A Meaningful Life Is a Messy Life

Like January 6th kinda messy

My silent escape from a tangle of lies took years.

Terror lives in the hearts of men an’ women who look a whole lot like your next door neighbor. I grew up with ‘em — I went to church with ‘em. Hell, I called ‘em my friends.

When they raised their “Jesus Saves” banners in Washington DC on January 6, 2021 — the year that we all hoped would bring us salvation from the one we’d just ended — I knew exactly who they were.

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My name is Wally Faye an’ I grew up in the Deep South.

The Southern United States is a place on the map. But the Deep South? That’s a state of mind. It’s a way of life born on patriarchal plantations an’ systems of slavery that still exist today.

The battlefields of the Civil War may be empty of life an’ their graveyards full of the dead, but the deeply held beliefs an’ cultural values that spilled so much blood on those fields — is alive an’ well today.

My parents came from the cornfields of Iowa, but I grew up in the panhandle of Florida, smack in the middle of the Fundamental Evangelical Christian Church in the 1960s an’ 70s.

I’s raised to follow Jesus, pretend to love — but actually hate — anyone who didn’t follow Jesus, an’ to be a good Christian girl who keeps all the rules. All the goddamn rules.

‘Course we never said that goddamned part out where anybody could hear it. That wouldn't be right.

An’ when it came to racism? Well, that was always allowed.

We were an angry bunch although we’d never admit it. But step inside an’ you can’t miss it.

Ever’ Sunday was treated like a Billy Graham Evangelistic Crusade where the congregation must be raked over the coals of their unworthiness. Ever’ preacher I ever heard pounded a flimsy pulpit of soft pine, yellin’ at the top of his lungs.

We were rotten sinners in need of a thrashin’ an’ they were there to make damn sure we got it.

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From my earliest memory I loved adventure. Damn the consequences!

The true joy of life can only be found in walkin’ the edge of that razor most ever’body else is scared of. My wicked sense of humor an’ personal world view simply added to my love of life an’ all it had to offer.

Unfortunately, the church I attended did not appreciate my way of seein’ things, an’ I’s just a kid, so a mask was required from the very start.

We were wretched worms saved by the grace of an angry god. We dare not show our real face in public — an’ for someone like me — that’s askin’ a lot.

It was exhaustin’ — keepin’ the real me locked inside. By the time it all fell apart, I’d look back an’ see that I’d been diggin’ my way outta the religious prison I’s born into for years.

Shawshank Redemption, move the hell over — Wally Faye has arrived!

A lifetime of workin’ long, hard hours for the church, tryin’ to prove my worth to that angry God I just mentioned never seemed to be enough.

But I kept at it — until the summer of 2010 when I hit a massively hard emotional wall that ever-so-gently — yeah, right — guided me to the ground where I could fall apart.

A freight train of emotion went barrelin’ through my mundane life an’ left me buried in the wreckage it left behind. When the noise of my personal crash died down, I laid there for a while unsure of my next move.

Tempted to hide behind closed eyes, I resisted denial’s seductive lure.

Takin’ a two-month sabbatical from my full-time work in the church, I lifted myself out of the ugly rubble that once constituted my life, found some breathin’ room, an’ took a good look around to see what had brought me here.

A lot was still pretty fuzzy, but one thing was clear.

Ever’thing I’d been taught to believe an’ all I’d been doin’ to prove I believed it — was turnin’ out to be a box of empty promises.

‘Bout as good as tits on a bore hog.

But all my life I’s told if I just did what the church told me to do, I’d be happy, an’ better still, God would be happy, too.

So, after my crash, the first place I went for answers was the Bible. Of course it was! I's just followin’ instructions, right?

But as Albert Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinkin’ we used when we created ’em.”

Sure ’nuf, it wasn’t long before I began to look elsewhere.

My first eye-opener came when I discovered that whole Jesus-Is-Coming-Soon-Don’t-Get-Left-Behind Rapture industry appeared to be nothin’ but a scam!

It started out innocently enough, I suppose. An’ no doubt, there are a lot of folks who still think it’s true.

Ask Mike Huckabee or Franklin Graham or talk to our current Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. They’ll tell you.

But in the end, after a lifetime of indoctrination, I’ve figured out that it’s all just religious fear porn an’ I don’t believe it for one minute. Not anymore.

