Of course I feel too much, I am a universe of exploding stars
A Woman's Reckoning with Christianity's Hidden Story
Beginnings: The Seeds of Doubt
I never set out to challenge Christianity. Religion was simply the backdrop of my childhood—Catholic masses, school uniforms, and the steady rhythm of holidays that punctuated our years. It was as unremarkable as the air we breathed, something to be taken for granted rather than questioned.
Yet the contradictions were always there, lurking beneath the polished surface. My grandfather, a fervent Catholic, would beat my grandmother, even while she was pregnant. Another member of my family was molested by a priest as a child. Two priests who officiated marriages in our families' weddings now sit in prison cells for molestation. Faith and violence have often been intertwined in ways no one wants to name out loud.
These early experiences planted seeds of doubt that would lie dormant for years. It wasn't until much later that they would sprout into questions I could no longer ignore.
So when two Mormon missionaries approached me recently as I walked with my two sons in a stroller down the street, and they asked if they could walk with me to share their message, I said yes, but not for the reasons they were expecting.
The Unraveling: From Engineer to Herbalist
My journey began in an unexpected place. I was an engineer before becoming a mother—trained in logic, precision, and evidence. When I turned to herbalism after having children, I was initially drawn by the scientific aspect—chemical compounds in plants and their effects on the body, showing real scientific results with gentler side effects. I didn't expect it to crack the foundation of my worldview.
As I dove deeper into plant medicine, I found myself asking: Why is this valuable information about growing our own medicine so forgotten? Why do we know so little about healing mushrooms like Reishi, known as the “king’s mushroom” which other cultures revere and which can even break down toxic waste? What happened to the knowledge of growing medicines in our own backyards?
Among herbalists, I discovered a community of intelligent, thoughtful people unafraid to question dominant narratives. They understood something crucial: the historical persecution of healers, particularly women, wasn't random but systematic—their knowledge threatened institutional power. After all, nobody profits when we grow our own medicine.
This realization transformed what I had dismissed as medieval superstitions into evidence of the systematic suppression of women's knowledge and authority. It was through herbalism and motherhood that I began to understand feminism in a personal way—not as an abstract political stance but as a connection to half our species and their historically silenced wisdom.
This awakening unleashed questions I'd been conditioned to repress since childhood. I had absorbed the implicit warning that questioning if God were a man—or worse, a fraud—might invite divine punishment. "You'll get struck by lightning for asking such things," the unspoken threat lingered. So I remained silent, even as contradictions mounted.
Through herbalism, I connected with a lineage of knowledge that predated Christianity—wisdom about the body, the earth, and the cycles that govern life. It wasn't a single moment that unraveled my inherited faith, but a slow accumulation of insights that eventually demanded deeper exploration:
Why were women—the creators of life—relegated to supporting roles in divine narratives? Why were the gods only the father and son, while the woman mortal?
Why was the mother in Christianity's central story a pre-teenage girl asked by her male superior to bear his child?
Why did traditions that clearly predated Christianity bear such striking resemblance to the supposedly "unique" story of Jesus? And even stranger, why do we forget that the earliest Christian teachers acknowledged this synchronicity as pre-destiny? As if, if you were caught plagiarizing, you could say the others “predicted” your work?
Why did an institution that preached love leave such a wake of suffering?
These questions consumed me—but how could I possibly convey all this to two teenage Mormon missionaries simply trying to gain more followers for their church?
The Cascade of Questions: Examining Central Narratives
Once you question one aspect of a belief system, the entire structure becomes vulnerable. This was my experience—one thread pulled led to an unraveling I couldn't have anticipated.
When I finally allowed myself to examine the central narratives of Christianity with fresh eyes, troubling questions emerged. The most fundamental was disturbing: Why are we glorifying what amounts to a child sacrifice? A father offering his son as a blood sacrifice to appease himself seemed deeply problematic—especially since this was a concept the ancient Hebrews and Egyptians had long ago deemed abominable. Yet here it was, repackaged as the ultimate act of love.
I struggled to understand what part of this story was truly a sacrifice. Was it God letting his son become human? Was it in letting him choose his own path? Was it Jesus choosing to sacrifice himself, somehow getting arrested being twisted in a narrative that it is being done for others? Or was it simply about a man losing his temper, getting arrested for breaking unfair rules of his day (to prohibit rebellion), and facing the consequences?
Even the central ritual of communion—the symbolic cannibalism that instructs us to "eat this body, drink this blood"—struck me with new strangeness once I stepped outside the fog of familiarity.
The contradictions multiplied. Throughout our human story, people sacrificed to appease powers greater than themselves—gods, forces of nature, things they feared and respected. Recorded numbers of sacrifices increase exponentially in known times of trouble- as we saw on the pre-Greek island of Crete just before Thera's eruption around 1600 BC. Even along the Nile, in times of no flooding (which was VERY rare, but devastating when occurred), sometimes it was the only way of survival- though heavily looked down upon. Then we have the known sacrifices of the Canaanites for their gods, and of the Romans, who at least substituted animals. Judaism had early switched to animal sacrifices, then a couple hundred years before Christianity, rabbinic Judaism started as a way to ensure people would never have to rely on a temple, that had been destroyed a couple times- offering sacrifices of prayers, rather than food or animals. It was Christianity that brought the idea of cannibalism and sacrifice BACK, even if just in metaphor, implying it was a way of life people at the time understood.
