Things I used to hang around my neck

No, really. All of these. And this isn't the half. There is also the cloisonne cross from the Vatican gift store, the gold Celtic cross from Ireland, the serenity prayer silver cross, the hematite cross, the other hematite - no, wait, I sent that one to a friend of mine. Someone in need. But all these I wore, individually, because I wore crosses then, that was my milieu somehow, as I was deeply devoted to the United Church. Seems like another lifetime, because it is.

I don't really hate them, but church and mainstream Christianity really ran dry for me at a certain point, and yet I stayed. I probably stayed on for another two years after it ran completely dry, due to my wretched misguided loyalty and the sense that if I just hung on a little bit longer, it would all get good again. And it didn't.

So much for the cacophany of internet memes screaming at us to "never give up! Never give up! Never give up no matter WHAT!" I really should've given up back in about 2002.

In some sense, it was a crisis of leadership, and it got so bad at one point that our minister was ordered to leave. This reflects a church which has lost its way, but most of the blame went on "him", that dastardly devil - the one WE chose over four other candidates! But he simply had more glamour, and on some level we believed it would be a feather in our cap, not to mention a badge of our liberal-ity, because you see he was a black South African. Though no one ever admitted this, it was a blatant bid for status so that we would outshine all the other United Churches in the area.

I had to leave not just because of that meltdown, or the pallid non-leadership that followed, but because of a massive (though gradual) shift of the tectonic plates of my beliefs. I simply began to see through the isms of Christianity, and to see that ANY church I was part of, no matter how supposedly liberal-ish, was really hidebound and expected its members to adhere to a certain kind of belief system. But I had a problem. I used to get far too emotional. I used to feel I had an actual relationship with Jesus, and almost everyone thought this was either crazy, or deeply embarrassing (even though we were constantly exhorted to do just that).

I ended up feeling very alone, in a church I had attended for fifteen years.

But no matter. I recently re-found these little crosses, took them off their individual chains (and they DO come from all over, including the drug store on Granville Street) and strung them with glass pony beads on a single chain. I like to look at them now, drape them over things, display them. Sometimes I even briefly wear them, but not in public. Just for the mojo, and when I'm going to cast a spell or throw a curse (and after what happened to Paul, it looks as if it works, at least some of the time). And when I've got my mojo workin', you'd better look out.

I am not sure what these seven crosses mean exactly, but I think it's kind of nice they're not relegated to the drawer any more. And that is all I have to say about it.