Why I Still Talk to Jesus -- In Spite of Everything
There are women reading this who have known despair, will know despair or are in despair at this moment. This is for you sister!
Black, white, brown, gay, straight, queer, bi, trans, old, young, mother, single, grandmother– if you are a woman you live in a world of perpetual insult. Nowhere is it clearer that we humans are merely jumped-up half-evolved primates than in the way our species treats women. As a man who loves his muse, best friend and life-partner—Goddess Genie—and has loved her for 44 years, I have a word for my other sisters: women are the best there is on this earth. Once in a while even a man like me can learn that.
As the father of a beloved daughter, three granddaughters and an adored daughter-in-law, a transcendentally lovely mother and three loving sisters, women have been, and are, my truest lights. I feel the presence of my departed mother in every beautiful moment in my life. My granddaughters fill up my heart again and again. My daughter has forgiven me for the harsh jerk evangelical “head of the home” I once pretended I was, before being delivered from moronic “biblical certainties” into the sweet embrace of merciful paradox.
These days here’s how I feel as expressed in my new book WHY I AM AN ATHEIST WHO BELIEVES IN GOD: How to give love, create beauty and find peace:
When I pray, I experience the same sort of optimism I feel when I’ve just wrapped up a university speaking tour and the plane at last takes off for Boston. My spirits rise. I’ll be talking to Genie soon. As we drive home, Genie doesn’t have to say anything as I ramble on. It’s enough that she listens.
Some conversations are one-way, but they are no less meaningful for all that. When I have a solitary encounter with beauty while on the road, I long to tell Genie. If Genie isn’t with me, the painting I see, the movie I watch, the interesting conversation I have doesn’t seem to count. It only counts to me when I tell Genie about it. When the words I use fail to tell the story, Genie knows what I mean no matter how inadequate my words are. Thus my truest and deepest consciousness resides outside of me in someone else. It’s a relief to be understood by someone who knows me better than I know myself.
What began forty-three years ago as sex between teens resulting in an unplanned pregnancy—when I said “I’ll pull out” I lied!—is winding up as two lovers clinging to each other as if to a life raft. A happy marriage is never entirely happy. I’ve been a shit sometimes. Now that there’s less time ahead of me than behind me, I mostly tell the person I love the truth. The same goes for Genie. We tend to look back over our lives with more mercy than we used to. We are nicer now, or maybe we’re just tired.
Yes, I love my sons and grandsons deeply and passionately! They fill my life with meaning! But they, like me, are men. They, like me, walk through doors where in most of this world a women must climb high walls and find a window to crawl through. And that is if she’s lucky, not dead, beaten, sold, killed, cut, abandoned, enslaved.
This grateful and humbled male wants to apologize for the continuing indignities that go with the territory of being female in this stupid world. You have been laughed at, hit, raped, mocked, condescended to, molested, belittled, passed over, underpaid and ignored. Fools have made your sexuality, virginity, lack of virginity, even your pleasure their domineering male “business.” You have suffered my sisters, some more than others, some unbearably. You are wonderful nonetheless.
You are the first human, the “Lucy”, the only “Eve,” the mothers of the world. You are the only leaders of our species with the intellect and will to carry us out of our woes. When this world hears our women and asks them to lead we will be healed. You are the true achievers, and the only truth on this planet. Old, young, thin, heavy, ill, well, loved or scorned you are the best there is.
There is only one true measure of any religion, political party, civilization, country, man or family: How do they treat women? If the answer is “well” they’re worth preserving. If the answer is “badly” everything else they do will be rotten to the core. It is a privilege to be here with you my sisters. Don’t give up. Save us all.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer. His latest book —WHY I AM AN ATHEIST WHO BELIEVES IN GOD: How to give love, create beauty and find peace
Available now on Amazon
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