But if the Christian God is this all-powerful, all-knowing creator of everything, who exactly was he trying to appease by sacrificing his own son? No one has been able to explain this to me, aside from a bunch of attempts at flowery language that brings us into circles, like an old magic trick using a red herring to distract you from the underlying essence, until I stumbled on a thought that acknowledges what's missing from the story— that maybe there was someone else he was trying to impress. Does God offering sacrifices mean there was someone else, possibly the missing divine feminine principle I didn't know I was looking for: a cosmic ex-lover whose power matched his own. This idea makes me smile, not because it's necessarily true, but because it highlights how desperately the traditional narrative needs balancing.
These weren't minor concerns but fundamental contradictions at the heart of the faith I was born into. The religion that positioned itself as moving beyond blood sacrifices of pagan Rome had simply abstracted and eternalized one particular sacrifice- an ultimate hypocrisy - where their version of child sacrifice was the one we were supposed to be in awe of for all eternity. The tradition that claimed moral authority had built its foundation on concepts its predecessors had rejected as barbaric. I don't know about you, but there are a lot of people that suffered a lot worse than Jesus, a guy who broke a law by making a scene in a very public place, flipping a table over in the temple. This was the guy that was supposed to be all calm and wise and godly?
Then there were the questions about women in power. Why can't a woman be pope? Because the one god chose to inhabit was a man? What god ever put that restriction on there? God never told us this, or anything even close to it. If she were all powerful, maybe she could be a blade of grass one day, or a star the next. I totally believe god could be seen as a woman, especially if we need to choose one gender to represent the person in this world who brings life.
Why is it so blasphemous to say Holy Mother instead of Holy Father, if she is everything, and nature itself?
Then there are the biblical stories about a man saying, “No please don't rape my sons, rape my daughters instead”. That never did sit right with me. Then Lilith! Oh, I can't wait to tell that story.
And there's the historical context that's conveniently overlooked: The Romans despised the Jews for refusing to assimilate into their culture and religion. And there is more to it than that- a demeaning of the old, to show "new" meant "progress", rather than "immaturity". Words like “crone” once associated with “crown” now meant something more like “old hag”. The “veneration” once given to a woman was now the root of the word for the sexual “venereal” disease.
Somehow, one Jewish rebel, and convicted convict, became the central martyr of what would become Rome's official religion. All while also making the Jews evacuate their homeland, and making laws prohibiting them to speak their native language, making Hebrew a dead language for 200 years, and ALSO changing the name of their homeland of Judea to Palestine, a version of "Philistine" that was their extinct ancient enemy of invader Greek pirates we find in the Bible. The name Palestine literally means "intruder" in Hebrew. It becomes a pretty obvious plan when you put it all in context.
The story of how this all happened—the councils, the votes, the political maneuverings, the texts included and excluded, and the copycat replacements of pre-existing traditions to gain more followers—reveals how inauthentic the supposed "divine revelation" of all of Christianity truly was. A very selective group of men voted on what God supposedly said and meant, hundreds of years after the events were said to have happened.
Excavating Lost Connections: Judaism and Earlier Traditions
My questioning led me to study Judaism as part of a broader comparative religious exploration. What I discovered astonished me—stories with far more complexity and nuance than what had survived in Christian scripture. I found context and dimensions lost in translation, evidence of deliberate omission, and traces of political editing. The Bible I grew up with was missing crucial layers, like a painting with colors removed.
For one thing, the word “spirit” in Hebrew was a feminine term. Then some languages even chose gender neutral translations down the line. This helps us understand the original intent of the prayer of “the father, son and holy ghost/spirit” to be a bit more interesting. All of the bible are translations of translations, some known to be more accurate than others.
My ignorance about basic religious history was profound. At 30 years old, I had never truly questioned what the other 44,000 versions of Christianity were saying. I never knew the difference between the "New" or "Old" Testament. I actually searched for this information, initially assuming the Catholic version must be older than Judaism's scriptures, which implied older and wiser, in my opinion (somehow thinking whatever the Vatican was doing must be the most ancient). That's how utterly disconnected I was from understanding Christianity's relationship with Jewish traditions, and aged wisdom itself.
What I discovered was revelatory: virtually all Christian prayers already existed in Judaism, only with richer context! As I expanded my research into Middle Eastern and Egyptian religions, even more connections to Christianity emerged. My mind was blown—not just by how much I had to learn about other faiths in relation to Christianity, but by how much I was never taught about the historical foundations of my own faith.
