Love is a sacred, intentional, and divine act. As a youth my church home was a space where I learned a lot about irony. I stood at the intersection of holy contradiction, of humanity and divinity and lived at the axis of God’s liberating love and the patriarchal control of Chrisian supremacy. In my younger years, I accepted my spiritual education without much question but as I began my scholarly training, I learned to disentangle Christianity from Christian supremacy and began to spot patterns in sermons from the leaders of my church, who were all men.
I began making connections between all the curricula in my life, I realized the lessons I was learning emerged from very homogenous, male centered paradigms; it wasn’t just faith spaces, this fact remained true in graduate school, summer fellowships and research labs. Once I arrived at this conclusion, I made a conscious shift to seek out the words of underrepresented voices of spiritual healing and becoming like women, queer people and (trans)* people. Seeking out voices, rendered invisible by Christian cis-hetero male supremacy, became my personal ministry. I felt I stood to learn the most about love, grace, and forgiveness from those who’d been rejected, obscured, bruised and bluesed. After all, the Bible’s most memorable heroes often faced unimaginable suffering, exclusion, and rejection. This essay isn’t about one of the Bible’s most famous heroes but about the heroines that inspired me most today. This is a journey of finding inspiration in the pews and in the blues every day and applying
The foundation of my spirituality is an abundance of intentional love. I’ve learned I practice love, like lawyers practice law and doctors practice medicine. I engage love as a daily practice of rest, engagement with sacred mediums, reflection, service and gratitude. As someone who wants to grow and rise in love, I look for mentorship in everyday places, today it’s in scitta papers lined in gold trim as I study the story of Ruth and Naomi.
In a nation where my queer loving practice is scrutinized and a generation where stoicism is mistaken for strength and emotional vulnerability for weakness, I look to Naomi and Ruth for guidance. In a world that values romantic love over all kinds of love, Ruth and Naomi remind us we can find intimacy, commitment, and passion in surprising places. Naomi and Ruth may have the most epic love story of the Bible and are a model on how to hold each other gently, intentionally and sacredly in love.
Naomi hit a new low in life after losing her husband and sons. Her first instinct seemed to be to isolate, which many of us do when dealing with hard times. I found her story relatable; I try to keep the worst of my problems to myself, so they don’t crush the people I love. While this strategy is common, it’s not helpful; it often creates more feelings of shame and fear of being burdensome. At the time when Naomi was at her lowest and sent Ruth away, Ruth clung to her. When Naomi felt life had passed her by, Ruth reminded her that she would go wherever Naomi goes. When Naomi felt she had nothing, Ruth reminded her, they are family, they have each other and that the God that united them will not separate their sacred bond. In the text she says,
“Ruth replied, “Don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us!””
Ruth 1:16-17 NLT
Ruth and Naomi are a blueprint for the kind of revolutionary love that’s needed in these unprecedented times. In these verses, Ruth uses love as solidarity to comfort Naomi’s spirit. Ruth cannot solve Naomi’s problems or resurrect her sons and husband, but she can be a companion in coping, healing and growing through adversity. Their story reminds me that love begets hope which begets peace.
I always wonder why Naomi and Ruth’s story wasn’t taught to me growing up in the church. Their radical love transforms the way I judged the strength of important relationships in my life. When I model my loving practice after the relationship of Ruth and Naomi, I’m reminded of the importance of commitment, closeness, loyalty and sharing. I am comforted by a bond between two women that reminds me of the love I received from my mother, tía, teachers and lovers. This story reminds me that when two women are connected, God’s love is also there. It also reminds me of the power of women to live their lives as a sermon despite their exclusion from pulpits around the world.
Christianity is a language that I’ve come to speak after two decades of church going. It’s a knowledge system that I can’t divorce myself or generations of my family from. However, I’ve leveraged my own embodiment and experiences to practice the faith in a way that aligns with my metaphysical essence and physical being. This iterative process is how I came to understand God as beyond and within me. It’s how I began to disentangle my faith from the white, cis-hetero Christian supremacy that undermines love, community, and justice. Today I add to that language in a way that reminds me I am whole, I am a living sermon and that God is with me; that is a wonderful gift.