The history of the Rapture can be tracked back to Scotland in the 1830s when a fifteen-year-old girl declared the end of the world was near.

John Nelson Darby grabbed that ball an’ ran with it, preachin’ that Jesus would return to rapture true Christians from the earth any minute.

On that day, modern dispensationalism, the forerunner of Twentieth Century Christian Right-Wing Fundamentalism, was born.

Then came Cyrus I. Scofield, a one-time Confederate soldier who deserted his post right before the South lost the Civil War.

After two decades of scandal and disgrace (the kind that would make any preacher blush) he reinvented himself as a Congregationalist minister.

Scofield wrapped Darby’s ideas up in a tidy bow, declarin’ God is gonna deal with mankind in seven distinct eras — or dispensations — each one marked by tests and trials.

History, cut into seven neat sections like pie at a picnic, where the Rapture an’ the Great Tribulation come at the very end.

Turns out, right before this Great Tribulation starts, Jesus returns like a knight in shinin’ armor to whisk his Bride — that’d be the church — off to Heaven.

It’s a high octane, whirlwind courtship that takes ‘em on a journey to the Promised Land where they marry an’ live happily ever after.

This destination weddin’, an’ the big celebration of Jesus’ holy copulation with the Bride of Christ at The Marriage Supper of the Lamb, happens as the world is goin’ straight to hell in a hand basket.

Those left behind — those who didn’t get their invite to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb — will endure a season of horrific human sufferin’ an’ torment when God sends angels to slaughter men, women an’ children ‘til the blood runs as high as the horse’s bridles.

That’s a direct quote from the Book of John’s Revelation, straight outta scripture.

Now, when I talk about dispensationalism’s seven eras of God dealin’ with man, I mean all of us — men an’ women alike.

Which brings me to somethin’ I find very interestin’: how the evangelical church magically knows when the word “man” means men only — with all the equipment to prove it — an’ when the word “man” means mankind.

That includes those with a penis an’ those without one.

Most of the time, issues about sin an’ the rules we’re supposed to follow direct us to interpret “man” as mankind.

But when that word holds power an’ status?

Oh no — it’s penis holders only.

Funny how that works.

But I digress.

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We are livin’ in the Last Days, the culmination of our journey on a hell-bent spiral to destruction.

An’ by my calculations, Mr. Scofield is the great-great granddaddy of the Left Behind series.

His wildly popular Scofield Reference Bible eventually made Left Behind authors, Tim LaHaye an’ Jerry Jenkins, a truck load of Deep South money.

Scofield’s 1909 Reference Bible fueled the certainty that the end of the world was near.

It was propelled forward by the South’s Lost Cause Narrative that reimagines and then celebrates an antebellum South full of kind an’ benevolent slave owners an’ their happy an’ grateful enslaved people. Downplayin’ or outright ignorin’ slavery as the real cause of the so-called War of Northern Aggression.

In this re-write of history, the South is the helpless victim, taken hostage by Northern power an’ greed.

Scofield’s Bible popularized the idea that the good guys — true believers — get rescued, while the bad guys get left behind to suffer through The Great Tribulation.

But this Rapture rescue requires the world to sink into utter depravity, so hateful an’ abusive to the church — the Bride of Christ — that total apocalypse is God’s only recourse. After all, the sooner the world burns, the sooner Jesus comes back.

Just ask Mike Huckabee or Franklin Graham or Pete Hegseth. They know all about it.

The Book of John’s Revelation, with its vivid descriptions of unimaginable human torture of sinful unbelievers, became fodder for ever’ evangelical’s wet dream.

Redneck good ol’ boy preachers were droolin’ all over their Rural King denim bib overalls at the thought of divine vindication.

Ahh, sweet revenge.

It’s easy to see how bitter Civil War Southerners might’ve latched onto this kind of holy retribution to soothe the losses they’d endured.

The literal interpretation of scripture made the world a scary an’ terrible place, gettin’ worse by the day. Evangelicals of my youth loved it. Far as I know — they still do.

The belief that we’re livin’ in the Last Days meant the Rapture was just around the corner, an’ that meant conservative, fundamental Christians would finally be vindicated in their beliefs.