What's rarely acknowledged is that much of early Christian thought was actually written in Egypt! Most of this all happened in Alexandria, the site of Rome's plundering of Africa's intellectual and material wealth. The Old testament was written in Egypt, where 70 (ish) Jewish scholars came together to decide what books to include in the Septuagint (literally meaning 70). Then again, the same thing happened with the new bible- so much of Christianity was debated or written IN EGYPT, or by Eygptian Christians. And Rome—an empire built on conquest, slavery, and the sexual exploitation and raping of lands and people alike- with 25 civilizations estimated to have been obliterated for control—became the incubator of what would grow into Christianity. This same empire established the foundations for what would become approximately 60% of today's major religions, considering that Islam developed as a sister tradition to Christianity, both flowing downstream from the shared Judaism. Islam would just take a stance 300 years after Christianity, which was essentially 300 years after trying to silence Judaism, and both celebrated in ways that either celebrated or diminished the sun: Islam embraced the least sunny moments of the day (so as not to appear iconic), while Christianity was moving towards the sun as holy (but emphasizing it is NOT iconic, either) - as in the case of SUNday being the most holy day. Both were like abandoned children, isolated and forbidden to look any deeper, getting more crotchety and cruel with time.
The interactions of the Jews and Egyptians are fascinating in themselves.
Judaism's Ancient Origins: Between Two Worlds
Judaism formed in the shadow of far older and more established civilizations, situated at the crossroads of Egyptian and Mesopotamian trade routes. The evidence of this cultural exchange appears in numerous ways:
Historical Interactions
Judaism's success stemmed partly from its intermingling with both Middle Eastern and Egyptian cultures, which ultimately made it a target of the Romans, who could justify seizing their treasures by maligning their reputation.
The historical record shows fascinating precedent in the Hyksos, a pre-Jewish people who actually ruled Egypt for about 100 years (from around 1600 BC). When Egypt eventually reclaimed power, it established tight control over Judean lands, marking the beginning of the Egyptian treatment of Jews as a subjugated population.
However, this oppression was primarily caused by one warrior sect of Judaism (those who had gained weapons and military knowledge from Middle Eastern cultures). All the while, many other Canaanite (and other proto Jewish) communities had lived peacefully with Egyptians for thousands of years.
The Exodus—dated to approximately 1300 BC—occurred just a few generations after this Hyksos period. Perhaps the Jews were being forcibly expelled, or maybe they simply grew weary of Egyptian cruelty after their more militant cousins had "poked the tiger" of Egyptian power.
To give just a bit more context, it seems the lands of Canaan were farmed since around 7,000 BC, and trade with Egypt was almost immediate. Stories of the bible say that in one family, a father of 10 sons sent 9 to Egypt, where they flourished with the fertile Nile lands, being of great aid to the Egyptian king by helping to teach to store grain for times of trouble, while 1 son stayed to farm the lands of Canaan. And the ones we know as Jews were those that came back to Canaan a few generations later. The Jews are just the Canaanites who went to Egypt, then listened to Moses, a guy who received visions under an burning hallucinogenic acacia bush, about going back home. This means Jews are just Cananites who intermingled with Egyptians for a while, and created a composite religion based on the two elders.
The Linguistic Trail
The very word "Bible" traces back to this connection—derived from papyrus made in Egypt (“papyrus” giving us the word for “paper”), then sold in the Phoenician port city of Byblos (another proto Jewish people). The word “byblos” refers to the inner bark of the papyrus plant. The Jewish city of Byblos was based on this Egyptian plant, which eventually gave its name as the holy book of the Christians. These ancient trade networks left their mark in language itself. If the paper of the bible can be from Egypt, why can’t the ideas also be transferred? If all people came “out of Africa”, why are we so hesitant to admit great thought and characters emerged from here as well?
The idea that kept me up one night, was the name "Israel" itself, which serves as a linguistic snapshot capturing Judaism's dual influences. I was making a list of places that had goddess origins: Europa, Ireland, and many rivers, etc… when I paused at Israel. I broke it down, first noticing the Ra in the center. Then I saw her: the Is.
Traditionally, scholars acknowledge the name Israel incorporates "El," the Canaanite father god (appearing in many names like Gabri-el)
Looking deeper, two Egyptian deities also be appear within the same word:
"Is" (echoing Isis, the Egyptian divine mother)
"Ra" (the Egyptian sun god and divine son)
"El" (the Canaanite father god)
In this single name, we may find an encoded trinity—mother, father, and divine child—the original family unit that creates life, drawn from traditions predating Judaism. And judaism passed on the prayers like that of the father, son and holy ghost (knowing the ghost is a woman). The historical timing, semantics, and story all align perfectly: the first inscription mentioning "Israel" appears around 1200 BC as mentioned in Egypt, with Judaism forming as we know it roughly 300 years later.
This original trinity reflected something universally human: the love between man and woman that creates new life, the eternal cycle reflected in nature's seasons. And the child can be gender neutral. To new parents, every child is like the sun in the sky, as many love songs attest.
