On queer religion, religion after trafficking, my goals in religious studies, complex relationships with family members, and that unshakeable spark of belief. I grew up feeling touched by God in ways that, according to others, I did not deserve. I believed in God before I knew what God was. I grew up with a mother who described herself as "spiritual but not religious" and a father that came from a conservative Christian family but who had somehow agreed to keep his faith out of raising me, so I didn't really learn about God until it was too late, but I always felt that pulse in the chest, you know? There was always that ember within me that kept burning on and on, even when I drenched it in ice, even when I forced the big bad wolf to blow it all down, my hands prying his jaw right open. Said he was trying to not be the bad wolf anymore, said he sold insurance, not children, now. Said it was too risky to keep going. Said even wolves can be hunted. But I held him against the embers of my faith and he only reignited the fire, despite being the Greatest of Scorchers himself. I still don't get it; I shouldn't breathe like this after all that I have been through. They tell me I am wrong for it, that I am a traitor for my community for feeling God's love. They tell me that the imagery is off in my head and anything that can chomp the serpent of me down is of virtue, even if the chomping thing is that wolf himself. They tell me that I = the serpent = the temptation of my little scrawny self was my own fault = I = eternal and global fault. That I - me in my all, me to my core, my damn essence and genetic composition and energysoul - personally doomed all of men just by being a bit too tall for my age back then. But still to my core, to my damn essence and genetic composition and energysoul, I know that the God they speak of is a portrayal of God that got lost in translation. Aa Dollar Tree knockoff God, a Spirit Halloween costume called "Short Green Goblin With Light Sword" that is trying its hardest to both be Yoda and obscure its Yoda status at the same time. It is wearing God clothing. It killed capital-r Real God and buried it in the yard next to the dog and went under the knife to shuffle its appearance around and took over Real God's place in the world. Except silly them, you can't snuff that out so easily; the one who guided evolution into present humanity doesn't just give up, so Real God is gonna come back to defeat the imposter one day, you just watch, even if They have to come back vesseled through me. I believe in a God that hasn't stopped speaking. Actually I believe in a God that does not shut the fuck up. I believe in a religion of entanglement, that God is closer to you than plasma, and I believe God respects the boundaries of people who say no I don't think I'd like any helpings of God thank you, and I believe God weeps when people use Their name to strike and oppress and abandon, and I believe that God's tears trickle down Their face and sprinkle miracles across Earth as they run, fertilizing the ground so that something greater can grow, and rapidly; I believe God cries revivals-from-death and successful rescue missions and found dog posters so that everything bad meets a beautiful, peaceful transformation instead of an end. I believe in a God that says THERE ARE SEVEN BILLION PROPHETS ACTUALLY. MAYBE EIGHT, ACTUALLY. I LOST COUNT OF ALL THE PEOPLE I LOVE BECAUSE I KEEP FINDING MORE PEOPLE TO LOVE EVERY DAY, EVERY MINUTE, INSIDE OF EVERY SECOND'S EVERY FRACTION. I grew up with blood in my blood and as such I have always been extremely close with my family. My mother is my best friend now, but her sister, my aunt, was like a second mother to me in childhood. She was a lipstick lesbian, danced around in Ed Hardy knockoffs and black yoga pants and platform flipflops and CAN I SPEAK TO THE MANAGER? YOU'RE DOING A GREAT JOB HONEY haircuts. She had struggled with severe mental illness her whole life, but even at that age, I was in the same boat---no women in my family have ever escaped it unscathed---and we had a sort of connection in that way. I spent nights at her apartment and we'd make grocery store chicken cheese taquitos in the toaster oven and watch movies my mom would never let me watch at that age, like The Craft or Scary Movie. She treated me like a person, and most people in my life treated me like either a problem or a thing that needed to be protected, and I think that's how I knew when she started dating him. Him being her cousin, of course. Adoptive, but raised the same. He'd had a hard struggle with addiction and found falsegod, then bought some land in small town North Carolina, built a church on it, took a six week online course, and declared himself a Pastor. And after this, he reconnected with my aunt, who fluttered around the world searching for someone to take care of her, and seduced her to his God with promises of eternal comfort and life after the life she had tried for so long to end as long as she doesn't end it and salvation and superiority, which I guess I was too young to realize she had always wanted. I could tell you he took away my second mother, but the truth is that he actually just killed her. I don't know, I think Amy's body is buried there next to God and the dog and their cats who died in the God's-wrath-house-fire-of-2015, and the Amy who calls us on Facebook messenger now is some entirely different creature, customized through manipulation entirely to his own wishes, toddling around the church corridors in a zombie walk, arms out and clasped together. I knew I was gay when I was ten or so, and she left two years later. I realized when I developed a crush on a girl at my school who had the same birth name as me, a girl who ended up blaming her suicide attempt on me later that year. My cousin - Amy's daughter - grew up knowing she was gay at a very young age too, and she was butch, so it got her targeted significantly; Amy had to watch my pain over that blame and her daughter's pain over the lesbophobia she faced in the 1990s/early 2000s and still she drew herself to the conclusion, eventually, that we deserved all of our pain, that it was God's punishment for us being gay. She told her daughter that they weren't going to the same place after death. She doesn't tell me the same things anymore because she knows if she tries that shit there's a chance an order of live bees will show up at her front door. I feel an absence of myself in myself every time I think about this loss, yet still it does not push me from God, it only transforms how I think about Them. I shouldn't think of it this way, but a lot of my love for God is formed in the vein of the idea that spite is the best motivator. I'm planning on getting my Masters of Divinity because then I will have more religious expertise than them by far and it will piss them off that a "heathen" (read: non-Evangelical dyke Quaker me) will be more logically trustworthy on the topic than them. I am mostly getting my mDiv because I want to volunteer in hospice chaplaincy. I want to counsel the sick and the dying and comfort them in their final moments. I am the kind of person who feels intense compassion, but does not feel mirrors of others' emotions when they are suffering, so I am able to take a kind and thoughtful response while remaining detached--something I think is necessary in that kind of position. I want this because I want to be the kind of spiritual counselor who my uncle never would be. If I can help guide someone's relationship to God into something they find solely comforting---even one person---that is all I want to accomplish with my work. Because I completely understand being non-religious and rejecting religion after religious trauma. I do. But for people who choose to remain of faith in ways that work for them... we deserve to feel confident, supported, and loved in our paths. Today my country largely preaches the idea that God's love is conditional but fuck that. God didn't help humanity form and love all of us in our entirety during evolution, just to say "actually nvm I'm a lil picky now". God weeps and frustrates only out of love and belief that Their creation can be their best selves. Through this understanding, this knowledge and this connection to GOD (all caps cuz We're both excited), I am able to be my best self in the education and volunteer work I hope to undertake. I don't strive to do good because I want God to love me, I strive to do good because I love humanity just as much and just as deeply as They do.