Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on August 23, 2015.
So I got a tattoo.
In April this year, the word I’d written in Sharpie on my wrist for two years was etched into my skin. Became a part of me. It was kind of a spiritual experience.
Here, I’ll explain.
A couple of my friends from CleanPlace, the writer’s forum I joined in 2009, did a lot of growing recently. One of them had been writing “love” on her wrist for four years, inspired by To Write Love On Her Arms and suicide prevention.
Mary’s tattoos. Love and Grace.
Another one hated herself, despised her name. She begged God to give her a new name, and she heard a name: Glory.
“I wanted a name I could grow into. I wanted something I could become. Something I could keep becoming and never completely finish being. Something that was bigger, grander, limitless,” she said.
Silver’s tattoo.
And they marked these revelations on their bodies, etched them permanently. They didn’t want to slip back into those old patterns of self-loathing, they wanted something to mark their healing.
In both Jewish and pagan tradition, people used stones to mark significant events, like this:
Tel Gezer | Source: OurRabbiJesus.com. Image links to source.
The stones were supposed to prompt questions.
Ray VanderLaan, who studies Jewish culture and archeology, explains to his Israel tour group: “Anybody who walked by and saw them could say ‘Woah, what happened here?’ And you could say, ‘Let me tell you what God did.'”
And I think that’s what my friends and I wanted. A sort of living memorial.
I used to believe that any body modification would damage my body as a temple of God when I was a fundamentalist. Then I pierced my ears for the first time in May 2014.
I’d read the verses in Leviticus about not tattooing yourself for the dead, but the context was 1) for the dead and 2) that’s Old Testament regulations anyway, which don’t apply under the new covenant.
I’m just tired of watching people distort and manipulate something beautiful to me until it’s monstrous. I wanted a living standing stone, I wanted to mark myself as part of this journey for life.
So back to the word: ἄφες.
That one word encapsulates over 30 nuances of meaning in two syllables: “to send forth, yield up, to expire, to let go, let alone, let be. To let go, give up a debt, forgive, to remit, to give up, keep no longer. To permit, allow, not to hinder, to give up a thing to a person.”
Ἄφετε τὰ παιδία
Permit the children
– – – –
καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ
and forgive us our debts
– – – –
Πάτερ ἄφες αὐτοῖς οὐ
Father, forgive them
You know that scene in the Passion of the Christ where they’re nailing his hands, and like, /while/ they’re doing it, he’s saying that? (Not before, not after, but during?) And the soundtrack crescendos in the background?
It sounds like a release… like some sort of freedom within pain… and it seemed very different from repression.
When I first saw the movie in fall 2012 after moving out, I was like, “I am going to find out what that word is in Greek,” and I did. And I learned ἄφες means “to let go, to release.”
Much different than how churches taught me “forgiveness,” which is more like burying the hurt, or feeling guilty about being angry about it.
It’s letting go when /you’re/ ready to, and it frees you, it lets YOU be your own person. Like, we were always told forgiveness was the answer?
But we also always had to forgive instantly and never harbor resentment ever because 1.) Jesus clearly suffered worse than you ever could! Why can’t you forgive? (because you’ve never been tortured or crucified) and 2.) the faster you forgave, the more Christian you were.
But this, this thing I saw in the film, is way, way different. There’s no obligation or guilt involved.
So I marked it on my wrist, this word that spoke life to me.
Thanks to my friend Sam, who gave me a gift certificate to Pens and Needles.
– – – – – – – – –
P.S. This dude who blogs also has two awesome tattoo stories:
I wrote this about two years ago. I don’t believe any man is a shepherd anymore, but this was the only way I could try to explain what was happening when I was in…
Once upon a time, there was a shepherd who had many sheep. The sheep were healthy sheep, though all had their little differences that made them rather sheepish. Most of the sheep were happy sheep, and they all enjoyed doing sheepy things, laying in the sun or eating the grass and watching the lambs play. The shepherd was happy too. He had a peaceful job, for the most part. He had time to think and enjoy the outdoors. He practiced hunting the bears and lions that occasionally came around looking for fat sheep or little stray lambs to steal, and ensured that none of the sheep wandered too far. It was nice being a shepherd. He protected them from predators, and they, by sharing their wool to make him coats, kept him warm on cold winter nights.
