Some would say I've gone astray. You see, I don't attend church anymore. Unless you think of laying in the grass, listening to birds chirp, basking in the sun, or walking barefoot in the garden while being extraordinarily aware of God, church experiences. If you do, then I can honestly say that I love my church and I'll never leave it. :)

Why have I stopped attending scheduled church services in scheduled meeting places? There are too many reasons for me to address in one blog. One of the biggest reasons is that the church works so hard to teach and enforce the rules to the masses that it's often blind to the needs of individuals. When I went to church I was always worried about doing the right thing and following God's will. I thought I needed to do this or that hard thing to be right with Him. There's a perverse sort of pride that comes with giving up what one loves or wants for the sake of "following God's will."

Here's a novel idea: what if God simply loves us without the requirement of religion? What if there is no getting right with God there's just "with God?"

So much of what we're taught ABOUT God simply binds us up. It doesn't free us. I think of King David and what a joyful sinner he was and what an incessant WHINER, too. Yet he was a man after God's own heart. I think about that a lot. The Pharisees were busy rocking the rules and looking good, but God was enamored of this adulterer and murderer who was so incredibly blessed yet whined like a baby about every little thing, then jumped and sang and shouted. :)

David was AUTHENTIC. He was real. He represents each of us in our humanity, I think. Yet, instead of emulating him in his authenticity, we somehow end up wanting to emulate the Pharisees! THAT is what I see happening in churches and in religion as a whole.

I'm not suggesting that one should go out and murder and commit adultery. I'm simply suggesting that God may be far less concerned with rules and religion than he is with, say, seeing his people love one another.

I haven't gone astray and I'm not lost. I simply let go of religion and found my way back to God.

©Just Kate, March 2010

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She walked down the hallway in her bare feet. The house was dark and quiet. She slipped into the bathroom quietly, pushed a towel up against the crack at the bottom of the door before switching on the light.

The bathroom mirror was big. Too big. She typically made a point of wearing her hair like a shroud 'round her face so she wouldn't see her reflection and other people wouldn't see her, but this time she took a deep breath and shook her hair back.

She was surprised by the girl she saw looking back from the mirror. Her eyes were so sad and guarded. You wouldn't think a 12-year-old would know to identify them as such but she was a girl who paid attention to people and saw too much. She wondered what she would one day be, if she would be ugly or by some miracle maybe a little bit pretty. Maybe she would be grossly fat. Her dad had reminded her at dinner when she'd eaten corn with her mashed potatoes that pigs eat corn. Of course, he was eating it, too, but there was a message there and she didn't miss it. She would be fat, ugly. It was her destiny.

It wasn't long before she was a teenager. She wore her hair long to cover her face, kept her head down, hid her mouth with her hand when she laughed. When some boy said she was pretty, she thought he was making fun of her. When another boy said it she lost all respect for him. If he was THAT stupid, he wasn't worth knowing. How pathetic.

Eventually, she got it. She realized that some people couldn't see the truth, that for some reason they were immune to it. She knew what she was and that was worthless. Her father saw it. Her brother confirmed it. But some people seemed to miss it altogether. She never learned to trust them. She trusted anger. Anger always told the truth, didn't it?

She became adept at pretending but the more she had to pretend the less real she felt until she became utterly invisible. You could do whatever you wanted to her and she wouldn't even feel it.

She eventually ran away from home, tried to run away from herself, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't leave herself behind. One day someone observed to her that she was made for suffering, that she had a penchant for it like he'd never seen before. Although they weren't spoken in anger, she recognized his words as truth, and thus began the slow unraveling of the lie.

Years went by and she became more and more real. She never really went back home. She tried. But home was a place where she ceased to exist, it was inhabited by that girl she'd been, and she felt like she might lose herself to that girl again if she stayed too long near home.

That girl was me. It's still hard to look at her because she breaks my heart. Why do parents sometimes hate their children? Why do people hate one another? Where do those angry words come from? We can build and deconstruct people with our words. That old kids poem, the one about sticks and stones breaking bones while names will never hurt us? It's a lie. We shouldn't tell our children such things. Words are powerful.

I grew to love words, to live inside of them. Words capture truth and lies, reveal beauty and ugliness, create peace and cause wars. I know how to wound with words and I know how to heal. I pray that God will remind me, always, not to intentionally inflict pain.

