When you and your wife visited,
you shared a question asked by a pastor
of a raped
and thereby pregnant
vulnerably young and questioning parishioner.

“If your unborn child survived
his first year
and walked back into your home
do you think you would still want to kill him?”

Probably not,
I’m thinking.
And,
perhaps more pastorally significant
and responsible,
how can we, in resilient compassion for ourselves
and for those who trespass against us
mitigate sacred rage
against ancient sins of our predative Fathers?

The next morning
over coffee and breakfast
your wife told a surprising story
of meeting a woman
in a Carolina church basement
who boldly claimed to be
an unapologetic pagan

Certainly not repenting;
more like recruiting

UnStraight out proud wiki
without thinking that might be an appropriate sin
for inviting healing prayer
rather than embracing
as if possessing a pure and virtuous soul
matriarchally regathering
HolyEarthPeace Spirits.

Your wife’s response
cautiously avoided Retribution Is Mine!
weaponized words,
another patriarchal sin of our historied Fathers

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that before”
right out in public
toward lunchtime on a bright spring day
and certainly not in a ChristChurch basement

I silently wondered why your wife did not seem to feel
this pagan should be aborted

Stoned to death
or at least hanged
for defying the Good News
of Straight White King James
colonizing Jesus.

If there was a conversation about how many pagans may feel
about abortion of healthy tribal lives
or Great White Father rape,
or the somewhat wider history
of patriarchal predation against matriarchal wisdom
she did not mention such old crone witchery

Studying dark theistic codes of dueling history
usually tolerating abortions of Othered human lives
for exceptional survival reasons
emerging throughout traumatic transition years
for various viciously circling reasons

A well-capitalized
verbally articulate
personalized monotheistic God
might appear to be against
polytheistic Muses and Witches and Goddesses
within EarthTribe mind-spirited space,
political place,
economic race

On the Othered,
and safely aborted, hand
pantheistic spiritual commitments
supporting multicultural
animistic
pantheistic
panentheistic
polycultural respect
may more resiliently redevelop
sacred
sentient
holy spirited life
at the EarthTribal
universally uniting EarthPeace level
of sacred passion

Respect for our interdependent thriving lives
does not mean we are not also
abortionists to survive the trauma
of invasive felt predations,
biological
and ecological
and theological
and political.

Divine respect for co-infested fertile life
might include respect for death
and gratitude for EarthTribe lives sacrificed

As we hold hands
and bow our heads
with gratitude
for hungry stomachs satisfied,
for sacred quenching waters,
outs and ins of healthy bodies,
backs and forths of wealthy minds

With trust our thirst
for tribal trust
does not imply that when and what I swallow,
I abort

And do not also co-invest
in this our cooperative resilience

Health care giving
and receiving
EarthTribe sentient wealth

Respect for dark
deeply raging
patriarchal trauma
does not imply
disrespect for more therapeutic
matriarchal light.

And just so,
I reversely suppose,
universal peace
uniting holy spirited respect
for resilient
brilliant sentient life

Does not imply
disrespect for trauma,
despair
and death

Which I had been struggling with
when you and your wife visited,
and you shared your story
of a raped
and thereby pregnant
young and traumatized parishioner.