Hope in a Godless World
An RfRx talk with Danielle LaSusa, Ph.D.
By Valerie Williams, RfR volunteer
Back in my pre-enlightenment days, those dark days of my Christian faith where I put celebrity preachers on wobbly pedestals, I listened religiously (ha ha, see what I did there?) to whoever was speaking at a popular Californian church. I think I took everything each speaker said as profound, sometimes even posting them on Facebook to stun my friends with their brilliance. Because Facebook is a ruthless reminder of your past, quotes that I apparently found mind-blowing pop up in my memories from time to time and as I re-read a lot of them now, with my head in my hands, I think, “that doesn’t even make sense!”
One such statement that I’m thankful I did NOT digitally record forever was a rant from one of the church’s pastors, declaring, “We’re taking our rainbow back! And we’re taking our crystals back!”
Now, if you’re not a former believer this probably won’t make any sense to you. And to be fair, it didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time, but I assumed if pastor so-and-so was voicing it, there must be a deeper truth to it than what my little brain was comprehending. Ok, so the basic idea is that the LGBTQ community has “stolen” “our” rainbow, and the new-age mystics have “stolen” “our” crystals, and it’s high time…
