I was teaching back then.  She came into the lab every day with dull eyes and no expression.  None at all.  I could tell she heard what I said only because she woodenly followed the instructions.  “Scrape a little of the bacterial colony off the plate and make a smooth suspension in a drop of water on a glass slide.  Let it dry; pass it through the flame of your Bunsen burner to heat fix it, then stain it following the recipe on the blackboard.” 

She took the microscope out of the cabinet under her bench, placed the slide on the stage, and looked through the lens.  I was talking to another student at the time, but I saw her out of the corner of my eye.  It was as though a curtain had dropped from her face.  “Oh, cool!” she exclaimed.  Her face was now animated and alive.  And it stayed that way the rest of the semester.  That was an irreversible moment.

I was sitting in the recliner in my living room, reading the introduction to A God Who Looks Like Me, by Patricia Lynn Reilly.  I don’t remember what it was that she wrote – only the impact it had on me.  It was as though the invisible tumblers in the safe of my mind had all clicked in place and my mind opened.  From that moment on, bearded, judgmental, grandfather god in the clouds was dead.  Another irreversible moment.

Irreversible moments are those moments when something happens, some new knowledge, insight, or awareness comes into one’s mind and one is forever changed.  It is impossible to go back to the state of unknowing.  One must either build walls around the newness, pretend it didn’t happen, all the while knowing one is living a lie, or move forward.

My mother built walls and, as a result, left much of her life unlived; I was determined to live differently - to face the unknown.  But I like being in control…and now I had no image, no concept of the Other.  So I started looking for other images – in books, in catalogs, in jewelry stores, online.  One word tripped me up time and time again.  Goddess.  It was a scary word – one I had been taught to associate with witches and evil.  As I read more, I discovered that, in fact, practitioners of Wicca have all the same values Christians profess.  What I was taught was the leftovers of religio-political battles.  So the word “Goddess” went into the same category as “Allah,””the Great Spirit,” and “Kali.”  But none of the images, none of the concepts I found resonated with me. 

Eventually it occurred to me that, instead of looking for others’ images, I needed to allow my own to rise from within.  I needed to give myself the freedom to have my own, regardless of what others might think.  I needed to walk past my need for external affirmation, my fear of others’ rejection. 

I have many images and concepts of Godde now, each of which serves to inform me of a different aspect.  My concept of Godde as an infinitely large crystal with an infinite number of facets reminds me that I have a unique view, and that even the person standing right next to me has a slightly different view.  I can have no idea what view might present itself to those on the far side of the crystal.  This image informs me that every person has the right to hold her or his own image.  And that no one can tell me my image is wrong.  My image of Godde as an ocean and we as individual waves, rising out of the ocean and taking discrete form for a finite period before falling back into the ocean, shapes my concept of the before- and afterlife.

I try to be open to irreversible moments.  Even when they are scary, they are doors to discovering who I am.

Drop me a line at candy@judithstable.org.

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