A Spiritual Death? The One-Eyed Doe Rises
Stephanie deLusé
“Sister deLusé, you’ve been brought before this committee for a serious matter,” Brother Johnson said. The other elders of the congregation sat in silence as Brother Johnson continued. “We’ve been aware that you’ve strayed from the flock since you left your husband Lars against our advice.”
He went on to list my transgressions, including having signed up for college classes that would fill my head with ungodly ideas, lead me to associate with worldly people, and take time away from seeking first the Kingdom. Almost as bad was moving out of my aunt and uncle’s home, where I lived after leaving Lars, and unwisely rooming with unbelievers. “You’ve made these poor decisions, but you had not yet sinned. Now you have. Sister, you’ve been brought before this committee on charges of adultery.”
I sat alone facing this judicial-like panel of gray-haired men in crisp shirts under pressed suits, their conservative ties picking up the gray in their unexpressive eyes. We sat in the library room of our small and simple place of worship, called a Kingdom Hall, in padded folding chairs under fluorescent light. In the brief moments after he spoke, I felt my heart quicken, and I squirmed slightly in the chair as I sat up straighter still, carefully re-crossed my legs at the ankles, and smoothed the skirt of my black-and-blue speckled dress. The fabric was silky and comforted me.
“But Brother Johnson,” I began, “how can I be an adulteress if I was still a virgin when I left Lars? I kept God’s laws, was sheep-like in my behavior, and followed all the rules of our faith before and while I was married. I married him a pure and chaste virgin, and I was still a virgin three years later, through no fault of my own, when I had the marriage legally annulled. Adultery means to have cheated on your mate, to have slept with someone else. Lars was never my mate; he was basically my roommate at best and a bad one at that. How can I have defiled the marital bed when there was no marital bed? There was no sex, and no love, as Lars, my so-called husband, neglected to consummate the marriage and, instead, treated me with contempt and abuse.”
“Sister, you took a marital vow and we consider that sacred. You broke that vow when you began a sexual relationship with someone other than Lars, even if it is with your new husband with whom you are unevenly yoked.” He spoke the last words with a thinly veiled tone of contempt. It is highly inappropriate to marry someone who is “worldly” or an unbeliever. But would they have preferred I married another believer and put their relationship with God at risk, as mine was sitting here now?
His measured voice increased in righteous power, “You broke the vow, for while your marriage may have been legally annulled you knew full well we still considered you married according to scripture. You knew full well we considered you married in God’s eyes and Lars would be your husband until one of you died or committed adultery. Those are the only grounds for scriptural marital dissolution.”
We then quoted scriptures to each other for some time, offering our different interpretations, with me adding, “Brothers, Lars took a vow too. He made a verbal contract to fulfill all manner of husbandly duties, including that ‘the two will become one flesh,’ and yet he didn’t. He signed the marriage license but never signed, if you will, the verbal contract of the vow or followed through on what marriage means. He never fulfilled his side of the contract as he never consummated the marriage. I didn’t marry to be celibate or to be mistreated. That’s not what God intended marriage to be, is it? Yes, sex isn’t everything and celibacy is fine and can be noble, but that’s not what I agreed to. And I certainly did not sign on for the captivity, the near starvation, the occasional strike, or the verbal and emotional abuse.”
“Watch your tongue, Sister, lest you be guilty of slander.”
The room turned cold as a freezing fear crept into my heart. Was I going to have to go through this again? Please, no. Had I not been absolved of wrongdoing on this count before? Was no one listening? I felt despairing and alone, but I explained carefully, “Brother, I’ve already been brought before a committee on charges of slander, and, you’ll recall, I was found innocent. It is only slander if one speaks lies in reference to another. I’ve only spoken the truth about Lars, and, even then, I held my tongue for two years in terms of sharing my troubles with anyone except my immediate family and you, dear Brothers, when I could not take it any more and was so desperate for help. Lars admitted his misdeeds, and I was cleared of slander. Yet when I sought help you told me to stay with him and offered him no real counsel.”
I continued, voice faltering as my despair welled up and the memories came flooding.
“And my father, your brother, told me to stay with Lars as it was better to die faithful than to leave and risk God’s displeasure. I stayed, Brothers. I stayed, and I became so skinny, fewer than 90 pounds.” I remembered living off dried milk for days, as at times that was all Lars would permit in the house. “I was so ill. And still I soldiered on in God’s work, as best I could, and in maintaining the illusion of the marriage. But I became dizzy and weak, and I would pass out or lie in bed for days. It was only when my mother came to visit from North Carolina and buffered me from the strange living conditions Lars forced upon me that I started to recover. But by then, Brothers, my heart had developed real problems that the cardiologist thought could be repaired if I left this stressful situation but promised would become permanent and life threatening if I didn’t.”
“Sister, you shouldn’t trust men of science. They also believe in evolution.” He clucked at my ignorance.
