didn't acknowledge the human being who left the food at her door. When I asked my grandmother why Mrs. Henderson didn't thank the person who left the food my grandmother hit me on the back of my head with her gloved hand.
I was even more bewildered back home at my Catholic school. I asked Sister Mary Francis “Why do we have to eat the Body of Christ?” She flashed red, through clenched teeth she replied "So we can remember that Christ died to save our souls.” I remembered the flames of the riot after King was killed and how my neighborhood was nearly destroyed. I didn't feel “saved.” I glanced at the crucifix hanging on every wall. At the one she was wearing around her neck. Forgetting didn't seem like a real possibility.
Awakening to Goddess
It was not possible for me to maintain my identity in a traditional church setting. I was frustrated by the discrepancies between church (Roman Catholic and AME) dogma and deed, especially as it related to its treatment of women, homosexuals, non-Catholics and people of color. Even before I came out as a lesbian I explored religions, spiritual practices and a variety of alternative ways to affirm my values, sense of self and my connection to the earth and other beings.
As an adult, with children in tow, I explored dark bookshops. My neighbors took me to religious centers with vaulted ceilings and incense-filled attics where I learned to chant. I considered Judaism. Then, for several months I met with a female pastor at a small Baptist church near my home. She was willing at least to talk, to walk with me through some of the questions I had about Christianity. Until –
“So, there's something I've always wondered about.”
The pastor patted the red ribbon bookmark into the crevice of her Bible and looked up at me.
I leaned forward, “God isn't human, right?”
She leaned back into her chair. “Well, no...”
“Then why is it so common for people to say ‘He' when referring to God. I mean wouldn't it technically be okay to say ‘She?' God isn't male or female, right?”
The pastor folded her hands on top of the Bible. “It just isn't something we need to dwell on. God is Lord. He is our Heavenly Father.”
Her smile told me pressing her would only result in more platitudes. I wanted to dwell on this issue of God's gender. Why couldn't she be thought of as our Mother?
My husband at the time was beginning to grow weary of my questioning. Sometimes he would come home from a business trip to find the children and me sitting crossed-bowed on the deck meditating to the sound of Om. Other times he came home to an empty house because we were serving lunch at a shelter.
One Sunday shortly after the conversation with the pastor he took our family to a huge church he had heard about from colleagues. Same old sermons. Same old platitudes. I was so busy rolling my eyes and thinking my own thoughts I didn't realize- I was being pulled to the altar by my husband. He had responded to the preacher's call to join the church. The congregation was on its feet excitedly shouting “Save them Lord!” It seemed my husband was going to bring my spiritual journey to an end for me. My husband, children and I were escorted to a suite of offices where we met our “family counselor.” A woman I assumed to be the counselor's wife quickly pulled my sons off to the side of the room and gave them lollipops. My husband stood with the counselor receiving accolades for guiding his family into the church flock. I was not one to cause a scene and I did not want to embarrass my husband but this I could not take. Silent, I let my husband give his contact information to the counselor. But when he began to recite my information I said no. No. There's no need to contact me. I'm not interested. I took my children by the hand and left.
The ensuing argument between my husband and me didn't last long. I looked him in the eye and said, “Go if you want to. The boys and I will not.” He didn't press it. Frankly I think the entire display was more about making an executive decision. I filled his belly that afternoon with an old-fashioned Sunday dinner and he forgot all about it. The next day he was back on the road for work and never brought it up again.
About a month later I had a dream.
I feel heat. I am levitating from the bowels of a volcano. I raise my arms into a purple and mauve swirl. I am embraced.
I woke up still cloaked in the heat of the dream. I tip-toed to my office and started to paint. Unsure of why the dream clung so tightly to me, I placed the picture behind my desk.
About a year later, I walked into a bookstore and saw a book cover that looked just like my painting. I hurried over to the book, read the title and bought it.
The book was Carol Christ's Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality.
In the years that followed I immersed myself in the feminine divine. I read the work of Carol Christ, Mary Daly, Marija Gimbutas, Starhawk, Merlin Stone, and Barbara Walker. I howled at the moon. Under the guise of Easter, I celebrated Ostara with my sons. I became part of a circle, sat on the steering committee of a women's studies program of a local college, participated in my local NOW chapter. I learned to be pagan.
My husband found my interest in all things feminine to be a little suspect. Many of the women who came to my house for ritual were lesbians. I participated in primarily Dianic gatherings. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps all the research, contemplation and dancing to Melissa Etheridge was some sort of preview of the me that was aching to come out. About a year after my divorce I had my first romantic relationship with a woman. Did I find my way to Goddess because I was a closeted lesbian? Or did my interest in thealogy set the stage for me to come out as a lesbian? These questions are a bit like the “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” debate. Perhaps I was unconsciously drawn to activities my husband could not participate in because I wanted to get away from him. I tend to think it was all a part of the process towards my authentic self. My journey to Goddess was not about searching for something to believe in but more about looking for how to believe in myself; a way to put myself together and reconcile all the pieces of my life that were at war with each other.
