i have begun to create art
for art’s sake
i wish to never write again
a line that smells like
sweaty picket lines
or thick sharpie ink
on dollar tree poster board
hell.
i have begun again
to make my stanzas
shake and dance
my lines loop and
curve like your hair
beneath my dry fingers
and this thing shimmers
in the sunlight
it is a kind of
chatoyancy that i cannot
equate with cats or opal
because nothing shimmers
nothing shimmers
hell.
nothing matters but the
pools of universe you
foolishly call eyes
nothing matters but the
air that flows back and
forth from your lips
to mine
because when i pull back
and take a breath to admire
the self-sustained world we’ve
made the Spirit tickles my neck
and
it is good.
I want to reclaim purity.
the girlies
are going to hate me for
this one but
how can you expect
me to unwrite
the tradition that
is transcribed in
my bones
when i was 16
my mother told
me
“you know that
in our culture if
a man touches you,
no man will ever
marry you”
and that was my
sex ed
forget abstinence
education
the worst thing
that can come from
sex is not unplanned
life
it is decay
if you do not
control protect
hide and destroy
the lust will ruin you
can you imagine that?
premarital sex will not
only make you undesirable
it will make you unworthy
a reject
an outcast
a pariah
how can the radical girlies
expect me to
simply unlearn this
what if instead of
fear and shame we
highlighted beauty
“a man leaves his father
and mother and is united
to his wife and they
become one flesh”
they become one flesh
how did we manage to
let purity be overtaken by
Gnosticism
one day
my love
you will leave the comfort
of mother and father’s arms
and we will be united
your breath will become
mine and mine yours
until the expanding and
contracting of lungs
aches when we are
apart and we feel it in our
ribs
your ribs ash of my ash
and my ribs dust of your
dust
bone of my bones
one flesh
and we will be naked
before one another and
feel no shame and
what God has joined
together no person or
faulty theology can separate
i will love you without
shame beloved for these
fires that burn between us are
a mighty flame that cannot
be quenched or swept away
an all-consuming blaze that
brings us both closer to the Lord
not further away
for this passion is
pure
this passion is God-given
“My only two topics of conversation are sex and God”
“Spot the difference”
Victoria and I have this weight on our backs. This is bizarre for me to write because most of the things that weigh me down sit on my chest. But this one, this one has found a nice spot tucked in between my shoulder blades and it pushes down on my thoracic vertebrae or something. Listen, I don’t have to tell you the details because you know it. You have seen the tape ripped off of one boy and stuck onto the next and the next and the next until the tape is just a worthless piece of plastic. You have seen the flower passed around the room with each person ripping off a petal until the symbol of beauty and romance and love is nothing more than another scrap for the compost bin.
Do I have to name the thing? Don’t you know the sticky sweet juices of the forbidden fruit so well? You have felt it on your fingers, you have smelled it on his breath. You have seen the beauty squeezed out of it, distorted and consumed in incognito browsers and anonymous chat rooms. Please don’t make me name the thing. It haunts me when I am with him.
When his delicate finger brushes my arm I cannot help but wonder if the tingle I feel in my spine is arousal or the fires of hell licking at my back. Can you see it more clearly now?
At the Easter Vigil mass I sat in the pew gnawing at my fingers, praying for the Lord to hear my pleas and absolve me. My friends talk about therapy like it saves. Do they not know? Have they found a way to purge the guilt from their bones? I need a divine pardon. Hell, I might need an exorcism. How did I manage to be bewitched by an incubus, to let it make my body its home? The mass ends and I all but beg the priest to hear the confession of a humble sinner.
“Please, Father. I want to receive communion tomorrow”
and he takes pity on me. He looks at me with worried eyes and I wonder if he is trying to figure out what broke me.
“Lust.”
The word beats it way out of my chest, scrapes the insides of my throat, and punches past my teeth into the room and I am suddenly aware of just how close everything is. How close this priest is to me. How close my flesh is to my soul. How close the atoms of the air are to one another to hold the world together.
How do you know you are in the presence of the Lord? I do not understand discernment. Consolation and desolation feel much too black and white to me, the God I know exists in gray spaces. Containers and categories are demonic, we know this.
I imagine Peter, James, and John must have flipped their frikken lids on that mountain. Since middle school I have been praying for God to show me His face, to let me hear His voice, to let me feel His touch.
Oh me of little faith. Was I testing the Lord? Was God mad at me? I thought that after nearly two years in Theologybot training I would have more answers. How do we reconcile the angry God of the Jews with socialist nonviolent Jesus? But I am still here with the same childlike questions.
