(Image is a a path through the trees in my local park. It’s foggy, and the trees blur in the background. In the distance is the small dark figure of a person, alone in the fog.)
(Imma tell you right now, I’m not exactly polishing and editing this stuff. I’m just journaling.)
When we left off, my mom had brought us into His Community, a ragtag bunch of hippie Christians who had started as an informal bible study group and had grown into a sizeable congregation.
On Sundays we (my mom and sisters and I) went to “worship service” in the big old barn that served as the church. Bible study for teens was on Saturdays, I think. Honestly, I don’t remember those sorts of details. What I remember was feeling like I belonged for the first time in my life. No one called me a ‘brain’ or ‘four-eyes’, no one made fun of my clothes, no one saw the ugly girl that I thought I was. We were all beautiful, we were all friends, and we all loved Jesus. It was what religion should be. Love, all around. Laughter. Joy. Song. Friendship. Acceptance. Everything I could hope for - the diametric opposite of the Catholic Church.
As a side effect of our belonging to His Community, my mom was actually kind and loving to me, and that was a great gift. I know now that it was because she, too, felt loved and like she belonged.
His Community became the focus of our family, almost to the exclusion of any other friends or relatives. My dad was there-ish… really on the edge of it all. I never knew what he thought of it. We rarely saw him. He was the night custodian at my middle school, and although I was proud of him and loved going to visit him after school in his ‘office’ (the boiler room), I don’t recall him ever talking about our new religion. I imagine my mom was being kinder to him as well, and all he knew was that our house was peaceful.
At home, we listened to a lot of Jesus music, much of it for children. “Bullfrogs and Butterflies” was a favorite album – my sisters and I would joyfully sing along. “Bullfrogs and butterflies: they’ve both been born again!” Mom would sing along too. In His Community there was always activity: a celebration or a special bible study or just visiting new friends. It was, all in all, a really fucking miraculous time in my life. I felt full to the brim with the Holy Spirit. I could talk to Jesus directly, no priest required. I started reading the bible and I carried it around with me at school, which brought me everything from scorn and derision to perplexed glances and teasing from my friends. Sixth grade is hard enough, especially when you are being teased for your love of Jesus – but I did not care. I did not care. Jesus loved me. His Community loved me. It was even possible that my mom loved me, which was a miracle I had longed for. Thank you Lord Jesus.
Some time later – a year, perhaps, I heard my mom talking on the phone. Her voice was concerned, suspicious. The leaders of His Community, David Mulligan (husband of neighbor Mary’s sister) and Alice Benoche (wife of Mary’s brother), along with three other adults, had started calling themselves “Headship”, which was disturbing to my mom. Headship had told the congregation that (among other things) Christmas trees were pagan and unholy: directing the flock to save the money they would have spent on the holiday and donate it to His Community. They were making other requests/demands as well, and it was causing rifts in many marriages. If one spouse was more deeply involved than the other, Headship told them to separate from the nonbelievers. Then the women in Headship, the ones who had started the bible study in the first place, stepped back and turned the leadership over to the men.
All these developments were making my mom very worried. She was a smart woman, and she could see what was happening. The air in my house very quickly went from joy to tension. Then one Saturday my mom told us we weren’t going to be in His Community anymore.
My life, my faith, was destroyed in an instant. What about my friends? What about bible study? She was cutting me off from the only people who really loved and accepted me! She was cutting me off from JESUS! It was a nightmare. My one His Community friend who went to my school stopped talking to me. I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t know why my mom would do this to me, to our family. I caught glimpses and snatches of conversations she had over the phone: she was trying to get people out of His Community – even as Headship started encouraging the believers to not only divorce the spouses who opposed their ideas, but to let them have custody of the children. To sell all their worldly goods. To turn their backs to the unholy world and prepare for a new life in the Promised Land.
Keep in mind that I was only a child. Twelve or thirteen. Later I was to learn more – the story of a bible study that became a cult - but at the time all I knew was that my mom was working hard to convince her friends to get out, to the exclusion of all else. She was getting threatening phone calls from Headship. She had managed to convince Mary (quite a feat given how Mary’s siblings were running the whole thing!) and a few others, so at least she had people to talk to about it. As for me – I was not allowed to call or be in contact with anyone from my bible study. I was alone, in the dark.
And then one terrible day, they disappeared. The adults in His Community picked up their children from the outsider spouses to take them to a celebration of some kind, and disappeared. My friend from school, gone. A boy I had a huge crush on – one of the seven kids of Headship’s Alice – gone, along with his siblings. So many people vanished on that day.
You can find stuff about this online, just search “His Community cult” and you will see what I learned once I was an adult. It’s horrifying.
But this is the story of me – a confused, angry, devastated girl – who loved Jesus with her whole heart and thought she had found her place, whose world was plunged into pain and darkness and tension and confusion. My Jesus had forsaken me.
