Excerpt
The Mystics Would Like a Word
Chapter OneTrusting Yourself Doesn’t Make You a HereticI read the words on the screen with a tightening in my chest. It wasn’t uncommon for me to get criticism from fundamentalists on my Instagram, but their words were usually at least coated in something resembling civility. On this day one particular woman had come with claws out. “Stop pretending to be Christian,” she rebuked me in the comments on my post. “You are purposefully deceiving people. It’s obvious to all of us that you are Wiccan.”
Spoiler alert: Gentle reader, I am not Wiccan. I don’t think I even know any Wiccans. The extent of my familiarity with Wicca comes from the character Willow in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series that I watched as a teenager, which is to say, less than exhaustive but pretty witty.
And yet, in that moment, my heart raced and my cheeks burned as though I had been found out. I felt publicly exposed and vulnerable, not because I was being correctly outed as a pagan but because, as incorrect as her diagnosis was, this commenter had picked up on something true: I had transgressed the laws of Christian womanhood.
My crime? I had written a post that put language to the wild, raw, hungry spirits inside of women, the places in us that marvel at—and sometimes fear—the power of the mysteries within. The last sentence I wrote was “We will never be satisfied with a small God or a small inner flame. We know in our bodies there is more.”
It was simple, this call to listen to and honor the deepest stirrings within. But the prospect of self-honesty, of attending to the desire to live untamed, terrified this woman. Her terror turned itself onto me, a conflict-averse person for whom that was difficult. But it wasn’t about me at all. It was about her consciousness and her cages warring against each other. From behind the bars of patriarchy, women can be downright cruel to those who wander free.
This is an extreme example, of course. Most of us are not leaving hateful comments on other women’s social media posts. (If you are . . . please stop.) For most of us, the battle is internal. Do we acknowledge the rumbling in our guts or do we continue reading from the script we’ve been given?
Too often, certain issues feel unwelcome in our faith spaces, while our faith might feel unwelcome in spaces of important social critique. When I say, for example, that I am Christian and feminist, I find the Christian part scares the feminists and the feminism part scares the Christians. Like many women today, I have felt pressured to choose between religious fidelity and progressive thinking. I have been there before—and I have no intention of going back.
A handful of years ago I was a much-lauded writer for a prominent Catholic women’s ministry, where I enjoyed a sense of belonging and friendship. Community has always been an integral part of my spiritual life, and the women in this ministry were my primary community at the time; these were individuals with a spectrum of social, political, and theological beliefs but whose group identity leaned more conservative than my own. Still, I was convinced there was a place for me with them, especially since my writing was so well received. So I censored my more controversial opinions and convictions in order to fit in with the group. Worse, I performed serious mental gymnastics to lie to myself about being okay with some of the things said, done, and taught in the ministry. I didn’t feel full permission to trust myself, my own conscience, or the way I understood the Spirit inside me, so I deferred to others instead.
Gradually, I began to wake up. Prompted by trials in my personal life that forced me to confront honestly the extent to which I had disconnected from my authentic self, I found the courage to return to my own instincts and voice. I employed small critiques of patriarchy in my writing and advocated for serious leadership positions, including ordination, for women in religious institutions. I criticized the blending of church and state for politicians’ personal gain. I spoke openly about my love of yoga and the Enneagram. Even though I expressed these opinions only on my personal blog and social media accounts, my status within the ministry began to crumble. Complaints were lodged against me by longtime readers, which felt as humiliating as it was infuriating. A priest and a bishop worked to shut me up, which opened my eyes to the subtleties of clericalism’s harm. When I was told by ministry leadership that I would be required to hide my personal convictions entirely if I wanted to stay on staff, I resigned in what I hoped would be a gracious and amicable fashion. To my shock, the vast majority of women I once counted as friends never spoke to me again. The feeling of having been used and then abandoned hurt more than the censorship.
The grief went deep. I lost friendships I had assumed were real. I lost my largest writing platform. I lost my spiritual community and sense of belonging. I mourned this all for months—and, if I’m honest, a part of me still mourns it. And yet, I learned what it felt like to be true to myself. I learned that I could trust myself. It was more than worth it.
I know I am not alone in having gone through an experience like this. When you consider how common these pressures are, it’s no wonder women are plagued by anxiety and depression. For the sake of maintaining our sense of belonging, we discipline ourselves into staying within the received boundaries of what we are allowed to think, believe, or practice rather than what we actually think, believe, or want to practice. We look to spouses, family members, pastors, and news anchors to tell us what parameters we ought to stay within. We trust the authority of outside voices far more than we trust the guidance of our own souls. In fact, the very idea of trusting ourselves elicits unease: isn’t that the very thing the Bible tells us not to do?
It’s true, there are places in the Bible that discourage us from putting trust in ourselves. When I was a good Baptist kid growing up in Bible Drill competitions, one of the first verses I memorized was Proverbs 3:5–6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (NRSV). I’m not saying this isn’t wisdom: trusting in ourselves apart from our union with God can indeed be a recipe for disaster. When we are not attuned to our Life Source, we tend to be pretty selfish and destructive people.
But that doesn’t mean we throw away our inner compass. If we are sincerely seeking to live in union with the Spirit, then trusting in ourselves as portals of Divine life can be a way to move from spiritual childhood into spiritual maturity. Jesus himself said the kingdom of heaven is not to your left or to your right but is within you (Luke 17:21). If we’re honest, that’s a frightening prospect. It can feel safer to look for the kingdom of heaven outside of ourselves, to look for it in authority figures, religious culture, or the safety net of orthodoxy. There is a certain kind of felt security that comes with believing someone else knows more than we do, that somehow they have reached transcendent answers we are not even capable of touching. Jesus’ words are all well and good, but when it comes down to it, we are more convinced that what he wants is for us to outsource our spiritual lives to a select few.
But what if, when Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is within you, what he meant was—and bear with me now—that the kingdom of heaven is within you? I know. Crazy. What if you actually do have a still, small voice to guide you? What if you actually do have everything you need for life and godliness? What if it’s not a matter of being taught what to believe but a matter of being taught how to listen deeply to what you already do believe?
If you were taught to trust yourself, how might your experience of God be different? How might your entire existence be different? And if such a thing were possible, who would teach you?
