Step one. Pray.

All the time. From a young age. Allow God to speak in a way that makes you feel known. Hear in your heart the call to leave everything behind so you can change the world. Ask to be chosen. Seek advice from spiritual leaders on how to know if you’re called. Find a way to follow that inner voice to the bitter end.

Step Two. Discern.

So when the Christ supposedly returned to the hand of the Father the Church it became obvious the second coming wasn’t coming any time soon so the Church broke into pieces as the message of redemption spread. Christianity would come to dominate the West and from that would rise up religious groups to solve the social problems they believe God wanted them to fix. They couldn’t be idle. But when the divine no longer sends burning bushes or angels of light how do you know what God wants YOU to do? Discernment.

Belief in the Christ and his mission demands actions. But when the divine no longer sends burning bushes or angels of light how do you to know what God wants YOU to do? Discernment.

Learn to grasp and comprehend the obscure. See a rise in emotions during church as a sign of Gods presence. Consider the imaginations of what life would be like as a nun in medieval times as a call to consecration today and now. Dismiss your lack of meaningful relationships as proof you’re meant for something, not someone, extra special. Ask experts to help dismantle the deepest, most private part of your psyche to get external confirmation that you’re called.

Step Three. Follow.

You think I’m tricking you at this point. I’m not. For I believe that to be mad there has to be a relationship. Therefore I propose that to truly feel anger at God, to hate God, you have to have followed the path or the rules or whatever.

Which I did for 9 years from 13 to 22 in a religious group that’s since morphed and changed almost as much as I have. Knowing that there was a Mater Ecclesiae College on Austen Ave in Greenville Road Island seems like an secret for a cult. The building is still in use. I want to go stand in those halls and imagine myself back to the feeling of “being in formation” with my day spent going from chapel to dining hall to classroom to chapel to bed to wake to do it all again.

Step Four. Change.

It’s the only constant.

Its the one thing the Church hates.

Church can destroy you using everything you ever loved as the means and motivation. Only it’s just people trying to control their worlds by manipulating mine.

Step five. Resurrection.

That’s where it ends. People deciding that who I was, how I loved was too out of their control. So my religion died. My resurrection was fueled by anger at Gods as I knew them. It’s an anger that burns. It’s an anger that’s rooted. It’s an anger like a hurricane. It destroys all that came before except the knowledge that I was made from and for love.

Amelia Martin the Heretic Fairy