For Part 1: https://oddbygod.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/the-missionary-position-part-i

When you are thrown into a chasm of despair, I believe in holding on to whatever you need to make it through to the other side. Sometimes rescuing ourselves out of the pit involves a lot of clawing at rock surfaces, blindly feeling for the slightest edge that will bear our weight. This is messy work and I do not judge how you find your own way out. Whatever you do, however, do not do as I did when I returned home utterly ashamed and wrecked by my disastrous missionary year. Do not work at summer camp. This is a highly unadvisable way of coping with an existential crisis.

I began my scramble back to the surface by simply attempting to return to normal life. And part of my normal life from the age of nine to nineteen included spending part of nearly every summer at our church’s camp in the Sierras, first as a camper then later as staff. Tucked up on the South Fork of the Merced River, summer camp felt like a second home to me. Some of the most important friendships and mentoring in my life happened there and every summer I looked forward to making the drive up Hwy 41 with my parents and brother where within an hour of being on the road we ascended out of the hot, dry Central Valley air into the fresh, cool scent of pine trees.

The best parts of camp distilled and intensified the experience of being a kid and celebrated the gifts of play, creativity, and self-discovery. And as ours was also a Seventh-day Adventist camp, worship and religious education were infused into almost every aspect of daily life. I don’t know how many times I was brought to tears as I gave my life anew to Jesus in those years. Or experienced divine love and acceptance through friends and mentors that nourished my soul as I navigated the confusion and loneliness of adolescence. Or simply sat by the river and learned to pray in rhythm with the rapids.

But the Seventh-day Adventist message also includes very scary, pointed teachings about the imminent End of the World. And how can you truly love a child if you don’t prepare them for the Apocalypse? One summer, our religious education for the week included being ambushed by a group of staff dressed in black who zip-lined and rappelled out of the trees to dramatize the kind of persecution we could anticipate in the End Times–such as being accosted by ninjas.

The Seventh-day Adventist church teaches that the second coming of Jesus is right around the corner. . .okay, maybe not that corner, but definitely the next corner. . .really, any time now. . .wait for it. . .wait for it. . .and that before he returns to Earth for the last battle with Satan certain things will need to happen first, including forced worship on Sundays and the violent persecution of those who refuse. Long before the Left Behind books infiltrated bookstores, Seventh-day Adventists had Project Sunlight, a thin book fictionalizing end-time events from a distinctly Seventh-day Adventist perspective. Many Adventist youth, including myself, participated in dramatic re-enactments of the book in our church worship programs. The loudest sound I ever made in a church wasn’t one born out of laughter or praise but fear when, during one of those dreadful End Time skits, my character let out a blood-curdling scream. If I remember correctly, the End Times did not end well for her.

Growing up Seventh-day Adventist, I truly expected the end of the world at any time. Once, while walking home from school, I spotted a strangely singular cloud in an otherwise clear Eastern sky. Standing transfixed in the middle of the street, I wondered if this was it, if Jesus was somewhere in that cloud coming to take us home. Spoiler alert: He wasn’t. But that didn’t deter me. I continued to be vigilant for the End, believing I would either be imprisoned or killed for my religious beliefs in the very near future. This explains why I didn’t make any long-term plans; I planned on being in Heaven before getting to the heavy grown-up stuff: career, marriage, divorce, children, global warming, the inevitable death of everyone and everything I will ever love. Of all possible life strategies, hoping to get beamed up to Heaven before shit gets real is perhaps one of the worst.

But at summer camp I found a niche of people even more geeked out on the End of Time than I was. And once I found it, I spent my summers learning—then helping to teach—wilderness survival. You know, practical and helpful skills to nurture one’s comfort in Mother Nature—such as learning how to build a debris hut thick enough to avoid radar detection.

As I grew more radical in my beliefs, I became frustrated by my happily suburban family’s lack of interest in fire-building and foraging for food which placed the grave responsibility of caring them through the End Times on my shoulders. I exasperatedly explained this to my non-outdoorsy mother who simply said that she trusted God to care for her as he cared for the Israelites in the Wilderness. I felt like throwing my hands up in the air. Manna, mom? Really? That’s your entire survival plan? Waiting for bread to fall out of the sky?! How are we supposed to catch bread out of the sky if we are hiding from radar detection under a thick layer of forest debris?

