On these pages, you will find a variety of different creative projects.  spoken word, poetry, memoir adjacent fiction, and fiction.

Not all these projects are populated yet. Bear with me as I continue the construction in real-time. I needed somewhere dedicated to hosting the spoken word as it is pouring out of what I am coming to affectionately call "Pyroclastic Girl"   You'll find out more about her and how she emerged from the multitudes as the Memoir-Ish section grows.

Disclaimer: For the Spoken Word Project:  I make no claim to a universality of experiences.  These are my lived experience and the emotional impacts and my integration of those impacts are mine.  Other current or former Free Presbyterians will have their own lived experiences in and relationship to that sect.

 

These spoken word tracks reflect how I as a child, saw very closely the impact of a self-righteous, rigid and inflexible interpretation of the faith, and a dogmatic certainty about their right to claim to be the "true" descendant of the Scottish Reformation and the drive within the church, as a result of Calvinist theology to control every aspect of its people's lives.

 

These pieces may be hard to listen to.  I don't expect, that even people who understand the lived experience which I had as a child of a Hebridean Presbyterian minister, will "like" what they are listening to. 

 

These explorations are not designed to comfort, they are not designed at all. These are all ad-libbed, stream-of-consciousness tracks of the raw and unadulterated rage I experienced as a child as parts of me were cut off from Spirit by the very people who claimed to be saving me.

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They will challenge you. 

 

If your response is to be defensive - pause - and sit with the energy of what you are trying to push away.  You may be surprised at what emerges.

 

Kirk Session elders and the Synod hold a vast amount of power over their parishioners.  Often the churches are geographically located in small villages and communities in the North where there was and is no escape from the watchful and judgmental eye of church leadership.

 

Where the Nazarene came in love, the Kirk Sessions come in often mind-numbing and rigid righteousness that gatekeeps who can sit at what they call "the Lord's Table".   

 

While I am no longer trapped in the sect of my childhood, this project reflects the fact that the Highland form of Calvinism was a profoundly geologic force of shaping the lives of its people, and sadly, so very, very rarely in love, but always in judgment.