I think I have blocked my memories of the rest of that time. I honestly cannot recall how I dealt with the aftermath in my young life. Eventually things settled down in my house, but it was never to be the same again. I was never to be the same again. If Jesus loved me – all of us – how could this happen? What was I supposed to think of the Holy Spirit who had robbed me of not only my friends, but my joy? How could I continue to believe?
Ultimately, I couldn’t. I would never again call myself a Christian. I would never again feel full of the love of Jesus. I went back to Catechism and in eighth grade I was confirmed in the Catholic Church. Having fulfilled my dad’s request, I no longer went to church. I was done – really and truly done - with religion. His Community had broken my heart, and wrought irreparable damage to many, many families – some of whom were never found again. They scattered after the police had tracked them to the Promised Land in Kentucky.
My mom devoted the next several years of her life to the people that had been left, or chose to stay, behind. One of them was Mary’s brother/Alice’s husband Les, who had asked too many questions and as a result lost his wife and all of his children. He and my mother spent a great deal of time together, sitting close to each other on the couch, drinking wine and talking quietly, sometimes holding hands. One night my dad came home from work and saw them. He said nothing, and walked past them toward my room. I was awake, and I opened my door. “Daddy?” I said. I was sure he was hurting and confused about what seemed like his wife having a love affair right in front of him, as I was. He turned to me, tears in his eyes, and we hugged, tight. We were both in a world of pain.
It was quite possibly one of the worst times in my life. I was afraid my parents were going to get a divorce. My old friends didn’t really understand what was wrong. I was lost, abandoned by my mom, and worse, Jesus. And if Jesus would abandon me, despite how much I loved him, then I guessed I wasn’t worth much at all.
Whew. Heavy shit. So, let’s shake all this off. Go read about it if you want. I am not the only person it shattered.
We are going to fast forward now – I am in high school, it’s the summer before my senior year, and I have gotten pregnant. I had gotten contact lenses my sophomore year, started wearing makeup and very short skirts, and that was when my sexuality started to bloom. I had zero sense of self-worth, but I knew that boys suddenly wanted me. And if I let a boy fuck me, for a few glorious minutes afterward he would hold me in his arms and he would stroke my hair and tell me how amazing I was. It was a small price to pay to have a tiny sliver of the love and acceptance I had once found in the theoretical arms of Jesus. Sex became my new religion, and I was eager to spread the good news to anyone who would listen. I needed that feeling of love, no matter how fleeting and non-existent.
When I got pregnant it was no surprise – because I had no concept of how my own body worked. Seriously, none. I wasn’t even sure who the baby’s father was, having fucked two boys in the same week. This crashed into my family and further splintered what was already wreckage. My parents either fought or didn’t talk to each other – further deepening my fear of silence – etching it into my psyche.
Although mom was still friends with Mary and Les and other His Community dropouts, she had fled back to the Catholic church and taken a job as a secretary for a priest whose church was about a half-hour from the house. That priest had become her best friend. That is a whole other can of worms, but long story short he fell in love with my mother. Since he was a priest and much older, I don’t think she returned that love in a romantic way. She accepted it, though, eagerly. He monopolized her time, and they became constant companions. Everything in her life revolved around this obnoxious man who inserted himself into our family, constantly called my mom or appeared at our house, thought it was cute to press his thumb against our noses and say “beeeeep!” in his nasally voice. He was in our lives in every way, at every moment. I despised him for who he was, for who he represented, and for what he had taken from me: my mom’s fleeting but still very-much-needed love. I spent as little time at home as possible.
So when I got pregnant, he was the first person she called. He of course told her that hell was my destination unless I carried that child to term, gave birth, and gave the baby to a childless couple he happened to know in Louisiana.
Which all happened, but we aren’t talking about that right now, either. We are talking about religion. And I can tell you that being a pregnant teenager who was about to start her senior year of high school, who was now not only abandoned by Jesus, but by a lot of her friends, and her own parents, was very nearly the end of me. One night, desperate and afraid, I gave in and prayed. I sobbed, begging for an answer, begging for a sign, begging for anything at all to tell me I would survive this. My room was completely dark, and I was exhausted with grief and fear, as alone as I had ever felt – with a fetus inside who felt like an alien that had taken over my body. Just like Jesus, I wept and prayed. Lord let this cup pass from me.
Then - a light appeared. It was a glowing blue-green ball of light, hovering quietly up above me, at the side of my bed – right where a person’s head would be if they were standing there.
I was terrified. My breath stopped, my body froze. Was I dreaming? I blinked, rubbed my eyes, and it was still there. Just hovering. Just waiting for me to breathe again. Who are you? I asked it. It didn’t answer. It said nothing, but I could feel love and comfort emanating from it. It moved a little closer. And started communicating with me – speaking with me, but not with a voice – what it was saying just appeared in my head. Like I could read its thoughts.
It told me I was going to be okay. That someday I would be happy. That someday I would have children I could keep. That someday I would be loved. It was a promise. I was going to be okay. I started sobbing again, this time out of relief. I had begged for a sign – and I not only got a sign, I got a promise that I knew I could believe.
