My former husband and I, both from very populous southern US states, emigrated to northern Alberta and farmed without electricity and running water, raising three children in a tiny but beautiful little hut that never got to be turned into the “true” farmhouse.  We had cattle and hogs and grew most of our own food, but were dedicated actual farmers, that is, making our income and expanding into a viable farm. However, the stress of that was not in our blood, we pulled up and moved on, and my life of battling crippling mental illness began.  That last is not completed in that it is now a “disability”, but the journey to crawl out of what our medical and religious systems decreed has been one that has involved connections with that love beyond understanding that Jesus tried to open up for people.  And the reality of that love truly does supersede all else!  May we continue to seek and find together to meet the growing need for that love in this newest era of struggle.

I am in my 8th decade of making sense of life from being a dedicated and naive Christian as a young person to turning completely away from religion based on the failings of the members of the little local church and many since.  But Xty is in my blood, so I have continued to seek a way to “belong” to a “fold”, even going as far as to attending seminary two years ago toward a master’s in divinity.  But it seems my history of severe sexual and physical abuse as a child, a messed-up marriage, and then serious and debilitating mental illness that has interrupted my “normal” life as mother and contributor to society have continued to keep me from trusting human constructions of what love is.  And yet, what other construction is there?  For me: a Near Death Experience and several non-human spiritually salvatory experiences during the worst of my struggles to find who I am underneath the “humanly defined” survival patterns my life has demanded.  And these experiences that are so much deeper than our normal human lives are what bring me back again and again to Jesus, for he is one who managed to give enough of a hint beyond the normal human that his words still carry a magic that keeps being turned to for the power to overcome what humans mete out to one another in our fears.  Joella