I learned that many of the symbols that surround us, religious and otherwise, originated in ancient female-based cultures. There is archaeological evidence of the feminine divine all over the world, including Africa, the Celtic regions, India and native peoples of the Americas.1 Throughout history, woman-centered symbols were taken and reinterpreted to reflect the present patriarchal system. For example, the Trinity originally referred to the Virgin, the Mother and the Crone.
The feminine divine is more than a change in iconography. I do feel the presence of a divine energy and that energy feels feminine to me. Mother not Father. When I need refueling it is the cool breeze touching my face that encourages me to have faith. And that touch is lovely, encouraging, an alluring assertiveness. Womanly. For me the feminine divine is a “living” spirituality. There is no master watching over us from a distant heaven. She is here – in me, in a flower, in a wall, in the sunshine. I am part of the process of the divine. We all are. The life energy of the divine which flows through everything means we are responsible in the effort to create the world we desire. The nine-year-old-girl in me says: see Mrs. Henderson, the hands of God/Goddess are your neighbor's hands.
Unbound
Wherever there is repression of female sexuality there are ontological assumptions — assumptions at the very heart of our beliefs, about the nature of life itself. The assumptions are (1) that the world was created by a male deity figure, or God; (2) that existing world orders, or cultures, were made by and for men, with God's sanction; (3) that females are an auxiliary sex, who exist to serve and populate these male world orders; (4) that autonomous female sexuality poses a wild and lethal threat to these world orders and therefore must be controlled and repressed; and (5) that God's existence as a male sanctions this repression. The perfect circularity, or tautology, of these assumptions only helps to bind them more securely around the human psyche. 2
Anchoring my center within feminist spirituality empowers and supports what I feel and experience to be true. Injustice in all forms — racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, gender conformity, classism, heterosexism — is enabled by a patriarchal system.
My quest for an empowering spirituality led me to read Adrienne Rich, bell hooks, Patricia Collins, Audre Lorde and other feminist writings. Adrienne Rich's "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" called for an unveiling. I was only vaguely aware there was a lesbian in the back of my mind, blind and deaf, her arms bound to the sides of her body, her mouth taped. Unbound, I have been able to speak of and seek my own direction; I believe Rich would say that this is exactly why compulsory heterosexuality exists.
I continued to examine heterosexuality and religion as institutions that control and stifle women and learned to question psychological theories in which men's experiences are assumed to be representative of all people.
As I reflected on my own life I began to see the impact of the complex and intertwined systems of racism, sexism and patriarchy on my life. I became aware of the roadblocks which keep “marginalized” people separated from sources of resiliency. Some roadblocks such as regret, fear, shame, and hopelessness are evidenced at the personal level. Other roadblocks are political or institutionalized: biblical justification of hatred, national marriage laws. These roadblocks are “mute-tations,” a silencing that keeps us from self-awareness and self-determination, and a subversion of spirit, identity and erotic power.
Self-Alliance
Every single day there is one thing I do – every day with out fail since October of 2006. I read a note that I scribbled in purple ink on the back of an envelope. The envelope reads:
Endurance is not transformation.
Usually, when people talk about the ‘strength' of black women they are referring to the way in which they perceive black women coping with oppression. They ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.3
The words are from bell hooks' Ain't I A Woman. I read them everyday because I need to be reminded every day not to take myself for granted – not to let anyone else do it either. I read them everyday because I don't want to lose myself again. I don't want to disappear in response to childhood wounds or society's ills. I don't want to disappear into my lover's embrace. I read it everyday because I'm tired of waiting. Waiting for someone else to say it's okay, you're okay. The time for seeking permissions is over. I have conferred on myself the right to BE.
Finding Goddess was a search for myself; a search for “self-alliance.” Self-alliance is a process of creating a personal politics that includes self-determined ethics and an aesthetic attitude toward life. Through self-alliance, I have made an agreement with myself not to ingest anything that fosters internal conflict. I am learning to smile without expectation of punishment, to receive love, to give love to exactly who I want to give it to, to create, to produce and to contribute towards efforts that ensure the rights of others to do the same.
Audre Lorde wrote: “. . . we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.” 4 A large part of self-alliance entails the work that needs to be accomplished in giving voice to what you feel and who you are. I personally know well the effects of silence. It is not worth it. Eating your words, keeping your piece of pain to yourself, is caustic and habit-forming. Years of silence- training keep a woman “in her place.” That is what happened to me.