That was the last time I was to knowingly interact with the divine for decades. Decades.
My spiritual journey has been an eye-opening experience. I have spirit guides with me all the time, and a few are here in the 3D world. One of them is a lovely young woman named Jhadina, who has YouTube and TikTok channels. She popped up in my feed one day, and spoke absolute truth to me, personally; at least that’s how it felt. She is divinity itself, and even when her words don’t fully resonate with me, I take what I need from them. More often than not when I go back and watch the posts that didn’t resonate the first time around, they are for me at a later time. I have learned, and had confirmed, so much about myself and the world/universe I’m in. I’ve also been told that Jhadina is being spoken through directly by the Divine, so I really listen to the things she says, and ponder them.
One of the things she talks about a lot is developing a relationship with your inner child - all of them - whatever versions, whatever ages. To meditate on them - go to them, sit with them, and let them pour out their sorrows and pain. To listen to what they are afraid of, to embrace them for their more difficult aspects, and to give them space to share their hopes and dreams for their future. To help them feel safe.
Several times this past summer and fall, I took cannabis, got a fire going in my firepit, and sought out those inner children. Always an eye-opening experience. One evening I was drawn to the pregnant teenager I once was. She was so ashamed at having gotten pregnant and let down her entire family. All she had wanted was to get through high school and then head to NYC to be a fashion designer. She was involved in theater, she was starting to become a pretty good tennis player, and she was attracting some very pretty boys. Then one of them left a deposit that stayed, and she found herself in a nightmare that had no end. Her hopes and dreams had gone.
Her body had been hijacked, and her mother had told that damn priest that Jeff, a gay young man who was her daughter’s best friend, was going to loan her daughter the money for an abortion and give her a ride up to Planned Parenthood. That priest, that “man of god” then went to Jeff’s house. He confronted Jeff’s parents - who were not even Catholic - and told them that not only their son but they themselves would roast in eternal damnation if they allowed this to happen. That pregnant girl had no idea it had happened until years later - right then all she knew was that on the day of the abortion, Jeff’s car broke down and he couldn’t take her. He wasn’t willing to drive anyone else’s car. It was done. She was utterly stuck - she had no choice in the matter. For all she knew, her life was over. She could not imagine going back to school in the fall, let alone a future beyond that. Her body wasn’t hers, her life wasn’t hers, and somehow it was entirely her fault.
Sitting in front of a fire, in a deep state of meditation, I found myself going to that miserable, frightened girl who thought her life was over. The girl who thought she’d been abandoned by Jesus, by life. The girl who was dying inside. I went to her, stood beside her bed as she sobbed. I wanted to curl up beside her and hold her close, stroke her hair, brush her tears away, but I couldn’t. All I could do was tell her with my whole heart and soul that there was hope for her. For us.
Divinity is real. I have met many, many deities – some I didn’t recognize as such until years later. People who would later become spirit guides, people who were put into my life to teach me – remind me – of something and then leave my life. People whose presence, whose kindness (or tough love), whose wisdom, whose light would give me hope or joy or peace by just being near me. And that night, in front of the fire in deep meditation, in a moment of pure awe, I realized I was that light. I was the glowing blue-green ball, comforting my teenage self. We saw each other through the veil. She thought I was Jesus (because of course she did), but I finally knew the truth. I was that deity. I was the Divine.
That night with that pregnant young woman was not the last time I would save myself from total despair. I would go back and be with other versions of me many times – though never again as a glowing blue-green orb (more’s the pity, because that was awesome). I have picked myself up, held my own hand, lifted myself up out of darkness time and time again. Every time it gets a little easier; healing happens a little faster. It is magical.
Realizing that not only is divinity real, but that I myself am divine was one of the most joyful, humbling things to ever happen to me. Hard as it is to accept sometimes because I don’t always feel worthy (and at this point whether I like it or not, LOL), I am the light. I see the beauty in every soul I encounter. I am full of love for humanity. People feel safe with me because they know they are. It has been a strenuous, incredible, awe-full, joyful journey thus far. Almost beyond belief, if I hadn’t literally seen it with my own eyes.
The beauty and the heartache of all of this is that everyone – every single human – has the capacity for this love and light. To save themselves, to lift themselves up and in doing so lift others. It is both the easiest thing to do and the hardest thing to accept. To understand that Jesus was one of us - just one that got particularly famous: there have been thousands if not millions of others. Maybe that sounds like blasphemy, but I don’t care. It is truth.
I know I am only a fledgling in this journey: I’m so grateful that there are higher versions of myself that are with me now, to help me out of the darkness when it comes. Every so often I level up, and become one of them. They welcome me. They are my flashlights, my candles.
Here’s the thing, though - what I really wish everyone could understand – we are all divine. We are all candles, if we choose to be. For ourselves, and for each other.
Let’s light this place UP.
LFG.