----- Original Message ----- 
From: S Anyomokolo 
To: [log in to unmask] 
Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2004 9:33 PM
Subject: I Went To Church


I went to church in Brooklyn, NY, on Saturday, February 07, 2004 with friends who know that God is my worst enemy. It was a small crowd where everybody knows everybody. I told my friends to tell the priests to not bother me. It was a spiritual healing prayer to mark the end of one month long fasting. It did not take long before these two women, evangelist Mary and another sister Catherine, who were standing on stage, started screaming like .I will be kind. Just as I was about to give sister Catherine credit for calming down and talking in a low quiet, nice voice, she started coming down the steps towards me and said, "Lets welcome sister Sophia". She was about five feet away when she switched the microphone to her right hand and looked directly at me. I stared right back and almost said don't flipping touch me but the fierce expression on my stone cold face stopped her on her track. 

 

It was time for individual spiritual cleansing prayer when the pastor, Anthony, owner of the church and whose wife is my coworker, started signaling me. I shook my head and he acknowledged but the grin on face was one of, you have to receive God in your life today. You have to get saved today. I had observed enough and was not interested in having any stranger(s) scream at me with their hands on my head. I was also afraid of being perhaps hypnotized and brainwashed so that I begin to live the artificial life of a Christian where I would wake up in the middle of the night and start talking to myself like an idiot. 

 

After the service, sister Catherine asked why I did not accept the lord. I told her that I am a feminist and I find religion very gender biased, besides, I would not subscribe to a culture that restricts my sexual freedom. She asked me to be specific and I told her that if God wanted my body to be penetrable by only one man, he should have created it as such. I also expressed my disappointment with the biblical preconceived notion that women lack intellect, therefore, should not speak in church but listen to the teachings of the bible from their husbands. 

 

She interrupted by explaining that it was not lack of intellect but rather because some women were being unruly and disruptive in church. I asked her to guess what these women could have been unruly and disruptive about in church. I suggested that it was possible that these women were challenging 'till death do us part' and 'no man shall have sex with another man's wife' because their sexual freedom was being stripped away. I added that these women knew that it is a terrible emotional and sexual torture to be with one man for a long time and that at a certain age, a man's 'thing' gets weak, he can't have an erection, and so it is time to seek a younger man. She responded with some nonsense of her own and I called it quit. 

 

By this time, I wanted to split her skull open and replace her brain with half of mine. Instead, I told her not to waste her time with me because I am too old to be brainwashed to live my life for a man's best interest. I concluded with: "I would not subscribe to any oppressive cultural norm that is clearly disadvantageous to a woman but advantageous to a man. I am a woman who cherishes her sexual freedom. Religion is not for me. 

 

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_______________________________________________________________
There will never be another Anyomokolo (I married trouble!). AN will not be the same again.
A big thank you!
An Eileen Phoebe Ocaya. 


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