The calendar started to come to life: the spring equinox marked the timing of the divine conception, the winter solstice celebrated the birth of the sun/son—not random dates or arbitrary stories but cosmic cycles observed for millennia, tied directly to biology! Christianity never explicitly recorded these connections, but absorbed them centuries later, their origins forgotten (or disguised) during two thousand years when literacy was restricted to a privileged few.
Even more tellingly, the Holy Spirit—now neutered in Christianity—was originally feminine. Ruach in Hebrew, Sophia in Greek wisdom traditions—the divine feminine presence was systematically neutralized by political forces that found female divinity threatening to their authority. What we're left with is such a profound mistranslation of the past that the original meaning is nearly unrecognizable.
To me, authentic religion was always meant to be about love and balance—the divine masculine and feminine in harmony, reflecting the natural world and human experience. But institutionalized Christianity was never primarily about love; it was about power—who had it, who could control access to the divine, who could interpret texts, who could declare others heretical. It became a political system controlling sex, so that men knew who to pass their toys and property to, when bloodline of women had always been followed, since it was more obvious than paternity.
For years, I felt awful for having any kind of thoughts painting Christianity in a negative light, as though my questions made me sinful. Now I understand that "heresy" comes from the Greek word simply meaning "choice" or "thing chosen." Among 40,000+ variations of Christianity worldwide, we are all heretics to someone else's orthodoxy. I'm no longer afraid of being labeled a heretic—I'm proud of my freedom of thought, my willingness to look beyond official narratives, to question what we've been told is unquestionable. I am a proud heretic. I choose to see the fullness of our spiritual heritage, not just the carefully curated version that serves institutional power.
Research became my refuge. Each discovery opened doors to others. The pre-Christian goddess traditions. Every Council's political maneuverings. The systematic eradication of countless texts. The witch trials that targeted women who preserved ancient knowledge of plants and healing. The residential schools where indigenous children were forced to swallow soap for speaking their sacred languages. The careful mistranslations that shifted feminine aspects of divinity into masculine terms.
The truth was both liberating and infuriating: Christianity hadn't created wisdom—it had absorbed, adapted, and often claimed exclusive ownership of wisdom that had existed for millennia before it.
Maternal Divinity
Giving birth to my suns (spelling error on purpose) transformed my understanding of creation myths. The absurdity struck me with new clarity: a male god and his son bringing forth all life without a mother? A divine trinity of father, son, and ambiguous "spirit" with no explicit feminine presence? This wasn't just theologically questionable—it defied the most fundamental natural law we witness: that life emerges from women's bodies.
The ancient world knew better. The modern one does too! Would anyone really give their father sole credit for their birth? Could anyone who saw a birth really say she had no part in creation? That it was all the dad’s doing? He who just gave his seed 9 months earlier, and is applauded if he stays to help out?
The other thing that sucks about the whole thing is how fathers were simultaneously given credit for life itself, but then removed from caring for life. Men, even a generation ago, were not allowed in birth rooms. This stems from a fear of a man becoming too attached to his family to want to leave to fight, or work. This is seen in story narratives like that of Troy, where the heroic prince must say goodbye to his son in a heart wrenching scene. That is the epitomy of a man- one who can walk away from his family. In fact, men are necessary for the best development of a child. A mother needs the support, one to care for her, and protect her, and be all the things a man is able to be. Together, they are something incredible. And that will always be worth celebrated.
As far as mother goddess go, ancients honored her in many forms and names: as Inanna, Isis, Demeter, Aset, and countless others who represented the life-giving power that was self-evidently female. They recognized the cycles of death and rebirth mirrored in women's monthly cycles and the seasons of the earth. Life and death were part of the same cycle. She of life was also one of destruction, since, with limited resources, energy must transfer from one thing to another. They understood divinity as balance—masculine and feminine principles working in harmony, not a patriarchal hierarchy with masculine power at the top. When we die, the word for burial in Egyptian can be translated as “to return to the earth”. When the mother is equated with the earth, death can be seen as “a return to the mother”.
When I look at the Christian story now, I see the remnants of these older truths. The "Holy Spirit" that once was Sophia, divine wisdom represented as female. The "Virgin Mary" who echoes earlier virgin mother goddesses. The December 25th birthday that aligns with winter solstice celebrations predating Jesus by millennia. The Easter timing that coincides with ancient fertility festivals. The dating was all pre-existing, with a Christian stamp placed on top.
Present Tensions
My brother tells me I sound angry when I told him what I was working on. But sometimes, uncovering the past elicits an emotional response, an incredulity that people literally thought they could live in this world without whole groups of people, women being one of them! Africans and Jews being another. And many other native groups world over. And that is our model for what we consider to be the best culture on this earth, the one we teach in schools as the leading way of thinking. Instead, I see us as being the most free and resource-ful people in the world, and we should be leading the charge in this exploration. If we are not able to, who else will?
