The Waiting Walk

It’s Halloween.

I do not celebrate it, and I hold a firm desire to stay far, far away from evil.

But what if the thing we’ve labeled evil isn’t the real danger? What if we are scared of the wrong thing? What if our misplaced fear causes us to inadvertently turn away the least of these while inviting evil right into our own lives and homes?

That’s the real horror show.

I am stirred to my very core every time I read this.  So today I share again below.

Witches, once upon a time, were girls.  Women just like me. Full of thoughts and dreams and independence.  Girls who refused to be silenced.  Women who didn’t need men in order to survive, to thrive.  Women who could think for themselves and who had their own relationship with their Creator.

This was threatening to the men, to the system of patriarchy, to the systems of religious control running rampant.  Very threatening. It felt downright dangerous. 

What’s the best way to control something that won’t submit? Kill it.  

But we can’t kill girls.  

Monsters, on the other hand, are free game.  You’re a hero if you kill a monster.

And thus began the process of turning beautiful, intelligent, independent girls into monsters.

And since the winners write history, monsters are what we see when we see witches.

Today, I invite you to see her humanity.

Don’t let her abuser win this one.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and turning wives into witches is something that still happens today.  If the world can be convinced she’s crazy, then he can get away with anything. Literally anything. 

Sometimes even murder.

(For those of you concerned about the association of Halloween with evil – it absolutely exists, but women who choose to be witches today and worship evil have absolutely nothing to do with what I just wrote or with what the following written words refer to.  

Perhaps we should look more closely at where the original evil lies and seek to combat that instead of focusing on the manufactured holiday in front of us now.)

The writing below is not mine, but it touched me so deeply that I must share.

____________

Halloween Witch

By Angel (Petals & Thorns poetry by Angel June-26-1999)

Each year they parade her about, the traditional Halloween witch. Misshapen green face, stringy scraps of hair, a toothless mouth beneath her disfigured nose. Gnarled knobby fingers twisted into a claw protracting form. A bent and twisted torso that lurches about on wobbly legs.

Most think this abject image to be the creation of a prejudiced mind or merely a Halloween caricature. I disagree, I believe this to be how witches were really seen.

Consider that most witches were women, were abducted in the night and smuggled into dungeons or prisons under secrecy of darkness and presented by the light of day as a confessed witch.

Few, if any saw a frightened normal looking woman being dragged into a secret room filled with instruments of torture, to be questioned until she confessed to anything that was suggested to her, and to give names or say whatever would stop the questions.

Crowds saw the aberration denounced to the world as a self-proclaimed witch. As the witch was paraded through the town, en-route to be burned, hanged, drowned, stoned, or disposed of in various, horrible ways, all created to free and save her soul from her depraved body.

The jeering crowds viewed the result of hours of torture. The face, bruised and broken by countless blows, bore a hue of sickly green. The once warm and loving smile gone, replaced by a grimace of broken teeth, and torn gums that leer beneath a battered disfigured nose.

The disheveled hair conceals bleeding gaps of torn scalp from whence cruel hands had torn away the lovely tresses. Broken, twisted hands clutched the wagon for support. Fractured fingers locked like cropping claws to steady her broken body.

All semblance of humanity gone. This was truly a demon, a bride of Satan, a witch.

I revere this Halloween Witch and hold her sacred. I honour her courage and listen to her warnings of the dark side of humanity.

Each year I shed tears of respect.

Image credit unknown 

Poor, sweet girl. How could they do that to her? And yet here we are doing it to so many people around us, each and every day.

When women are turned into witches…

When men are turned into monsters…

When children are turned into leeches…

When teenagers are turned into hormone-crazed zombies…

When young boys are turned into ogres…

When young girls are turned into temptations…

When immigrants are turned into violent criminals…

When homeless are turned into dirty thieves…

When the poor are turned into lazy parasites…

When those identifying as LGBTQ are turned into vicious perverts…

When Jesus-followers are turned into delusional wimps…

…then we no longer feel obliged to see the human. 

But can you see the person? When you see these people, can you see past the label? Do you pause to look into their eyes? To relate to them on some level, even if it is just simply a shared humanity?

Or do you simply see a witch and monster, and join the crowd to go burn her at the stake?

If we refuse to see the humanity of another, it is then that we become the monster. The witch.  It is we who are living in a delusion, and disgracing our Creator. 

We must look at the human. We must value the life.  We must see them as a person rather than relegating them to a faulty stereotype. 

Because usually we are wrong.  

Are there evil witches out there? Sure.

Do teenagers have hormones? You know they do, but they also have desires for goodness and kindness and joy.

Do dirty thieves exist? Absolutely.  But usually they dress nicely and the dirt is the kind that a shower cannot erase. 

Are vicious perverts walking among us? Yes, and statistics show that we watch them leading out in church, we send our children into their care at school or sports, and perhaps we even sleep beside them in our beds.  

The list goes on and on of all the ways that we have lost sight of the harms right in front of our faces while claiming harm from something that barely even intersects with our reality. 

Yet we are willing to go to war for these perceived slights.  Willing to erase people, even forever, if they fail to line up with our way of thinking.  Willing to completely overlook the reality that this person is infinitely loved by God, and instead create and then focus on fabricated dangers that aren’t harming us. 

All while claiming to be followers of Christ.  

All while supporting so many who are actually evil to their core, but who dress well and speak smoothly as they cause untold harm behind the scenes.

May God have mercy on our souls. And may we see women, not witches, in the world around us.