Another Happy Heretic

 Another Happy Heretic

(“Go and learn what this saying means: ‘It’s mercy I want, not sacrifice.'” Matthew 9:13a)

She was shunned because she
loved people
more than she
loved their god.

Imagine that. A rat in the church
for all that time who refused to
be crammed into their rigid frame
and hung on the wall.

She wore her hair long. The men did not.
She wore her dresses long so the men would not
be guilty of lust. Every time she complained,
they said,
“it’s bad company you’ve been keeping. Now,
go seek the Lord and learn to fit in.”

She could not shake her love for people,
and the god they applauded was always throwing darts
at the unsuspecting. The music was nice: some-times.
often: not.
It could have been her blood shed; that’s what she heard.
It should have been her death, till she looked her
neighbor in the eye and
realized how absurd was the thought that kept everyone
in strict mean time and away from the devil’s chords.

So she, shaking, scathed, praying that god was not
the tyrant she had been taught,
slipped away, cut her hair, posed at the camera,
took a selfie. And smiled.

Then she took her neighbor a piece of pie,
and gave the server at lunch a tip, a grin.
A chance to begin again to be
simply human. Though her stomach was twisted,
her heart churning like a dragster on the quarter-mile,
she knew she could wander in the wilds safely
and love people

More than she had loved their god.