Baptized Among the Elements: A Release of Rage and Despair

I found an old church bulletin in a binder, filled with the names of people who had betrayed their own alleged values so egregiously that when I discovered their betrayal, my world spun out of control. Leaders who turned a hurting woman's testimony into a knife and held it against her throat, lest she dare speak again. The reprimands and lack of support leading to shallow reconciliation and diluted repentance, when the victims deserved much deeper restorative justice.

New Year's Eve was a rough day for me personally. My struggles with my health had steadily improved, and then I was suddenly hit with a fever and intense cough. But I felt empowered by watching Tarantino films all day, and resolved that in the New Year, I would let go.

So while the fireworks exploded around me, I stood in my yard with a lighter and tin bowl full of water. I watched as the names of particular leaders burned and I let out all of my rage, my heartache, my despair.

The ashes hissed as they fell into the water. I submerged the remainder of the paper into the bowl, and went into my yard. I knelt down and took soft, drenched earth into my hands and began to dig, and dig, and dig. I pulled the soggy remnants of the paper out of the bowl and threw them violently. I filled in the hole with the soil, and then poured the ash-laden water on top.

It was at this moment I lost my mind, but in the most beautiful way possible. I splashed around in the mud and puddles in my yard as it turned midnight. I covered myself in mud and water and danced. I prayed my favorite prayers, Christian and Pagan, and I stood up on the deck with the light behind me and watched as my frame cast a large, feminine shadow onto the yard. I thanked the Goddess.

Baptized by fire, by smoke, by earth, by water.

And I let it go. It wasn't forgiveness. As I've said before, fungelical brainwashing has so entirely destroyed that concept by harming my young psyche that I don't know if I can ever reclaim it. But I let go of expectation that others would care, or would have their hearts broken by the same injustice, or would try to change it, or would ever change within themselves.

I stopped caring if they thought I was a heretic, or a sinner, or a flake for being ill, or "too" sensitive, "too" deep, as if depth and empathy were character flaws.

As Elsa sings in Frozen, distance makes thing seem small, and the fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all. It was a symbolic fuck you to those who proclaimed love/grace/justice, but only on their own terms, and I drenched it in the sacrament of nature. 


Craig saw me and was horrified and laughed at me as I came in the house. The logician philosopher shook his head at his mystical poet.

I took a warm shower and scrubbed and cleansed and put on essential oils.

I scrubbed my feet with an exfoliating lavender and honey scrub, because in the New Year, I am standing in new places.

And then I put on my black clothes and placed a rose quartz stone around my neck. 

Standing in new places. 

I finally had a baptism I can be proud of. 1/1/2016.

Midnight.

Reborn among the elements.