I Hold All of My Histories

I am the staunch Scot standing against the English crown and the English bishop

                Worshiping the stern Calvinist God of the Highlands

And I carry the songs of Irish druids who cherished the windswept land

                Whose heart beat with the sea and moors of the motherland.

I am the child of the cobbler who worshiped in secret, the English Baptist

                Who cherished soul freedom over hierarchy and power;

And I am the daughter of Catholic refugees from France

                Receiving absolution from the priest on Sunday, drinking hard on Monday.

I breathe the faith of renegade, frontier churches in the Americas

                Serving a working class God that orders all things right

And I bow too at the altar of ritual and grace in ornate chapels

                Who speak of a gentler God wreathed in mystery.

I am a child of the Americas embracing the mestizo faith of my southern sisters

                Bowing my head to La Madre de las Americas

And I am the wild preacher of the Western U.S. traveling on horseback

                Spreading a faith of holiness, healing, and Spirit led power.

I am the farmer who finds the heartbeat of the land in the soil

                Shaping the landscape to bring forth the bounty of earth

And I am the child of the forest who hears the whisper of ancestors not my own

                Biding their time until the old ways of this land are found again.

I am the redneck who worships a hillbilly God in a pickup and with song

                Who is proud of ancestors who fought and died for family and country

And I am the pacifist in plain clothes working hard in closed Amish communities

                Treasuring an old world way of life and a God of love and peace.

I hold all of my histories close to my heart—tangled in the depth of my being

                Please do not ask me to choose

I am a child of wandering ancestors who have been searching and longing for home.

 

I embrace all of my histories, needing them all to be whole

                I hold the history of the ages, of all of my people deep in my bones.