“You are not a bad person. You do not have to keep dwelling on the things you did before. You can leave that behind and do better.”
I have confessed this thing before. Of course. They got me good. They convinced me that this urge is disgusting, demonic, impure, dirty. They convinced me that these urges make me these things too. As if you cannot separate the girl from the lust. It is all consuming and corrupting and it. will. tarnish. you. Your worth will decrease and decrease and decrease and you too will find that the beauty is gone and all that’s left is the corruptible, salissant, compostable body.
One of the best confessions I had came with a lot of judgment. He asked me do you do this sin alone or is it with someone else as if the nature of the thing could change the thing itself. As if one was better than the other. As if one could be purged but the other would corrode. He told me that all I had to do was put God first and everything else would fall in line. He berated me for not organizing my life around the Lord and I left with a charge. To be better. Do better. I was obviously the problem here. I was covered in guilt and shame, slick with the sticky remnants of forbidden nectar.
But not this time. He did not ask any questions. He let the word fill the room as I babbled on a list of other sins that he knew I was not repentant for.
There was no burning bush. No three angels approaching. No bells. No sky opening in a fiery rage. No calm, gentle wind. No tempest.
Instead, the world quietly began again. The Lord opened the gates to the garden, gestured for me to enter and said “take and eat.” He unraveled me and returned me to my mother’s womb where He knit me again, fearfully and wonderfully. When He finished He set down His needles and said “it is good.” and it was well with my soul.
When Victoria and I see each other it does not take long for the conversation to stroll past pleasantries and into the profane.
“How are things going with your new guy?” she asks and I know that this place is sacred. The weight lightens slightly and I allow my spine to slowly straighten out.
I ask her questions I could never ask anyone else.
We talk about this thing in hallways and park benches and bar tables and gray spaces because that’s where God is.
“Give me a clear sign, Lord. Speak to me in a way that I will hear you. Show me you in a way that I can see you. Give me ears to hear and eyes to see, Lord. I want to see you.”
how
can i
love his
body
and
let him
love mine
without
being
crushed
beneath
the
g
u
i
l
t
🌸Victor🌸
the most delicate
blush colored
petals rush around
as the soft, warm
breeze picks them
up from the ground
these flowers want
to be more white than
pink and I cover my
ice cream with my
hand lest I eat a bowl
of pollen | she does
not mind that I take
issue with all the
seating options and
we finally find a bench
I frown because it’s not
in the sun she chuckles
and says she does not
mind my indecision much
and freckles paint her
face lightly like God used
the speckling method on
her, flickering them across
her cheeks and under her
eyes with the roll of His
thumb across the brush |
we talk about things that
actually matter and I feel
light all over which makes
me realize that I had been
heavy all this time and had
no clue | she makes me wish
I was a photographer so I
could capture this moment |
her perched on the arm of
the bench | the petals rising
and falling swirling around her
the wind playing peek a boo
with her hair | she makes me
laugh past the wall of fatigue
that threatens to drag me under
taking my mood and spirit with it
but | I am light as a blush petal
around her and giggles find their
way out of my chest and as | we
roll down Comm Ave singing along
to my guilty pleasure music | I
feel the need to thank her for
listening thank her for being
thank her for her presence her
deep brown eyes that make you
feel so ridiculously tethered to this
temporal world | I think I’ve
experienced an inbreaking of the
Kingdom | I find it hard to believe
that it will be a place where all our
wounds are gone | we’ll be
healed by moments like these
and God will look at us with |
His deep brown eyes and say
“No, that’s really messed up.”
and | we will be healed
“so, how did you two meet?”