One morning a bear came. The shepherd got his sling and started to stand. The sheep were scared and huddled in close to him. They trusted him, and they would protect him. But then he couldn’t get to the bear, and it was getting close to a favorite lamb, and though he knew they were doing what they knew, the shepherd got angry. He began kicking and yelling at his sheep, trying to make them move. The sheep got scared and huddled even closer together, tripping the angry shepherd in his attempts to get at the bear. When he stood, he saw the bear lumbering away with his little lamb in it’s paws.
The shepherd was sad. His lamb had been lost, and his sheep were at fault. As they calmed down, he did not. He vowed this would never happen again. As the sheep came toward him through the day, he would push them away. He had his lambs to worry for. The sheep didn’t feel it much through their warm coats. But they felt the shepherd’s anger, and this made the sheep sad. Over the next days, the lambs stopped jumping as much, and the old rams stopped eating as well.
After a few days, the bear came back. The shepherd knew this bear, and immediately jumped up, kicking and yelling at the sheep to move. Most of the sheep, seeing his actions, and smelling the bear, ran to him like they had done earlier that week anyway. But one little lamb remembered the shepherd’s angry voice. It hesitated to get too close, and the bear snatched it up, and lumbered toward the forest. Again the shepherd was angry. Now two lambs were lost to one bear. The shepherd planned a bear hunt, and resolved that the bear would never eat another lamb.
It wasn’t long after this that the shepherd began to notice changes. Some of the sheep were sickly, even though there was nice green grass there, and water nearby, and they didn’t come to him like they used to do. He also started noticing more and more of the sheepish qualities about these sheep. The rams would butt heads. The lambs wandered too far. The ewes were too fat. Some would come and he would talk to them and play with their lambs, but others seemed to stay away. The shepherd distrusted these sheep, not realizing the sheep now also distrusted the angry shepherd.
One more time the bear came. The shepherd was prepared. He had made a club to carry along with his rod and staff, and as the bear came out of the forest, and the sheep started toward him, he beat them away with the club, yelling and kicking at them as he ran toward the bear. This time he met the bear head on, hitting it with a stone from his sling. His aim was true, and the bear fell with a roar. After killing the bear, the shepherd walked back to the sheep. A surprise waited him there. Several lambs lay dead. Two ewes had broken legs, and three rams were cut and bleeding. The shepherd looked around in dismay. The sheep huddled together at a distance, as though still scared. What animal had done this damage? No sheep were missing, but the injuries were horrible-and those poor lambs were dead. He dropped his club, his rod and his staff and knelt next to the littlest lamb. He called to the sheep, but they wouldn’t come near. It was then that he noticed the blood on his club and realized what had happened.
The Bible says leaders should be slow to anger. My pastor was hot tempered and quickly angered. I never knew what might set him off. It could be someone else’s problem that he was angry about, or some lie a member told about me. Sometimes I was at fault for something, but all too often the punishment far outweighed any crime. My faith and my salvation were questioned, false labels were placed on me. I was told I was like this one or that one who had left the church, and told I wanted to leave. My pastor finally told me that God didn’t need me and the church didn’t need me, and that he could care less whether I was in church or not. He said he was fighting for our salvation. But he too often fought the “sheep,” wounding and even killing the ones who trusted him. I doubt he has realized even yet that most of the damage he saw done, was done with his own words.
Many people like me who were raised in controlling environments tend to not get along with authority outside that context, breeding difficulties in maintaining employment and interacting within society.
But the older generations often discount why we’d react this way.
“You’re just a rebel. Someday you’ll grow up.”
“I guess your parents didn’t beat you enough. Nobody ever taught you respect.”
They don’t recognize that 20 somethings like us have negative experiences with authority figures.
What about children who were beaten by their parents, teenagers molested by youth group leaders? What about those of us convinced early on that we must kill any strong desires as worldly and evil and focus obsessively on self-sacrifice in preparation for our eventual martyrdom?
We’re not deviant just because. Usually we were wounded by someone who misused their power.
I’m able to balance my rebellion through boycotting video cards and candy bars. I find harmless, unusual outlets in which to be deviant. But society views my friends who deviate in larger ways as dysfunctional.
I’m not that different from them. I just happen to have a job and they don’t. But we feel the same way about authority.
Here’s some ways I think authority figures can be fair and ethical in dealing with people like us:
1.) Don’t make excessive rules or rules with discrepancies.