I may be a little heated when I talk about this, but why can't I be? I'm not angry because someone has done something to me specifically, but I might be a bit angry because so much was stolen from all of us. We’ve lost the direct connection to the divine, to our celebrations, to the easier alphabet to understand that used to match sounds with symbols they represented, so as to be more easily learned. I'm angry because generations of people were silenced, tortured, and erased for preserving knowledge that predated Christianity. I’m angry because science cannot flourish in areas that seem to deserve it. I'm angry because indigenous wisdom was systematically destroyed under the banner of salvation. I'm angry because children were violated by people who claimed to represent divine love while denying their own human needs- to prove they were somehow better than animals with animal instincts. I am angry that men with no sexual outlets took their primal urges out on children, and those in power did nothing about it, and rather, tried to cover it up. That is absolutely unacceptable, to put men in power without allowing them the ability to be married, with a whole narrative on how women are too distracting for them to commune with god. …But little boys will do for them. EFF THAT.
And we are not that much more advanced from a primitive state as we would like to believe - it is still our reptilian brain that is older and drives us more strongly and quickly than our conscious brain, and often, it is our subconscious brain we rely on to survive- to breath, digest, wake up and go to sleep, and yes, take part in that once sacred act: have sex. Instead of trying to fight it, we can use our conscious AND subconcious brain to our advantage, since 99% of our day to day life is not conscious. The prefrontal cortex that separates us is the smallest and most recent part of the brain, and least developed. Here, as well as many other places, we have much more to learn and develop. As the African wisdom holds, the stuff that has been with us the longest should be revered specially. Ancestors are beloved for their accumulated wisdom. We should see the same wisdom in our bodies.
Most of all, I'm angry because this whole thing continues, and people cover their eyes when the light is right in front of them. I am upset that bright-eyed young boys can still knock on doors selling a narrative that has been curated through centuries of power politics while remaining oblivious to the bloodshed that secured their certainty. I am also upset that someone may someday blame my own sons- white boys- for the injustices in the world that we can systematically trace to a very strange religous group-think from many generations ago. As more women birth more sons in this era, they will see how boys, also, are hurt by this past way of thinking. If we truly want our daughters to flourish, we need sons to love and support them, not be bitter for their getting government support in meager, ill-placed incentives, and make white boys feel like they are to blame for everything in this world. For the record- I do not blame anyone living, or any ONE at all for how we got here. My goal is to empathize with every one of the groups I have mentioned. I just give least credit to the ones heroized in my day: Christians and Romans. I think we have way more to pay attention to, and reason to pay attention what others may see as flaws that we can work on as a culture. As humans, we are bred to connect, to find community. But also, in groups, we can be fierce, and take on zombie-like stances. This seems to have been the most contrived systematic cover up in history: that women used to be in the seat of power as well, even at the core of it. Is that really such a bad thing to show a human response? Could this be the reality? The answer is a resounding, very loud YES!
The Goddess Remains
Yet beneath my anger lies something stronger: recognition. The strong female narrative wasn't truly removed—she was hidden in plain sight. This also means: She is still here! She survived. She lives in our language (the very word "matter" comes from "mater," mother). She shows herself in the changing seasons. She emerges in our deepening ecological awareness that the earth is not an object to be dominated but a living system to be respected. She lives in the fact we all love our mothers, even if they have scarred us (I know all too well the pain of a mother lost, even before her time was through).
When I look at my sons, I feel the urgency of this understanding. I don't want them captured by a narrative that separates them from nature, from their emotions, from the balanced aspects of themselves. I don't want them learning that divine power is about dominance and conquest. I see that sustaining power requires nurturing and connection. I want them to understand that if energy cannot be created or destroyed, then we can see we are all made of stardust. We are literally made up of the same material that makes the stars. They are literally my little sunshines.
This isn't about rejecting spirituality—it's about reclaiming it in its fullness. Einstein believed science and spirituality can live in the same realm. It is about recognizing that we are healthful for seeing awe and magic in the world. The smartest people in the world admit that the more we know, the more we don't know. Everything is more complex the deeper we look. And in the narrative of the scriptures, the divine balance could never be fully eliminated by Christianity, no matter how many times attempted (and how many knew this will never be understood); it was incorporated and obscured but never truly removed. She waits to be acknowledged again, not as an opponent to masculine divinity but as its essential counterpart. The interesting thing today is wondering why the secrecy within the Vatican still exists- why there are millions of scrolls that have not been scanned or revealed to the public? What is it those people in power are so scared of? Why not be transparent?
In my mind, just saying we were born of Judaism, which was born of the more ancient Egyptian and Middle Eastern religions, and that we are all saying the same thing, is extremely powerful. Rather than fighting it, it is just easier to embrace this fundamental truth.
The Beautiful Synchronicity
What strikes me most profoundly now is the beautiful synchronicity hiding in plain sight—in our language, our calendar, our celebrations. The words in German give us some clues to our Egyptian past, through other trade routes before Christianity wiped even their slate clean: "Easter" echoes Eostre, the goddess of spring. Our days of the week honor ancient deities: Thor's day, Freya's day, Saturn's day, rather than the Latin planets. Speaking English implicitly means we speak several languages: in the tangled battles between France and Britain, between Latin and Germanic languages. Many of the Germanic celebrations, like the Christmas tree and Yule log connect us directly to pre-Christian solstice rituals, and even more so because many came with the German immigrants straight to America just as our modern versions of these holidays was forming, just a couple hundred years ago.
