Colette’s Credo: Part Two

My last blog, Upside Down Eden, was based on the first stanza of my Credo which is a product of my Tech Literacy class from last semester. 

The second stanza is what I’ll dive into here which is my propensity toward religious pluralism.

I believe that humanity was created with a mortal body and an immortal spirit. Loving my mortal body and knowing my spiritual self is my redemption.

I believe that truth is what rings and echoes in the chambers of my heart. Truth’s song is too big to be bound in a book.

This is a very short statement that is based on over fifty years of experience. As I study world religions in my university classes, I find that every religion and every dogma seems to swirl around the energies of joy and suffering. 

In my Catholic upbringing, the fear of mortal sins, purgatory, and hell won over the joy though. Embracing condemnation and guilt were paramount in my duties as a good sinner. This dissonance led me to discover a non-denominational Christian ministry where I spent twenty-two years in leadership positions. 

This newfound love of scripture taught me that I could do all things through Christ who strengthens me and that there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. This was very empowering and replaced guilt with a lot of joy. The ministry was based on fundamentalism. Every word of the Bible was the literal truth. I studied the Bible with a passion and believed that every word was perfect and infallible. It was God-breathed.  

The truth and wisdom found in scripture have gotten me through adversity, confusion, and grief many, many times. However, there were a lot of things about this holy collection of texts that bothered me. Many stories left me confused about the disparity between unconditional love and the merciless vengeance dealt from the hands of a perfect God. 

They still do. I was married and therefore held to scriptures that demanded the submission of wives. I knew women, including myself, with the same training and education that the men received in our Bible college who were capable of excelling in leadership roles, but we were held at bay by the patriarchal attitudes that formed the holier-than-thou boy’s clubs. It wasn’t until I left the ministry after the death of my husband, Peter, that I opened up to possibilities of truth outside the confines of the canonized texts that form our Bible.

For another twenty years, I wandered through Buddhism, Taoism, other Christian churches, Hinduism, yoga practice and soaked up what I could from many mindfulness teachers. I began to recognize what struck a chord in my heart. I found new ways to pray, to meditate.  

The last few years have brought me full circle back to my love for scripture, but also for religious texts and belief systems across the globe. My new approach is to read them from the point of view of the writer within the culture and the time they were written. I see truths in all of them that intersect with each other. My experience has shown me the damage that literalism can do and the disparities in real life that it causes, such as religious abuse and its resulting trauma. Literalism also amplifies the idea of ‘us’ and ‘the others’ even within each faith.

A pivotal moment happened when I studied the evolution of the collection of books in the Bible — which is called the canon — and how it came to be. Because of this research, I discovered the apocryphal and pseudepigraphal texts that were written around the same time as the canonized books of the New Testament and even by some of the same authors (like John and Paul) but were not included in the canon. This was where all the women had been hidden, including the female nature of the trinity! As I read these words that were more than 1800 years old, I would literally lose time. I fell into these texts and my mind was a dry sponge that found water for the first time. It was refreshing, unadulterated, clear water that exhilarated every neuron in my brain. 

I read them over and over so that they’d sink in and strengthen me. I read what other scholars have written about them. I read the arguments the early church fathers had against them. These texts were like manna. 

Holy food. 

Something struck a chord in my heart and the body of truth became massive. Truth escaped the leather-bound confines I had held it in for so many years and exploded in a fantastic array of light that played on my heart.

My ears began to ring constantly with ideas and questions. Intuition told me that I needed to get a formal education. 

I needed mentors, I needed a new network filled with scholars who know how to see the human condition and the spiritual world through an open lens — the wide view. I researched which university would align with my goals and enrolled in Arizona State University. In 1979, I started out in a fundamentalist, literalist Christian Bible college. In August of 2020, the next leg of my journey started. This summer, I’m finishing up my freshman year working toward my major in Religious Studies with a minor in Journalism.

I hope you pursue the ideas that strike a chord in your heart. When your brain lights up and your neurons spark and sizzle, turn the volume up and sing along. 

This is joy. This is an inspiration. This is your true Self living large for a moment. Don’t dismiss it. Feed it. And one more thing, this comes from experience: don’t let the small-minded, dried up, nasally voices in your head dismiss You.