by Taylor Marsh
Organized religion’s expectations are a losing proposition for any independent-minded, self-actualized, spiritual female, but also for the men who love, honor and protect us. Unless, of course, you belong to one of the liberal religious factions or choose meditation and contemplation, which are now becoming a primary source of spiritual solace and inspiration for more and more people.
For the record, I’m a rebel Episcopalian, coming from the Disciples of Christ world. I’ve heard speak and met the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States, Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori. She is the first female elected to this position in the church’s history. I remain an Episcopalian in my heart, because the Episcopal Church under her leadership has led the way on supporting marriage equality, and because there are modern Episcopal churches. Schori stated in 2012 that the church “has taken a very nuanced approach on abortion. We say it is a moral tragedy but that it should not be the government’s role to deny its availability.” This is a modern statement by a true religious leader, a female, who understands the challenges of modernity and that, in some matters, we each have to grapple with ourselves and our God. She has also said that contraception is a “normative part of health care,” because “it’s appropriate for couples to plan their families.”
I’ve written about my very personal come-to-Jesus moment many times before, including in my book, The Hillary Effect, in the chapter titled “Is Freedom Just for Men?” To make a long story shorter here, contraceptives failed, leaving me pregnant in the middle of a road show tour. I had to hide that we were going to get an abortion, a legal procedure at the time, also having to cross several state lines and drive for hours to have the procedure performed. There wasn’t a moment I didn’t know what I had to do when I found out I was pregnant. An abortion was the only option for me for emotional and very personal reasons, as I explained in my first book in great detail. It’s unfortunate that I had to skulk around to get one, because it led to me hemorrhaging one day as I walked around a mall. Thankfully, it wasn’t life-threatening, and I kept the real reason I’d originally missed rehearsals quiet, averting judgment and stigma I didn’t need on top of everything else. The abortion did make me face myself in every way.
I’d done everything I could not to get pregnant, except not have sex. For most modern women this is not a real choice and shouldn’t be expected. It was a tragic situation, but I take responsibility for the way I live my life, with my independence and decisions no one else’s business. The abortion had no impact on my spiritual grounding, but did further convince me that “God’s will” has nothing to do with anything in life, but is really a man-made construct to explain choices we each actually make ourselves, but are afraid to claim.
I also know from personal experience that churches can make a great deal of difference in their communities, for which they should be commended. The outreach by churches to the poor and homeless through meals alone after the 2008 economic downturn became the only source of sustenance some people had. The last church I belonged to was when I lived in Beverly Hills, California. All Saints’ Episcopal Church was a lifeline at one of the most harrowing times in my life, which I’ll never forget.
It doesn’t erase the harm organized religions do through politics and gender apartheid.
When I was growing up, my mother wouldn’t let me skip a Sunday service. If I dared to play hooky by pretending to be asleep or act like I was not feeling well, I could sometimes skate, but once she came home, the cold shoulder I got destroyed the whole day. It turned me into a religious person for a very long time, though not someone who automatically followed along with the sermon and saluted. I had a lot of questions that started very early, because I didn’t quite appreciate that women were out of the power loop where God was concerned, which was obviously a setup. What made men worthy to run things but not women? When I figured out it revolved around having a penis, it led to quite an epiphany.
Religion was seen as the glue to American society until the late twentieth century. But nothing has caused the world more grief than people fighting over their religion’s dominance throughout history. What religion has done in the name of God is equally immoral. The Catholic Church’s role in protecting priests instead of children might have turned out differently if nuns had serious leadership roles inside the Vatican. Would the Penn State pedophilia scandal have happened if women were among those who knew about it? Our institutions cry out for women in leadership.
Amid this testosterone-driven environment, women are supposed to find solace and support in the most important union of their life, marriage. Is it any wonder more and more females are choosing God’s outdoors as their church?
I blew through organized religion’s usefulness a long time ago, preferring daily meditation and contemplation, where I convene as I choose in a manner that has proven to me that I need no conduit to connect. Women don’t need a male member of any church to prove the force is within, though I have met holy men whose conversation I have deeply enjoyed. Not coincidentally, I have also had their respect for being a powerful spiritual force of my own. There are men who know women deserve this respect inside the church as well, but they are still a minority, especially in the public voice of organized religion. Still, we need them because we won’t change the balance without them. I’m blessed to have also learned much from spiritual men.
One of the main disagreements I have with Steve Harvey’s mostly insightful advice on relationships is his emphasis on traditional religion. In many sections of his book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, Harvey invokes God, which is understandable given his traditional audience. However, in one section constructed for women, he gives examples of questions to ask potential mates, including “whether he knows the Lord.”
Obviously, Harvey and I are from vastly different cultural backgrounds. It’s not just about me being a Scots-Irish feminist, and Harvey being an African-American, traditional male, though this is a huge part of it. It also goes way beyond Harvey, because there is a whole contingent of people, including women, who still believe that the structure of relationships and families proselytized by organized religion still applies today and will for the children born to millennials and the next generations.