I was struck by his choice of focus, saddened in his trying to set me straight about the evils of science given what else I’d said. “Either way, Brother, God put it in our hearts to live, and I finally had to leave—escape while Lars was at work. I had to trust that God, not other men, is the final judge. I had to trust that He knew, still knows, my heart was with Him despite my leaving that deadly relationship. I pray you understand too.”
“Why your family would take you in when you were leaving your husband is a surprise,” one Brother mused with suspicion. Feeling my blood pressure rise with my fear, I flashed on the image that their noses were really beaks, and now their eyes seemed beady to me. They were predatory birds looking for weakness in potential prey. Me. My family.
“Brothers, please don’t blame them. My aunt and uncle thought it better I live in their basement than with unbelievers. You yourselves said it was. They saw to it I was kept warm and well fed and attended the Kingdom Hall for each meeting. You saw me come all the time until I left their house. And I couldn’t afford to live anywhere else, Brothers. Surely you know that as you’d seen I’d dedicated my life to God’s work, participating in the door-to-door ministry work 60 to 90 hours a month until I, quite simply, couldn’t go on. It was while my mother was still visiting, offering her protection and care, that I restored my health enough to take a humble job outside the home. I know, I know, you’d have had me return to the ministry, but I had to do this, you see? And while I gave Lars most of what I earned, I kept a bit to myself as I planned my escape. But it was not enough to live on, of course. I let no one know I was leaving, Brothers, and you know that no one else supported my decision, so no one else is implicated here. I told my aunt and uncle on the very day I left as I begged for their assistance. They were only being good Christians, Brothers. They were not drawing me away from Lars. They were trying to keep me in the flock by taking me into their home.”
“Yes, Sister, we know they are good people,” a Brother replied, one who had been a friend of the family for years. Then his toned changed. “They broke no vows. Only you did that.” His finger pointed like a talon.
I was relieved my relatives were not seen as complicit, but in tears, I continued, still convinced they’d see logic. “Brother, it was Lars who broke the marital vow well before I did by not keeping his word, the vow, of being my husband in all ways, including the physical. Why is it that he has not been punished for the wrongs he committed against me? Why am I the one sitting before this committee of elders begging for mercy when I’ve done no grievous wrong?” It was true that I had left Lars, yes. Years later I remarried an unbeliever, yes. But, I reminded them, “I’m not an adulteress; I’m simply a survivor. I still love Jesus and God. Brothers, I was more sinned against than sinning, and I tried to stay in that loveless marriage, but I was dying. I had to leave Lars. But I never wanted to leave the Organization, so please don’t punish me further by casting me out. I’m no risk to the flock. I’d prefer we place no blame but rather let this pass as the poor fortune of a 17-year-old girl and a 23-year-old man. Let me, please, start fresh in God’s eyes. Have mercy and let this go, but if blame must be placed, please see that it was not I from whom you need to protect the flock, but Lars. Lars is the wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
The elders exchanged glances. The time had come. “Sister, please leave the room and let us pray.”
Composing myself as best I could, I retreated from the room, feeling smaller than when I entered it. I laughed inwardly at my having worn this black-and-blue speckled dress. I was nothing but a bruise from my “marriage” and my encounters with the “shepherds” of the flock. Spent from the effort of the interchange, worried about how they would rule, I imagined the worst case scenario—my friends and family not speaking to me again should the elders decide against me. That’s only if they made the most negative decision. The best case scenario would be mercy. What a gift that would be! In between the polar extremes, they could give me private reproof, or even reprove me publicly. One punishment more embarrassing than the other, yes, but either would allow my family to still eat with me, would allow me to maintain my now fragile understanding of a man-mediated relationship to God. But should they make the most negative decision, my life would change even more than it already had. The suspense was palpable as I waited outside in a room filled with books that interpreted the Bible, and here I thought about Aesop’s fable of “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.”
Indeed, as I’d reminded the Brothers, Lars had hidden his wolf side from me when we were dating. Admittedly, most of these were chaperoned dates, but, still, he presented his sheep side only, shining as an upstanding Christian and such a role model in our organization. What rule-abiding, dyed-in-the-wool Christian girl wouldn’t want that? His physical stature matched, it seemed, his spiritual stature as he was a handsome six foot, four inches and 200 pounds of solid bodybuilder muscle, and he was proud that his 22-inch biceps were the size of my petite waist as I stood a foot shorter and 100 pounds lighter. So grand was he that my father basically handpicked him for me, discouraging me from considering other suitors. What 17-year-old girl who’d been taught since birth to obey her father wouldn’t take his sage advice? Taught that women were subject to men in all things, my father was my shepherd, in a sense, so he’d protect me, right? He’d make the choices that were best for me, wouldn’t he?