Our words reveal the most obvious hidden lineage— "Sun Day" as our holiest day, and even "holiday" from "holy day," which itself evolved from days sacred to goddesses long before Christianity.
The fact that we celebrate birthdays at all, the time it takes to pass through a solar year, a very Egyptian concept of solar celebration and birth- while Romans were all about death days, is a major clue to the origin of our traditions. Blowing out a birthday candle brings our wishes up with smoke to the gods in the sky. Romans glorified death days, and thought the world was the center of the universe. The first time we saw the birthdate of Jesus was amongst a list of death dates of saints- it never quite fit or had a clean derivation. It was manually placed somewhere because the people were already celebrating something, and rather than trying to take them away from that, it was easier to say they are just doing our thing. Oh yea, that's our date too. That happened SO. MANY. TIMES. Easter, Halloween, All Saints Day, Christmas - overlaid dates of made up Christian importance on all the important solar events in a year. For a society that does not believe the sun is very important, we have put it quite central to everything.
This recognition isn't just academic—it's liberating. It allows me to forge new stories for my children, ones that honor these ancient rhythms while freeing them from dogma. We celebrate the winter solstice as the return of light. We mark the spring equinox by planting seeds. We acknowledge Halloween's roots in Samhain, when the veil between worlds thins. These aren't rejections of tradition but reclamations of deeper, older traditions that connect us to the earth and to countless generations before us. We see the conception of a god in spring, when the energies of light and dark are in balance, reflecting the shared origins in creation of diverse forces of male and female, then 9 months later have the birth of the sun god, when the solstice and Christmas lined up before the change in calendar systems just in 1589 to Gregorian calendars. We have great proof of this in the way people used to talk of the savior's birth on the birth of the sun. More on this soon enough.
Beyond Group Think
My issue isn't with individual Christians—many are thoughtful, compassionate people, looking to find meaning and connection. What troubles me is the group-think that transforms living wisdom into rigid orthodoxy, that values conformity over questioning. This pattern isn't unique to Christianity; we see it in extremist expressions of all religions, from Hamas using children as shields to evangelical politicians using faith to justify environmental destruction. We just see ourselves as extremists. We have the illusion of free choice, when we are distracted into saying the same things and not having enough energy to just look one step deeper.
And here is the most dangerous thing about being a religious zombie: when religion stresses the importance of the next life over this one, it enables terrible atrocities of the present moment—of our bodies, our communities, our planet. The most dangerous ideas frame this world as temporary, disposable, merely a testing ground for some other existence. This is how people can say, "I do this for God", whether it is suicide bombing or child sacrifice. THIS life matters. If we truly put children first, this whole narrative would change. Everything would change. If we put into action all we know about childhood developmental milestones, the need for a healthy planet for a healthy food system, and about not about sucking up their attention with screens and advertising. We would encourage a whole other way of the education system and health care, not trying to manage patients with pills for a customer for life, but to heal with real food. Our whole incentive system would change to not just be of short term profit, but of long term gain. We all elevate our way of being if we support children and remove pesticides from the food system and encourage real food. Some people may make a little less money, okay, a lot less money, but more of the middle class and lower class, 99% of the world would flourish.
What I'm reclaiming is precisely the opposite of saying the next life is more important: I am trying to show the sacredness of the here and now. The divinity present in this life—in women's bodies creating new life, in love creating life, in the importance of fathers in children's development (rather than separating them), in the changing seasons, in our interconnection with all living things. This understanding doesn't privilege men's experience above others but recognizes that all of life matters, all is worthy of reverence. This makes way more sense than people of different religions all fighting with different flags, thinking their all-powerful god is on their side only.
Planting Seeds
When those Mormon teenagers asked me about faith, I didn't lecture them on pre-Christian goddess worship or the Council of Nicaea. Instead, I asked them questions they're rarely asked:
Do you believe creation came from men alone?
Have you studied the religions that Christianity built upon?
Do you know that “the spirit” is considered a feminine term?
Why is Mary the only one not divine in the Holy Trinity?
Did you know Islam, Christianity and Judaism are fundamentally connected?
Have you ever read the Jewish prayers, or the Egyptian ones, that Christianity is based on?
Did you know Jewish people created THE original alphabet, and what that implies about our very thoughts and words? Especially considering they were created in Africa?
Did you ever wonder what happened BEFORE the exodus that started our bible stories? The history in the few hundred years prior is fascinating.
Their confused expressions told me everything. They weren't anyone I needed to convince —they were simply operating within the narrow frame they'd been given, unaware of the larger picture just beyond their vision.