Throughout my life, I had one dating rule: If a man showed up in front of me and professed his Christianity or his knowledge of the Lord, I’d politely excuse myself, then run from the building. Because what’s tied to most men who claim to know the Lord today is the traditional mind-set that is now archaic and meant to make women unequal, but is disguised through words like respect and protect, which can also mean rescue and control.
In a hilarious tale revolving around Steve Harvey’s definition of “protection,” he talks about one time when he was out scuba diving with his wife, a certified scuba diver. Not a diver himself, Harvey was left back in the boat while his wife went exploring. When she was out of sight and in the water, he pretty near panicked: “By the time she was actually under the water, I’d told my security guy, who can’t scuba dive, to put on his snorkel and get in and keep an eye on her. I’d also told everyone onboard — from my manager to the captain — that if my wife is not back up here in thirty-five minutes, everybody’s putting on some suits and we’re going to go get her.”
Needless to say, the tour guide for the dive got a bit alarmed, and the rest played out in a scene you couldn’t script better if you tried. “‘I’m telling you,’ I said, getting a little more jumpy with each word, ‘either everybody goes down there to save her, or I’m killing everybody on the boat. This boat goes nowhere without her, and if it pulls off and she’s not on it, that’s it for everybody.’”
Harvey calls this a “primal need” he has “to make sure nothing happens to her.” His wife doesn’t “trip out” about this; she simply says, “Thanks for caring, honey.”
Good for the Harveys. They’re obviously well suited, and we should all be so lucky as to have such a long, successful marriage.
Modern wo
men like myself hear Sting playing in our ears, every breath, every move, every step, “I’ll be watching you.” Great song, horrible way to live.
Harvey also talks about a moment when his father stayed home, because his mother felt intimidated by an “insurance man looking for some money.” As he tells the story and describes the man, it sounds like any woman at home might feel intimidated by someone like this. His dad finds out about it and decides to confront the insurance man, making sure he’s at home when the guy comes back. The confrontation is intense. Harvey recalls his dad saying: “‘If you ever say anything disrespectful to my wife again, I will kill you.’ Now, that may seem a little extreme, but this is what real men do to protect the ones they love.”
If this weren’t literal, maybe we all could appreciate the romantic paternalism of this story, if not the actions, which are more than “a little extreme” and go a lot further than what any modern woman expects from her man. Assaulting, let alone murdering, someone and landing in jail would be extremely counterproductive to protecting the ones you love.
Steve Harvey repeats in his book that it’s “God first, then family.” I’ve no doubt many people relate to this prioritization, but it certainly doesn’t translate to anything that benefits modern women or men in today’s world. The search for meaning in life, as well as God, can be a constant in a person’s life. But your primary relationship is finding and knowing who you are and what that thing is that makes you happy, which no force outside yourself can tell you.
The answers lie within. We are all part of God, not separate from God. If we’d accept that, maybe our actions would change, and so would the world.
What organized religion has done to the natural course of human sexuality experienced between partners is nothing good. The shame, bigotry and exclusionary religiosity that comes from organized religion has resulted in sex becoming dirty, scary and outside the normal course of life’s experiences we long to enjoy. Celibacy is not a natural condition of the human animal. It’s an aberration, an abnormal condition that is unhealthy and counterproductive, and is only appropriate for the very few who live in seclusion but have no business teaching life-lessons to mere mortals, who benefit from the healthy quenching of natural human desires. If sexuality isn’t honored and respected in your life, it will destroy you through its sheer power to be recognized as part of what makes you human.
Modern religion has done much for the poor, reaching out across the world through ministries to help the underprivileged and marginalized. But it has a lot to answer for when it refuses to honor what’s real and institutes religious dogma for solutions, which is what happens regularly with condom distribution and reproductive health advice for women in underdeveloped nations, but also through institutional bigotry and misogyny. Counseling that helps women in developing nations plan their lives is a human rights issue, as well as a women’s rights issue, borrowing from what Hillary Clinton has said throughout her public life.
Modern women and the partners who love us need to craft a separate path, away from organized religion’s hold on society, especially where relationships, marriage and family are concerned. Does this mean there is no value in the Christian or Hebrew Bible, the Quran or in Buddha’s teachings? Of course not. Reading any such text is at the very least a challenge for us to mine the meaning for our own lives through the words that come from men divinely inspired. But any holy text is just a beginning. Where extremist fundamentalism resides, however, no matter the religion, there is no room for women to breathe or live independently, which is the point.
People are questioning and finding out answers for themselves, with there not enough vibrant conversation going on outside the church in God’s outdoors, where life’s combustion lives. That is to say, beyond the boundaries and confines, outside the rules and strictures of religious philosophies that are rigidly discussed. Gender-driven confines have no place in the modern era, with more and more people coming to this conclusion slowly and steadily.
