A quiet liberation.

My ancestors were Baptists and Methodists. When I started on my spiritual path I wasn't drawn to the faith of my family. I spent my teenage years pretending I was a double hard bitch and my twenties realising I was a feminist. Feminists didn't go to Church, they spent their time liberating themselves from the nauseatingly narrow roles the Church had for them.

In the University Library I found women who were intellectuals, magic makers, rebels and mystics of all kinds and I inhaled it all. Buddhism and 'neopaganism' caught my attention though I didn't consider myself either: this/and/maybe. The goddess caught me. I made myself an altar that I didn't know what to do with but I loved. I said words I didn't write but knew they were important becuase my heart told me so.

I am still at my altar, still saying words (though I write my own now), still this/and/maybe. I have had the opportunity to learn from some amazing wise ones, through books, classes and mentoring. I still find wisdom and liberation among fierce women but also ones in all kinds of bodies and ways of being in them: queer, non-binary ones, people of color, those in differently abled bodies with different capacities and wonders, in bodies entering and exiting transitions of all kinds.

More recently I finally read the Bible, as an offering to my ancestors. Most of it made me furious and sad... and there were flickers of poetry and wisdom and power. It wasn't so easy to dismiss it all out of hand. I read the Way of the Rose, the Gospel of Mary, other Gnostic Gospels. I learned about these foremothers who were contemplatives, mystics, teachers and leaders in spite of the weight of all the odds against them - St Julian of Norwich, St Hildegard of Bingen, St Teresa, Catherine of Sienna. I wondered some more. I found that while I despise the institution of the Church, for me there is also wisdom in the psalms, the beatitudes, the parables. I didn't have to resist or stiffen or cut anything out or off. This understanding has woven in with threads I already held from folk witchcraft and the magic of earth and stone and rain; I welcomed psalms and saints. And and and.

There's nothing earthshaking here, and no fireworks. Just the power in letting go of binds I didn't know I had. A quiet liberation.