JE #7

I was born somewhat catholic. Throughout time, I’ve been evaluating my religion as well as my family’s commitment to it. All this has been partly due to the fact that I come from an indigenous background, one in which my familia was born and raised in Oaxaca, Mexico, therefore my parent’s continue bringing a lot of indigenous traditions to our household. However, upon migrating to this country they were forced to continue their faith through a more colonized aspect of religion, Catholicism. When I have had the privileged of going to Oaxaca, Mexico, my grandparents would pray to La Virgencita de Juquila, a holy virgin that is well-known for granting miracles for those that made the long journey on the mountains to see her. I have made this journey with my grandparents three times in my lifetime so far. All though Catholicism stems from the colonization of our people, my parent’s faith is different because they choose to honor a mujer that is deemed powerful by granting miracles to those suffering. In a sense, I’ve created a different narrative for this aspect of faith my family claims.

In addition, upon coming to this country religion and faith was no longer a priority, but rather getting food on the table. I always questioned my parent’s commitment to their religion because their attendance in church was lacking. However, I realized that after working 12 plus hours every day, one may not have the energy to attend a one hour mass that may be filled with patriarchy and heteronormativity. (My thoughts on that last part, not my parents) As a person who identifies at LGBT, somewhere in that spectrum, I can see how religion can be a barrier to one’s identity; it has served as one of my metaphysical borders. Due to the fact that religion has been so ingrained into our society, they have created a narrative that God created man and woman as one, and that intermixing with the same gender is wrong. Due to this, my religion and my sexual orientation have had a difficult time getting along. I have chosen to continue with being somewhat of a catholic because I feel that faith is very powerful. I am religious in a sense that I believe in a higher power that maybe is a man or a womyn or gender non-conforming. I believe that humans have misconstrued whatever the creator truly believes about queerness and until change comes, religion and sexual orientation will always be at war with each other. I have chosen to leave the battlefield and believe when I need to believe and be queer as is regardless of my religions opposition. I believe in faith but I don’t believe in the institution that is called religion.