Mother Theresa said, "If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." Those are powerful words and true. When I get angry I say those words quietly to myself to remind me of our shared humanity.

If I could heal the world, I would.


©Just Kate, March 2010

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Dew soaked grass against bare feet, soaks the hem of her jeans as she tip toes across the yard on an early Spring morning. The birds trilling in the trees seem so incredibly happy, so full of joy they have no choice but to sing.

From the grass to the barn road, ouch, ouch, ouch, she gingerly steps across the rocks. It’s not wise to go out to the barn in bare feet, but sometimes there’s no other way. The earth calls to be stepped on, to be touched. It’s as if God is in the very soil, saying walk with me.

The ponies neigh happy greetings. She has no illusions. It’s food they want, not company. The smallest one nips at her as she passes by and gets a swat on the nose, followed by an affectionate rubbing of her forehead. Pony girls have a tendency toward naughtiness, but they’re cute as hell.

She tosses hay into each stall, then slips on her Fat Baby cowboy boots, the pair she leaves in the barn because she knows she’ll be coming out barefoot as long as the weather holds. Slipping into the first stall with a curry comb, she creates an explosion of white fur. Fur in her mouth and nose. She and the pony sneeze at the same time and she laughs. The pony laughs too. She can’t see it but she feels it, like God in the grass and earth.

Barn swallows are brave little souls. They swoop down and fill their beaks with so much fluffy white fur it’s a wonder they can fly, but they do. The nests in the rafters are lined in downy white. God smiles at the same time she does, watching their happy industriousness.

Not so long ago, she would have ran back to the barn in church clothes, tossed hay at the ponies and hopped in the car, racing not to be late. Hello, hello, hello, good morning, across the parking lot she would go, hoping not to be waylaid before arriving at the church bookstore where a line already awaits her, but nobody really waits. They talk at once, asking questions she can’t possibly answer as she counts the money, marks her sheet, holds up a hand palm out, politely asking for a moment to put everything together.

By the time the service starts and she closes up shop, she’s harried and frazzled and has to stand in the back, so as not to disrupt worship. Her feet hurt, so she surreptitiously kicks off her shoes and slides them under the usher’s bench, until an usher passes by with an arched eyebrow and stern look. Right. Shoes back on. Apparently, God is not in the church floor the way he’s in the grass and earth.

The music is lovely. All around her, lifted arms reach for God. It’s meant to be an immersion, a surrender, an act of worship but it looks for all the world like they’re reaching for a God they cannot grasp. Perhaps it’s only ritual. How many minds are back at home, mowing the grass, playing tennis, drinking a beer and watching the game they know they’re missing.

Everywhere she looks, hands are dropping to adjust ties and tug at the hems of skirts. Everyone’s dressed carefully, hoping God will notice. Oh, who are we kidding. It’s not for God, not really. It’s preening, something birds are way better at and more sincere. A preening bird makes God smile in a way high heels never will.

End of service, praise God, brother, sister, kiss kiss, how are you. There’s no time to answer because he’s walked past fast, followed by him and her and her. Coffee time! Can’t miss coffee time and fellowship. Hurry up!

There’s a certain lingo in the church. God is in control. Are you spending time in the word? How’s your walk? Give it to God, brother, sister, other brother. Can I pray for you? Long words, fancy words, well practiced, sometimes sincere, mostly rote.

It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a long time. But more and more Sundays she wakes up and can’t find the impetus to get dressed and out the door, to rush the kids and the family, who don’t have time for breakfast, to smack, quick, quick, dog food in bowls and hay to horses, and zoom to church. How many people get speeding tickets, racing to bible study or church? She’s seen more than a few, including the pastor’s wife who blustered and blushed and insisted the speed limit sign wasn’t clearly visible. Never mind that she traveled that same road two thousand billion, jillion times before.

A day off. A day of rest. A day with God. And here he is. The wet hems of her jeans are covered in sawdust and she can’t get the pony fur out of her mouth. She laughs as the dog licks her hand and gets a tongue full of fur for his efforts. They cough together, fingers to tongue, paw to face. Note to self: don’t brush the ponies in the barn during the yearly Spring blow out. She opens stall doors and watches as the pony girls leap and buck and tumble, one over the other, pure joy, making God smile some more. She brings new hay, the other stuff will go to compost ‘cause there’s way too much white fur in it.

