Priestdaddy

by Patricia Lockwood

But religion, above all, must recognize the power of the symbol. It must recognize the power of standing up and sitting down. If the church teaches anything, it’s that sometimes we have to answer for what other people have done. Let me do it by standing up and walking out of the countinghouse, and saving my number for the smaller side. All my life I have overheard, all my life I have listened to what people will let slip when they think you are part of their we. A we is so powerful. It is the most corrupt and formidable institution on earth. Its hands are full of the crispest and most persuasive currency. Its mouth is full of received, repeating language. The we closes its ranks to protect the space inside it, where the air is different. It does not protect people. It protects its own shape. You have belonged to many of them. So have I. The church was one of mine—it was my family. The story of a family is always a story of complicity. It’s about not being able to choose the secrets you’ve been let in on. The question, for someone who was raised in a closed circle and then leaves it, is what is the us, and what is the them, and how do you ever move from one to the other?