ST. Gertrude’s Abbey – an at Home Monastic Practice

Tag: lgbtq

  • Blackbird Pie

    by Sr. Organza, OLBQ

    She only had her Kenneth Cole leatherette attaché for a shield. She was deep in conversation on her phone oblivious to the world. I could have mooned her and she wouldn’t have flinched. She was one of those smart women you see so often lampooned. Hair pulled back in a tight bun. Makeup flawlessly applied. A dark suit of some sort with pearl buttons and a silk scarf hanging daintily from her neck. Given how cheap her bag was, I doubt it was Hermes. She was a career girl- a business woman on her way to seal a deal or club a child. She had that lean and hungry look about her.

    I briskly walked my dog past her on the nature trail/nature boardwalk that connects my condo with the rest of the city. He stopped for his own business at the head of the trail. I heard the distinctive trill of the red-winged blackbirds that nested in the trees on either side of the boardwalk. They popped their little heads out and watched this woman like an angry old neighbor might watch kids straying ever too closely to his manicured lawn. Sheila was not looking. She was busy on a call I could just barely hear one side of…

    “…I told her about the report. I told her where it was saved…I…ahhhhhhhh!”

    The birds were over her. She was caught off guard dropping her phone with a clunk on the deck and crouching beneath her satchel as the birds began dive bombing her head. One after the other screeched and then swooped from their perches in the nearby oak trees towards the neat bun on the back of the woman’s head.

    “What the hell! Is happening? Fuck! Help!”

    She vainly swatted at the birds who were unphased by her futile self-defense. She was only just barely able to retrieve her phone from the ground before the first bird came back to swipe even more closely at her scalp. This was not an attack intended to wound but only to embarrass. As she ducked under her attaché, she lost her footing and one of her high heels was caught in between the slats of the decking. She pulled but the shoe would not budge until a loud “crick” and then “crack” and the heel was torn off hanging by a thin strap of leather and glue. Whatever her hair was supposed to have looked like when she left the apartment, it was now a frizzy mess crowning her head with several strands of hair hanging down into her reddened face. She eventually did make it to where I was standing.

    “Red-winged black birds,” I said like a New England farmer at my stone wall and discussing planting season. Some how knowing what they were would make her unfortunate morning a little better.

    “Huh?” she said as she checked to make sure that they hadn’t ripped her smart summer-weight linen suit.

    “Those were red-winged blackbirds. They’re just like that.” I tried smiling at her as this doubling down on trivia of the birds of North America would again help.

    “Well, what the hell are they doing here?”

    “They’re nesting. This is just where they live.”

    “Someone should just shoot them all.” And she walked away stomping with one shoe while the other dragged the remnants of the heel behind her.

    If she had stopped and talked, she would have learned that I felt much the same way. I too had only recently been attacked by the same duo that had destroyed her. (You are right. I could have warned her. But I hated her shoes.) The winged terrors swooped down and pecked at my head. They even drew a little blood. It was the first time I had ever been attacked by a wild animal. I need to underline the wild because to my knowledge no one keeps these kinds of birds as pets. They’re not domesticated like grumpy homing pigeons or really annoyed chickens. So an assumption that these birds were wild is reliable. Though, I have been attacked by other animals before.

    Several years ago a good friend planned a 40th birthday trip to Roatan Island, off the coast of Honduras. It is a lovely place except Roatan must be ancient Mayan for “uncatalogued bugs that bite with random effect.” One of our party was bit by…something, and her foot swelled up to twice its normal size but only for a day. I was bit and developed a 24-hour flu replete with the chills, sweating and a fever and had to pretend I wasn’t miserable so I wouldn’t ruin the party.

    “Are you hot? You’re sweating buckets.”

    “Never better!”

    But we’ve all been bitten by a bug at one time in our life and I did say animal attack. On Roatan is a small sloth sanctuary. I’m not precisely sure that sloths even live on that island at all but they do have a sanctuary there just in case. Maybe it was a sloth resort and not a sanctuary. Along with the sloths, the sanctuary also rescues other creatures. These strange pig-looking things that are native to Roatan along with several species of tropical birds and a little troupe of capuchin monkeys. We waited patiently to hold the sloths and I will say it was worth it. They’re remarkably docile and gentle creatures and frankly I agree with their natural shyness. I would also prefer to hang out in a tree getting high on leaves and only coming down occasionally to take a giant, satisfying poop. Adjacent to the sloths were the monkeys.