But it wasn’t like I was crazy or anything.

At least, not technically?

This is hard for me to explain to anyone who has never been a part of the world I am trying to describe. I’m still trying to understand it myself. Because despite the undercurrent of Apocalypse prepping, summer camp was still incredibly fun, full of silliness, laughter, singing, teenage crushes, and breath-taking adventures on the sides of mountains. Always a serious kid, it was when I became a staff member and joined obligatory skit-making projects that I really learned I could make people laugh. And though I grew up being taught in church that dancing was a sin, one night after all the campers went to bed, a few friends and I found ourselves on the amphitheater stage dancing  to MercyMe’s “I Can Only Imagine”, imagining with the singer what it would be like on that day when we could finally meet Jesus face to face, “surrounded by your glory, what will my heart feel? Will I dance for you Jesus or in awe of you be still?” And as I danced with friends in the mystery of our faith, I did feel like I was in Heaven.

But then I went to Prague. Naive, earnest, and sheltered, I wasn’t prepared for the impact of beginning adulthood in the shadow of another’s mental illness. And her diseased perception of me as an agent of the devil became my perception of myself, ripping open deeply seated feelings of shame and self-loathing and activating a biology predisposed to depression that no amount of love from my parents or community had been able to heal. And where before that year most of my anxiety and worry about the End of Time could be managed or repressed in the presence of loving family and friends, when spiritual trauma was added to the mix it was like a match was thrown into the tinder of beliefs serving as thick forest debris in my mind which, if left undisturbed, would have provided me a buffer from many harsh realities. Returning home, I wanted to return to the innocent comforts of my youth–summer camp being among the most cherished. Instead, I returned a Manchurian Candidate to the very community I loved. I spent a year in that missionary position and, unbeknownst to me, brought back the spiritual equivalent of an STD.

At camp that summer, a dear friend quickly picked up on the change in me and expressed concern as he tried to understand where the old Heather had gone, the Heather that could make people laugh, the Heather that could dance for Jesus. I didn’t know. And the more people missed the old me, the more I wanted to disappear all together. Because I knew the old Heather wasn’t coming back. And I was afraid what remained of me was akin to the sediment in a dry riverbed–dirt holding the memory of water. That’s how I felt about myself.

Again, when you find yourself pinned down by an incubus of shame and self-loathing, I strongly advise you to not be a summer camp counselor while you figure shit out. For God’s sake, there are children involved.

Now, part of camp programming included developing a special Sabbath afternoon activity every year. That year, we took the kids on a nature walk through the Book of Revelation (an ultra-Adventist thing to do, by the way). The trail alongside the mountain winded through different stations representing aspects of the Book of Revelation. There was the Whore of Babylon—a female counselor dressed in a purple evening gown, offering bad advice and putrid wine (salted grape juice) to the children. Militia men wandered the woods “arresting” campers if they were caught and taking them to jail which was conveniently located next to the Mark of the Beast station.

Through the use of Bible verses, the children were given instructions and warnings by the First and Second Angels  throughout the walk to help them avoid being captured. The last warning by the Third Angel was the most important. The angel warned them that at the next station people were waiting for them with colored markers; they would be given the choice of taking the Mark of the Beast or going to jail. If the children persevered as they were taught, they would go to jail but then an Angel of the Lord would come free the children and lead them into The Promised Land (aka the ice water station) where the game would end for them in victory.

Assigned to the jail, I watched as campers breezed through the Mark of the Beast station without any of them taking the Mark. This is a problem, I thought. Obviously, the other staff weren’t making the choice difficult enough. If the entire exercise was designed to prepare kids for the End Times then maybe a little verisimilitude was called for; after all, Satan would be way trickier than any of us could even hope to aspire. We needed to teach those kids to be vigilant, prepared, ready for anything.

So I asked for a job transfer.

With markers in hand, I concocted a nonsense game of shapes and symbols. If any of the kids would have asked me to more fully demonstrate what I was saying, they would have caught me in a ridiculous lie. But like any good con-artist I spoke quickly and with confidence, tamping down any potential questions by explaining how they needed to choose the symbol or shape to which they would belong. One of the other camp counselors said he tried to follow me because it sounded like I was saying something that made sense. But nothing I said did.

