All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [57]
My soul sister, Seane Corn, and me at a spiritual retreat.
When one is out of touch with oneself, one cannot touch others.
—ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH
he time I spent with Father Michael at the AIDS hospice, observing his respectful interaction with Professor Monk and his honoring of the Buddhist iconography, gave me an awful lot to think about.
I am Christian. I practice my faith. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, I hold Jesus in the highest regard, in preference to all others. I am also inclined to believe that the deity I know and call Jesus is the same Consciousness others know as the Compassionate Buddha, Sri Krishna, the Creator. I was raised in an array of Protestant churches; because we moved so much, I ended up going to just about every kind, I think, sometimes attending whatever denomination was within walking distance. Papaw Ciminella was Catholic and I loved worshipping with him, though initially his church’s ways were strange to me. I wish I could ask him today what he was thinking when he encouraged me to take holy communion with him!
Except for a stretch of time early on at the University of Kentucky—when I was briefly attracted to a form of Christian fundamentalism practiced by a few friends but ultimately rejected it as intolerant and judgmental—I have, encouraged by both my mother and my father, believed the paths are many, the journey is one.
After my spell as a fundamentalist, I began to trust that God was big enough to handle my doubt, my scathing inquiry, my pain over injustice, and that such thoughts did not need to be shamefully repressed in order for me to qualify as faithful. I began to study and respect the Jewish tradition of intellectual probing, closely examining the sacred texts. I gained the confidence to wonder openly, and some of my pastoral counselors might even say harass the clergy, about the flagrant, chronic misogyny that has come to dominate interpretations of nearly all religions and most scholarship. I began to have the courage to identify, and to pray to, a nonpatriarchal God, a God beyond social and cultural constructions of gender. I didn’t want just Father God; I needed Mother God, too. I realized that perhaps, just maybe, I could expand my God concept to include a “God who looks like me.” And perhaps this God looked not just like me, but maybe like the dirty, poor, wretched, exploited, sick, and abandoned people in all corners of the world.
My God is inclusive. And with wonderful irony, it was some of the more conservative Christians in my life who helped me get there. Turned inside out by some of St. Paul’s infamous teachings about women, I was devastated when asked to read from them at a family wedding. Riding in the car with Uncle Mark, I wept bitterly. He is a minister and a chaplain in the Baptist Church, a seminary graduate, fully ordained in that congregation. Rather than using my raw vulnerability as a moment to lecture me about the “right” way to believe, or the superiority of a particular sectarian interpretation of scripture, he simply turned to me and with enormous tenderness said, “Ashley, I love you.” That moment has always exemplified grace to me.
I return to the same lessons repeatedly. While the Golden Rule is in the gospel, there are close versions of it in every faith. In the sixth grade I was in a pickle at school; I had some keen social dilemma that I can no longer remember. Mom happened to be home, and I decided to risk running it by her when she was putting me to bed. After listening, she asked me a question.
“What is the Golden Rule?”
I paused; I could not remember it.
“You know it,” she said. “Think about it.” Then she left.
A few moments later, it came to me: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I’ve always thought that was an inspired stroke of parenting on her part. She essentially told me that I have internal wisdom and that I must go inside to find my answers. Using the Golden Rule as the example was especially deft. Rather than encouraging me to rely on her for answers, she helped me see that I had already