I’m officially staying in Montana through the winter. It was always a little up in the air, but Grandma said I could. I’m still in the RV, just in her yard. We’ll make sure it’s sealed up for the winter.

I’m working extra hours at the hat shop now, too. My life just kind of came together here in Montana, so I’m gonna let it be good for as long as I can. I’m dating someone (who is the absolute best) and I just love living where I’m living. I’m still doing my art, photography, writing. I’m starting a program in Spiritual Direction and I’m applying for master’s programs. Life is good. I’m living the dream.

The rain came first

There were a lot of unexpected gifts from the week in ceremony. If my title shocked you, it should. It shocked me.

When the desert storm came through, the haboob, it was intense. My tent had been struggling earlier in the week to keep the rainfly on. It was user error, but it got me through the nights. It just kept coming off in the days.

And then, the midday storm hit hard. Hail the size of grapes. All of a sudden, we had a river flowing. A woman there said she hasn’t seen this much water on the land, and I quote, “in 20 years”.

So when the rainfly, per user error, malfunctioned and came off in the wind, my whole tent filled with water. Everything I had with me. Clothes, sleeping bag, backpacks. The Bible I brought, since I’d been reading it nightly, was tucked under my cot. It was soaked. Found in about an inch of water by the time I got back to the tent.

The programming showed up

I wasn’t upset about any other wet item besides the Bible. Things have been coming up for me around Christianity. Obviously, I’ve been writing about some of it. But I hold a lot of shame around purity, being a “good girl”, doing things “right”. It’s a type of perfectionism. If I can do this right, then I’ll be loved. The Bible, as far as I know, doesn’t say any of this.

Cultural Christianity, the kind that’s just adopted by teenagers (and adults), always felt like a whose better than who thing to me. How “good” can you be? And I wasn’t raised Christian, truly, at all. My parents were largely secular. They worshiped work more than anything. It shows me just how deep the kind of bastardized religious programming runs through our culture. Where in my own self it’s lain unconscious.

It’s made me think about what we mean when we say “Christianity.” Because there’s the living, breathing relationship with God that’s found in the everyday, in nature, in prayer, in the Spirit moving, in the cosmos and your lover’s eyes. And then there’s the cultural layer. The stripped-down, oftentimes weaponized, version that I actually grew up absorbing in both the places I knew about and the ones I didn’t.

Cultural Christianity isn’t really about God. It’s about social order. About belonging to the right club, proving you’re respectable, measuring your worth by how closely you fit an invisible moral checklist. A superficial adherence to an identity.

And the thing about that kind of scoreboard is: you can never win. You’re always one mistake away from exile. And the thing with me is, no one else is even on the scoreboard. It’s just me and myself. Always looking over my own shoulder, terrified someone will find out I’m not clean or perfect. It doesn’t foster intimacy with God—it fosters paranoia, shame, and comparison. The kind of mental environment where you start to believe no one will love you unless you’re perfect. And if you aren’t conscious about this, you’ll start trying to justify it with a version of Christianity that was never real or written about to begin with.

I couldn’t take it home

I found myself attached to the item more than I knew about whatever was inside of it. I knew I was learning for the first time, but what was I coming into the classroom with? What preconceived notions was I bringing in? What stories had followed me? I’m building and writing my own rubric. The teacher’s first task is clearing out false confidence, or simply, unlearning—making space for truth by uprooting what only looks like knowledge.

I was gifted that Bible by my Baptist minister uncle. So when it got so wet it started to fall apart, I was sad. It’s the only Bible I’ve ever had (besides some white leather-bound one that I was christened with). I’ve brought it with me since I was 16, through life, everywhere I’ve traveled, even though I only recently really opened it.

I tried to lay it out to dry. It made little difference even in the direct Arizona sun. The pages were falling out. The silver on the edges was sluffing off. The cover’s fake leather was shredding more and more every time I touched it.

I knew I couldn’t take it home. It would get my backpack wet at a minimum, and I just knew it couldn’t handle being traveled with again.

The unexpected fire

That night, they had a rare bonfire. Mostly to burn items and plants from a previous ceremony. I love fires. I’m a little fire bug. I was a sight throwing items into a 9-foot-high flame in a skirt and flip-flops.

Since I knew I couldn’t bring the Bible home, I thought, let’s burn it. I was a punk kid so it feels metal to burn a Bible, and I also don’t take it lightly. If it’s so sacreligious you can’t even look at me, then move on. My boots used to say Rude Girl. However, the burning was more for release and transformation of energy than any kind of stick-it-to-the-man thing.

And as I was pulling the already soggy, loose pages from the binding, I can’t say the punk in me was anything but somber. My friends kept asking me if I was okay. I was, but I was with something. At the time, I didn’t understand why I was so moved by burning the book. I spent the whole next day in contemplation.

It only hit me later.

The attachments. The need to be “good”. The brainwashing that this is the way and the only way. How strong the culture is at branding you on this stuff. It shows you how deep it runs in America. Like second-hand smoke, you breathe it in without choosing to.

I thought about the Baptist minister uncle who used to keep me at church past midnight, demanding I accept Jesus into my heart or I would burn in hell. But also that someone cared about my soul. Gave me a book to care about my soul. At least someone cared about what happened to it. This was the only book, for so long, the only piece of knowledge, story, or meaning that made me believe my soul was worth caring about. Was even something to be seen.

I felt all the internal programming tagged with Christianity. The library that lives inside. The parts I’ve inherited and are still coming to understand. The cost of not cleaning that library is subtle but heavy. It can keep you from having a real relationship with God.

The bible I choose

I’ll be getting another Bible, don’t worry. But I want to make sure that the next time I pick it up, the next time I try to dive into the vast knowledge base that is the Christian faith, that I come to it differently.

The storm didn’t just drench my tent—it washed me clean of something I didn’t even know I was carrying. That old Bible, with all its baggage, wasn’t just falling apart because of the rain. It was asking to be released. And I think that’s the gift of ceremony, and of God’s timing. Sometimes the most sacred thing you can do isn’t preserve what’s been given, but let it go when it no longer serves your growth. Fire has a way of sanctifying what water cannot.

I want to begin again with a different kind of approach—one that isn’t levied by what I’m still holding of my own attachments or traumas, but rooted in the living God who shows up in grape-sized hail, in the eyes of people I love, in the quiet mornings on the river. My embodied experience of the divine is my greatest connection to it. A faith that’s less about being “good” and more about being real. Less about cultural rules, more about spiritual relationship. If burning that book cleared even a fraction of the false religion from my heart, then it was worth it.

Because now there’s room for something new to grow.

Love,
Valerie

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