Gospel of Love

In our town there was an old barn, and in the old barn there was a momentary church. The real church had burned down, and all that was left to hold all of us was the Garcia’s barn.

A freak storm had happened, and a lightning bolt hit a tree on consecrated ground, which jumped around until it hit the church building. A burnt church shakes people. It shook my heart, but I couldn’t figure out why it shook, not in mourning, but in excitement. Luckily for the congregation, the bolt had hit on Friday, so they could mobilize on Saturday to clean and spruce and set up a new place. The Garcia’s were God-fearing enough that they offered up their unused barn, thinking that they’d be rewarded when the time comes. Hopefully done so by the priest, who likes to give out plaques to the big donors in the congregation.

That Sunday, I sat on the wooden bench someone had brought from their own drab-chic farm table, facing the folding table that held the body of Christ and the cup of salvation. The heat in the barn was starting to make mirages, with one right below the plate that held the little wafers. How had Christ made it here, to this small town halfway around the world from his place of birth? Did he feel at home here, having been born in a stable himself? Was this as much his home as mine?

My parents went to college across the country from where they grew up, and afterward decided they didn’t want to go back. They liked four seasons instead of only knowing oven-hot, and the rolling hills instead of dusty mountains. For some reason, this town was full of people like that - people that had relocated because they wanted something different than where they had grown up, raising their kids here, who will inevitably move back to where their parents are from to feel more connected to their roots. This was supposed to be home for me.

I looked up at the newly dusted rafters and spied a barn owl looking down on us. Owls are bad omens to many people, but I love them. They speak to me of a deep knowledge in my bones that my blood has forgotten.

The owl felt me. She turned to look at me with piercing black eyes. I had never seen a night darker than in her eyes, even with no street lights around. The darkness reached into me, finding all the parts of myself that I hadn’t mourned yet. The eyes didn’t need to bring these parts to light; they knew my mourning was better in the dark. The dark said,

You belong here. You weren’t meant to be here. You belong here. You weren’t meant to be here. You belong here. You weren’t meant to be here.

The church burst into flames as the darkness whispered to me. My excitement grew again and I understood. The church wasn't meant to be outside of the wanderings of a Jewish man named Yeshua. It wasn’t meant to have traveled across the sea, empowering conquistadores and colonists to rape while evangelizing a gospel of love. I was meant to know who my ancestors were, but the gospel of love eradicated ancestral knowledge. Yeshua wouldn’t have wanted this. My tongue was meant for a different language, but the gospel of love had worked on this continent to “give” me English and Spanish. I wasn’t meant to be in a church. I was meant to be dancing outside with a hat full of marigolds in front of Our Mother.

The barn was fitting. The gospel of love had spread the barns too, as the gospel of love empowered its followers to settle on land that did not need the gospel of love. Land that was already being taken care of by people who had the land’s teachings. How fitting - a church had burned down, and we used a barn instead; an altar to a way of life that didn’t allow me to know my ancestors.

I did belong here. I belonged to the community of kids who would leave because migration is natural. Migration is what our body wants. Stability in change, in the ritual of moving. Barns are not for migration. Churches are not for migration, as much as they encourage visitors. Visitors immigrate in, feel unwelcome in a clique-y congregation, and emigrate out.

I felt my parents take my hands for the Our Father. “Madre Nuestra,” Our Mother, I begin in the first language I knew, that was handed down to me by the gospel of love, that I defended from the gospel of xenophobia.

The owl looked away, knowing it had left me in the darkness I needed. I prayed in the same tone and rhythm as the rest, but I prayed to Our Mother below us. Instead of having to reach through a high vaulted ceiling, past the barn owl’s nest, I prayed to the ground below me.

Our Father

- Our Mother

Who art in heaven

- who art in dirt

Hallowed be thy name

- hallowed be thy body

thy kingdom come

- thy kindness come

thy will be done

- thy lessons be heard

on earth as it is in heaven

- in afterlife as it is on earth

give us this day our daily bread

- give us this day our daily life

and forgive us our trespasses

- and forgive us our trespasses

as we forgive those who trespass against us

- as we seek justice for all

and lead us not into temptation

- and lead us from pettiness

but deliver us from evil

- and deliver us from evil

for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory

- for thine is the earth, the power, and the glory

forever and ever

- forever and ever

Amen

- amen

Enjoy here, and make it possible for others to enjoy here, before you are given over to the trees and seeds and flowers. Make sure others are not bone-tired of being here. You were made to enjoy life, not push yourself to heights that will not catch you, that will isolate you from community.

The service ended. We walked out the back. It still smelled like smoke. It still smelled like retribution, and a gospel of cyclical change, on a wheel too large to see in my lifetime. I do not know my ancestors, but I am comforted that they know me. I wasn’t meant to be here, and I belong here, and the world has larger paradoxes and injustices to remedy. And the earth calls for me to make the world enjoyable for all. And the Mother remembers me for all time, and I must honor Her children. And we cannot keep hiding in barns-made-churches, or churches, or hide our guilt at what the gospel of love has done. Stop spreading the gospel to be able to spread love and care. Give the land back. Let the barns rot.