    “Oh can we see the monkeys?” said the birthday girl.

    The guide was thrilled. “Of course! If you want, you can go in the cage with them.”

    “Let’s do it!”

    “I don’t know,” I said. “They don’t really seem all that safe.”

    I wasn’t being dramatic or a Debbie Downer. I had just read a story about a young girl whose parents rented a monkey for her birthday party and apparently the monkey did not like the girl and more or less ripped off her face. Despite the surgeons’ best efforts, the teen needed a face transplant.

    “Oh come on! It’ll be fun!”

    “Ehhhhh…”

    “You’ll be fine.”

    Against my better judgment and a deep surety that I too would need to have a face transplant, I got into the cage. They weren’t in there at the time as they lived in what resembled a wire version of a gerbil city.

    “Don’t worry. They’ll come to you. Oh look see? Here they come! We named them after the cast members of The Jersey Shore.”

    That wasn’t reassuring me. I was anticipating the headlines back home to read “Chicago Nun’s Face Torn Off by Jwow and Eaten by Snooki.” At first, the monkeys seemed friendly. Maybe I had been overreacting. They were curiously chittering at us from the top of the cage. They slowly began approaching us reaching out to us with their all-too-human-like hands. Then one jumped on my shoulder and any fear I had evaporated and I was thrilled. She was so happy and excited to be there. She played with the collar of my shirt and seemed just content to be there. I was Jane Goodall. But she started to chirp and while I do not speak capuchin monkey I do believe she told her friends, “Hey everyone! Come over here and get a load of this feller!” And they did. All of them.

    Before I could prevent what I saw was happening, all four monkeys were on me. They were on my head. On my back. On my shoulders. And they wouldn’t leave. The others in my party were at first amused but then annoyed since none of the monkeys would come to them.

    “Get them the fuck off me!”

    “I can’t do that,” said the zoological park’s answer to a teenager working at a shoe rental counter in a bowling alley over summer break.

    “You fucking what?!?”

    “They seem attracted to your natural scent. I think they are all fighting for you as a mate.”

    And they were. Screeching and howling at one another, they were pulling at my hair, my shirt, my ears. I stood there terrified. They treated my t-shirt like a kid’s maze, going in the collar and out the bottom or trying to get in through the sleeve of my shirt. Any time I opened my eyes all I saw was the horrified faces of my travel companions and fur. This went on for about 10 minutes and then I said it one more time. “Get these fucking monkeys off of me or I will start to kill them one at a time.” At this point the keeper realized that I was absolutely serious and completely unamused. He tried to lure them away with peanuts. That didn’t work. He tried calling them like a tropical Santa Claus hoping to get some air in his monkey-powered sleigh. They still ignored him -my natural scent too powerful or my apparent capuchin monkey-like attractiveness too alluring. But then I felt it. It was warm and wet and was now dripping down my back. Several of the monkeys either peed on me or came on me. Maybe both. They used me like a cheap whore and then scampered off as soon as they were done. I stood there, hair a mess, red in the face, scratched, and with monkey cum all over me.

    “We can offer you a new t-shirt. They’re $18.”

    Extortion. I can either wear, for the rest of the day, a shirt covered in monkey spunk or I can pay $18 for a t-shirt that barely fits me. Some of my party were laughing as if I were Jack Hannah on The Tonight Show. We continued on our safari of the possibly native animals of Roatan and in the next cage were two giant, blue macaws. I opted against this since I just changed my shirt. But one of the women in my party thought they were just remarkable creatures and had to get a closer look. Afterall, she had handled the monkey enclosure as if she were a born naturalist. Well, one of the remarkable creatures clamped down on her wedding ring trying to bite off her worm of a finger. Once she did successfully get the finger out of the macaw’s mouth, her finger went from red to blue in a matter of minutes. Had the sanctuary not had pliers to help loosen the ring, she likely would have lost her finger. How majestic. A lesson to be learned that humans may consider themselves the ringmasters of the circus of life but are really just the tricycles the poodles ride in on.