But it can be fun, to see a spark of light animate them to say, wow, I never considered that. Maybe they can bring meaningful discussion that makes women in their worlds feel more seen. Maybe they can acknowledge their mother that night, and bring to her needed respect for everything she has done. Maybe, if they travel the world, they will see what this story has done to girls around the world, blocking their access to education and autonomy, and their ability to plan for their own families, married off before puberty. Maybe they will see that when women around the world are pushed aside, the whole world suffers. The number one solution to climate change was studied to be educating women. Their use in family planning and farming is essential for knowledge transfer and real change. But just seeing them for their contributions while religious story after story has raped and maligned her image, proves women to be such resilient creatures who are ready to stand on her own again.
I don't expect to change entrenched beliefs in brief sidewalk conversations. But I can plant seeds of curiosity. I can remind them—and myself—that questioning isn't the enemy of faith but perhaps its truest expression. That looking beyond the official narrative isn't rejection but expansion. I might be a crazy woman seen to them as preaching women's rights to them, but at least they can see a "normal" looking woman saying it, with more knowledge of history than they could imagine, not a witch with a green nose and warts.
The truth doesn't need my defense—it has survived millennia of attempted erasure. The balance continues to emerge, whether we name her or not. The pendulum is swinging in the favor of women's rights right now, but a balance will come again. Our major skew of the last 2,000 years will leave us all surprised at the settling point, which will be something nobody is used to. With this era of freedom and access, we must be ready for some unexpected turns.
The Evidence of Erasure
And as for evidence, the most convincing argument lies not in what survived, but in what was deliberately destroyed. The massive book burnings throughout history—Alexandria's library, the Mayan codices, the countless "heretical" texts fed to flames—these systematic erasures themselves testify to truths powerful enough to threaten empires.
I've collected lists of these purges. The rabbinical accounts of Torah scrolls burning, with witnesses describing how "the words and truth lifted into the sky." The Roman practice of damnatio memoriae, their systematic attempt to erase half their emperors from historical record when they fell from favor. Egypt losing her voice but preserving her monuments. Jews losing their land but maintaining their texts and traditions.
And women—repeatedly targeted for silencing throughout recorded history. Consider Rome's foundation myth: a rough group of men who, realizing they needed women to bear sons to inherit their possessions, orchestrated the "Rape of the Sabine Women." They invited neighboring tribes to a festival, then abducted their daughters and wives. This celebration of abduction and sexual violence forms the mythological foundation of the very empire that would later shape Christianity.
These are the monuments and legacies we're taught to revere. Just as enslaved people feel righteous anger seeing their masters immortalized in stone, those who recognize these historical violations feel compelled to challenge these narratives. Are we ever wrong to protest the wrongs of the past that went unacknowledged? Never. We should speak louder than ever.
Archaeology continuously uncovers evidence that contradicts official narratives—goddess figurines predating male gods, women's high status in pre-patriarchal societies, evidence of diverse spiritual practices later labeled as demonic. With each new finding, the fuller picture emerges. The more they tried to erase, the more we should be attentive to what they feared—and why.
In the fragments that survived, in the spaces between official narratives, in what was deemed dangerous enough to destroy—here we find the most profound truths. The evidence of erasure itself becomes evidence of truth. What frightened those in power so deeply that they devoted enormous resources to its elimination? What threatened the artificial hierarchies they had constructed?
Often, it was simply balance—the recognition of feminine divinity alongside masculine, of cyclical time rather than linear progression, of authority derived from wisdom rather than force. These concepts were revolutionary enough to justify centuries of suppression. They remain revolutionary today.
The Mother's Truth
Sometimes I feel guilty for not hearing these young missionaries out more fully. But I know what they'll offer—the same rehearsed narrative they've been given, the same testimony about what their faith means to them personally. How can I engage sincerely with someone who has no concept that Christianity evolved directly from Egyptian traditions? How can we have a real conversation when such fundamental historical context is missing?
I've grown weary of politely nodding through narratives that fundamentally make no sense. I can't keep traveling the same hamster wheel of energy-draining exchanges. So instead, I cut to the heart of it:
No human being I know would give their father more credit than their mother for their existence on this planet. Not in the raising, certainly not in the birthing. No one who has witnessed the act of birth could possibly attribute creation primarily to a man. Yes, he had his moment of pleasure in conception, hopefully providing security and support along the way. But SHE—the mother—is the vessel of creation, sustenance, and nurturing. Her body sacrifices its own energy and nutrients to form new life. She undergoes the ultimate sacrifice willingly, and CANNOT opt out of this physical demand if she chooses motherhood.
Children aren't merely burdens, and in fact, what religions frame as "the devil" was always simply an obstacle making us stronger. Our children transform us fundamentally—women's brains actually shrink up to 25% during pregnancy but grow larger afterward. Women have reduced breast cancer risk the more they breastfeed. Our bodies are literally designed for this sacred act of creation.
Children are challenging, absolutely, but they're also the greatest gift in existence. This fundamental truth is what all the holiday symbolism originally celebrated—love creating life, together. Men and women needed each other in balance, working in harmony. There was none of this nonsense suggesting creation happened thanks solely to a man, or more absurdly, two men and a ghost.
