Christianity infected my childhood home when I was about 7 years old.  That was when the Baptist ladies came calling, handing my agnostic father a little book of bible verses and telling him that the local Sunday school was taking new students and they’d be delighted to educate the four children hanging from the swing set, driving him slightly crazier while mom was in the hospital, birthing out her fifth kid.

Seeing an opportunity for a couple of hours of peace and quiet on Sunday mornings, my parents packed us up and put us on the blue Sunday School bus the very next Sunday.

Thus began my romp through Christianity (baptized Baptist, confirmed Methodist, “certified” New Testament – aka the Pentecostal years, and 15 years of singing and playing guitar in the Catholic Church.)  Breaking the protestant/catholic barrier was just the beginning.  I’ve attended Temple with my Jewish friends, prayed in a Shinto temple in Japan, meditated with a group of Buddhists (and eventually marrying one…at least temporarily), and answered the “Call to Prayer” in a Muslim country – which basically involved finding Mecca by spinning around in the direction everyone else was facing, dropping to my knees, and praying.

It was encountering a number of solitary witches and one coven that I realized the secret I’d been harboring.  A truth discovered when I was about 12 years old but safely hidden.  I am a witch.  I was born a witch.  I will die a witch.  An no amount of religious remonstration was going to change that fact.  Even when what the Pentacostals tried to explain that it was a “gift of the spirit”.

My mother eventually became a minister.  My father remains agnostic but has become a devout follower of Glenn Beck.  And I eventually shook the belief that you can’t be a Christian and a Witch.  You can.  I am.  And I’m going to talk about it here.