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Religious

Instructions:
A Prose Poem

By Jane Gilgun




A nun: Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. She was huge and round, dressed
in black, with a white thing squeezing her face into a fleshy ball.

Me: You mean my body isnt mine? Someone else lives there? I didnt say that out
loud. I was too afraid of the nun. I was ten years old or maybe even younger.

A nun: Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Me: You mean I have to be pure? Im not. I bleed every month. The smell can be
unpleasant. I lust after boys. This is what I thought four years later. You can count
on itI didnt say that to a nun.

Telling me my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit didnt help me. These words had
meaning to me in the context of my church of origin where I had the status of a
sinner and of being impure as compared to the perfect purity of the Blessed Virgin
Mary. It has taken me a long time to absorb the deeper, more accurate truth. We are
made in the image and likeness of God, and God saw that we are good.

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