Tell It Slant

Facing the Mountain

“Tell the truth, but tell it slant.”- Emily Dickinson

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Every church I have ever belonged to was different, but my place in it was the same.

Younger me had a closet packed with cardigans. I would never be allowed to fill a pulpit, so I filled hidden drawers with cigarettes instead. I knew from the jump that no one was good. The only logical solution was that we all were. I couldn’t package that in a three-point illustration anyone would listen to.

My Aunt Linda went to Austin Theological Seminary when I was a teenager. She was only able to serve as a Presbyterian minister for less than a decade before dying of cancer. I still have dreams that she is sitting in the first classroom I ever taught high school English in. The classroom is empty except for her. I am teaching Othello in the yellow pencil skirt I wouldn’t be able to shimmy up my left leg now. It is my worst nightmare because it is the Shakespeare I like the least, and she is shaking her head back and forth; her green ecumenical stole shivering with the weight of her veiled disappointment.

"I’m not brave like you.” I whisper to the covers when I wake.

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I was a freshman in college in 2001, at a tiny, private Christian school. That very year was the first year women were allowed to major in Pastoral ministry. (This is not to mean it was encouraged. Tell the truth, but tell it slant). I remember staring at them in wonder- curious how their parents felt about wasting their tuitions. Surely, no congregation would actively elect a female to lead the flock. Then, two planes flew into the Twin Towers and I couldn’t get my Dad on the phone who was making a delivery in Manhattan at the time and I couldn’t imagine the world surviving without the voice of a woman to lead us.

The patriarchy is a slurpee laced with antifreeze.

We stay childlike, blue-lipped and flatlining- poisoning ourselves.

I could never keep confined in the boxes I was meant for. I changed my major 4 times before dropping out. It felt like my insides were burning. Like I needed to molt like a Phoenix. Or a snake. I couldn’t quell the screams and lost my voice. I couldn’t button myself into peacoats and tights without choking. I couldn’t be brave enough to be myself. I couldn’t be brave enough to ask who that might be.

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The perception of the geographical slant and social support was a study published in 2008. It says, in terms anyone can understand, that when two people stare at a hill, the hill is perceived to be smaller than if you were to stare at it alone.

The actual perception shifts when you are in supportive company. Suddenly, mountains that seemed insurmountable are now possible to pass.

I have often thought this beautiful. The proof that our relationships with one another are the magic of ordinary people.

I still believe that. I always will.

And.

I’m no longer the girl who hides cigarettes in my drawer and keeps cardigans in her trunk for emergency Baptist reassurance. I know that too many use the truth of the geographical slant and apply their own slant. To use it to supply an uglier falsehood: that we are incapable, weak, and inadequate alone.

I can attest to the truth of the perception of the geographical slant. The mountain looks bigger on my own. But I also know that is only the perception, and not the reality.

The reality is that it’s the same fucking mountain.

Would I rather face it with friends?

Absolutely.

Can I still do it alone?

Guess.