Under my watch, a few campers here and there began to take the Mark of the Beast, effectively ending the game for them. They would not be allowed to enter into the Promised Land. One of the children who took the Mark was a boy of about twelve or thirteen with dark hair and a camp reputation of being a jokester. And when he learned he would not be able to finish the game because he bore the Mark, he sat down near the boundary of the game, just outside the entrance of the Promised Land, and began to cry. What haunts me to this day is this: I watched him cry and felt nothing but justified. And a little surprised that he was taking it so deeply to heart–even though I was the one trying to make the experience as real as possible. It was better that he learn the lesson now, I thought, than when the stakes were irreversibly high and he was forced to remain outside the Promised Land forever.

I know I’ve harmed more people than this one boy with my religious bullying. How many I don’t know. Some I know by name, most I’m sure I don’t. But this boy on the outskirts of the Promise Land is the one that haunts me the most. Because I can still see his face. In his tears, I can see evidence of the soul injury I caused him. And I can remember the absence in my heart of anything but cold righteousness responding to his pain. In that very moment, I believe I entered the room of the human mind that is the birthplace of all religious violence, where any degree of harm to another can be justified because it is done in the name of God. Understandably, much of our collective attention is drawn towards physical acts of violence used to ostensibly cleanse a community of “infidels” and “heretics”. Bombings, burnings, executions all committed with that same cold, righteous conviction. But in that same room with the grand acts of terror are the small ones, too–powerfully small, like viruses infiltrating a person’s soul–that are zealously practiced in too many religious communities who would be horrified to think they are doing anything but saving people from themselves. Terrorizing children–anyone, really–because you think it will save their souls is an awful way of loving them. It isn’t loving at all. In fact, it treads dangerously close to the methods sociopaths like to use, saving souls like some people save coupons: by tearing them out and storing them in a pile to be crumpled and forgotten.

It is well understood that victims of abuse often play out their trauma by inflicting it on others. So to understand religious violence from the inside, we must do so not only as victims but for those of us to whom the other title also applies–perpetrators. Both as a victim and perpetrator, I am a part of a lineage of spiritual harm to children. Within the span of months, I lived the full spectrum; in Prague, I was poisoned with accusations of being an agent of the devil. And when I returned home, I found a way to make that true by injecting that same poison into the next victim. Understanding this has been the key for me in learning to forgive myself and others. I see myself in the boy with a mark on his hand who is barred from the Promised Land. I see myself in the woman who called me evil. And I see the paradox in how even gentle people of integrity can inhabit a religious landscape in which war is always raging and every child must be armed.

There may be people who respond to this post with Bible texts who would like to show me the error of my ways, prove how the End of Time is coming. . .any day now. . .and convince me how I must repent of these sins or else I will be lost forever. Thank you for your concern. But I’m not interested in debating theology anymore. I am interested in knowing how our beliefs become the creators of our actions and self-perceptions. Is it possible to believe in the imminent End of the World, a precarious, exacting road to salvation, and demonic dangers at every turn and not become instruments of fear? I am interested to know how people with good intentions are killing each other. I am interested in being a part of the effort to heal this beleaguered Earth, not wait sanctimoniously for it to end. These days, I am interested in believing less and loving more. I am interested in living the way the poet David Whyte is: “It doesn’t interest me if there is one God or many gods. I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned. If you know despair or can see it in others. I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back with firm eyes saying this is where I stand. I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love and the bitter unwanted passion of your sure defeat. I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God.”

I still think about that dark-haired boy crying on the perimeter of the Promised Land. He must be in his mid-twenties by now. And as I make the long and difficult journey towards healing myself, I hope he is likewise finding his way. I hope he got angry about that day. I hope he fought back. I hope he called me a crazy bitch. I hope I was the exception in his life and not the rule. I hope he is still a jokester. I hope Love is writing itself over and over in his heart in a chain of endless, joyful doodles. I hope he found his peace. I hope he knows that wherever he goes in this world he is already in the Promised Land.