Yet that’s where the connection with Aesop’s fable breaks down. In the fable, the shepherd does manage to protect his lambs from the wolf, albeit by accident, when the shepherd reaches into the flock to choose a sheep for dinner. The wolf, so well disguised by his fake mantle, is selected and slaughtered. The moral of the story is appearances often are deceiving, and many people misremember this fable thinking that the wolf devoured the flock through his falsity, but, in fact, the wolf’s deceit cost him his own life. It wasn’t the shepherd’s wisdom that led him to select the disguised wolf. It was dumb luck or perhaps providence, but the wolf’s evil plan was foiled. In my case, the wolf won as he went undetected and destroyed me, the sheep. So how was I to understand my father’s choosing this wolf for me? Daddy didn’t slaughter the wolf; he unwittingly served me up on a platter.
I was summoned back into the library now that the Brothers had prayed to Jehovah God, in His Son Jesus’s name, asking that the Holy Spirit guide their decision. It had to be the best decision then, right? “Sister, that you think you were justified in leaving Lars and in taking your subsequent course of action betrays an unrepentant, goat-like heart. Next week, at the next meeting of the congregation, you will be disfellowshipped.”
Disfellowshipped.
That’s their word for excommunication, for ostracism. The word fell like a guillotine. The decision felt completely wrong, felt like this is not what a merciful God would choose, but there I was not dealing with God directly but with a human committee of flawed men. As I was raised from birth in this strict fundamental religion, its beliefs and organizational structure were part of the fabric of my being. I believed my safety and salvation lay with the community of people who shared my faith. To secure my position in the eyes of God and in the eyes of this community, I kept every rule to the letter with a joyful spirit, never questioning the rules set down by the men who ran God’s “one true organization on earth.” A more sheep-like follower you’d have never met, until my life-preserving choice. And there I was being cast out, cut off, erased. No one would be able to talk to me anymore and, worse yet, they wouldn’t even want to. I would be dead to them, to my family, to God. A mortal wound indeed.
I was like Aesop’s “One-Eyed Doe,” who was blind in one eye so she would graze along a grassy cliff overlooking the sea, keeping her good eye watching for hunters on the land side. She felt safe in her decision, for who would attack a deer by sea? One day, sailors passing in a boat shot her. Trouble comes from the direction we least expect it, and I’d spent my life blind in one eye. So trusting I was of my religious community that I was blind. I kept my good eye on avoiding the threats of the “worldly” people and pursuits, on avoiding anything that was not studying God’s word, worshipping, or proselytizing. In the end, I died a spiritual and social death and lived what the fabled doe said with her last breath, “Alas, ill-fated creature that I am! I was safe on the land side, whence I looked for danger, but my enemy came from the sea, to which I looked for protection.”
***
No more words. No more words. I was speechless. Nothing I said had made a difference, so nothing I could say would. With all I’d been through for how many years, I should have seen the handwriting on the wall just like King Belshazzar had in the book of Daniel. With all I’d been through for how many years, I should have known this meeting would spell my doom. Was this decision really so surprising after everything that had come before? Yet I was caught off guard, dizzy. Emotion. No more thoughts, only a storm of emotions roiled through me. Grief. Anger. Confusion. Apathy. Disgust. Fear. Grief. Grief. Grief. The waves of grief tore through as my shoulders heaved, my heart cleaved and I trembled.
I left. What else could I do? As I made my way home, a scripture surged into my heart, “E’li, E’li, la’ma sa·bach·tha’ni?” (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) But I knew the answer to that. Or did I? On the one hand, I’d been forsaken much earlier than that night. That night was just the culmination. On the other hand, perhaps I’d never been abandoned as perhaps my Heavenly Father had been with me all along to help me survive the dramas through which I’d lived. Deep inside, I felt God knew my heart. Deep inside, I questioned if I could (couldn’t I?) maintain a relationship with Spirit without the trappings of a human-led organization. Yet even thinking that possible was heretical in the black-and-white world I’d lived in so long. But what did it matter that I had that “gray area,” I thought now, as I’d already been kicked out? Perhaps this seed of a new, grayer belief system would save me.
I pondered.
Perhaps I could learn from Aesop’s fable of “The Oak and the Reeds.” The oak had stood proudly against many strong winds until one day a great wind came that was too strong for even the oak. The tree broke in half and washed downstream, where it saw reeds standing whole and beautiful. “How did you manage to withstand that storm, reeds, when it broke even me?” the oak asked. “Dear oak, your pride kept you from yielding even a little. We, knowing our weakness, bend and let the wind blow over us without trying to resist it.”
Of course, the moral is that it’s better to bend than to break. I felt broken, but maybe I was just bent like the reeds. I’d spent my life learning how to bend to so many men and so many rules, could I not use my preternatural flexibility to save myself again? I’d been a paper doll fluttering in the wind at the breath of each brother, but perhaps now I could root like a reed and take some solace and support from the earth, bending as the heavens waged war against me.
But in this case, what would bending look like? I’d been drifting away from the black-and-white tribe in slow, subtle ways, yes, but being forced out against my will in this way and for this reason still didn’t sit right with me. To the annoyance of the Brothers, I appealed the Committee’s decision. Another body of elders from a neighboring community would hear my case, but now the mote was removed from my eye. I was beginning to see clearly the sad truth that there was little hope for me here. Pray as I might, I wasn’t expecting much objectivity from these elders who were the confidants and relatives of the elders in my congregation. The circle was close and the clutch of patriarchy was tight. More than expecting a reversal, the true grace in the appeal process was the time it bought—they wouldn’t announce my disfellowshipping while the case was still “undecided.”
