gold cross necklace

A gold dainty cross necklace sits underneath my chin and hangs from my neck now. The chain is light gold, thin, and fragile. It makes me feel that if I accidentally tug too hard on it it’ll break. The cross itself is slim and simple. Its face is slightly textured and there’s a smaller cross carved within it. I asked my mom for a cross necklace before my 20th birthday in November. She gifted it to me on Christmas Day.

I had a small pink bible that lived on the bookcase built into the headboard of my bed in my childhood bedroom. The side of the pages exposed between the pink padded covers were painted gold and the small pages felt silky and delicate. I scribbled my name over the front cover with a black pen. Next to this miniature pink bible, stood an illustrated children’s book that described the story of Jesus (sans the crucifixion I assume, but can’t remember). Both of these now live in a bin inside my closet with my baby clothes and the rest of the artifacts from my childhood. 

Symbols of Christianity are sprinkled all throughout our Bushwick apartment. We keep a cross made out of palm leaf above our front door balanced behind the cable wire. Then in the bedroom my mom has the “Our Father Prayer" hanging above her bed on a small portrait.

When I was in elementary school and before a big event like the first day of school or a test my mother would rub holy oil (anointing oil) onto my forehead in the shape of a cross. I’d also always have a small vial of it in my bookbag, something that stayed with me whenever she couldn’t be. I still remember the distinct smell of the holy oil, it smelled like olive oil. 

During the pandemic, my mom spent almost all of her free time reading the Bible. I’d go into her room to bother her and there she’d be in her bed with her highlighter reading the Bible. I’d jump into her bed at some random time during the day and right next to the tv remote next to her in bed would be her Bible. Before my Grandma passed away at the end of 2023, she gave my mom a pink Bible cover with the nickname only she called my mom, “Pumpkin”, printed on it. (My grandma mentioned here is not biologically my grandmother, she’s an adoptive grandmother of sorts)  

My mom has a gold cross necklace that I’ve worn on special occasions. I most recently wore it for my high school senior pictures. The gold cross I wear now, for me, feels like a coming of age. I look at the cross and I feel my mom. I feel my grandma. My grandma was so very religious. She’d leave me voicemails of her praying for me, she’d write me letters that always mentioned God, and send me paragraphs on imessage praying for me during monumental life events like my first day of college or a cancer diagnosis in the family. And so, to me, the cross symbolizes the women in my life who love me unconditionally, I mean just for breathing. And it makes me feel protected, especially now that my Grandma isn’t here to be that prayer warrior. 

I remember all these small tokens of religion in my life and still I believe that “Religious” would not be the first word used to describe myself. When I first set out to write this, I thought it would be about me seeing my mom become more religious, but as I reflect I realize that Christianity has always been embedded within my life because of my mom. I called her while writing this. The first thing I said when she answered was, “Are you a Christian?” because I didn’t know for sure what her denomination was (or what denominations meant) and then learned that she’s in the middle between two denominations--Baptist and Pentecostal, and she’s okay with not choosing one. She explained to me that she’s been going to church since she was a kid, which is something I didn’t know. 

Sophomore year I was speaking to one of my friends who wears a beautiful regal dark gold necklace. She explained to me the nuance of her wearing it. I think she and a lot of young people, including myself,  have qualms with how christianity/religion is weaponized to demonize queerness, having an untraditional lifestyle, and to reinforce patriarchal structures. But she wears the cross anyway, because it connects her with her mom, culture, and duh her religion.

Black Christianity, in its purest form, is a stem from the tree of culture that grows, in part, from Black American identity. Most notably, churches were used during the Civil Rights Movements as sites of community organizing. We owe our liberation to these sites. At the same time, practices from Black Christianity are embedded in my childhood in the same way that twists, barrets, and bow bows are. In the same moment that I smelled the holy oil being rubbed on my forehead, I also smelled the jam used in my hair used to tame it into ponytails for my twists. 

I’ve prayed to God ever since I was a little girl. I used to pray over every meal; “God is great, God is good, now we thank you for our food. Amen and enjoy our insert breakfast, lunch, dinner here”. It was like a little nursery rhyme. For regular prayer, It starts off with, “God” and ends with, “Thank you. In Jesus name I pray, amen.” I looked that last phrase up, just because I was curious, and I see that it's “in Jesus’” name with a possessive apostrophe. It’s funny how when you hear something and never see it written down that the phrasing becomes something a little different than the written down text. However, I think it’s tiny examples like that that show how Black people have reclaimed Christianity. I’m sure there’s books on this already so I'll spare you the essay. 

I think I stepped away from religion a bit because it all felt so predetermined. Christians look like this, Christians act like this, Christians speak like this. I don’t know, for some reason it felt like embracing Christianity meant giving up some kind of freedom of autonomy, even though that was never the example given to me by my mom. She’s the perfect blend of loving God and Jesus and still having the mouth of a sailor with a heart of gold. 

I’m still developing my religious identity for myself. I’m learning that I’m a person that likes to take aspects of the traditional and aspects of the alternative and blend them together to the perfect Kayla mixture. There’s a bible phrase I learned while doing an assignment for my journalism class. It’s, “And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” It was told to Dollie Burwell, a Black woman involved with the first environmental justice protest in North Carolina in the 1970s, by her mother. That’s what kept her motivated to fight for environmental justice in her community. I think it’s beautiful. It made me realize why people put Bible quotes in their bios, lol. 

Religion is a highly personal thing to me, especially because belief systems can evolve over time. Mine has. I believe in God; I think I’d crumble if I didn’t think there was some type of being looking out for me and my family and I also believe in the “Universe”, I use those phrases interchangeably. 

I still have questions about religion and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. Like the golden one: I believe in God, but why do atrocities happen in this world if he exists? I answered that for myself and said that God and the Universe do not control human beings. The evil we see destroying this world comes from immoral people who manipulate the word of God for their own personal agendas. To my limited knowledge, Jesus was an oppressed person. Jesus led those who were oppressed. Jesus sacrificed himself to save others. And the answer to these questions allows me to get closer to Christianity for other reasons. Because I realize that it’s not about giving my autonomy away, but actually the exact opposite of being able to live as the truest version of myself and knowing that someone, some being, will always be looking out for me. And also knowing that being the truest version of myself allows others to do the same. To me, the cross symbolizes freeing myself and using my freedom to free others. 

So no, I don’t know all the bible scriptures, but I’m open to learning some. I am open to reading the stories in the Bible because like any text I’m sure there’s things we can learn, and have learned. I wear a cross, yes for the deep ass reasons I said before, but also because I want to. I don’t go to church, and I don’t need to. My mom always says that you don’t have to go to church to have a relationship with God/religion and I agree. For any kind of spiritual balance you have to have community, and I get community in other ways outside of a church environment. Every other Thursday, I’m on a zoom call for a community organization I work with and I joke to myself that that is my church. It always runs longer than the hour it’s supposed to, we have Nuns and Pastors on the call, and it's a space to share frustrations, but also a space to get motivation to keep on fighting. Our quote-on-quote pastor, the chairperson of the organization, is an amazing speaker and always invigorates me when I’m feeling less motivated.  

To close, I don’t have a moral of this story. Religion can be messy and complicated. I’ve been working on this post for weeks and it still doesn’t feel perfect, but I’ve decided to post it in its current state because if I don’t, I never will. I've decided that outside of this blog post, religion is one thing in my life I want to keep personal and private. Thanks for reading, thanks for being open-minded.