[Winner of Senior Division] Yes, God is a Woman

Yes, God is a woman: Soul food as a girl in a modern time 

Supposedly, my cosmic frequency is 500. However, I am not religious. The spiritual, for me, comes not from predefined words or the readymade emotion, but a shimmer that trickles from my fingertips, my lips, my swollen eyes, and my gasp, the color of butterflies in my eyelashes and pearls cradled under my arm. All that is absolute, so I can only cry and think of colors too vivid, invisible to the human eye. 

With that said, I believe in tarot cards and I do believe in magic. A friend of mine recently had a tarot card reading with us, three, curiously standing by. I admire her; when she paints my nails, she wipes the excess off on her shirt and jeans, and she chooses to pay for a tarot reading. At the end of it, each of us could ask one question. Mine: “how will my breakup go?” 

Pam, our tarot reader who I can’t separate from her sparkly mauve tablecloth–(she said she sparkled because her inner child, Sweet Pea, truly desired it)–released a puff of air only a woman with bright pink acrylic nails could breathe. Her sigh was infused with lavender and wisdom that you could make out from her teal veins and slow-moving fingers. “Oh, honey.” She motioned for me to tell him his name and squinted her eyes, her fingertips squirming in the cafe air, hunting for an undying truth about him. “His cosmic frequency is… 14.” We erupted with giggles–he was incapable of unconditional love with a cosmic frequency of 14, seemingly accurate to my personal dilemma. She told me, “close that door, sweetie, and another will open.” 

Regardless of what I asked, I’m confident that Pam would have envisioned for me spoils and lavish love, a happy life fit for any young girl–any boy would have a cosmic frequency far below mine, and any bad omen was a lottery ticket for something better. In fact, when my friend drew the death card, Pam paused and reframed the presenting black void: “well, it really just means that when one door closes, another one opens.” Despite her innocuous tendency towards warmth and door-related metaphors, her words rung true. 

Just an hour before, the four of us–our book club–had sat to read When God Was a Woman, written by historian Merlin Stone. Several quotes drew us in shapes of disgust, our stomachs turned and nerves plucked. For one: Professor R.K. Harrison describes the prominent features of the Goddess religion, including the “‘lewd, depraved, orgiastic character of its cultic procedures’”. Quotes like these exhaust me, draw out a weary elder; anger’s waves lose their might over time. Our faces would still, and the echoes of smiling and tasting each other’s chai would hesitate, soon to be filled by a, “God, this is disgusting”. 

The following conversations meandered through every corner of our lives that was etched with the sticky residue of male-oriented religion, the heavyweight of male bias. I recall hissed cat calls on occasional bus rides, learning that our bodies were the passive counterparts to men, and the way boys I know foolishly speak of prostitution as though they understand; the way teenage girls must right the wrongs of grown men. As girls raised in a liberal sphere, as girls close with other girls raised in a liberal sphere, and as young women, what was certain was the second reality we perceived. 

There exists an emotional truth in a girl’s arteries, a compass for right and wrong when society withholds her influence and suggests that she sit like a real lady. She learns to decipher sin from when what a man calls sin, or what a man, speaking through a woman, calls sin. As a result, she’s left with nothing but intuition, other young women, and sparkly Pam. 

One of the four of us, Mercer, laughed at Pam’s predictions. For her, it was ridiculous to assume knowledge of the future; her premonitions were little jesters jeering at the faces of science, logic, at healthy skepticism and cultural understanding. Ironically, she was the only one who was assigned a cosmic frequency of 510–supposedly, she was more capable of unconditional love than we were. When the humor was recognized, the four of us entwined into a braid of knowing smiles; we painted the base coat of a picturesque landscape painting, a girlish life, and Pam, perfecting the finishing details of her own, couldn’t decipher our language. Her smile was the jasmine adorned in girls’ braids, perched at a vista. 

Confirmation bias was the substance of Pam’s profit. Her predictions could be no more than fable; they were just her respectable side hustle. But I wonder, so what? Religion, ideology, and hope are similarly lucrative. When my friend received the death card and reflected on personal loss, or the queen of cups–an emblem of love and success–why was it insufficient? Why can’t we adorn ourselves with glitter in addition to our velvet and incense? 

Ironically, I wonder if the distaste for tarot stems from its effeminate features: emotion, sensitivity, possibly an obsession with purple bead curtains or bat wings. The picture of tarot is difficult to paint without imagining witches from Hocus Pocus or the laughable crazy cat lady with frizzy hair and thick lenses shielding her eyes. Tarot can only be read by the woman who is so innately in tune with a feminine shimmer; then, naturally, it’s painted as false. 

My friends and I returned to our uneven table, trading whispered smiles. Merlin Stone, speaking through our shut-off e-books, patiently waited for us to read past her introduction. We sat in silence for a moment, before: 

“Do we really feel like reading this right now?” 

“I could go for a board game.” Mercer sighed, but she was happy too.

I believe in tarot cards, but they are not my religion. 

We still have not read past the introduction of When God Was a Woman. That Friday, we played Poetry for Neanderthals, whacked each other with rolls of paper, and left Soulfood Cafe behind in our unintentionally matching Converse; it was all the communication we needed. I imagine the ghost of Merlin Stone sighed. That’s okay; I believe she would do the same, with pearls clutched under her arms, too. All we can do is taste our soul food.