Only the Forest Sees me Naked

All of me feels like too much for anyone, it takes the forest for me to feel like there’s something I won’t overwhelm.

Bend of the river at dusk

The dogs try to wrap themselves around me again as I gape at the salmon pink clouds showing off over the indigo mountains. I drop their leashes low enough to step over and remember that I’m supposed to be exercising them, so I head down the road to the field that leads to the river. I concentrate on them for several minutes together and then the mountains and the moon are on the other side of the road. This always weirds me out because it doesn’t feel like the road curves so much when I’m walking it that the view should switch sides on me. 

I’m once again the only one outside. In my mother-in-law’s neighborhood, I rarely meet the neighbors, even walking my dogs several times a day. I’ve passed people headed to the river overlook exactly twice so far in all the years I’ve been doing this, twice a year, winter and summer. 

All three of us exhale when our assorted feet and paws leave the pavement. The dogs immediately find something interesting that needs deep sniffing and I stand there patiently staring at the yellow flickers of fireflies looking for company in the wide expanse of calf-high grass and flowers spread out in front of me. Eventually I persuade them to move on and I get to the river in time to see it gleaming silver in the remaining light from the day. 

Trees block my view from the houses and I relax. Only the forest gets to see all of me. Only the forest gets to see me naked.

Not actually naked, I don’t want to deal with bug bites in inconvenient places if I don’t have to, but I only really feel fully me when I’m away from people, unobserved. 

My writers group asked for more of me in my pieces, and I realized I’m always giving out measured doses of myself all the time. Always restraining myself, always sucking myself in to some degree or another. It depends on the situation. All of me feels like too much for anyone, it takes the forest for me to feel like there’s something I won’t overwhelm. 

All of me is feeling the temperature in the air drop, the damp in the hollow by the river bank where the water from yesterday’s rain has seeped. The river bank has moved at least a foot towards the side I’m standing on since I started coming here. In the winter when the undergrowth retracts for the season, I used to be able to duck under the tree that leans out over the water and walk along the bank and sit under the bushes in the soft sand. Now the bank drops steeply off under that tree and the sandy bank across from me protrudes further into the river. The river has casually rearranged the land. It doesn’t need a permit or a planning committee. A series of storms raised the height and it carried the soft soil of the bank away with it and now this is where it flows. 

By myself where no one can see me, I am observer and not observed. That’s not actually true of course. A firefly flits hopefully in front of me, and then disappears in the dusk until he lights up again two feet to my left. But I don’t speak firefly fluently, and so I don’t know if his thoughts are negative or positive. I doubt he thinks of me at all. He’s out there looking for a mate to continue his species and as I don’t fit the bill, he moves along. It’s a neutral interaction for me, demanding nothing. 

I watch the intermittent blinks all across the field, more and more joining the light show and I am suddenly slammed by period cramps. Peri-menopause is really unfun, as I can’t predict my cycle any more. This one has been toying with me for days, and now it finally decided this was the moment to arrive. I sigh, suddenly longing to be back indoors with soft furniture, some ibuprofen and coke zero. But that brings with it the eyes of my family. 

Don’t get me wrong, my family is awesome, but several decades of trauma and a lifetime of masked autism have made me watch my every move around people, question and examine every action. Some of this is generic to all humans, I know, but sometimes it feels like I have to try extra hard to human. 

The sky is shifting to navy and the crickets are serenading the sun as its last rays fade away behind me. A deer is standing in the half light across the field, and munches grass undisturbed by me. I adjust my hand on the leash and prepare for my boxer to notice the deer. I keep my focus on the hardened earth of the path before me, hoping he follows my gaze, but I can’t help but steal glances at the graceful doe. I’m sure the rest of her herd is in the shadows under the trees. It’s rare for female deer to be alone. In their matriarchal society, the women move together, raise children together, and keep each other safe. 

My precaution turns out to be necessary, but Beau the Boxer has gotten better than he used to be. I stop a few wild lunges and he calms down and continues along without more fuss. Bertha the Boston doesn’t even notice the deer. But then she’s more likely to pounce a bug near her face than get worked up at a mammal she can’t really see over the taller grasses. 

Beau the Boxer and Bertha the Boston

The path is sand and dirt and there are tiny purple flowers that seem to glow against the oncoming night. A half moon peeks out from ragged clouds that have been gathering while I watched the fireflies. 

I step back on the pavement and the spell is broken. I glance back and the deer is gone. Muffled human noises meet my ears from a house that seems to be having some kind of gathering based on the number of cars outside. I don’t stare too long. I don’t know who’s looking back. 

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You may have noticed I added “CJN” after my name on this publication. It’s common for members of religious orders to have a designation after their names to indicate which order they belong to. CJN is for the Companions of Julian of Norwich. Read more about it below:

I Am Keeping You

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I walked around the nave looking at the rest of the windows in the church, all figures depicted as white, all figures depicted as thin. All figures are conventionally attractive. Almost all are standing, most of them are male. No hint of disability, or variety, clearly according to the windows in my church, only a certain type of people are really “chosen.” Never mind Pentecost and Ethiopian eunuchs and Hagar naming God. Never mind the woman at the well, or Mary Magdalene appointed as the first apostle. Never mind the audacity of the woman who touched the hem of his garment, or the woman who won an honor contest with Jesus in public. Never mind. The windows are clear about who the kingdom of God belongs to. 

Except. Except the actual characters in the Bible are diverse, are indigenous, are male and female and sexual minorities. Are sick and healthy and blessed regardless. Are almost exclusively non-white and yet are the main characters in the story. Are poor, working class, indigenous people working off the land as fisherman and farmers, carpenters and even reformed tax collectors who would have likely been hated by their own people for colluding with the invading empire. Jesus goes out of his way to include those excluded and there is nothing more antithetical to the gospel than any form of supremacy. 

Scripture shows us a God who reveals themself in male and female terms, giving us a God beyond the binary, a God who transcends gender and therefore embodies any gender, a God who was crucified and permanently bears the marks of that in God’s body. A God whose perfection is in perfect love and not any one racial or gender identity or physical ability or status. A God who reaches into the sidelines and makes people that society has discounted and discarded the main characters in the story. 

Read the rest on Earth & Altar.

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“I wish I could still believe in God, but I can’t be a Christian anymore because of ______” Fill-in-the-blank with racism, misogyny, homophobia, toxic capitalism, and so on. I’ve had this conversation with different people almost word-for-word over and over. White American Christianity has so defined God that many people cannot separate God from the toxic theology they were taught.  

But this isn’t the God I see in the Bible. The Bible shows us a God meeting people where they are and nudging them towards justice and total thriving for all: shalom. The Bible details arcs of justice and societal reform. If we understand how radical those arcs were in the context of the day, we can extend them forward into the future and figure out how to work for justice, total thriving, and societal reformation in our day. 

I grew up in that first world view. Come along, and I’ll tell you the story of how I escaped, and I’ll show you a theology that I believe paints a more accurate picture: a faith for the common good where everyone thrives and no one is left out.

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Anna Elisabeth Howard writes highly caffeinated takes on shalom as a lens for everything from her front porch in Hendersonville, TN where she lives with her husband and two sons. She is a community organizer and movement chaplain with a background in youth and family ministry and is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary. An avid hiker and backpacker, many thoughts start somewhere in the middle of the woods, or under a waterfall. She is a regular contributer to Earth & Altar and her latest book is Inward Apocalypse: Uncovering a Faith for the Common Good.

Buy Inward Apocalypse: Amazon | Independent Booksellers

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