Fear haunts us in many disguises: the threat of abandonment and the landing of a fist. Changing is not so easy. Sometimes years of constant silence will lead to a gradual awareness that something is wrong. More often, some event, some horror, some greater fear beyond our daily experience has to wake us up to the call to speak and to act. Apparently only fear can trump fear. What a woman has to do is make the fear of losing her self the greatest fear.
I was raised to treat others as I would like to be treated. But that's not always what I saw. I loved the emotional vibe in my grandmother's church: the swaying and song entangled in a swell of relief. I can still see my aunt pushing her wrinkled hanky down into the bosom of her dress signaling the end of the service. Then the congregation gathered in the church hall to share a meal: Grandma's fried chicken, Mizz Walker's buttery macaroni-n-cheese, long sips of sweet lemonade. The grown folks shared troubles, hushed-mouthed so we couldn't hear: “you know bout Maemie James's daughter—she's funny—you know— in that way. What a shame. Poor chile is gonna hell sure nuff.” Given the verbal assaults, rejection, and the highly stressful atmosphere of the church I do wonder why there are any LGBT people in traditional churches at all. The hypocrisy is exhausting.
My partner and I have a truce for now. She wears a gold cross around her neck and I wear a silver Spiral Goddess symbol. On Sunday mornings I watch her head to a Metropolitan Community Church where at least our sexuality is affirmed. Sometimes, in an effort to be a good mate, I go too. But I'm not waiting for her to see the eclectic beauty in my rituals: the way I can testify in moonlight or shower waters.
She's not so sure that what I do is “religious.” “What the hell is ‘cross-training kindness'?”
Knowing Goddess is hard to explain. I say, “Honey, I don't have to go to a church to worship. When I smell lavender – it's a prayer.”
She tilts her head – puzzled.
“Making love is a benediction.”
Her shoulders drop.
I try to speak plainly.
“I choose to make my life reflect what I believe. My job says I believe in the value of each human being. I have no problem yielding the right of way in traffic. When I twirl chocolate on my tongue it's thank you to the divine for the wonders of nature!”
“But you haven't said anything about God!”
“Yes, exactly” and I give her a smile.
Notes
- Stone, Merlin. When God was a Woman. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1976. Also see Gimbutas, Marija. The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images. CA: University of California Press, 2007.
- Sjoo, Monica and Barbara Mor. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth. New York: Harper Collins, 1991.
- hooks, bell. Ain't I A Woman. Boston: South End Press, 1981. pp.1 - 86.
- Lorde, Audre. “The Transforming of Silence into Language and Action.” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1993. pp. 40 - 44.
Pencil, ink and marker sketches
Oya was originally a Goddess of the Yoruba in western Africa and spirit of the Niger River. Her presence helps us to appreciate life and live it with passion. Oya is credited with creating fire. She is irrepressible, full of zeal, fair minded and truthful. Oya is strong, with a “let's get it done” attitude. Her spirit will help you decide what you need to do, figure out a plan and put it into action! Oya is not the all work no play type. She appreciates fun and remembers to laugh. She does what is necessary and if you get in her way her fiery temper may create a storm. Be careful what you ask of her. Her penchant for telling the truth may bring to the surface something you would rather hide. Using energy to create energy Oya will get you moving on the path to change.
Spring is approaching. Nature is in a phase of rebirth, the earth blossoms and so can we. It is a time traditionally when we adjust our spirits and start anew. Mujaji a rain goddess of the Luveda people in South Africa signifies our need to do away with the old and prepare for the future. Her rain can be soothing refreshment giving us the strength to go on or she can bring a flood – completely washing away the old. What is it you need – a cry of relief or an evening of deep sobs to set you straight? In either case, Mujaji is there to see you through the rain to sunshine and balance on the other side.
Marimba is the Goddess of Music who comes to us from South Africa. Her strength comes from her ability to speak her heart story. Once cursed by controlling forces, Marimba stood fast in her belief to live the truth of her unique spirit. Triumphantly, she was able to spread her message through the beauty of her voice. It is said that Marimba encouraged her people to turn their enemy's tools of war into musical instruments. Marimba invites you to hold onto your voice through your pains and triumphs and to share the wisdom of your experience.
About the author / artist
After a 30-year hiatus, Vanita Leatherwood is finding her way back to writing and publishing again. She lives in the Washington DC Metropolitan area where she facilitates Transformative Language Arts workshops that promote spiritual, philosophical and social change across boundaries of age, class, culture, gender, race and sexual orientation. Her Power Point documentary, They Called Her Funny, features audio clips of interviews with six women of African descent who came to clarity about their lesbian sexual identity later in life. Information about her workshops, documentary and 2009 Goddesses of African Datebook (artwork featured in this issue of Trivia) can be found by writing to . In March, her work will be part of an exhibit, “Poets & Painters” at the Artists' Gallery in Columbia MD.
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