    The red-winged black birds were not residents in some sanctuary. They were wild naturally occurring, locally sourced buttheads. After that first attack, I avoided the area on future walks for several days. Then I decided I was not going to allow some 6-ounce bird dictate my walking habits. So I returned. This time wearing a bright, white hat. While the hat kept them from pecking at my head, it didn’t stop them from aggressively swooping around me and then bawking angrily in my face from a nearby reed.

    Any other day of the week and in any other environment, I like to feel like I’m David Attenborough. But in that moment I had to think: how much a shot gun actually cost, what red-winged black birds tasted like, and how one decorates with red-winged black bird feathers. It is, alas, illegal, to kill red-winged black birds and particularly illegal to consume songbirds as food, which apparently red-winged blackbirds are considered songbirds in much the same way that Katy Perry is considered a musician. But once upon a time, four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie was considered a main course fit for a king rather than a felony. Laws can be changed, bird. Laws can be changed.

  • Religious Liberty: Corrupted

    by The Abbot

    Shortly after the 2024 election, I found myself in Midway Airport in Chicago. I noticed something unusual, particularly for the liberal bubble that is Chicago. Milling about were a number of people sporting prominent and conspicuous Christian merch. There were t-shirts with giant crosses or just “Jesus Saves” emblazoned across them. I saw all manner of cross pendants -some in gold, or others covered in rhinestones. Parents, many of whom are dead set against their children becoming recruited or groomed by drag queens reading The Wizard of Oz to their kids at a public library, had dressed their own progeny in the same, blasphemous, way. They carried tote bags covered in the name of the Lord or bedazzled with yet again more crosses. One asks oneself where all of this stuff came from and who is making money from it, because I would be genuinely surprised if Tiffany at the mall kiosk where these people bought these insipid wares was running a charity shop.  

    In those weeks both leading up to and immediately after the election, the newly triumphant right began its victory tour. With not only the newly “liberated” Christians running amuck but with their Congressional leadership introducing all manner of religious legislative claptrap. First, a formerly pro-LGBTQ Republican representative, wanted transwomen banned from the House women’s restrooms on religious grounds and the self-called Christian Speaker of the House obliged making sure to cite his faith rather than his just being a bigot as the reason he came to this decision. This was to keep precisely one member of Congress from using the women’s restroom. Frankly, if that had been me, I would have just dropped my pants and peed in the cloakroom. We have seen Oklahoma schools begin placing Trump bibles in classrooms. (A dangerous and disturbing move since The Hitler Youth did the same thing with Mein Kampf). Aside from the ethical implications of placing a book produced by and directly enriching the pockets of the president, one might ask why a Bible would be necessary in a classroom at all. The right cites “religious liberty” and again everyone just nods their heads like they’re bobbles – empty, hollow, unthinking, tacky.

    Religious liberty does not bestow the right of any one religion or any one religious sect to force its beliefs on others or on a national, non-religious government. I don’t care what kind of semi-remedial history class Lauren Boebert insists on teaching. If the Framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had wanted to found our country on the precepts of Protestant Christian doctrine- they would have just said so right off the bat. Instead, the founders expressly cautioned us about mixing the matters of state with those of religion. There are several mentions in both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that make it clear that this was the real intent of the Framers.

    “But why,” ask the Christian right, “would the god-fearing Christian men who founded our nation do such a thing? Surely, anyone claiming otherwise is mistaken. This was meant to be a Christian nation.” To this I point out that the period just prior to the founding of the United States through a time shortly thereafter was known as “The Enlightenment” or “The Age of Reason.” The men and women who came before had only decades earlier, lived through several centuries of political unrest all due to the question of religion. This was a Europe-wide problem. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in civil wars and uprisings in the wake of the Reformation and Counter-reformation. Billions of dollars in property were destroyed in riots over which sect of Christianity one belonged to or believed in. Millions of people were displaced from their homes. It was from these ashes that the men and women of The Enlightenment emerged and with them, a deep distaste for the comingling of religion and state. They had apparently learned their lesson.

    If one were a thinking person, one might necessarily reason that any new country, formed after this mess, would be one that would attempt to avoid entangling religion at all and instead rely solely on pragmatic, secular concepts that while preserving private religious freedom also avoided the reemergence of a civil war based on religion. The American Experiment would take the ideas of The Enlightenment’s most prominent philosophers and apply them to this new form of democratic government. What our Framers intended was to build something entirely new – a nation uninterested in the petty and ultimately personal problems of religion, and instead conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal. They left problems of religion in the capable hands of pastors and reverends and in the homes of the private citizens themselves. It is the only explanation for the need of a “free-exercise clause” placed within the Constitution.

