When the world you live in shifts from what you understand to something very wrong, its like being Alice in the Looking Glass. This is the story of a very strange Sunday for this pagan shamanic feminist woman.
The other day, for the first time in a very long time, I let myself be talked into going to someone's church. It is described as somewhat nontraditional/ charismatic, held in a hall here in Victoria. The person who invited us will remain nameless, but she is a trusted, respected friend, so there was no question that this might indeed be a community of faithful who it might be enjoyable to associate with and we arrived with open hearts and minds.
We were a little late and the show was already in operation with a hula clad woman up front on the mike singing along with the words on the screen, church karaoke. Who knew? There was an ensemble of Hawaiian clad people up front, a choir of sorts who sang along with her and the congregation, sitting around large round tables with coffee cups and muffins in front of them, joined in. After this we were led on a gentle guided meditation, so far so good.
Then the preacher invited a woman up to the mike and sat next to her, proceeding to introduce and then interview her in a surreal spotlight, with his Hawaiian shirt and her sarong very dissonant when the topic was revealled. The woman explained how she had been thrown into a Satanic ritual cult when she was a baby and was sexually ritualized from her earliest memory. Remember now, this is being spoken in a quiet room of about 100 men, women and children. Then the priest asks 'And what exactly did you experience and when is your earliest memory?' to which the woman starts spending the next ten minutes describing events that parallel the sensational 1970's Satanic Ritual themed book, 'Michelle Remembers', that I remember reading as a young teen. I was very uncomfortable as this whole dynamic was wrong on so many levels. That she was describing physical sexual acts in front of children was the least. How was this considered to be 'church worthy'? If the information was indeed true, which I have my doubts about, given my long career with women in need/crisis, and this public announcement was part of her healing, then surely she would be better off announcing it to a closed group of trusted parishioners and not the public Sunday drop in? How was this leadership of responsibility to the congregation?
My mind boggles with the notion that if I had kids there and they were subjected to this kind of dialogue, I would not have sat there like the 100 others and continued to listen as the woman went on and on, the priest goading and coaxing her to reveal more. It is not a Sunday church meeting's right to take away the innocence of the younger parishioners, what IS IT about Churches that thinks it has the right to blindside their meek followers like that?
We left before they got any further. We went to the pub, had brunch and I drowned the image that lingered in my psyche by that poor, coopted, meek woman on the church's stage, who had regailed us all with the description of her earliest sexual abuse memory, of being forced to give head to two men who she woke up in her crib with at the age of 9 months. I drowned it behind several drinks and when that didn't help, I added tequila to the mix, had my hubby drive me home, and I slept it off.
Can anyone blame me?
Why did those people all just sit there and listen like it was perfectly acceptable? The incongruity of the hawaiian theme that week was just so strange too. That this woman actually participated in dressing for the theme even though she knew that she was going to be publically humiliated eventually that morning boggles my mind. The guided meditation was a 'virtual cruise' to a place of the heart, using all manner of cruise ship vernacular, assuming that the congregation was experienced with it, although I could see a room full of for the most part, lower middle class white/ elderly poor / handicapped people, most of who would not likely know what a cruise was like. The preacher spoke at length about ritual sexual abuse as if it were credible, accepted, and that all who were attending understood the jargon he used. He gave a source referring to the esteemed expert somebody or other, and continued to tell his audience what to believe about this farcical topic.
There were penises and rape and prostitution bandied about on the stage for the 15 minutes we tolerated it, not believing our ears and too 'deer in the headlights' to move. Maybe that was it, it was the shock of the psychological blind side that froze us to our seats.
We live in incongruous times. My friend texted hubby and apologized. I don't believe an apology is necessary as she had no way of knowing this was going to happen. When we met later, I was not able to open the topic with her. I suppose there are long standing loyalties with the congregation that confuse the issue for her. I don't know what I would feel in her place.
I can't believe that I didn't stand up and stop the proceedings by saying 'This is wrong.' and that I sat there like the rest of the room and let it continue. I guess walking out was enough for me to summon at the moment. I can't believe that there were no complaints, no hue and cry either. It just boggles my mind.
Ironically, the next day, I read an article in here (internet) about 'Deploying Feminism' and once again, I am jangled awake as a feminist, with another affront to my sensibilities of gender imbalance, human rights offenses and discordance. Using the war machine's patriarchal language to describe a manner of utilizing feminist concepts set my red flags off as much as the statement ' fellow feminists' does. I am once again reminded that like Alice in the Looking Glass, we live in a very strange world.
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