On a bale of hay, face tipped to the sun, barn cats twining round her legs, dog panting at her side, she pulls off her Fat Baby boots and listens to the earth praise God in a beautiful, natural chorus that cannot be scheduled or contained. It just… is. Happy trees reach toward heaven. Birds fly, swoop, twitter, cheep, even the dog smiles, feeling God in his very bones.

This is her church, her worship, her congregation. The breeze is God’s touch. The earth his heartbeat. She’ll never call a church building or ritual gathering church again, and it is good.

©Just Kate, March 2010

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I slam on my brakes when I see you clear as day in the midst of a crowd on a bright, sun-drenched morning.

The car behind me honks long and loud as I sit, stunned and wondering where you’ve come from.

Front tire over yellow curb, I leave my car running in park and run to catch up, calling your name. Around a corner, I almost lose sight of you as I move through a sea of people in slow motion frenzy, trying to reach you.

At the bus stop, you pause and look at your watch then sit down on a bench I can’t see, although I know its location on this familiar street by heart.

Gasping for breath, I find myself behind you, hand outstretched, almost touching your hair. What stops me? It’s the sound of your voice, talking into a cell phone. The shape of your hand and wrist. The tiny birthmark that isn’t there.

Then you turn and smile and I see your profile and it really isn’t you at all but someone else with just your shade and texture of hair. Someone tall and straight with the same loose-limbed walk, wearing jeans that might have been yours and a t-shirt soft and worn in exactly the same shade of faded blue in which I buried you.

And I wanted it to be you more than anything. I want to go open the ground and check to see if you’re really there where you can’t be because you’re so alive inside of me that it’s impossible to believe you’ve gone.

I close my eyes and open them again, hoping to see that it’s you in front of me, but it’s not.

Back down the crowded sidewalk, I work my way back to my car, pull the ticket from the windshield, and drop it on the dashboard without reading it.

On autopilot, I drive familiar roads unseen and end up at the cemetery, not knowing how I got there.

There’s a patch of brown earth in the middle of green. The sight of the soil hurts me. I can barely breathe. You can’t possibly be down there when I’m up here. And I just want to find my way back to you.

I remember your bare feet, the frayed end of your jeans, the letter I slipped into your pocket that said I love you forever and ever. The one you never read because your eyes were dead.

And I can’t tell you everything I didn’t say before. I want to follow you, to be with you, to never ever leave you, but I can’t, not yet. You’d kill me for even thinking of it.

But I don’t know how to be in the world without you and it hurts.

Long moments pass on the dirt by the grass and the sun shifts in the sky and I grow quiet inside thinking of you. You once carved our initials in a picnic table top: you plus me equals true love always, and I laughed and teased you because it was so cliché. But now I want to do it too. With my finger in the dirt that covers you, I draw a heart and put us inside it.

I know it won’t last. The rain will wash it away or someone will scuff it with their foot but that’s okay.

Maybe I’ll grow old while you dance on the other side of forever but I’ll never stop loving you and I will miss you always and forever, even as I let you go.

©Unequivocal Kate, 2010

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Susan peeks out the window of the church office, pulling the venetian blinds back just enough to view the broken down station wagon piled high with blankets and listing to the right on tired tires. Children tumble out onto the tarmac, a man unfolds from the front seat, scruffy beard, dirty plaid shirt, the woman impossibly huge in pregnancy. Susan, the perennially tidy church secretary, crinkles her nose at the imagined stink as she picks up the phone and dials then whispers, “Pastor, there are people here. They’re filthy and it looks like they’ve been living in a station wagon. I’m sure they want a handout of some kind…”

The pastor’s voice is quiet, “I’m five minutes away. Please, just wait.”

He arrives in a well maintained, 1985 Honda Accord. It takes him a moment to straighten from the car. He’s nearly 80 years-old and his hair is snow white but his blue eyes are bright. He sees Susan peeking through the blinds and waves as he moves to greet the rag tag family parked across the lot.

The Pastor listens while the man talks. He learns of a lost job. The old station wagon is running on fumes, they need a place to rest… The man can’t even meet his eyes as he states his case. Pastor sees the crumbled cigarette packages, a beer bottle stuffed between the front seats. The man’s breath reeks. The children are big eyed and silent, their noses runny. He nods his head, steps back, and opens his arms wide, inviting them to come inside the church.

