“But there come times – perhaps this is one of them – when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die;” –from ‘Transcendental Etude’ Adrienne Rich
I am starting this conversation with a conversion narrative.
This conversion is not only from claustrophobia to adventurer exploring what lies underneath. It is a conversion from original to unoriginal sin, from white fragility to human vulnerability, from enslaved girl to shared power, from violence to erotic power, from dissociation to spiritual connection.
My Puritan and Huguenot ancestors were very anxious about the state of their souls. They looked to their sacred books, including dreams, visions, and the book of nature to discern whether they were among the elect, those chosen by their God to go to heaven. If they had a conversion experience it was a revelation, a sign, an assurance that they were not going to hell. With relief, they testified about these conversions in church and they wrote about them. Some have said that those conversion writings are the base for literature that separated America from Europe. I have studied the sacred books of experience, submitted them to a fierce interpretation (what theologian Elizabeth Schusler Fiorenza calls ‘the hermeneutic of suspicion’), and have been assured that the place my ancestors called hell is as essential to explore as heaven. I have converted from a Puritan to a New Puritan.
Those old Puritans taught that at my heart was the hard stone of original sin, which was caused by a woman who listened to a snake. The punishment was human suffering. By taking myself more seriously rather than suffer and die, I was converted from snake handler to prophet who listens carefully to the snakes for signs of the times.