In the few-week extension, we—my family and I—tried to process the implications of the first decision and prepare for the impact should the final decision not be more merciful. To my family’s disquietude, they knew I would make no efforts beyond the appeal to restore my name in this organization. Pray as they might, if the original decision was upheld I would not demonstrate my repentance by spending years stealing silently into meetings just before they started to avoid any social contact; sitting ignored in the silent reproach of others not permitted to greet or look upon me. Were my heart not in it, it would be a hypocritical act to gain the Brother’s favor once again. Though most my family still believed, and do to this day that it is God’s organization, they knew I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, do that. I was David to the Goliath of this organization, yet unlike David my acts of personal integrity would not prevail against the giant. The giant would best me, would cast me out of the only community and belief system I had ever known.
The Brothers had placed me on a stake to be burned for my seemingly heretical, “unrepentant” heart. If the appeal did not save me, they would light the fire by announcing the disfellowshipping. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; the Appeals Committee Brothers confirmed the earlier decision. It was so clear then that I was made from the earth and would return to it. The clay vessel of my life was crushed by their choices, their words, their stones—crushed to bits as the dust settled around the shards of my soul and the dashed dreams and disappointments of my self, my family. I thirsted for repair, for restoration, for rebirth. I was the crow in Aesop’s fable “The Crow and the Pitcher,” who was so thirsty he couldn’t even caw and was perilously close to death. The water that could save him was deep in a pitcher, too deep for his beak to reach despite his straining. He tried breaking the pitcher and tilting it but had insufficient strength. About to give up, he lit upon an idea. He picked up pebbles and dropped them into the pitcher until the water rose to the brim where he could drink it, quench his thirst, and live. The moral is well known: Necessity is the mother of invention. Dear mother. Finally, a mother. Perhaps a mother could save me where the proverbial father could not.
Out of necessity then, I dropped the pieces of my life, shard by shard, emotion by emotion, into the near empty pitcher of life water before me. The water held nourishment in new people and expanded thought. The water also held toxins as some family ignored me while others would talk to me when necessary but refuse to ever be seen with me in public or even eat with me in private. Slowly, the mother of reinvention with me, the water rose as I explored other religious traditions, Christian and non-Christian, and spirituality without organized religion, personal spirituality as well as organic, earthy spiritualities. I’d never stopped loving Jesus but came to appreciate other holy people. I’d never stop loving Jehovah but would come to take as much comfort in nature. Slowly, I could pray again without confusing God with man-made organizations claiming to represent Him or Her. Like Lazarus, I lived again.
To this day, many years later, I still live the beauty and the scars of having had a deep religious training and community. I cherish the values, the morals, and the knowledge my upbringing provided me as a fine foundation for who I have become. Am becoming. The painful scars become sensitive again under certain atmospheric pressures. Sensitive when I relive experiences as I have in writing this. Sensitive when I see someone struggling in relationship to religion or spirituality, or to community, as I once did. Still do. Sensitive when any of the many deeply ingrained prophecies or lessons from my youth come back to haunt or taunt me. Sensitive when my parents remind me that I’m out of favor with God and encourage me to try, knowing there is no guarantee of success, to return to the fold. Sensitive when my well-intentioned father, cycling into his periods of greater piety and rigidity in the name of Jesus and “tough love,” refuses to see me or talk to me.
Thank Goddess my mother never does that.
“Sister deLusé, you’ve been brought before this committee for a serious matter,” Brother Johnson said. The other elders of the congregation sat in silence as Brother Johnson continued. “We’ve been aware that you’ve strayed from the flock since you left your husband Lars against our advice.”
He went on to list my transgressions, including having signed up for college classes that would fill my head with ungodly ideas, lead me to associate with worldly people, and take time away from seeking first the Kingdom. Almost as bad was moving out of my aunt and uncle’s home, where I lived after leaving Lars, and unwisely rooming with unbelievers. “You’ve made these poor decisions, but you had not yet sinned. Now you have. Sister, you’ve been brought before this committee on charges of adultery.”
I sat alone facing this judicial-like panel of gray-haired men in crisp shirts under pressed suits, their conservative ties picking up the gray in their unexpressive eyes. We sat in the library room of our small and simple place of worship, called a Kingdom Hall, in padded folding chairs under fluorescent light. In the brief moments after he spoke, I felt my heart quicken, and I squirmed slightly in the chair as I sat up straighter still, carefully re-crossed my legs at the ankles, and smoothed the skirt of my black-and-blue speckled dress. The fabric was silky and comforted me.