    The Clause stated that Congress could pass no law preventing the free-exercise of religion. So a state or the federal government could not make a law that would outlaw the saying of the mass or quaking or passing out communion bread, or meditating or lighting a menorah, or a law that would force people under a dietary restriction to forgo that restriction and eat pork. As long as you were still able to personally and privately practice your religion, Congress was still free to pass any other law it wanted to within the parameters of the Constitution and courts. For example, precluding prayer in public schools. This is not a ban on personal prayer. If a child wants to say grace before eating or say a prayer before gym class, as long as they are doing so on their own and not forcing other students to participate, there is no issue. This is why the forced displays of the Ten Commandments or reading of the Bible in a public school is so egregious a violation of the principles and purpose of separating church and state. It is undoing several centuries of common sense, and good governmental policies avoiding the unnecessary entanglement of religion and public facilities.

    This is where waters, once clear, have become exceedingly muddy. One of the more recently famous examples are the bakers who refuse to bake cakes for same-sex weddings. Their argument is that state and federal anti-LGBTQ discrimination laws are an example of Congress passing a law that prevents them from freely exercising their religion. The Supreme Court, as weird as they are now, agreed with this flawed logic. First, entangling our secular court system with matters of religious doctrine is a dangerous precedent. The Court in this case would have had to have asked “What does the free exercise of the respondents’ religion look like?” This is problematic as a U.S. Court lacks jurisdiction in religious law or doctrine. And entangling a state or federal court with the belief system of a religion only sets up a future possibility of direct legislation of religious laws. (Hence the purpose of the prohibition of co-mingling church and state matters.) If a court can say what a religion does or does not believe, so too can Congress make a law specifically on the doctrine of that faith. Instead, a Court could only rely on that particular religion’s official creed of belief and regular established customs of practice. It could not extrapolate what free exercise meant to that particular baker. (More on personal religious practices later.) So does Christianity forbid an adherent, a follower of Christ, from providing a commercial service to an openly homosexual person? I know of no Christian sects or denominations with the lone, radical example of the Westboro Baptist Church, where a follower would be prevented from baking a cake for a gay couple based only on the Creeds or the Gospels.

    I am not unaware that most Christians still adhere to the Old Testament prohibition on male-on-male sexual expression. But do the later additional teachings of Christ further prevent a Christian from interacting with or conducting business, trade and commerce with a gay person? I would argue from a religious and legal perspective it does not. First, Leviticus says nothing about gay people. It is only specific to the sexual act itself, that is anal sex, between two men. Second, Christ encouraged the interaction of Jewish people with all sorts of others that they considered unclean, or unworthy. He healed Jewish people, Romans, Syrians, Greeks, and Samaritans alike. His own Apostles were mostly fisherman who earned their money by selling fish at markets and these markets were populated by all sorts of people both foreign and domestic. So where do these so-called Christian bakers, caterers, photographers etc. find a law from Jesus that would allow them to deny goods and services, paid for in the national stream of commerce to people who in their own personal disapproval of a “lifestyle choice” (a lifestyle that would have been completely unknown to people living in the first century)?

    Having a personal distaste for a gay couple because of what they may be doing in their bedroom, does not an expression of religion make. How one personally feels about gay people because your religion frowns upon the manner said persons engage in intercourse is irrelevant. Baking a cake for a gay couple in no way inhibits a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist or any other religion from freely exercising their professed faith. Religions are expressly concerned with the activity and not with the predilection for engaging in that activity. So through slight of hand these allegedly religious individuals have been given an allowance to openly discriminate against gay people based on their personal assumption of a reality occurring within the privacy of gay persons’ bedrooms that may or may not be true.

    This type of thinking invites serious and in all cases ridiculous scenarios that were neither anticipated by the Framers nor intended by them. For example, a right-wing Christian nationalist physician could refuse life-saving treatment to a gay person or a transgender person or even a person who in their opinion is a sinner thereby effectively murdering them.[i] Does this mean that we begin to get into the nitty gritty of what each faith teaches? Can a Muslim deny treatment to a Jew or a Christian because they are an “infidel?” What about an Orthodox Jewish person who decides not to resuscitate a Muslim? The logic employed by the Supreme Court invites nothing more than ideological pettiness. The kind of pettiness that Christ himself took issue with in the 1st century.

    Religious liberty pertains only to your personal and private right to honor and practice your religious beliefs – in your home, in your car, in your church, and in your head. Religious liberty was never meant to supersede the basic laws of fairness that permeate the secular government or the secular marketplace. If you hang your shingle up outside, advertising your business as a public concern, partaking in tax exemptions, credits and write offs and participating in all those rights and privileges state and federal laws allow, you are not only acknowledging but also agreeing to the rules of the marketplace. If you find yourself unable to do so – then don’t get into business, at least not a business that would allow you to write off a lease or part of your mortgage because you work from home. This argument holds as well for the left as it does for the right. Those on the left in the course of business should not be allowed to deny goods or services to people that they ideologically disagree with. Doing so represents a great danger to our nation. We are not only split down the middle politically, but also split down the middle economically. We see this divide in the level of healthcare, education and leisure available to those in more left-leaning states. We effectively are transforming into two different nations. This kind of thinking happened before at the time of slavery and even after during segregation and it did not work. Economically, it was ruinous to Southern, Jim Crow states who saw a Great Migration of more than half of its workforce that they are only now just recovering from. Will we start seeing “straight only” or “Republican only” signs start sprouting up? This too is ridiculous and only further illustrates why we as a nation require a new kind of thinking about who we are and how we are to interact with one another if we are to succeed at all.

    Our success begins and ends with each individual. All religions and psychologies agree that change starts only with the person first. One who is deeply troubled, hurt or traumatized cannot possibly help others or their community. Those of us in the middle or on the left of center have to lead the way to a more reasonable soul for our nation. It is important to begin to redefine or at the very least clarify the function of an organized government in the midst of a diverse nation. In order to even start this process, we must also define what the purpose or goal of life should be. I believe it is not our purpose while here to be a billionaire with a megayacht. God created humans for loftier endeavors. We we were created to find happiness. By diluting faith with politics and vice versa we begin to confuse the function of religion with the function of government. Faith is concerned with the hereafter. Government is concerned with the here and now.

    In government, we cannot assume that every single person is a member of the same church or the same faith that lives in our neighborhood, our state, or our country. Even if we think our neighbors are Christian, or even if we see our neighbors in church every Sunday, it is still impossible to know what they truly believe or feel. When we introduce religion into government we begin to erode basic liberty. Our right to private lives and our right to life and the pursuit of happiness are given a back seat to a twisted reading of what religious liberty was meant to entail. By placing religious liberty ahead of basic, individual liberty, the current Court and their fans have deformed the purpose of the Constitution and the intent of the Framers. For it cannot be a logical conclusion that religious law and sentiment should be the sole principle upon which our national laws are founded. To conclude this, is to disavow the entirety of the Bill of Rights and means those first Americans who died, did so in vain. Replacing one form of illogical or unreasonable tyranny with another was not a consideration or an aim of any of those earliest patriots and it should not be one now. It is possible to live a religious life in the middle of a nation that, even in your opinion, is straying from the fold. Christians have been doing it for centuries almost everywhere else. This has been the rule rather than the exception for literally hundreds of years. Look to the Enlightenment’s vast array of philosophical treatises, rather than the Bible as the foundational set of texts that built our nation.

    The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and 1693 illustrate precisely what happens when a government becomes entangled unnecessarily with religion – people die. Here, the strange and superstitious Puritan community relied on their religious ideals rather than simple logic to put to death 19 people. In the end, the Salem Witch Trials became an embarrassment to those who participated and all but destroyed the tiny town itself. We see explicitly before us an example of what is to come. And it should alarm everyone, even those who enjoy publicly flaunting how good a Christian they are.

    We have come a long way from the days when Americans were concerned with John F. Kennedy becoming President because the Pope might become the real ruler of America as Kennedy was a Catholic. Now, it is almost required to rule based on religion in many states and counties across this country.

    The idea that by allowing things like gay marriage, or drag queens, or transgender protections, or abortion in some way exposes this country to possible disdain and a revocation of the blessings of God is a disgusting perversion of God Himself. If God were to judge this nation, we know exactly how He is going to do it. If Christians want to pick this fight, then I will use my own knowledge of scripture as my sword. Matthew 25: 31-45. In it we are told “All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.” It says that while all nations will be before God, it is on the individual basis that they will be judged. Each person unto themselves. He says to those assembled, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”  The people on the right are dumbfounded and ask when did they see him in any of these terrible situations and Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, who are members of my family, you did it to me.” I will not continue quoting as it is well known that those who decided to be selfish, judgmental, greedy, petty bigots, did not fare as well.

    If you are going to sit there and dare invoke your faith as a reason you are allowed to mistreat another human being, whether or not you think it is part of your religion, then you absolutely deserve what is coming for you. Because Jesus did not qualify the least of these as straight, or Republican, or male or female or transgender, or Democratic or clowns or any other sub-group of human being. The Christian faith was radical and dangerous because it, out of every other religion of its time, removed national barriers and allowed others to be good to their neighbors regardless of borders, or nationality, or religion, or gender, or slave or free status. It transformed thinking that you could only be nice to those who were exactly like you and challenged the early believers with practicing mercy and compassion to everyone. If this nation is to be judged on its ability to be compassionate within those parameters, I do not like where we are headed.

    You can tell yourself all day long that you are a good, God-fearing Christian, but if you are incapable of even the smallest acts of compassion, Jesus needs to have a word with you. He’s either going to do it now, or at the end of time. If you are a Christian who is part of this bizarre and bastardized religious movement of hate, hypermasculinity, fear, greed and power, I would perhaps invest in post-apocalypse SPF. You cannot call this a Christian nation if the simplest precepts of the faith are not practiced. If you do, then either you are lying to yourself about what a Christian is or we are not, in fact a Christian nation. Either way, we are in a precarious position. Religious liberty has meant, does mean and will always mean, the right to privately practice your faith. If this is also not something you can live with, then how about one more Gospel quote. “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room, and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6: 5-6). If this is what a Christian nation is supposed to be doing, I fear we are failing. If this is what a secular nation should be doing, I fear we are failing there too.

    [i] While I like being right, I do not enjoy being right in this case. As of the writing of this essay, the Department of Veterans Affairs, removed language from their discrimination regulations that explicitly prohibited doctors from discriminating against patients based on their political belief or marital status. While the VA has denied that this was the intent, why remove it at all?

  • Conservative Christians are Idiots

    by Sr. Organza Pettingfield

    As a woman of the cloth, I am well aware that the title seems provocative. Why do I think that Conservative Christians are idiots? Let’s start with the impossibly small minds of most conservative Christians, particularly in regards to the allegedly limitless power of God as they see him. These same people become apoplectic about transpeople because…well, honestly it doesn’t matter why they think it- it’s dumb. These same people can read about an unnaturally old man who is told by a disembodied voice to build a giant boat because it’s going to rain a bunch and as a punishment for wicked men and apparently wicked hippos or elephants, the world will be flooded. So he needs to take two of every living thing on the planet, put it on the boat and hope to fuck it floats. This is not just the cutesie animals we see in children’s wallpaper borders (I’ve never known a time when genocide was made so adorable). These are the lizards and snakes and those ugly dogs that look like they have mange. All of ’em. If you can sit there with your pious, smug face Luanne and tell me that you believe this story as it’s told and then even after a catastrophic worldwide flood, this same giant boat piloted by the only perfect man and his obnoxious family lands on a mountain top in Turkey and every single one of these animals not only safely leaves the confines of the ark without devouring one another but somehow make it from Turkey…in Asia Minor…ALL the way to say China, without food, yet you cannot wrap your little mind around the concept of a transperson? Then I think the god in whom you believe is a limited, weak and feeble god indeed. And just as an aside, can someone tell me how a whole class of animals like kangaroos, wallabies, echidnas and koalas made it from Turkey to Australia? Did they build little rafts and float from Indonesia? Did they fly Quantas? How? And if you even think of saying a miracle, don’t fucking look me in the eye and tell me transpeople can’t exist. If god can float a kangaroo 6000 miles from Istanbul to Sydney, he can make a transperson.