This is just asking for rebellion.
Like the student handbooks at Bob Jones University or Pensacola Christian College. They’re so exacting.
If you’re going to have policies like this:
“BJU takes a conservative approach to music. While students are at the University, our goal is to teach them to appreciate music that is spiritually edifying and culturally valuable. For the BJU student this precludes most of the music of our popular culture including rock, rap, jazz and country, as well as religious music that borrows from these styles. It also precludes any music that uses a discernible rock beat regardless of the style. In order to develop their spiritual and aesthetic discernment, BJU encourages students to listen to classical and light classical music and traditional sacred music. There is also a spectrum of music that falls outside light classical and traditional sacred music that is acceptable to listen to.” (p. 29)
Of course you’re also going to have to enforce them like this:
“BJU students are to listen to and bring to campus only music that meets our community standards. In addition, each member of the BJU family should carefully monitor music in movies, computer games, television programs, commercials, Internet sites, cell phone ringers, etc. To ensure personal accountability, students are not to listen to music with headphones. Students may use headphones in the residence hall study lounge for academic purposes, and resident supervisors may approve individual requests to use headphones for independent learning courses.” (pp. 29-30, 2011-2012 version)
BJU also bans several other extremely specific offenses like wearing Abercrombie & Fitch or Hollister clothing, because of the brands’ “unusual degree of antagonism to Biblical morality,” (p. 33), and necklines lower than four finger widths below your collarbone, for modesty reasons (p. 32).
Similar themes surface in The Student Voice’s satirical Things You Won’t Do at PCC, which lists arbitrary items such as “own a fish” and “play a harmonica.”
Peter Gage, who published the Student Voice, the “underground” newsletter that sought to expose PCC’s flaws in the early 2000s, was sued by PCC for cybersquatting in 2013.
Because we grew up in home environments with their own specific rules, we used the rules to protect ourselves. That’s why discrepancies bother us, because then the authority becomes unpredictable. It’s survival instincts.
One company I worked for intentionally hid dress codes so the HR department could fire employees violating rules that were never properly explained.
When guidelines in the workplace are contradictory, I get panicky, waiting for unexpected punishment.
2.) Don’t invent punishments intended to harm. Consequences should seem natural.
Many fundamentalist parents will say, “I make my kid pull their jeans down, because if I spank them through their pants, it doesn’t hurt enough.” Or “The diaper is too much padding. They won’t remember what they did wrong unless it stings.” Or “My child talked back, so they lost their favorite doll / book. I had to find some way to get their attention.”
This strange idea circulates that the consequences have to be harsh, and it should hurt the child. I thought society frowned on cruel and unusual punishments. Also, the rest of the world doesn’t operate this way, as we found after childhood. But it still feels like it does.
After my last post, my friend Kathleen asked me how I thought parents should raise children.
I’d say they shouldn’t invent punishments that crush the child’s spirit, either physically or emotionally. Consequences should be preparation for adult responsibility, not calculated to inflict pain.
Children learn by doing.
You can tell them to pick up their toys so the dog doesn’t destroy them, but if they don’t listen and the dog shreds them, you don’t punish the child or the dog. And you can remind them not to walk in front of swings, but, unfortunately, they may have to get bonked in the head a couple of times.
I don’t think sheltering kids from these experiences is the answer. It’s just inhibiting their individual growth. The parents, seeking to protect the child from scraped knees, inflicts different wounds.
If I get to be a mom, I want to be their healer and guide, not their aggressor.
3) Allow for communication about the rules and how power is exercised.
My friend Shelby, who is a sociology grad student, developed a scale for my paranoia.
Source: fs.usda.gov
“1 = Everything’s cool; not liking the cameras at work, but otherwise cool; using video card freely; perhaps reading or beading between calls; browsing Internet sometimes; training the dictation program profile intermittently; still using instant messenger.
“2 = Not so cool; really avoiding cameras at work; may use video card, but does so reluctantly and wants to hide it from supervisors; more likely to read/bead between calls than browse Internet; training dictation profile more frequently (such as reading from book); still using instant messenger.
“3 = Much less cool; definitely suspicious of cameras at work; may use video card, but does so reluctantly and wants to hide it from supervisors (more likely to train dictation profile using the video as well); much more likely to read/bead between calls than to browse Internet; training profile exuberantly; still using instant messenger.