“But Brother Johnson,” I began, “how can I be an adulteress if I was still a virgin when I left Lars? I kept God’s laws, was sheep-like in my behavior, and followed all the rules of our faith before and while I was married. I married him a pure and chaste virgin, and I was still a virgin three years later, through no fault of my own, when I had the marriage legally annulled. Adultery means to have cheated on your mate, to have slept with someone else. Lars was never my mate; he was basically my roommate at best and a bad one at that. How can I have defiled the marital bed when there was no marital bed? There was no sex, and no love, as Lars, my so-called husband, neglected to consummate the marriage and, instead, treated me with contempt and abuse.”
“Sister, you took a marital vow and we consider that sacred. You broke that vow when you began a sexual relationship with someone other than Lars, even if it is with your new husband with whom you are unevenly yoked.” He spoke the last words with a thinly veiled tone of contempt. It is highly inappropriate to marry someone who is “worldly” or an unbeliever. But would they have preferred I married another believer and put their relationship with God at risk, as mine was sitting here now?
His measured voice increased in righteous power, “You broke the vow, for while your marriage may have been legally annulled you knew full well we still considered you married according to scripture. You knew full well we considered you married in God’s eyes and Lars would be your husband until one of you died or committed adultery. Those are the only grounds for scriptural marital dissolution.”
We then quoted scriptures to each other for some time, offering our different interpretations, with me adding, “Brothers, Lars took a vow too. He made a verbal contract to fulfill all manner of husbandly duties, including that ‘the two will become one flesh,’ and yet he didn’t. He signed the marriage license but never signed, if you will, the verbal contract of the vow or followed through on what marriage means. He never fulfilled his side of the contract as he never consummated the marriage. I didn’t marry to be celibate or to be mistreated. That’s not what God intended marriage to be, is it? Yes, sex isn’t everything and celibacy is fine and can be noble, but that’s not what I agreed to. And I certainly did not sign on for the captivity, the near starvation, the occasional strike, or the verbal and emotional abuse.”
“Watch your tongue, Sister, lest you be guilty of slander.”
The room turned cold as a freezing fear crept into my heart. Was I going to have to go through this again? Please, no. Had I not been absolved of wrongdoing on this count before? Was no one listening? I felt despairing and alone, but I explained carefully, “Brother, I’ve already been brought before a committee on charges of slander, and, you’ll recall, I was found innocent. It is only slander if one speaks lies in reference to another. I’ve only spoken the truth about Lars, and, even then, I held my tongue for two years in terms of sharing my troubles with anyone except my immediate family and you, dear Brothers, when I could not take it any more and was so desperate for help. Lars admitted his misdeeds, and I was cleared of slander. Yet when I sought help you told me to stay with him and offered him no real counsel.”
I continued, voice faltering as my despair welled up and the memories came flooding.
“And my father, your brother, told me to stay with Lars as it was better to die faithful than to leave and risk God’s displeasure. I stayed, Brothers. I stayed, and I became so skinny, fewer than 90 pounds.” I remembered living off dried milk for days, as at times that was all Lars would permit in the house. “I was so ill. And still I soldiered on in God’s work, as best I could, and in maintaining the illusion of the marriage. But I became dizzy and weak, and I would pass out or lie in bed for days. It was only when my mother came to visit from North Carolina and buffered me from the strange living conditions Lars forced upon me that I started to recover. But by then, Brothers, my heart had developed real problems that the cardiologist thought could be repaired if I left this stressful situation but promised would become permanent and life threatening if I didn’t.”
“Sister, you shouldn’t trust men of science. They also believe in evolution.” He clucked at my ignorance.
I was struck by his choice of focus, saddened in his trying to set me straight about the evils of science given what else I’d said. “Either way, Brother, God put it in our hearts to live, and I finally had to leave—escape while Lars was at work. I had to trust that God, not other men, is the final judge. I had to trust that He knew, still knows, my heart was with Him despite my leaving that deadly relationship. I pray you understand too.”
“Why your family would take you in when you were leaving your husband is a surprise,” one Brother mused with suspicion. Feeling my blood pressure rise with my fear, I flashed on the image that their noses were really beaks, and now their eyes seemed beady to me. They were predatory birds looking for weakness in potential prey. Me. My family.
“Brothers, please don’t blame them. My aunt and uncle thought it better I live in their basement than with unbelievers. You yourselves said it was. They saw to it I was kept warm and well fed and attended the Kingdom Hall for each meeting. You saw me come all the time until I left their house. And I couldn’t afford to live anywhere else, Brothers. Surely you know that as you’d seen I’d dedicated my life to God’s work, participating in the door-to-door ministry work 60 to 90 hours a month until I, quite simply, couldn’t go on. It was while my mother was still visiting, offering her protection and care, that I restored my health enough to take a humble job outside the home. I know, I know, you’d have had me return to the ministry, but I had to do this, you see? And while I gave Lars most of what I earned, I kept a bit to myself as I planned my escape. But it was not enough to live on, of course. I let no one know I was leaving, Brothers, and you know that no one else supported my decision, so no one else is implicated here. I told my aunt and uncle on the very day I left as I begged for their assistance. They were only being good Christians, Brothers. They were not drawing me away from Lars. They were trying to keep me in the flock by taking me into their home.”