That mindset led to the sale of more’n two million copies of Scofield’s Reference Bible — eventually layin’ the groundwork for this whole notion of not gettin’ left behind.

Believe it or not — these ideas didn’t just sell books an’ movies. They fueled a lotta what you saw on January 6. An indoctrinated belief system built on the end times, righteous vengeance, an’ the ultimate vindication of “true believers” — it’s all there, if you’re willin’ to look.

As a teenager, I’s bathed in this kind of end-of-the-world fear porn.

Hollywood loves it.

The movie This Is the End lets you laugh at the end of the world — makes it a little less difficult to think about.

Legion, an’ The Book of Eli, on the other hand, shove your face right down in it, leavin’ you to stew in the horror of it all.

Through these teachings, the call to spiritual warfare became clear: there were evil forces at work all around us. Ever’ true believer must put on the full armor of God an’ fight the good fight.

We were soldiers in the Army of the Lord, an’ the day would soon come when we would be called to die for our faith, if necessary.

We must get ready!

Fear wasn’t just a side effect — it was the fuel that kept us in line.

Turns out though, Jesus had nothin’ to do with this Don’t-Get-Left-Behind Rapture nonsense.

It was invented by John Nelson Darby an’ became its own Rapture Industrial Complex (RIC) through the works of Scofield, LaHaye, and Jenkins.

The RIC sold millions of books, bibles, and even movies, all feedin’ off the fear it created.

But I’s told it was the truth as if Jesus had taught it to his disciples.

My whole life was built on a foundation of fear, an’ this was just one little piece of it.

As shockin’ as all that Left Behind stuff had been, discoverin’ that hell was a fourth century invention by the Church of Rome to keep people in line an’ the money rollin’ in turned my need for breathin’ room into a need to breathe a’tall.

Turns out, it was early church fathers like Ignatius of Antioch and Clement of Rome in the second century, and Hippolytus of Rome in the early third century who decided sinners needed some eternal punishment to keep ‘em on the straight an’ narrow.

A hundred fifty years later, Augustine of Hippo tied up the loose ends, sewin’ up the Christian doctrine of Hell.

Greek and Roman mythology — like the story of Hades, ruler of the Underworld, an’ Persephone, his girlfriend-by-force, manipulated victim — snuck into the mix, but the church never shares credit.

Ideas developed outside their control don’t ever get to take the stage.

I learned that the 21st century fundamentalist idea of Hell, where souls would live in eternal torment, was a foreign idea to the 1st century Christian church — one that the Jewish tradition never taught.

Early Christians focused on God’s justice an’ mercy. They didn’t need a fiery underworld to scare the faithful into submission.

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This is probably a good place to remind ya’ll that Jesus was a Jew. He was not a Christian.

I can almost hear my Granny sayin’, “Hush your mouth, Wally Faye!” as she slowly rolls over in her grave.

But somebody’s gotta talk about this.

‘Cause here’s the thing: those Left Behind folks? Those hellfire an’ damnation preachers? They’re servin’ up this stuff ever’ Sunday.

An’ the people sittin’ in the pews noddin’ along? A lot of ‘em showed up on the steps of the Capital on January 6, chantin’ their way toward “righteous vengeance.”

These two doctrines — Hell an’ the Rapture — were foundational to my religious trainin’. If they’s all just a lie, or at the very least a theory that had morphed into “truth,” what else might be hidin’ under the covers?

I’s finally gettin’ a good look at the mess my life was built on, an’ it was breath takin’. But not in a good way. More like gettin’ sucker punched in the gut.

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That’s when I started meditatin’.

In that moment, a line was drawn in the sand. On one side was the life of a good Christian girl tryin’ to make God happy. A life filled with quiet desperation an’ hopeless resignation to what I already knew was true: I’s never gonna be good enough.

On the other side of that line? I’s tryin’ to figure out where the hell I was. I hid it well, but inside I’s a wobblin’ mess — even before my crash.

Reachin’, seekin’, strivin’, tryin’.

But once I started meditatin’ — the wobblin’ stopped.

Quiet came. An’ not the kinda quiet born of deperation. It was somethin’ else. It was peaceful.

For twenty minutes ever’ day, I could step over that line, leave desperation behind, an’ just embrace the quiet. Not ever’body finds that kind of peace when they crash. I was lucky.