When I speak with these missionaries, I'm not trying to destroy their faith. I'm inviting them to expand it beyond the artificial boundaries that were created for political reasons, not spiritual ones. I'm asking them to consider what was lost when half of humanity's spiritual experience was systematically marginalized—when the divine feminine was erased from our understanding of creation despite being self-evidently central to it.
"Before you tell me about your faith," I sometimes say, "can you acknowledge that Christianity evolved out of Egyptian traditions? Can you recognize that religion has systematically credited men for what women physically accomplish every day? Once we establish that basic reality, then we can have a real conversation."
Most can't or won't make that acknowledgment. Their training hasn't prepared them for questions that challenge the uniqueness and originality of their tradition. And so we remain at an impasse—me unwilling to pretend their narrative exists in historical isolation, them unable to step outside the framework they've been given.
Yet occasionally, I see that flicker of recognition—a moment when something I've said resonates with an inner knowing they perhaps didn't realize they possessed. Those moments give me hope that the truth isn't just in ancient texts or archaeological findings but in our very bodies, in the undeniable reality of how life comes into being.
Origins Revealed: Biology and the First Divine Feminine
The truth about human spiritual history lies not just in ancient texts but in our biological reality. In nature, it's often the male who must perform elaborate rituals—dancing, displaying colorful plumage—all to attract female attention. This wasn't arbitrary but evolutionary strategy. Males need to spread their seed, while females bear the consequences of their choices and must select wisely. Female biology, cyclical like the moon, creates natural rhythms in sexuality, while male biology remains constantly ready, perpetually seeking attention.
This biological reality has profound implications for understanding early religion. Before paternity tests, before the connection between intercourse and childbirth was fully understood, early humans would not have recognized men's role in creation. For countless generations, the miracle of life appeared to emerge solely from women's bodies—a mysterious power that seemed divine in its manifestation.
This biological framework explains why archaeology consistently reveals female figurines as our oldest religious artifacts, and why goddess worship preceded god worship across diverse civilizations. The divine feminine wasn't a later invention—it was humanity's original spiritual understanding, arising naturally from observed reality.
Archaeologists dismissively label these earliest spiritual practices as "fertility cults"—a term loaded with judgment and diminishment. Yet would we call each of the 45,000 versions of Christianity "fringe cults"? Egypt's sophisticated religious traditions spanned thousands of years, influencing civilizations across three continents—hardly a "cult" by any meaningful definition. Let's strip this biased language from our understanding of history.
Our biological reality reveals that women would have naturally been the first source of spiritual inspiration. The cyclical nature of female bodies mirrored cosmic patterns—the moon's phases, the seasons, the eternal return. The River Nile, bringing life-giving waters in predictable cycles, became the original holy water that Christianity would later adopt and repurpose. The sacred feminine wasn't invented by modern feminists—it was humanity's original spiritual understanding, arising naturally from observed reality.
What else have we missed in this systematic rewriting of history? What other connections remain hidden in plain sight? What wisdom awaits rediscovery when we finally remove the patriarchal filters that have distorted our understanding for millennia?
Continuing Revelations: The Unfolding Journey
I stand in this knowledge with some moments of sadness, as my brother suggests, but also, more steadily, with profound hope. The veil is thinning. The forgotten history is being remembered. The wisdom that was never truly lost is finding new voice—including mine.
Modern Discoveries Accelerating
What excites me most is how these revelations are accelerating in our time. Each day brings:
New archaeological discoveries that challenge established narratives
Fresh translations of ancient texts revealing previously obscured meanings
Broader perspectives on our shared spiritual heritage
Archaeological findings in Egypt, Israel, and Mesopotamia regularly overturn conventional understandings. Recently uncovered papyri from Egypt reveal early Christian communities with female leaders. The Dead Sea Scrolls continue to yield insights that complicate simplistic theological narratives we've inherited.
Technology and Diverse Voices
Digital technology now democratizes access to ancient texts once accessible only to elite scholars. Simultaneously, women are increasingly represented in the fields of archaeology, religious history, and biblical translation, bringing fresh perspectives to texts long filtered exclusively through male interpretation.
These changes matter. As we peel back the layers of history, we find not disconnected religious traditions but a tapestry of human spiritual experience, with threads connecting across time and cultures. The more we discover, the more we recognize our common origins—and the systematic efforts that obscured them.
Healing Our Collective Story
These aren't merely academic curiosities but vital rediscoveries that can heal deep wounds in our collective psyche. They offer a path toward spiritual understanding that:
Honors both masculine and feminine principles in balance
Reconnects us to the natural world and its cycles
Values cyclical renewal over linear domination
The most profound spiritual truths aren't esoteric or hidden—they're as obvious as a mother cradling her newborn. No amount of theological complexity can ultimately obscure what we all know at our core: that creation requires balance, that life emerges from women's bodies, and that the divine mother wasn't eliminated from reality, only from officially sanctioned stories about it.
We all gain something immeasurable when we bring our mothers back into our spiritual lives—a wholeness that has been missing for millennia.