“Yes, Sister, we know they are good people,” a Brother replied, one who had been a friend of the family for years. Then his toned changed. “They broke no vows. Only you did that.” His finger pointed like a talon.
I was relieved my relatives were not seen as complicit, but in tears, I continued, still convinced they’d see logic. “Brother, it was Lars who broke the marital vow well before I did by not keeping his word, the vow, of being my husband in all ways, including the physical. Why is it that he has not been punished for the wrongs he committed against me? Why am I the one sitting before this committee of elders begging for mercy when I’ve done no grievous wrong?” It was true that I had left Lars, yes. Years later I remarried an unbeliever, yes. But, I reminded them, “I’m not an adulteress; I’m simply a survivor. I still love Jesus and God. Brothers, I was more sinned against than sinning, and I tried to stay in that loveless marriage, but I was dying. I had to leave Lars. But I never wanted to leave the Organization, so please don’t punish me further by casting me out. I’m no risk to the flock. I’d prefer we place no blame but rather let this pass as the poor fortune of a 17-year-old girl and a 23-year-old man. Let me, please, start fresh in God’s eyes. Have mercy and let this go, but if blame must be placed, please see that it was not I from whom you need to protect the flock, but Lars. Lars is the wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
The elders exchanged glances. The time had come. “Sister, please leave the room and let us pray.”
Composing myself as best I could, I retreated from the room, feeling smaller than when I entered it. I laughed inwardly at my having worn this black-and-blue speckled dress. I was nothing but a bruise from my “marriage” and my encounters with the “shepherds” of the flock. Spent from the effort of the interchange, worried about how they would rule, I imagined the worst case scenario—my friends and family not speaking to me again should the elders decide against me. That’s only if they made the most negative decision. The best case scenario would be mercy. What a gift that would be! In between the polar extremes, they could give me private reproof, or even reprove me publicly. One punishment more embarrassing than the other, yes, but either would allow my family to still eat with me, would allow me to maintain my now fragile understanding of a man-mediated relationship to God. But should they make the most negative decision, my life would change even more than it already had. The suspense was palpable as I waited outside in a room filled with books that interpreted the Bible, and here I thought about Aesop’s fable of “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.”
Indeed, as I’d reminded the Brothers, Lars had hidden his wolf side from me when we were dating. Admittedly, most of these were chaperoned dates, but, still, he presented his sheep side only, shining as an upstanding Christian and such a role model in our organization. What rule-abiding, dyed-in-the-wool Christian girl wouldn’t want that? His physical stature matched, it seemed, his spiritual stature as he was a handsome six foot, four inches and 200 pounds of solid bodybuilder muscle, and he was proud that his 22-inch biceps were the size of my petite waist as I stood a foot shorter and 100 pounds lighter. So grand was he that my father basically handpicked him for me, discouraging me from considering other suitors. What 17-year-old girl who’d been taught since birth to obey her father wouldn’t take his sage advice? Taught that women were subject to men in all things, my father was my shepherd, in a sense, so he’d protect me, right? He’d make the choices that were best for me, wouldn’t he?
Yet that’s where the connection with Aesop’s fable breaks down. In the fable, the shepherd does manage to protect his lambs from the wolf, albeit by accident, when the shepherd reaches into the flock to choose a sheep for dinner. The wolf, so well disguised by his fake mantle, is selected and slaughtered. The moral of the story is appearances often are deceiving, and many people misremember this fable thinking that the wolf devoured the flock through his falsity, but, in fact, the wolf’s deceit cost him his own life. It wasn’t the shepherd’s wisdom that led him to select the disguised wolf. It was dumb luck or perhaps providence, but the wolf’s evil plan was foiled. In my case, the wolf won as he went undetected and destroyed me, the sheep. So how was I to understand my father’s choosing this wolf for me? Daddy didn’t slaughter the wolf; he unwittingly served me up on a platter.
I was summoned back into the library now that the Brothers had prayed to Jehovah God, in His Son Jesus’s name, asking that the Holy Spirit guide their decision. It had to be the best decision then, right? “Sister, that you think you were justified in leaving Lars and in taking your subsequent course of action betrays an unrepentant, goat-like heart. Next week, at the next meeting of the congregation, you will be disfellowshipped.”
Disfellowshipped.
That’s their word for excommunication, for ostracism. The word fell like a guillotine. The decision felt completely wrong, felt like this is not what a merciful God would choose, but there I was not dealing with God directly but with a human committee of flawed men. As I was raised from birth in this strict fundamental religion, its beliefs and organizational structure were part of the fabric of my being. I believed my safety and salvation lay with the community of people who shared my faith. To secure my position in the eyes of God and in the eyes of this community, I kept every rule to the letter with a joyful spirit, never questioning the rules set down by the men who ran God’s “one true organization on earth.” A more sheep-like follower you’d have never met, until my life-preserving choice. And there I was being cast out, cut off, erased. No one would be able to talk to me anymore and, worse yet, they wouldn’t even want to. I would be dead to them, to my family, to God. A mortal wound indeed.
