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jaded (excerpt)

a poetic reckoning with white evangelical christian indoctrination

Marla Taviano

contents

welcome

indoctrination

zealous

scare tactics

oh my god

disability justice

sex and

“purity”

patriarchy

“christian”

nation

white

supremacy

colonization

a breather

mama earth

queerly beloved

pro-“life”

infidelity

stagnant

church

no thank you

deconstructing

loving myself

new plan

more

appendix a: endnotes

appendix b:

recommended books

acknowledgments

 

jaded

adjective: tired, bored

or lacking enthusiasm

 

typically after having had

too much of something

 

made cynical by experience

and over it already

 

but also: can’t

seem to let it go

 

hi friend

if you haven’t read my book

unbelieve, you need to

 

if you have and liked it

but wished it would have

 

been a little spicier

you’ll love jaded

 

if unbelieve made you cringe

you might want to

 

gently lay this book down

and back away for a bit

 

just so you know

 

jaded is

unbelieve’s

bitchy

little

sister

 

even though…

I had largely untangled myself from

the lies and beliefs, they went

 

deep / my insides wouldn’t let my

outsides write that expansive book

 

yet / I still had work to do to help

us get free / I long for a beautiful

 

world beyond white evangelical

christianity but I feel a pull to get

 

people out / partly because I care

about them, mostly because I care

 

about people they’re harming / I

harmed people too and have wrongs

 

to right/write as I move into freedom

so here is my labor of anger and love

 

more is still to come

 

no shame / just do better

 ignorant, often used as an

insult, actually means lacking

knowledge or awareness which

can be remedied with a desire

and effort to learn / it’s a whole

other thing to be willfully stubborn

refusing to hear uncomfortable

truths / I’m not here to shame you

or even get you to unbelieve

exactly like I do / I want us to

think for ourselves, not just swallow

what we’ve been told / let’s

become un-ignorant of injustice

and how we all perpetuate it

whether we mean to or not / let’s

move from unknowing to knowing

then from knowing to taking

action to stop the harm

hi, god / it’s me, mara

 “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them, “Call

me Mara [Marla], because the Almighty

has made my life very bitter.” (Ruth 1:20)

once upon a time

my mother named me

Marla Rachelle

after the bible’s

Mary and Rachel

Marla means motherly

she told me, smiling

but I found out otherwise

when my ex’s grandmother

bought me a photo frame

with a watercolor print

Marla in fancy font

BITTER in bold caps

I was offended then

but I’m smiling now

and taking bitter back

imagine

 slaughtering your child on an altar

because god told you to or else

what in the actual hell?

the bible is full of violent stories

that are not kid-appropriate

and most adults can’t really

be trusted with them either

I obviously couldn’t (sheesh)

and now I recognize the sad sad

truth / my flippant answer to my

precious daughter was just me

desperately trying to prove to

god that I’d pick him over my

kids so he would never ask me

to willingly give them up

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