“4 = Definitely not cool; very suspicious of cameras at work; not using video card; may read/bead between calls, but only if also training dictation profile; not using Internet for anything unrelated to work; training profile vigorously; still using instant messenger.
“5 = Very anxious and jumpy; not using Internet for anything unrelated to work; not using instant messenger for anything unrelated to work; training dictation profile obsessively between calls.
It’s useful, because she can ask me how anxious I am on any given day, and I can give her a number, like 3.5.
I can report my paranoia like the local news reports the daily fire danger during the summer. This helps me communicate how I feel, how rational I am that day. It’s amusing, but I also become more self-aware.
Also, if authority figures are open to negotiation about the rules, I feel safer.
Homeschool alumni blogger Libby Anne wrote last month about how she’s more flexible with her children than her parents were. She explains:
“Growing up, my parents were very firm that “no” meant “no.” If we begged or tried to get them to change their minds, we would get in trouble. That was disobedience. More than that, they thought that if they were to “give in” to begging after already saying no, they would be allowing us children to rule them and would lose control of the family. So not only were we not allowed to beg, they also didn’t allow themselves to change their minds. That would have been showing weakness.“
And she points out that treating children this way isn’t a good model for adult relationships, with several examples, and concludes:
“My children and I exist in relationship with each other…. Yes, my children are young and in need of guidance and teaching. But part of that guidance and teaching is helping them learn to master things like compromise and negotiation.”
I relax and begin to trust authority again when they consider what I want and need, and are open to compromise.
We won’t remain rebels if we feel we are treated fairly.
I had no idea what I was getting into. When my Grandma came to stay at our house, my mom would make me go with her to take Grandma to church. I only went on Sunday morning, which unknown to me at the time, was just “dress rehearsal” for the big Sunday night show. I would come to know this more and more as the years went by. You always saved your “finest” for Sunday night. Anyhow, the preacher would preach about – well I can’t really remember – mostly stories of people losing out, waiting too long, and missing their chance before it was too late. Mostly, I remember getting emotional during these services because I was doing all the things he said were bad.
My early teenage years were spent hearing this but going back out and being “cool.” The Lord was definitely drawing me to himself but in my very finite understanding, I reasoned – after high school – not now. I didn’t want to be weird in high school. Just recently, I had a memory of a guy I met in high school that was unlike anyone I had met – he was a Christian. I went to church with him once but I told him “I know where I am going to church when I start going.” I chose an emotional religion over a relationship with Jesus Christ. God was giving me the chance of a lifetime if only I had taken it…
When I could put it off no longer, I called my Grandma one Sunday night and asked if she would go to church with me. She was elderly, didn’t drive, and only went on Sunday morning. Little did I know, this was the “we’re gonna pull out all the stops” service. They had been in revival services for many weeks prior, so they were really fired up! Imagine, it’s 1973, a young girl and her hippie boyfriend walk into a red hot revival at a United Pentecostal Church. Mostly, all I can remember is crying; crying buckets of tears. All the condemnation that was heaped on me was being washed out in tears. When they saw me crying, they lead me up to the altar where I cried some more and then asked me if I wanted to be baptized. I was taken up and the next thing I know I have been declared to have the Holy Ghost. I came home with a baptismal certificate and the next day I went to school to tell all my friends.
Oh yes, I had lots of zeal, but it was not according to knowledge (Romans 10:1-3). There was no conscious decision made to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. Upon leaving, seventeen years later, I was still a baby. I had no more knowledge of the purpose for going to church than when I began. I did learn that there are only parts of the Bible to preach from. Some Bible words like love, grace, and reconciliation; those are for those other churches. I learned that here, we are exclusive, we have “the truth” others need not apply; they are only going through the motions of having church. We are the real deal.
After leaving, I would learn about those words and the purpose of going to church:
He handed out gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor-teacher to train Christ’s followers in skilled servant work, working within Christ’s body, the church, until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ.
No prolonged infancies among us, please. We’ll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are an easy mark for impostors. God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything. We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. He keeps us in step with each other. His very breath and blood flow through us, nourishing us so that we will grow up healthy in God, robust in love. Ephesians 4:12-16 The Message
Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on July 2, 2015.
After leaving fundamentalism, some of my friends left organized religion because of spiritual abuse, or identified as anarchists because they’d seen systems of power oppress people.
