It started by the river. The Salmon Falls river. We'd play in the cool water, lay in the itchy tall grass, feel the whispers of the wind and try to seek shade from the scorching sun.
No matter how hard I tried it was that river that called me back. I would force my self into my Sunday clothes and try to wash away the memories of rubbing the wet clay all over my body before I jumped into the welcoming slow current. The current pulled me down. I came up and returned to life but the river kept my soul. The clay kept my spirit. The sun kept my ambition and when I breached the surface the breeze breathed abstract thinking into my veins, thus claiming me as the other elements did.
Here that follows is the story of how the elements claimed me as a child and called me back as an adult.
In my upbringing, in a Baptist Christian home, we had the bible. The bible was the book that contained the information we all needed to know how to walk the way that God wanted us to walk in. We had pastors and elders and youth ministers to go to with questions. These people were “initiates” in the way of Christianity. This structure and formatting was something I understood and felt comfortable with. Like a child’s blanket.
As I grew as an individual, spiritually and in maturity, I found that I no longer took comfort in the way I was living my life. It started in 1999, when I was 14. I attended a sports and music camp for christian youth. SPAM camp. Each year they had a different speaker come do to the daily sermons. This particular year it was my youth pastor’s older brother. The focus was “Is it yours?”, meaning do you own your parent’s faith or is it your own? This hit me like a ton of bricks. It was a week long camp. He spoke every night. Every night I lost “my” faith more and more. I had been carrying my parents thoughts, morals, ideals, faith, and all of it from a young age. It never was mine. I was “saved” at the age of seven. How can a seven year old make this decision for herself? And every night that man spoke I felt more and more lost. It was conflicting and horrifying. I refused to let anyone down and to be different from my family. At 14, I wasn’t ready to make that out-on-a-limb commitment. Not yet.
Over the next 5 years I struggled to find my place in my parents faith. I was given evidence over and over again from the Gods and the Goddesses that I was only fooling myself in trying to ignore the events placed so conveniently in my life. Over the years I saw Christians bring down other Christians for sins that that I couldn't understand. I saw my youth minister fired for downloading porn at his office in church. I saw Elders cheat on their wives with younger female church goers. I watched my parents “till death do us part” marriage fall apart in a matter of one night followed by a year of a messy divorce. I heard pastors tell my friends that depression is a sin and they were a sinner for being sad with no reason. I couldn’t understand or accept these events happening. During all this I attempted perseverance. At 18 I started going to church on my own, I became a member on my own, I taught Sunday school to two year olds of my own volition.
In an attempt to strengthen the community of our church and to prompt the fellowship to treat each other better (I assume, anyway) the pastor started the sermon with a quote by Brennan Manning:
"The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable."
I left that congregation that day not remembering anything from the actual sermon but the quote. I continued to attend church, my attendance starting to dwindle week after week. I stopped teaching Sunday school. I met a boy. We fell in foolish love and I married him and we moved away. We stopped going to church. Our marriage failed and by the time I moved out on my own I was suddenly 20.
I continued to struggle to find a path that compared to my formative years of structure. I wanted that back but could no longer say that I believed in the way that Christians lived their lives, what they believed in, or how they treated one another. (Not to mention the bible which is a whole different essay, or book for that matter). I felt nature. I had always felt it. From a young age I felt spirit and magic in wiggling my toes in cold clay take over my body more than a powerful sermon ever did. I never experienced the kind of emotion that a river or a tree gave me in a church. I revisited that. And without the thick barrier of fear and discrimination that felt at home, I ventured out to find what I could find.
I met a strange woman named Naomi who introduced me to the full moon and tarot cards. She was an artist. There were pictures she had painted on her walls of Goddessed I had never heard of or seen. She invited me to a Winter Solstice feast she hosted. I was inspired by the mutual love in the room the first night I found out what Yule was. I had to know more.
I was pregnant in 2007, very pregnant. A new spirituality store had opened in town. Kindred Spirits. I was there every day in case something new came in for me to look at or read. I begged the owner to hook me up with an experienced witch who could teach, guide, or direct me. That is how I met Stacy. She was going to start teaching a Tarot class starting on my due date. I wanted to sign up then to start the class. Stacy and I talked about it over the phone and she thought that I might find that I was going to have a hard time getting to the first couple of classes just having a new baby. In my eagerness I couldn't understand but ultimately decided to take the next class that was available. I finally met Stacy 8 weeks after I had my son. I met her and we got along great and within a couple of visits I transferred my begging the store owner over to Stacy. I loved that she had a large book shelf full of knowledge and a house full of witchy things for me to absorb. I asked her to apprentice me. She gave me book after book and I read every one. Never quenching my thirst for more.
Suddenly, I found what I was looking for all along. Perhaps it was always in me. Taken by and given life to by the elements. Way back when. Back at the river.
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