How I came to sin...

When I was about nine years old I loved to go to church. I went to school at St. Gabriel's, staffed by Anglican nuns in full habit, mostly black with white like magpies chasing our shiny childish souls; although there was Sister Christine who rapped knuckles with a ruler and had perpetual hiccoughs who wore brown. I didn't like her much. I loved to pray. The words would pour from my throat in sweet measured cadences and sometimes I'd see the nuns whispering and nodding towards me, I think they suspected vocation in me and they may have been right because once I prayed and saw an angel who came to answer my prayer; but my path from the Church was brutally and abruptly sundered one Sunday afternoon.

I went to church as usual,Sunday School, we sang the hymns and then it was time to pray. The stained glass windows were right above me and a shaft of sunlight trickled down and wrapped around me, bathing me in colour and in warmth. I was exalted, taken by the Rapture. I could feel the power reaching out to me and calling me up the ladder of light barred with rungs of sapphire, ruby and gold. I prayed. The words an anthem of my spirit. My soul pushing up from my diaphragm, through my throat and climbing up the light with passion and commitment. I saw and was Seen, a deep connection made to somewhere, something, and the current ran from me to all the others, I felt the meld take hold and stretched my arms above my head, reaching up the light.

A crash on the lectern stopped me, stopped us all, The priest came over, grabbed my arm and threw me literally out of "his" church and told me never to come back. I stood in tears, wringing nine year old hands, asking why? What did I do? He said "You prayed too loud." and whirled his fusty robes back inside. I trembled as I waited for my mother because I had transgressed. I had been expelled from Church. And she would not be pleased. Strangely there was no punishment forthcoming, and when all the grown ups came and others told the tale there was a hue and cry...against the priest who then proceeded to expel everyone from the Church. He shouted and pushed the grown ups too. They pushed him back. I remember my eyes stretched in my face, unblinking till they felt dry. The world was unfamiliar and unsafe.

I never went back to church with any earnestness. I went to many churches, seeking what I had felt and lost. Once, at fourteen, sitting on a hill with a stone pressing painfully into my behind I knew with utter certainty that the world and I and you and all that was around us, this was immortal. This was spirit forever.

I have followed many paths; opened my heart and mind so often that I broke the doors. Now tears stream down my cheeks uninvited, without a sob when I am engaged. I have no shields against the Rapture and I pour my soul into my words, onto paper on the net and let it wander where it will. What of the priest? The man who disposed of a young girl's burgeoning vocation? He drank, and on that day, demon alcohol was the spirit that moved him. No doubt my nine year old voice, suffused with Rapture was shrill and hurt his head...although I felt it echo in my chest. Today I thank him, because the cold of stone beneath my knees, the shock of flagellation is a poor way to celebrate the flesh. I might have made an admirable nun but I am one hell of a woman.