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A man who loves Jesus, believes in waiting for sex, and cares about intersectional feminism? That’s hard to find in Evangelicalism (although admittedly easier in an urban environment). And to find a guy who cares about intersectional feminism and also prioritizes faith? That’s not a snap either.
For me, feminism felt like finding a beautiful shoe in the wrong size. No matter how much I strained, it never seemed to be a perfect fit. I found my size in womanism.
In my rebel Catholicism, and the Catholicism that I see so many other Latinx people practice, faith and cynicism are dancing partners that invent their own steps.
I spent nine years attending Catholic School.
The through line of my life has been the tension caused by my father believing that I should “fall in line” and defer to his patriarchal authority. Nowhere is this more evident than in the ways that he cannot tolerate our spiritual differences.
I have a lot of anxiety about not doing enough. Not doing enough at work, at school, around the house, to help save the world from the creeping tendrils of authoritarian nationalism… the list goes on.
This past fall, I decided to stop worrying about the absence of my belief and allow myself the communal experience of prayer. I enjoy it, not because I believe in God, but because I enjoy the ritual.
In Sufism, one of the central doctrines is non-judgment of anyone based on their gender, race, religion, or ethnicity. This is grounded in the concept of Divine Unity. If everything is a reflection of the Divine, that means everything.
Basically, the lady got a lot of stuff done, and we are forever indebted to her for it.