In 2012, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that one-fifth of the American public and about 33% of adults under age thirty are “religiously unaffiliated” today, which is the highest percentage ever in Pew Research Center polling.
Believe it or not, that’s very good news for relationships, as well as for our nation’s spiritual health. But for women, it’s celebration time. We will never experience full equality as long as there are men in the turrets of some religious building spreading lies that we aren’t their equals when it comes to leading religious institutions and those seeking spiritual guidance.
A twenty-first century reformation will happen when hell freezes, right? Or when the money dries up. Or when people with larger imaginations set religion free. Surprisingly, Pope Francis I has shown remarkable courage in the way he has chosen to live, but also through his rhetoric. When he said the Catholic Church shouldn’t be “obsessed” with abortion, gay marriage and contraception, but also showed willingness to engage atheists, he made worldwide headlines. Conservative, traditionalist Catholics openly questioned him, ignoring that he’d given hope to millions of people who are spiritually hungry for change.
The inequality, segregation and outright bigotry of organized religion is no doubt why 88% of those unaffiliated also aren’t looking for a religion. The religiously unaffiliated believe that “religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics,” the Pew Research Center found.
Not enough people are brave enough to ask why churches getting involved in politics aren’t automatically stripped of their tax-exempt status. The answer is simple: It’s because politicians are scared to do what’s right, which would be to force religion to its higher place, outside of politics, where it does not belong. In a survey done by NBC News and Esquire magazine, released in the November 2013 issue, they describe a shift in American politics that includes “a large group of American voters — even a majority — who make up a New American Center,” with 59% of these people believing that “churches and religious organizations should have no role in politics.”
The number of Americans who say “they never doubt the existence of God” has dropped from 88% in 1987 to 80% in 2012, according to the Pew study.
The wonderful thing that rises to the top, however, is that a survey in 2012 by the same Pew forum, conducted jointly with the PBS television program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, found that 46 million unaffiliated adults consider themselves religious or spiritual in some way. More than two-thirds, 68%, say they believe in God. More than one-third, 37%, say they are “spiritual” but not “religious,” and 21% say they pray every day.
That’s a relatively paltry number who say they pray every day. But just imagine if meditation was seen as prayer, and people knew the physical and emotional benefits of it. One of the things meditation does is quiet your ego and emotions for a while, stop that tape in your head that keeps propping up beliefs you’ve clung to, but which are actually stumbling blocks preventing you from living your most authentic life on your own terms. Meditation is also great for stress, but also for your health, just like sex is.
In a conversation with Deepak Chopra on his website, Rudolph Tanzi, a renowned genetic researcher who was dubbed one of the “Rock Stars of Science” by GQ magazine, calls this tape playing constantly in our heads the “default mode.” It’s our normal. Tanzi and Chopra co-authored Super Brain, which, they write, “shows you how to use your brain as a gateway for achieving health, happiness and spiritual growth.” When your intellect is keeping your emotions in check through gibberish, it is actually also keeping you sane, as Tanzi puts it. But at the same time, it prevents you from living your life in the moment.
You may have had a fight with your boyfriend. Maybe you’ve had an encounter, and you’re scripting your next conversation. Or perhaps you’re reciting what you’re going to say when you meet that guy for your first date. All of this is your ego squeezing your emotional energy into words in you
r head to keep you from just enjoying your walk to the restaurant or bar, or waiting quietly for a call while you read a book and think about what you’re learning instead.
Meditation calms the noise. It allows the brain to relax and open, for lack of a better description, and even leads to intuition and higher thinking that isn’t available when all the chatter is rumbling. In a state of meditation, your awareness is more acute. I’m again relying on Tanzi’s interpretation, because it also rings true with my own experiences with meditation, which I’ve been practicing daily for well over fifteen years.
“The brain is like a piano,” Tanzi told the Boston Globe in November 2012. “You can learn to play it,” he added.
The distance meditation offers from the madness is part mystical, part miracle. It’s all predicated on the practitioner mining her own brain and funneling her energy into complete and total quiet. When you first try it, you’ll be lucky to last five minutes, but the effectiveness grows as you practice. The beauty and power of meditation is also that sometimes your mind works out problems. In the silence and peace, an answer rises, presenting itself easily. You often know the answer anyway but can ignore it in the frenzy of your nonstop, ego-emotion conversation.
There are no rules to meditation. Sitting in a pose isn’t required. Anywhere you feel comfortable will do, as long as you’re alone. For busy parents, this could mean the shower. You can even find a path to meditation through music, using it as a prelude and preparation for learning to sit in silence. A piece of music you love can act as a faithful companion as you attempt to quiet your busy brain.
Meditation does not require religion, a priest or pastor as conduit, or a book of holy prayers to chant. You can be indoors or in God’s outdoors, sitting in your car watching the sun set. Church is not required. Tuesday is just as good as Sunday. Meditation is the ultimate liberator. It can also eventually be a step forward on the path to health, including in your relationship.