novapsyche | postcards from an edge (Reply)

I was going through some boxes and rediscovered an index card box I'd begun in 2003. During this time, I was still unemployed, writing scads of poems and getting deeply involved in the theory of poetics, and I was thumbing through the religious artefacts that my great-aunt Helen had had. (She had an aggressive bout of Alzheimer's come on, so we had the strange inversion of going through her effects before she had even passed.)

She'd left her notebooks from the church I'd been brought up in. This was the Spiritual Israel Church and Its Army, a very specific church that I have found very little extant literature about. I know that the church was founded in the 20th century, and that my grandmother and my great-aunt Anna had played important roles in the church. I know that the churches are numbered, and several numbers can be found all along the Southeastern seaboard. There is a network of numbers.

But our church, I think it was a special church, because it was unnumbered. It was on Martinsville Road, a dirt road in the country. I think it was unnumbered because it was one of the early structures.

After the death of my grandmother, I felt less of a draw to attend church. (And her passing had hit me hard. I was six, just about to turn seven. The trauma lives with me still: I know this because it is hard for me to recall many memories of my grandmother, even though she was the most significant figure in my life up until then.) I quit the church when I was nine, to another significantly traumatic event: my great-aunt Anna, dragging me toward the car that would take us to church, though I wanted to stay home by myself; she held back and hit me, as though that would strike some sense into me. I merely cried as they left for services.

In the next three years--formative years, mind you; I was undergoing puberty--what I started becoming curious about were the booklets my great-aunts had around. Aunt Helen read Fate magazine, and Aunt Ann had these catalogs of curios one could order. All sorts of oils, candles, incense, mojo bags, carvings of elephants, even krises and other ceremonial knives.

When I was 11, I met my first serious boyfriend, and he was involved in a Free Methodist church. After seeing him for a while (seven or eight months), I began attending. This was the first time I had chosen to go to church. The Free Methodist church was very liberal: historically, they broke away from the Methodist church during the time where those who paid the most got to sit up front. (This was also during the time of abolition.)

I became a full member of the church when I was 16. By then I had been quite an active member, having contributed my voice for several solos and even giving mini-testimonials from the pulpit. One of these testimonials involved me denouncing the beliefs I had before, of the spiritualist leanings I had gleaned from my great-aunts' bookshelves.

But the reason I bring up the Free Methodist church is because when I graduated from high school, they had a ceremony for all of the year's graduates, and they presented me with the New Student Bible (NIV). It is most certainly quite an influence, this particular translation, with its annotations and question sections. It is from this version that the quotes in the index card box are taken.

I don't recall the process by which I organized these quotes, but their order does seem to have a cumulative effect. I was in a certain mindset, a lot of free time, a lot of cognitive collusions studying poetry, theology and philosophy.

I'll put them in a separate post, which also will be posted to