In the church kitchen he cooks for them, and invites them to use the facilities to clean-up. The secretary is frantic as she whispers, “You don’t know anything about them, Pastor. You can’t keep bringing homeless people, vagrants, into the church building! We just remodeled. The last man you brought in stole from us. Do you want that to happen again? You have a responsibility to your congregation!”

The Pastor smiles as he flips grilled cheese sandwiches in a pan, “I hope the last man was blessed by what he found here. Everything we have belongs to God, Susan. He took nothing from us. “

“But your responsibility to the congregation…” Her voice is full of frustration and indignation. Her arms firmly planted on her hips.

Sliding the sandwiches onto a serving plate, he turns to her and his voice is firm, “My responsibility is to our God who calls us to love.”

Later, when the church board reprimands the Pastor for putting church property at risk, for inviting vagrants in, he will remind them once again that the building and everything inside of it belong only to God, and that the mission of the church is not the protection of church property but the loving of people.

None of them will ever know the impact the Pastor’s kindness had on that family, but that father and mother will raise children who love God and they will do much good. Years later, when they tell their story in the homeless shelter run by their church, the father and mother will speak of the Pastor who loved them not with empty words but with hot showers and grilled cheese sandwiches when they were destitute and desperate. And they will ask those they serve to pass-on whatever kindness they have received and to do so in the name of God.

©Just Kate, 2010

Matthew 25:38-40 (New International Version)

38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'


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Yesterday, under a leaden sky in the pouring rain, I watched a solitary man fill a grave. And the grass was green where my father and mother lay, grandma and grandpa not far away.

I came to say goodbye. I've stood there so many times before. I wish to never stand there again but I will and some day I will lay there.

Just last week I came on a sunny day and pressed my hands to the gravestones, feeling the moss and rough stone, and I whispered I love you to my mother and my father.

It's not that I think it matters to them. They are no longer of this world. I do it because I need to remember to touch the people I love, to tell them that I love them.

Today, I woke up and ran to hug my husband. I love how warm he is, the scent of his skin, the way he hugs me hard and lifts me right off my feet. I told him that I love him and he said, "I know you do."

"But I have to tell you," I said. He nodded his head.

"Do you love me?" I asked him.

He hugged me again and said, "You're silly. Always. You know I do."

He's right. I do know. I still love the sound of it though. And warm skin is so much better than cold stone.

©Just Kate, 2010

Everything will change. It's one thing I'm sure of. When life is hard and must be endured, I'm thankful for the change that I know will come. It helps me carry on. When life is beautiful, I am caught up, captivated. It's hard to surrender those moments to the passing of time.

I remember. Laying under the Southern Cross on a hot summer night in Canberra, Australia, and the kiss that would change my life, albeit at the time I didn't know it.

I remember. Tilting my head to tickle his tummy with my hair, tiny hands pressed against my face, a squeal of laughter, my infant son.

I remember. The feel of my grandpa's hand in mine, his skin paper thin, blue veined, tremulous, the moment he sighed and died as I quietly sang to him.

I remember. My mom, body curled and ruined, but oh the brilliance of her smile, the love in it, the day I finally gave her permission to leave us. We'll be okay, I promised. It was the truth and a lie. I miss her. I miss her.

I remember. Sitting atop my father's grave, running my fingers through tufted grass, wishing things had been different, that he might have found a way to love me in a way that I could understand and feel, knowing that whatever chance we had was gone like so much dandelion fluff blown away by the wind. I wish...

I remember. The wind in my sun-bleached hair, arms tightly wrapped around my big brother, the wobble of the motorcycle when we hit gravel, a scream, a whoop of joy, a cloud of dust, flying down the trail.

I remember. The jungle, overripe and rotting, small brown hands patterned by scabies, picking head lice from the giant puff of her mother's hair, the flash of white smiles in nut brown faces. They were my friends and I always looked for them. One day I came and the little one wasn't there. It was malaria her mother said with sad eyes. I was shattered to think of her gone, that beautiful little one, and I cried so hard. Her mother touched my tears and said with wonder, do children not die in your village in America?

In a few days we'll mark a new year; hello 2010.

Everything will change and I no longer fear it. I want to feel EVERYTHING, take it all in. This life is a gift, every little bit of it. The only waste of life is a failure to really live it.

©Just Kate, 2009