A Message to the Faithful

How blindly you follow them… Men clad in four thousand dollar Armani suits… lifting hands and spouting the praises of a deity that you honestly believe would renounce his own beautiful children. Just for being gay. Or Muslim. Or Hindu.

How can that be? Could the Creator of the Universe have made so many millions of people who simply should not be here? Are we not created just as we are meant to be?

I watch as you clasp hands with usurers, “Church leaders” who wear diamond
encrusted pinkie rings and hand cobbled leather shoes… while your children go
to bed hungry or cold and without the hope of a happy birthday.

I cringe, as you are artfully manipulated out of your hard-earned finances with promises of miracles and increases that never manifest. I pray for your “salvation” at my healing altar. Yet still, you go. Like sheep to the slaughter.

They speak to you of an abyss of steaming hellfire and brimstone, waiting to swallow me up at my demise. You applaud the cruelty that seeps from their greedy, lying mouths, unaware that it is you and not I, who the wolves have led astray.

I cry for you.

Will the servant of the Most High share his millions with his struggling flock? Will he invite you into his posh mansion, feed you and give you shelter when you lose your job? Will he still reign triumphantly over his worship center once his extra-marital affair or his mismanagement of church funds is discovered?

Why is it that you fail to taste that which you are being fed? Are you so desperate for love, that you can’t feel the putrid acidity of prejudice as it trickles down your throats and into your hungry bellies?

Why is it that you fail to hear what’s being said? Are you so eager to believe in something larger than you are, that you no longer feel compelled to read, to learn or to think freely?

How is it that you are so easily persuaded? Greed is still greed. And hate is hate, even when cloaked in the guise of purity and piety.

I watch you from the shadows, wishing I could share my gifts with you. I straddle the precarious fence between fear and hope, wondering if I will live to see the day when you are no longer afraid of me.

There are still those among you who would have me arrested, seize my property or fight to take my children from me. There are still those who would burn me out of my home or beat me in the streets. There are even those who would kill me, just because I follow a different path.

But I am an American, too. And I vow to do all that I can to assure that the atrocities of centuries past are never again revisited.

I am a child of the Universe.

I am the physical embodiment of the God… and the Goddess.

I am a witch.

I am beautiful.

I am here to stay.