Don’t Pray For My Soul.

I really don’t need your salvation.

I sometimes wonder to myself, are there people out there praying for my soul? Like is someone going through their prayer list and when they get to my name they ask for god to bring me “home”? I kind of chuckle, because I used to be that girl. I still remember the poem I wrote years ago inspired by the story of the prodigal son. I imagined that even as the son chose to turn away from his father’s love and shelter, the father’s heart never left the balcony of their farm home where he stood and watched as his beloved walked away.

Ever standing on the balcony of my heart.

That is how I pictured god’s love for those who for whatever reason chose to reject his love and truth. It is a beautiful image really. The loving and giving father never gave up on his ungrateful and hurtful son. It grieved me that so many of my fellow Christians were unmoved by the loss of their spiritual siblings. Why were we not mourning as the father mourns? I purposed to ever stand on the balcony of my heart for all the “prodigals” in my life. Just as god never gave up on them. I almost got the phrase tattooed on my arm. (I really dodged a bullet there. It would be a very obnoxious reminder of my past life now lol)

For the most part, there are very few people left in my everyday life that would even consider it appropriate to pray for anyone’s “salvation”, let alone mine. But I do have a few friends who are still Christian, Christian. (haha. If you know, you know). And once in a while, I wonder do they leave our interactions and talk to god about me? Do they plead for my soul? Do they ask that I would be “brought low”, “return to my first love” “would turn away from the world” or “be born again” again? Do they ask Jesus to “reveal himself anew”? Or do they pray for an opportunity to be used in my “journey home”? — I actually chuckled at that one. To be honest, I don’t know. I have never asked. It’s a pretty awkward thing to ask a friend you used to share spiritual life with “Do you think I’m going to hell?”

As much as I chuckle at my youthful zeal. Now, potentially sitting on the other side of the well-meaning fervour, it makes me so uncomfortable. In hindsight, I see how cringey this comes off to those who haven’t been conditioned to believe that life and death hinged on being a member of this very specific club. It is such a narrow and arrogant view of the kosmos. As if the creator of all things is out there worrying about the semantics of my spiritual life. It’s almost as if we think god is as petty and nitpicky as we are.

Maybe we do. Maybe that’s why we’ve spent lifetimes fighting about the right way to worship, honour, know, appease, and contact the divine. We assume that they’re like us. Fickle. Temperamental. Controlling. Angry. Vengeful. Maybe, that’s why we allow ourselves to stay in an obviously abusive relationship with what we call the divine.

I can’t fully speak for other faiths cause that’s not my area of expertise, but as someone who was raised in western evangelicalism, the god I was discipled to love was a white cishet man. He was called just, compassionate, loving and sympathetic. But he demanded silence, fear, guilt, and shame. He had me prove my love by offering up my family, heritage, gender, race, and sexuality in the name of his kingdom. He never looked like me. Never sounded like me. In a bind, he always defended the stake of whiteness, maleness, power, and the status quo. And whenever I called any of this into question my programming led me to turn to him for resolution and answers. He was my abuser and my lover. His was the only voice that mattered. Even when it was apparent to others that our relationship was unhealthy, I stayed. I defended his honour and that of his representatives. Always to my detriment.

Stockholm syndrome is a bitch.

The promise was that my allegiance would be repaid by eternity with him and not in hell where all the ones who refused his way, explicitly or out of ignorance, would go. I don’t actually remember when I ceased to believe in hell. It was a long time ago, back when I was still considered in the club. But somewhere along the way, I let go of the fear and urgency. It was no longer consistent with how I viewed and valued humanity or the divine.

Hell.

That’s what it boils down to doesn’t it? If we’re really honest, hell is the reason people pray prayers like the ones I used to pray. Hell is the reason someone may be fasting and praying for my soul. Hell is why anyone asks,

“Are you saved?” Saved from what exactly?

“Have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Saviour?” Did I need ruling and saving and not know it?

“Do you know where you will go if I were to die tomorrow?” No, but do you know? Reeaaally?

I can already hear the answer. “Of course! Heaven. And if you don’t receive Christ you will be in hell. Eternally separated from a loving God because of your sin.” H. E. L. L. Those four letters combined were a powerful reminder that there were consequences to rejecting our faithful master and don’t you forget it.

It doesn’t matter that I feel more at home in my body, soul, and mind than I ever have. It doesn’t matter that I am kinder, more generous, and loving with myself and others. It doesn’t matter that even though I can’t bring myself to say the Apostle’s Creed anymore — because I can no longer with integrity declare certainty about things I will never know — I am more committed to the principles introduced in Matthew 5 than I ever was in my more “Christian” life.

*****************************************************************

I was talking to a friend months ago about some of the complexities of my current spiritual state. Even though I have walked away from the spiritual home I grew up in, I still have very real spiritual experiences that look like the ones I used to have. But to lump them in with what I used to be… feels so wrong. Incomplete even. There was a time when I felt like these spiritual experiences were like being haunted by my past. I have found better language around this but at the time I found it really troubling.

I had wanted to make a clean break and there seemed to be a force at play that wanted otherwise. The friend I was talking to replied, with what felt to me like smug certainty, that it was because I was “marked.” In the awkward silence that ensued, my body cried out a visceral NO! I could not express in words at the time what it was about that phrase that felt so wrong. But I knew in every cell of my body that I rejected the notion that I had been marked by this supposed god and as such was doomed to return into his care.

As I reflect on this now, a bit further removed by my past life and self, I think I understand what my body was speaking to me that night. She knew how far we had come and what we had left behind. And though I hadn’t fully processed it all, she knew that to go back would be to return to bondage and we had fought way too hard to be free. I would forward that the object of my worship was not my divine helper, but my captor. Whitemalegod was never rooting for me. Never out for my good. This god demanded I sacrifice everything that made me unlike him. I was not created in his image. I was called to conform to his white male self. All in the name of holiness. In the name of false peace. In the name of unity.

I cannot return home to my first love for, despite popular belief, I was never at home in his arms. I may have been branded by my captor, but I belong to him no more. It is the best thing to ever happen to me. Truly. So for those who may be praying for my soul. Who out of genuine love are calling for my return.

Don’t. Please.

I know your intentions are from the kindest place in your being. And I say this with the all the respect and understanding I can muster. You can keep your god. Keep your binaries and absolutes. Keep your certainty. Keep your heaven and your hell. Keep the fog of the mind you call living biblically. Keep the ritualistic sacrifice of women, the poor, the queer, the black and brown body and mind for the sake of your king. I will have none of it. I will not return. I will not lay my body bare before whitemalegod’s altar for another moment of my life.

I’m good. Not only am I good, but I am also fully aware of what it means to take my choice to its furthest extent. For me, it means liberty. Yes, I know. But believe me, I didn’t leave truth, justice or hope behind. I would even dare say I did not leave the Creator behind. On the contrary, I fled the plantation of my mind and soul and I ran for my life. I ran for the sake of my sanity, my wholeness, liberation and that of my descendants. That they may stand on my shoulders as I have stood with my ancestors. Never to be marked as I was.

Free.