January 6 was a quiet desperation at its boilin’ point, fueled by lies an’ manipulative deceit. A singularity of shameful behavior by men an’ women who ought to have known better.

But these folks were groomed for this day — by preachers an’ politicians alike.

When I watched ‘em march on the capital — I knew exactly who they were.

They were my neighbors in the Deep South, my conservative friends, an’ worst of all, they were my Fundamental Evangelical Christian brothers an’ sisters.

They were Scofield people. The ones taught to expect the world’s destruction as divine justice — the ones groomed to believe they’re soldiers in God’s final war.

Lookin’ back on my life growin’ up in the church in the Deep South, I can see how the trauma an’ fear of childhood eventually led to my crash in adulthood. What surprised me though, was what came after.

When the house my beliefs were built on burned down — I had the audacity to rise again.

Up from the grave she arose!

Just like that Phoenix, risin’ up from the ashes, I’s born again. Not the way my Fundamentalist friends would expect, of course. My rebirth wasn't about followin’ rules or earnin’ favor — it was about findin’ peace an’ my own damn voice.

Lookin’ back, there were moments when I thought I’s losin’ my mind. I’s convinced I’d never be able to share how my life was changin’ — at least not with anybody in the church.

An’ that’s all I had.

Ever’thing I knew revolved around the doctrine that Jesus was the one an’ only answer.

How was my new practice of meditation supposed to fit into that world?

Words like unorthodox, heresy, blasphemy an’ apostasy swirled around my head an’ spun around my feet like a storm. Surrounded by the well-defined world of organized Christianity — I knew there was nothin’ “organized” or “Christian” about what was happenin’ to me.

I felt like Dorothy in the Land of Oz, lookin’ at the strange new terrain.

“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Amen, sister.

Meditation became the savior that Jesus could never be.

With no demand for obedience an’ blind faith, no uncertain promise of salvation someday.

It gave me peace right here, right now.

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About six weeks into the practice, I came face to face with the girl I used to be.

I’d mostly forgotten about her because I got rid of her in 1976 when I left the northern panhandle of Florida for the northern panhandle of West Virginia. I’s only eighteen years old, but this felt like a brand-new start — even if the circumstances surroundin’ that move were heartbreakin’.

My bachelor brother who lived in Weirton had become seriously ill an’ needed someone to care for him. That someone turned out to be me.

When I left the only life I’d ever known on the white sandy shores of Pensacola Beach, I kicked the southern girl part of me to the curb. Told her I didn’t need her anymore.

The girl that talked like a member of the cast of Hee Haw wasn’t welcome in the world I’s about to create. She’d only embarrass me, an’ I wasn’t gonna let that happen.

In my mind, Northerners talked like they’s usin’ a straight edge — sharp, pointy, precise, an’ defined. They talked fast, goin’ straight from one point to the next.

The South couldn’t be more different.

We were all soft lines an’ circles, goin’ ‘round an’ ‘round. The heat an’ humidity slowed ever’thing down.

Puttin’ your thoughts together took more time, ‘specially when I was a child an’ air conditionin’ was somethin’ you enjoyed only on rare occasions.

Back then, that slow talk an’ southern drawl that people seem so taken with today could leave you with the idea that folks were a few bricks shy of a full load.

You know… stupid. Truth is, some of ‘em were an’, well… some of ‘em still are.

But now I realize it has nothin’ to do with the accent. You find stupid just about ever’where.

But the last thing I wanted in 1976 was to be thought of as stupid. So, right from the start, I decided there would be no southern accent for me.

That girl was not welcomed in my new world. If she wanted to come along, she’d have to keep her mouth shut, an’ I did not trust her to do that. So, I left her in Florida with the rest of my life.

Meetin’ that girl in 2010 durin’ a meditation that’s supposed to be empty an’ silent hit me like a bolt outta the blue. I’d tucked her so far away, I thought she was gone for good. I really had forgotten about her.

The sound of my southern voice, however, would stay hidden for another decade. My encounter with the girl I used to be remained a silent one — until January 6, 2021, when she finally had somethin’ to say. I guess she figured she’s been quiet long enough, ‘cause on the day Democracy came face to face with its End-Times-Jesus-Is-Comin’-Soon executioner?