I can’t blame them really, even if their choices appear extreme, because I don’t trust authority, either.
Authority more often uses power to control rather than to protect in my experience, not as an American citizen, but as a child growing up in an authoritarian household and evangelical churches, which I plan to write more about.
Sometimes this distrust surfaces in the workplace. I get jumpy when a supervisor comes over when I’ve done nothing against the rules, and my mind often assumes the worst if a manager asks to talk to me. I’m used to Draconian practices, harsh punishments for minor infractions.
A couple of my friends at work say I’m being paranoid, and asked me to explain how I feel.
Here are some of my ingrained responses to authoritarian systems:
1) Don’t let the authority know what your true desires are.
If the authority knows what you actually want, they gain insight into your thought processes.
Favorite books, TV shows, music, and hobbies reveal much about your personality and beliefs. For instance, I’ve started watching Supernatural this summer, because it resonates with how I think about spirituality, and how light and darkness work.
When I lived at home, if my parents knew what I liked, they could use it to punish me. They took away books I was reading, and my laptop and internet access, even during college.
And this could be for reasons like, one afternoon, Dad suddenly decides I am reading too much fiction, which isn’t productive. He says I should be studying or doing housework, so I lose my book for two weeks. Or longer. And I have to beg to get it back, which I’d do if I was caught at a cliffhanger.
This started with favorite toys.
My dad pitched my pony out the window onto the freeway because I was a crying, upset three year old, and he left my Pound Puppies on top of a supermarket trashcan when he thought I was disrespectful when I was 8.
I wasn’t a perfect child, but instead of trying to understand how I felt or why I was acting out, my parents often responded with punitive measures and emotion shaming.
I’m not sure what he was trying to teach me, but all I learned was “don’t let the authority know what you care about.”
2) Don’t accept rewards from the authority.
If the authority gives incentives, they can also take them away. It feels like another form of manipulation. I take back control when I meet the requirement and decline the offered reward.
I’m also suspicious that there’s a catch, that the authority has an ulterior motive.
I work in a call center that offers video card privileges for employees who score well on the weekly test calls. Usually, I boycott the video card.
I explained it to my friend Shelby like this when I had been boycotting for about six weeks:
It is one of my forms of rebellion against the system. Sometimes I do things like this because it satisfies my need to be in control of my life, even in small things. Taking the video card feels like submission to the authority. Whenever authority is like “here’s a reward” for excellence and a punishment is associated with doing poorly, I dislike being rewarded. I feel patronized. I don’t want to be rewarded by the authority. I want to excel and have the option to refuse the reward. It’s probably from growing up in my house. Slight offenses could result in beatings, huge amounts of schoolwork had to be done. The only way I felt I could fight back was by refusing rewards. If you take away their power to reward you, they can’t emotionally control you, because then you won’t be sad if they take the reward away. It’s something that baffles the authority and something they can’t punish. This is the way I balance my desires and my paranoia, without informing the authority of my desires.
I’ve also never accepted candy bars for making honor roll at work. It feels like bribery, too similar to my dad giving me a $10 bill for completing extra sheets of math homework.
I don’t want to be tricked into compliance. I just want to do my job, a self-sufficient human who meets my own needs.
3) Act as if the authority wants to own you unless determined otherwise.
I’m used to living like Big Brother is watching.
Early advocates of homeschooling argued that the public school system groomed children to be compliant employees. It’s unfortunate that so many fundamentalist families used homeschooling to control information to fit a supposedly Biblical narrative, to create an entire generation raised according to a “Christian” formula of perfection.
Our parents believed we’d be corrupted and deceived by evil if we weren’t isolated from the rest of society. They had an agenda, and they justified their behavior by telling us they were saving our souls from eternal damnation.
Their plan? Incubate a culture-changing generation. They needed us.
And I’m wary of how other systems could also be using me.
Many friends have told me they have similar fears and even difficulties maintaining employment, because now all authority carries the threat of repressing desires and emotions, crushing their souls.
Logically, I know that not all authority is evil and abusive, not everyone is out to get me. I recognize that authority can protect me, that revolution can be deadly. I know police officers who wouldn’t shoot someone because of their race, and I get along well with college professors, because they seem like guides or mentors, not tyrants.
But, meantime, I’ll still be boycotting my video cards.
I explained it to my friend Shelby like this when I had been boycotting for about six weeks:
