Skip to main content

Confusion

I am wracked with confusion. Though nothing in my outer world has changed unexpectedly, my inner landscape is a wasteland, devastated by some war of which I was not even aware. I knew when we moved to our new home that I would embrace a new life, and I had the sense that I would embrace my inner longings for a new religion. I didn't anticipate the way everything would get all torn apart though.

I am torn between loyalty to a comfortable and repressive faith that would more deeply connect me to others, and a faith that promises to dishevel my life with controversy, isolate me from others and color me with stereotypes.

It is a matter of how I can bear to live. Can I bear living with an inherited faith, fighting down my own convictions, for the rest of my life? Can I bear becoming even more isolated from the rest of the world, my own family, perhaps even my husband, even being stigmatized?

I do not want to abandon the personal faith I have felt as a Christian, the world understanding or ethics I have held previously. But as I think more deeply on life I feel a deep revulsion for the Christian religion. I don't know how to separate it from the teachings of Jesus. I have a sense that seeing Christianity as the be-all and end-all has led to great chaos in my society. A patriarchal society reigns, deriving confidence from a deeply patriarchal religion. I am a nameless form in my society and my religion, a second-class citizen. Jesus's teachings haven't given me the philosophical structure to combat this. There is something deeper, more powerful, that has been repressed for centuries, the balance of the masculine and the feminine, the reverence for the woman and for the earth.

Popular posts from this blog

The secret to a happy home

I finished Marion Harland's guide tonight and I wonder ceaselessly at two things. 1. She is so down on America! Even more than I am. She complains of things in which I am so well-steeped I could not see them for what they were. In particular, American style and cookery. It is true that our food, which we count as so much more generous in portion than the overseas counterpart, is as coarse and indecorous as it is plentiful, but as an American woman I cast up my hands and declare I would rather spend my time on something else. She makes an interesting point about American women's fashions. In France women wear what looks good on them, and in America women wears what comes off the manufacturing line in the latest style. It is very conformist, and I have to admit I feel it in myself, for I would be embarrassed to wear something that is "out" even if it flattered me better. 2. Harland's other point I feel clearly from last night's experiences. I looked in my journ...

Sprouts

Sprouts Originally uploaded by ladyhildegarde . I am getting sprouts. Hopefully they are carnations. It is such a beautiful spring day. It's good I'm taking the chance to come outside: I have craved a moment to reflect on something beautiful.

Blanche, a re-telling of Snow White

I began this story after reading a collection of short stories by Angela Carter. “Snow White” has always been a favorite tale of mine and I have placed this re-telling in nineteenth-century rural Louisiana. Near Vacherie, Louisiana, there are not only swamps but also old beautiful plantations. Some of them are restored but others are abandoned and ruined. The places I have seen captured my imagination and I combined them with my impression of Snow White as an object of envy and lust. My heroine Blanche is a hard-working girl who longs to be rich and to live in New Orleans, where her father was born. She is threatened constantly by the attention of the rustics who live around her. Her stepmother beats her when she finds Blanche in Jean-Jacques’ arms. When Blanche runs away from home she is beguiled by Philipe de la Roche, who persuades her to live in New Orleans in a fancy house with seven women. Blanche does not realize that the women are prostitutes. The farmer Jean-Jacques, who love...