False god

"God loves you
Well, not you
But the version of you
He has to imagine
is good enough to love."

Oh friend with jaw dropped
at news of my apostasy
the phenomenal thing isn't my disbelief.
It's that you cannot fathom
why I would want nothing to do with
that god.

by the nakedpastor

Lost At Sea, Part II: Flicker

I cannot tell you if it's over.

I can tell you that I am sitting in a cave,
half of it carved from the white marble of the moon
and half of it scooped from the sea.
And as it turns in the inky sky and the waves ebb at my feet,
I curl into a ball under soft, warm blankets of starshine and I lament.

I hurt, I hurt, I hurt
is the litany my soul cannot stop repeating.
I have used all the other words
and now there is nothing left
to speak to the darkness.

And how remarkable
that Her strong, soft voice
doesn't answer back with a cure.
She doesn't tell me I'm too emotional
to understand the patterns of the waves.
She doesn't tell me that if I wasn't hurting I would see the trail
because She knows the only paths worth parting the seas for
are those anyone, even the hurting
especially the hurting
can travel.
She doesn't tell me that I'm too sensitive,
that my trial of being flung into the sea
has nothing to teach me about understanding
when it happens to those around me.
Because She knows the wounded warrior
has eyes the unmarred soldier can never glimpse,
unless they vow to let their swords rust and crumble into the sea.

No. Instead,
She cradles me in the sea-light and whispers back to my soul
I know.

"And I'm learning

So I'm leaving

And even though I'm grieving

I'm trying to find a reason

Let loss reveal it." 

-Florence Welch

Lost At Sea, Part I: Overture

I was on an island shore. There he stood, miles away, on the stormy seas, just outside a ship.

"I refuse to walk out to him," I said to the sky.

"Do it anyway," said a voice.

I walked over the grey waves pummeling rocks and spraying water into my face and I stood a short distance from him. We screamed over the roar of the waves.

"Come over to me!" he said.

"I can't. I won't!" I was scared to be lured into his siren song yet again, only to be irreparably harmed.

"Come over."

I walked over. My last act of obedience. I decided to say my piece. The waves near us grew quiet. I grabbed his hands in mine and looked in his eyes.

"I can't do this anymore." I began to sink beneath the water. "I don't believe in this anymore," and my body submerged under the water as I let go of his hands.

Was I drowning? Swimming? Down in the distance I saw a warm light. Instead of breaking the surface I decided to dive further in to examine it.

There was a woman who made the grey water around her turn blue, who was cloaked in cerulean and verdant greens, who was warmth and light. She had long auburn hair filled with beads and shells, and an open warm face with a welcoming smile.

I went down to her and entered her home, a dry cavern escape from the waters.

"I've lost so much," I said, as I entered the doorway and felt the warmth of candelight envelope me.

mothers
fathers
brothers
friends
churches
schools
health

"I had to keep asking questions. I had to keep digging. I had to listen to my intuitions and my mind and my heart when it warned me there was danger, because years of not listening to myself had led to my worst wounds. I've lost so much."

I spoke and I spoke and I spoke and I don't remember all that I said. And I couldn't tell you all that she said. But it felt like home, and what it feels like to be a beloved daughter.

It felt like being able to call someone mother after years of never being able to do so. (If you have not known this pain, it is difficult to fathom the joy).

"God is Mother," she said, and for the first time in my life I was embraced by my Mother.

She looked deep into my eyes and smiled and I felt her pride in me. Someone proud of me not for having the right answers but for being my curious, deep, questioning self.

"Go," she whispered in my ear. "You're ready."

And I floated to the surface, where there was more of her same warm light, where the storm was over, where I knew I belonged as myself.

Charlatan

Goddess forgive me for

ever following a man who

never could admit he's wrong

tempting his proteges with claims of authority
rearing his children with gilded paternalism

yearning to devour us into himself. 

"Sometimes all that we believe
Turns out to be just a scam.
Just trying to get my world
Get it undamned."
-Over the Rhine

The Goodness of God Is Worth More Than the Inerrancy of Scripture

"The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of Scripture is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two. Indeed only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissible. 
To this some will reply ‘Ah, but we are fallen and don’t recognise good when we see it.’ But God Himself does not say we are as fallen as that. He constantly, in scripture, appeals to our conscience: ‘Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? [Luke 12:57] — ‘What fault hath my people found in me? [Jer 2:5]. And so on.”