i have two options here
- “oh, you know the bastion of vice and sin that is Tinder”
- my cat was stuck in a tree and he so happened to be passing by and he scaled the tree, saved the cat, and then solved world hunger
i tend to default to humor
when I am uncomfortable with the truth
how do i say
i had given up on romance
when somehow something
far outside of my understanding
happened and after years of
dead end conversations and
late nights on Omegle
marred in shame and filth
i swiped right on a boy i would
never swipe right on
went on my first Tinder date and
wait
this version is far too simple
you must know that i was discerning
the single life
i had decided that perhaps
i would be best off putting my energy
into serving the Lord
but i was bored so instead
i put a quarter of my energy into swiping
on Tinder and Hinge and Facebook Dating
(all synonyms for purgatory)
he walked in and said my name
it wasn’t the way the ancestors
intended but i let it slide
he smiled and said hey
hugged me tighter than i
expected and said
“it’s so nice to meet you”
or something and how i wish
i could go back in time and bottle
this moment because on January 1st
1804 Ayiti became the world’s first
black republic and in 19?? a
Dominican woman named Alicia
met a French man who became the
father of Felix Valin who left his
family and began a new one with
his maid Gislaine and they had a
child named Pierre and in 198? he
came to the United States and married
a woman named *redacted* and they
had a child named *redacted* before
a woman named Carline swept Pierre
away and they accidentally ended up
with a daughter who was born
before her heart was fully formed
but to understand how many stars
had to align for this daughter to meet
this boy in a boba shop in 2023 you
must know that first Abraham begat Isaac
and Isaac begat Jacob and Jacob begat Judah
and more and more and more and – here’s the kicker –
Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary of whom
was born Jesus who is called Christ and
the French colonized half of Hispañola
and brought Catholicism with them which
fit quite perfectly with the religion
of the Tainos so when the boy told the girl
that he is Catholic but only goes to church
sometimes she thought
“I can work with that”
and as he sat across from her
light freckles splashed across his face
nervous hands gesturing and fixing
and adjusting and fidgeting
talking on and on and on about only
Lord knows what
a new geneology of possibilities
slowly unfolded
and they shall call it love
I keep trying to write something that matters. Stop. Who gets to decide what does and does not matter?
I don’t feel like the right person to be writing about God. I barely know how to speak to God, how can I write something that would do Him any justice?
How did the church mothers and fathers know? How did they know that what they wrote was valid, useful, spiritual?
If I write about agape my pen shakes and the lines come out hesitant. Perhaps my hand is best used for eros. Maybe philia if I’m feeling bold. Holiness feels unattainable. There is nothing other about these wary scratches on sweaty paper. My writing belongs in the realm of the unconsecrated, it should be trampled underfoot and whispered into spit covered microphones at dive bars and library basement open mics. I would do far better there than in sacred places. My lips are far too unclean.
Imposter syndrome sneaks its way into the corners of my life that it doesn’t even make sense for it to be.
He cups my cheek with his hand and says “I love you” and I find myself peeling off layer after layer after layer of my skin, inspecting each bit trying to find the part of me that is worthy of such love.
“I’ll never be more loved than I am right now
Wasn’t holding you up, so there’s nothing I can do to let you down.
Doesn’t take a trophy to make you proud.
I’ve never been more loved than I am right now”
Why are there so many Christian songs about not deserving God’s love? Because we have spent so long entrenched in the world of unworthiness. Oh we, petty dishonorable disgusting humans. How dare we fix our lips to cry out to the almighty, all-powerful God who should not even waste His time hearing our cries but does. But does. Unworthy as we are, God loves us.
“Oh the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God.
Oh, it chases me down fights ‘till I’m found
Leaves the 99.
I couldn’t earn it.
I don’t deserve it.
Still, you give yourself away.
Oh the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God”
He tells me I am beautiful.
“But my thighs”
He tells me I am gorgeous.
“But I look like a potato”
He tells me I am amazing.
“But I’m so boring”
He tells me I am good.
“No, I’m not good but I try.”
He tells me that I am so smart.
“But I’m not an academic. I’m not a scholar. You should see the people at my school.”
He tells me I’m perfect. Just perfect.
I shake my head.
and I can’t imagine how the disciples must have felt when Jesus told them “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these” right after they expressed their doubt, fear, and lack of confidence in the way.
“What do you mean you have a weak faith life? You’re one of the most religious people I know?” and I don’t have the heart to tell him that I don’t think God hears me anymore. I don’t have the heart to tell him that I feel like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel except instead of a weak, limp finger barely reaching for the Lord I feel like God is just across the room and I am running, stumbling and falling like white people in horror movies trying to get to the Lord. but when I look down I find that I am on a treadmill. Running, chasing, stumbling, falling but going absolutely nowhere.
“Dear God
I've been trying awful hard to make You proud of me
But it seems
The harder that I try, all the harder it becomes
And I feel like giving up
Most of the time
Dear God
I've been chasing their approval and it's killin' me
And I know
The more I try to prove
All the less I have to show
And I'm stuck inside my head
Most of the time
But if I pray a little harder
If I follow all the rules
I wonder, could I ever be enough?”