She started talkin’.

She had somethin’ to say.

She’s ready to be heard.

An’ I was finally ready to let her speak.

My lovely fall from grace began with my crash in 2010.

I’s fifty-two years old, an’ it’d be eleven more years before the southern girl you hear talkin’ now would find her voice again.

In 2010, I’s firmly entrenched in the life of the Conservative Christian church, workin’ full time as Worship Arts Director. That’s really sayin’ somethin’ for an over-fifty woman makin’ her way down the halls of Christian conservatism, where women had little to no voice a’tall.

This wasn’t just my religion — it was my career. It was my life.

An’ as far as I knew, there was no place in Christianity for the kind of HOO-DOO I had started to entertain. So, I kept it a secret (feel free to insert a wicked laugh right here).

Once I stepped over that line in the sand an’ succumbed to the power of the dark side (Darth Vader would be so proud), dots started connectin’.

Strange, unexplainable experiences began to unfold — things I couldn’t ignore, even if I wanted to. One of those experiences became a profound gift — one that healed not just my body, but my faith in what was possible.

A whole new way of seein’ the world rose up out of the debris I’s livin’ in. Like a Phoenix risin’ from the ashes, I's piecin’ myself back together. But I still had no earthly idea what the hell was goin’ on — or what the hell I’s supposed to do while it was goin' on.

So, I started writin’ it down.

Oh my god, it was a mess.

But it was my mess.

My beautiful, glorious, god-awful mess, an’ I could finally own it.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t runnin’ from it — I was facin’ it head-on.

An’ now I have the nerve to ask people to read it — strangers who might find my story an insult to long-held beliefs an’ cherished traditions.

But you know what? That doesn’t matter.

Writin’ has been an act of self-preservation — like a shamanic dismemberin’ that changed my life forever.

That’s what matters.

In just a few years, I went from Conservative Christian Music Director to Reiki practitioner, tarot card reader, buddin’ astrologer, an’ author-wanna-be.

My whole world got turned on its head, an’ all the loose change I’d been carryin’ in my pockets went spinnin’ in circles on the floor.

It’s one hell of a story, an’ who knows? Maybe there’s somebody out there goin’ through the same kinda thing. What I’ve gotta say might help a little.

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When I stood in front of my television on January 6, watchin’ a locomotive of frustration an’ anger ram itself into the Capitol, it looked a whole lot like home to me.

A slow-motion replay of my own personal demolition was reflected in ever’thing I saw that day. Years of lies, anger, and fear — it was all there.

As a country, we were bein’ forced to look at decades of madness pressed into a single event.

But Donald Trump didn’t start it. He didn’t even organize it. Sure, he participated — of course he did — but he’s nothin’ but a pawn in a much bigger game. He just happened to be the one to pull back the curtain an’ release this mess into the public eye.

Our forty-fifth president came into office a powerful man, but he was never more powerful than when he garnered the aid of the Fundamental Evangelical Christian Church an’ unleashed on our nation the force of fear an’ anger that had been festerin’ there for decades.

Oh, he played the game well, all right. He saw an opportunity an’ jumped on it.

But make no mistake, the Fundamental Evangelical Christian Church knew exactly what they's doin’. Lookin’ at that angry mob, their screamin’ faces, eyes bulged out an’ glazed over, I recognized ‘em.

They were my people.

For a moment, I was shocked to realize it — but not surprised.

I understood why they’s tearin’ up the city an’ burnin’ down their own house — because I used to think like them. I knew what drove 'em to this.

Growin’ up in the Deep South, we were inundated with messages of fightin' the good fight an’ bein’ a spiritual warrior that could destroy the works of Satan an’ rebuild the Kingdom of God.

This wasn’t just how we talked — it was how we saw ourselves an’ understood our purpose in the world. As far as I know, it still is.

An’ that’s why the girl talkin’ to you now feels compelled to tell her story.

I understand these folks.

I know how they think.

I know the devils that torment ‘em an’ the angels they avoid.

I know the angry God they fear an’ the sugar-sweet savior they worship.

I know these people.

I know ‘em well.

‘Cause I used to be one of ‘em.

[The audio version of this story will be available on YouTube soon.]