-CS Lewis

Matter Over Mind

If I don't feel my pulse beating in time with the universe
and the breath entering and escaping my lungs
if all I know is the roaring howl of a
distracted, fragmented, anxious, fragile mind
then I fall through the hole
and no one can find me in the blackness.

Goddess: A Love Letter

"I want you to be disappointed and heartbroken
as the idols come crashing down from the shelf
and shatter on the ground into millions of pieces
their shrapnel ripping your heart apart with betrayal.

I don't want this because I'm vindictive
I take no pleasure in any pain
but because it's the only way you'll get that this love
is the stripping away of everything non-essential
so you can know
there was never anything
standing
between
us."

"Love Sprinkler," Cartoon by nakedpastor David Hayward

Leaving Christianity Playlist

Sometimes I lose my faith. This is the soundtrack when that happens:

Hozier-"Take Me to Church"

"Every Sunday's getting more bleak
Fresh poison each week."

Wicked-"No Good Deed"

"One question haunts and hurts
Too much,
Too much to mention
Was I really seeking good?
Or just seeking attention?"

Sarah McLachlan-"Dear God"

"The hurt I see helps to compound
That Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Is just somebody's unholy hoax."

Mutemath-"Odd Soul"

"I once was a son
Now I'm on my own"

Within Temptation-"The Truth Beneath the Rose"

"Pray for me cause I have lost my faith in holy wars
Is paradise denied to me cause I can't take no more?"

Within Temptation-"All I Need"

"Don't tear me down for all I need
Make my heart a better place
Give me something I can believe
Don't tear me down
You've opened the door now, don't let it close"

Calvin Harris, Florence Welch-"Sweet Nothing"

"It isn't easy for me to let it go

Cause I've swallowed every single word
And every whisper, every sigh
Eats away this heart of mine
And there is a hollow in me now

So I put my faith in something unknown
I'm living on such sweet nothing
But I'm tired of hope with nothing to hold"

Jennifer Knapp-"Inside"

"Do this and don't do that
Which you think you can't take back
Well, who in the hell
Do you think you are?"

Janelle Monae-"Cold War"

"So you think I'm alone
But being alone is the only way to be
When you step outside
You spend life fighting for your sanity."

Jewel-"Goodbye Alice in Wonderland"

"Yes a heart can hallucinate
If it's completely starved for love
It can even turn monsters
Into angels from above."

U2-"Stand Up Comedy"

"I can stand up for hope, faith, love
While I'm getting over certainty
Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady."

Idina Menzel-"Let it Go"

"And the fears that once controlled me
Can't get to me at all
It's time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through." 

Foxes-"Holding Onto Heaven"

"Can't take it cause you think nobody sees what you're doing to me
I'm telling you guilt is in your eyes
I hate what you've done
What you've made me become
Don't sleep
Face the night."

Panic! At the Disco-"This is the Gospel"

"And truth be told I never was yours." 

U2-"Invisible"

"It's like the room just cleared of smoke
I didn't even want the heart you broke
It's yours to keep
You just might need one."

Not Allowed In

You were so preoccupied with what you thought you had to keep out
you didn't see all the beauty you weren't letting in.

Human beings put fences
where God plants sprawling, flower-filled meadows.

You were too afraid to err on the side of inclusion
because you didn't want to offend the sensibilities of the self-declared orthodox.
So we received lip service
and they received power to draw the lines in the sand.

Here we are,
on the other side
cut out, excluded
but told, "You're welcome here,
and I understand your concerns
just understand that these people are wounded
and they need this place to be conservative
because the risks of being too conservative are less than of being liberal
and we can't rock that boat."

Never mind that people like me had been wounded by the arrows you were helping them forge.

In our quiet talks you
pitted their hurt, their stories,
against mine
as more worth protecting, more worth believing.

In enabling them, you lost me.

It's not that their hurts weren't real
it's just that you didn't want to publicly affirm
that mine were too.

"It's not enough to tell me that you care

When we both know your words are empty air." 

-Florence Welch

"You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better."

-Anne Lamott

Stuart Harlan Cone

Yours is the name I want to speak to this dark night of one-thousand regrets
In hopes that with it's utterance you would break forth incarnate
made from the milky threads of distant galaxies and the dust of millions of stars,

Forming into the one person
whose loss has left us with an
empty, black sky.

I speak your name with reverence and trepidation
like holy words from an ancient prayer
but you do not appear.

And yet this longing won't go away.
The agony hope won't go away.