    While I am on the subject of gender and sexuality let’s rap about the Virgin Mary. Here is this person, basically a teenager just before she would have gotten her donkey cart learners permit, who becomes pregnant all on her own- parthenogenesis, big bang bong and presto baby Jesus. When Mary, in her naivety asks how the hell that’s possible without having sex, the angel explains that “nothing is impossible with God” and she’s just going to be pregnant. So, if it is indeed true that nothing is impossible with God, how is it that conservative Christians still think anyone in the LGBTQ community is somehow an impossibility? It is utter bullshit. God is so powerful that he can get a human woman pregnant all by herself but can’t make someone gay? It seems to me that making a person gay, which is just a bit of a flip of a genetic switch is far simpler a matter than bending the laws of mammalian biology. And on the subject of power, how powerful can god be if he can’t stop a gay person from existing? If gay people are such an abomination, why are they there? Again, your god is weak.

    This is a perfect segway into the subject of science. We live in an age where suddenly science is not only a matter of opinion, but it has also become a matter of belief. Is it because when you apply the scientific method to your overfed, overconsuming, over fossil fuel burning asses you seem that much more sinful and ridiculous? This has to be it because I have noticed that in some cases science is alright with your subset. In my spare time, I do enjoy a good true crime show. In these shows, almost always set in some dumpy little town riddled with meth and focused on Friday night high school football, y’all have no problem with DNA evidence. This science that brought us the discovery of DNA that clears your hillbilly family from a heinous crime suddenly becomes evil if it says that climate change is real, or that fossils were not randomly scattered around the globe by the devil for confusion (Yes, some Christians really believe this. Which makes me give a brava to Satan for being amazingly crafty in his spare time. Apparently busy hands are also the devil’s workshop.) Or when science confirms that COVID is a real virus or that vaccines, shown to work in billions of cases all over the world against a host of diseases, now you suddenly you have an issue with science? Science, which is inherently nonpartisan, has now grown liberal wings and is peppering the landscape with propaganda because liberals have nothing better to do that to torment imbeciles with truth. (A side note on the anti-vaccine crowd, especially those of you who were wearing “Jesus is my vaccine” or that “Jesus was never vaccinated.” Of course he was never vaccinated, he died in 30 AD. Not only did no one own a microscope but they hadn’t been invented yet. And people already had a hard enough time as it was believing Jesus’ story. Do you think it would have been any easier for him had he also added in, “By the way- when you get sick, it’s not Satan or sin, but tiny, virtually invisible creatures that live in your blood that do.”? Had he ever said such a thing, they probably would have just stoned him straight away.)

    As a nun, I can appreciate religious belief. I think healthy religious belief can be good for the soul and I know quite a few whores who need Jesus…and likely penicillin. However, when one ignores logic because faith somehow contradicts it, I start to wonder are these people religious for the right reasons? I’m not even sure many so-called Christians practice their faith completely. Let’s take this recent fiasco in Los Angeles. What I don’t understand is how an evangelical Christian can quote at great length and with gusto half of the Book of Samuel yet when you hint at Matthew 25, they call you a radical liberal. I don’t mean to be a nitpicky old nun, but when Jesus says we are to welcome strangers because these least of his little ones are synonymous with him and you don’t do that, I want to know why.

    One last thing, because the more I write, the angrier I get, but judgmental Christians. These people shouldn’t even exist yet we are inundated with Christians carrying all kinds of signs condemning any one of a thousand different problems they take with the modern world. If only Jesus had given us an example of say a judgmental man, pointing out a splinter in his brother’s eye but somehow missed the giant beam in his own eye. If only he had said that to someone! I am also fairly certain that somewhere in the Gospels, he expressly forbade his followers from ever judging or condemning other people. I really just want one Christian who can go to church and have that read to them on Sunday can turn around and protest transpeople or put immigrants in concentration camps on Monday, to explain it to me like I am an idiot. Because if you have the audacity to call yourself a Christian and claim you are saved even when you are a total asshole to every other person you meet, then I think perhaps one is not fully aware of what is being asked of you. Maybe what we need is a remedial Christian school so that these judgmental cruel fucks who love nothing more than to wear their giant diamond crosses and toss out racist, xenophobic bullshit can finally learn what a Christian truly is.