I was like Aesop’s “One-Eyed Doe,” who was blind in one eye so she would graze along a grassy cliff overlooking the sea, keeping her good eye watching for hunters on the land side. She felt safe in her decision, for who would attack a deer by sea? One day, sailors passing in a boat shot her. Trouble comes from the direction we least expect it, and I’d spent my life blind in one eye. So trusting I was of my religious community that I was blind. I kept my good eye on avoiding the threats of the “worldly” people and pursuits, on avoiding anything that was not studying God’s word, worshipping, or proselytizing. In the end, I died a spiritual and social death and lived what the fabled doe said with her last breath, “Alas, ill-fated creature that I am! I was safe on the land side, whence I looked for danger, but my enemy came from the sea, to which I looked for protection.”
***
No more words. No more words. I was speechless. Nothing I said had made a difference, so nothing I could say would. With all I’d been through for how many years, I should have seen the handwriting on the wall just like King Belshazzar had in the book of Daniel. With all I’d been through for how many years, I should have known this meeting would spell my doom. Was this decision really so surprising after everything that had come before? Yet I was caught off guard, dizzy. Emotion. No more thoughts, only a storm of emotions roiled through me. Grief. Anger. Confusion. Apathy. Disgust. Fear. Grief. Grief. Grief. The waves of grief tore through as my shoulders heaved, my heart cleaved and I trembled.
I left. What else could I do? As I made my way home, a scripture surged into my heart, “E’li, E’li, la’ma sa·bach·tha’ni?” (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) But I knew the answer to that. Or did I? On the one hand, I’d been forsaken much earlier than that night. That night was just the culmination. On the other hand, perhaps I’d never been abandoned as perhaps my Heavenly Father had been with me all along to help me survive the dramas through which I’d lived. Deep inside, I felt God knew my heart. Deep inside, I questioned if I could (couldn’t I?) maintain a relationship with Spirit without the trappings of a human-led organization. Yet even thinking that possible was heretical in the black-and-white world I’d lived in so long. But what did it matter that I had that “gray area,” I thought now, as I’d already been kicked out? Perhaps this seed of a new, grayer belief system would save me.
I pondered.
Perhaps I could learn from Aesop’s fable of “The Oak and the Reeds.” The oak had stood proudly against many strong winds until one day a great wind came that was too strong for even the oak. The tree broke in half and washed downstream, where it saw reeds standing whole and beautiful. “How did you manage to withstand that storm, reeds, when it broke even me?” the oak asked. “Dear oak, your pride kept you from yielding even a little. We, knowing our weakness, bend and let the wind blow over us without trying to resist it.”
Of course, the moral is that it’s better to bend than to break. I felt broken, but maybe I was just bent like the reeds. I’d spent my life learning how to bend to so many men and so many rules, could I not use my preternatural flexibility to save myself again? I’d been a paper doll fluttering in the wind at the breath of each brother, but perhaps now I could root like a reed and take some solace and support from the earth, bending as the heavens waged war against me.
But in this case, what would bending look like? I’d been drifting away from the black-and-white tribe in slow, subtle ways, yes, but being forced out against my will in this way and for this reason still didn’t sit right with me. To the annoyance of the Brothers, I appealed the Committee’s decision. Another body of elders from a neighboring community would hear my case, but now the mote was removed from my eye. I was beginning to see clearly the sad truth that there was little hope for me here. Pray as I might, I wasn’t expecting much objectivity from these elders who were the confidants and relatives of the elders in my congregation. The circle was close and the clutch of patriarchy was tight. More than expecting a reversal, the true grace in the appeal process was the time it bought—they wouldn’t announce my disfellowshipping while the case was still “undecided.”
In the few-week extension, we—my family and I—tried to process the implications of the first decision and prepare for the impact should the final decision not be more merciful. To my family’s disquietude, they knew I would make no efforts beyond the appeal to restore my name in this organization. Pray as they might, if the original decision was upheld I would not demonstrate my repentance by spending years stealing silently into meetings just before they started to avoid any social contact; sitting ignored in the silent reproach of others not permitted to greet or look upon me. Were my heart not in it, it would be a hypocritical act to gain the Brother’s favor once again. Though most my family still believed, and do to this day that it is God’s organization, they knew I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, do that. I was David to the Goliath of this organization, yet unlike David my acts of personal integrity would not prevail against the giant. The giant would best me, would cast me out of the only community and belief system I had ever known.