Of all the guys I matched with on Tinder, he is the only one who didn’t ask “what’s theology?” He reminds me of why I decided to study theology in the first place. He keeps me rooted in the real world outside of Chestnut Hill and Brighton and the crushing gears of academia. We rarely ever talk theology but somehow his arms are a space for theological reflection. He asks “what does that mean” and “why do we believe” and says “I don’t get that” and I am forced to step off the treadmill for a moment and ask myself why am I running. He traces my lips with his thumb and runs his hand across my arm and pushes my hair behind my ear and talks to me with a sense of love and admiration that I thought I would never feel and eschatological hope feels less like a concept and more like a reality. He reaches a hand out and pulls me from the depths of self-deprecation and I wonder: if I can feel such a deep warmth from laying in the arms of a mere mortal, how much more will I be loved in the Kingdom? How much more will I be healed in the presence of love incarnate love Divine?
His hot breath on my ear sheds a different light on heaven.
In his book Prayer for Beginners Peter Kreeft says something along the lines of “in heaven, praying is better than sex.” I always get irritated when people use “better than sex” to describe how good something is. As a virgin, I feel a little left out. That’s like me telling a toddler that this hot fudge sundae is better than getting wine-drunk on a Friday night with friends you haven’t seen in a while. It’s not helpful. Peter Kreeft must have known that at least half his audience had no clue, on an experiential level, what he was talking about.
I am terrified of old demons coming out of the closet when I am ministering to people. I have filled my head and heart with all these ideas and concepts and theories and theologies that have been weaponized to keep people thinking in a very specific way. I have been trained in a thought bubble that prioritizes fear and order over love and tolerance. I have all of these moving boxes that I am using to dismantle harmful ideologies brick my brick but I do. not. know. where to put the boxes so they do not haunt me in my sleep or jumpscare those I minister to.
An old friend once told me that there would be no romance in heaven. No food. No friends or relationships. I would know you and you would know me but we wouldn’t care who the other was because none of those things matter in heaven. We wouldn’t hunger. We wouldn’t lust. We wouldn’t want for human relationships. I would see my husband and know that he is my husband but I simply would. not. care. We would spend all of forever singing holy, holy, holy with all the angels and Saints and so we’d be too busy to care about other people.
Respectfully, no thank you.
I have heard that idle hands are the devil’s playground. Lord, please free my people from the shackles of using the Bible to justify and uphold demonic capitalism. It makes me sick. And tired. I am sick and tired of the toiling of my people. I am sick and tired of grinding ourselves into a pulp and then asking ourselves why we aren’t strong enough to grind more. There better not be no form of business in heaven. You hear me, God? I’ve had enough. We want rest.
Patricia Beattie Jung writes, “Theologians have for centuries imagined heaven as completely bereft of sexual desire and activity. Traditionally, most theologians—Augustine and Thomas Aquinas among them—speculate that we will remain distinctly male or female in risen life, but they retain little place for other aspects of sexuality in heaven. They argue that in risen life while some transformed experience of gender difference may abide, sexual attraction and joy will be left behind… sexual activity is one of the most decisive ways humans draw near to each other, “quite physically, quite literally,” as theologian David Jensen puts it,” then it might well be a key way we draw near to, commune with, and make room for one another in glory…The traditional view denies that God intends to heal and restore this way of relating to each other. But several contemporary theologians have begun to suggest that our sexual desire—just like the rest of nature—is ‘capable of being gradually transformed and ordered by grace so that we are brought to flourishing starting from where we are.’”
And I am pushed back into a conversation I had with my friend Victoria on a park bench. I told her candidly about a sexual encounter that left me spiritually wounded and she heard me with God’s ears.
I cannot understand a heaven in which all the wounds inflicted upon us on earth are not addressed and made right. There is sex in heaven not only because it is beautiful, but also because it has hurt so many of us. Once again God has given us a gift so precious and beautiful that, in awe and fear of its beauty, we made it unrecognizable and ugly.
After a mix of Catholic guilt and cultural fear mongering rendered me petrified of sex, a sexless heaven made a lot of sense. It’s a thing people do, flinging flesh against flesh for the sake of filthy pleasure.
but.
a sneaky smile dances across his face and i ask “why are you looking at me like that?” but I know. and unimaginably the pure bright blinding picture of heaven that I once held onto so tightly begins to shift out of focus.
God gave us free will and Mystery so we wouldn’t get too comfortable with our conjectures about him.
He snakes his hands around my waist, squeezes my squishy hips tightly, plants a soft kiss in the delicate space between my neck and my shoulder and I am humbled. All conclusions about God and Heaven turn to mush and I
melt
into
his
arms
the Mystery