The Brothers had placed me on a stake to be burned for my seemingly heretical, “unrepentant” heart. If the appeal did not save me, they would light the fire by announcing the disfellowshipping. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; the Appeals Committee Brothers confirmed the earlier decision. It was so clear then that I was made from the earth and would return to it. The clay vessel of my life was crushed by their choices, their words, their stones—crushed to bits as the dust settled around the shards of my soul and the dashed dreams and disappointments of my self, my family. I thirsted for repair, for restoration, for rebirth. I was the crow in Aesop’s fable “The Crow and the Pitcher,” who was so thirsty he couldn’t even caw and was perilously close to death. The water that could save him was deep in a pitcher, too deep for his beak to reach despite his straining. He tried breaking the pitcher and tilting it but had insufficient strength. About to give up, he lit upon an idea. He picked up pebbles and dropped them into the pitcher until the water rose to the brim where he could drink it, quench his thirst, and live. The moral is well known: Necessity is the mother of invention. Dear mother. Finally, a mother. Perhaps a mother could save me where the proverbial father could not.
Out of necessity then, I dropped the pieces of my life, shard by shard, emotion by emotion, into the near empty pitcher of life water before me. The water held nourishment in new people and expanded thought. The water also held toxins as some family ignored me while others would talk to me when necessary but refuse to ever be seen with me in public or even eat with me in private. Slowly, the mother of reinvention with me, the water rose as I explored other religious traditions, Christian and non-Christian, and spirituality without organized religion, personal spirituality as well as organic, earthy spiritualities. I’d never stopped loving Jesus but came to appreciate other holy people. I’d never stop loving Jehovah but would come to take as much comfort in nature. Slowly, I could pray again without confusing God with man-made organizations claiming to represent Him or Her. Like Lazarus, I lived again.
To this day, many years later, I still live the beauty and the scars of having had a deep religious training and community. I cherish the values, the morals, and the knowledge my upbringing provided me as a fine foundation for who I have become. Am becoming. The painful scars become sensitive again under certain atmospheric pressures. Sensitive when I relive experiences as I have in writing this. Sensitive when I see someone struggling in relationship to religion or spirituality, or to community, as I once did. Still do. Sensitive when any of the many deeply ingrained prophecies or lessons from my youth come back to haunt or taunt me. Sensitive when my parents remind me that I’m out of favor with God and encourage me to try, knowing there is no guarantee of success, to return to the fold. Sensitive when my well-intentioned father, cycling into his periods of greater piety and rigidity in the name of Jesus and “tough love,” refuses to see me or talk to me.
Thank Goddess my mother never does that.
Working notes
This piece was hard for me to write. It was hard to have everything I thought I knew and trusted torn apart when it was happening, and still was during processing and reflection. Thus, it took some time and distance to pull something shareable out of that night and the aftermath; and it took even more time before I actually sent what I wrote out to the world. I still have the black-and-blue dress I wore that night, an odd keepsake. Digging it out on occasion takes me right back to one of the worst nights of my life, but, in retrospect, maybe one of the best.
Writing this piece “popped the cork” for me in some ways; my readiness to write it allowed me to begin to write about other real-life events—other pieces that were written later but published before this one. Sending this piece out just felt too personal. Yet it is only through the courage to share such things that we can help others to do the same, and perhaps find community in doing so. I was happy to learn of TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism as it feels like a good home for this piece to live.
The interweaving of a few of Aesop’s Fables in the piece reflects how I moved in and out of myself, emotionally and analytically, for ways to make sense of and survive the shifts I was being invited, or forced, to make. There’s nothing like ancient literature to remind us that what we experience now may be novel to us, but, really, there is little new under the sun in terms of the human condition. Core issues and choices are part of every life and time.
Writing this piece “popped the cork” for me in some ways; my readiness to write it allowed me to begin to write about other real-life events—other pieces that were written later but published before this one. Sending this piece out just felt too personal. Yet it is only through the courage to share such things that we can help others to do the same, and perhaps find community in doing so. I was happy to learn of TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism as it feels like a good home for this piece to live.
The interweaving of a few of Aesop’s Fables in the piece reflects how I moved in and out of myself, emotionally and analytically, for ways to make sense of and survive the shifts I was being invited, or forced, to make. There’s nothing like ancient literature to remind us that what we experience now may be novel to us, but, really, there is little new under the sun in terms of the human condition. Core issues and choices are part of every life and time.
About the author
Stephanie deLusé has a Ph.D. in social psychology. Her writing explores the tensions of influences that exist in and around us. An interdisciplinarian, she has work forthcoming or in literary journals such as The Griffin, The MacGuffin, The Legendary, Wild Violet Magazine, and Emrys, and in academic journals including Family Court Review, Issues in Integrative Studies, and Family Process. On the popular side, she has essays in The Psychology of Survivor, The Psychology of Joss Whedon, and The Psychology of Superheroes. Her recent book, Arizona State University (Arcadia, 2012), is of yet another ilk. By day, she professes in Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University. Her teaching has won her multiple awards, including “Last Lecture,” and her writing has earned a Pushcart Prize nomination and consideration for inclusion in well-regarded “Best of” anthologies. In life, she finds things to be over-rated, preferring time with loved ones, plants, and non-human animals.
For an updated list of works published in TRIVIA, please see this author's contributor page.
For an updated list of works published in TRIVIA, please see this author's contributor page.