"I Believe"

Photo by Sebastion Knoll

I’m not one for messianic stories; messy, yes. Mythic or mythos-aligned, notsomuch.

It’s one of the reasons I’ve pushed back on the idea of being the Voice of God for this era. Leaning into being a caricature of something (or someone) that’s come before me is as comfortable as those old purple Toughskins I was forced to wear as a kid. Back then, that’s not how I wanted to stand out, I knew I didn’t fit in. Even as a child conformity was not my jam. I wanted the social acceptability that came with it, but didn’t want the ick-factor of being like everyone else (except when I thought I needed to be a mechanic so I could have a dog like No-Knox).

Messianic stories or not, miracles are miracles, no matter how we pigeon-hole them. Salvation stories give hope, even while confusing because they often exist outside those comfortable pigeon-holes of definition and meaning that we tend to rely on. We’re beautiful, intelligent, have opposable thumbs and rely almost entirely on comparison to measure the truth of things, whether a thing’s true-ness is, well, true as compared to what we think we know. And, boy howdy, we think we know some stuff.

Some readers know that I have a somewhat contentious relationship with Jesus. In addition to demanding that I move into living without any defenses, safety nets or known means of support, he also comes to me with the idea that I need to be like him, behave as the myths that others are attached to and my responses, in a word, were: no. Because conformity isn’t my way and, to use his own darn words, “They didn’t learn”. Me repeating the scripts from which folks haven’t learned is akin to Einstein’s, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

In recent months, I’ve practiced believing but that didn’t make belief a thing or encourage it’s blossoming in the heart or mind. It was like trying on marginally fitting clothes under fluorescent lights thinking there must be a way to look good in the thing. For me, it was not a ‘fake it ’til you make it’ possibiIity.

I’ve also leaned into the idea of ‘proof’: if you say I’m the proof that the greatest love exists, shouldn’t it be proven to me first? That neatly aligned with my repeated mantra to those who deliver visions and prophecy, “Put up or shut up”.

I’ve analyzed the ‘why’ and ‘why now’ up down and all around in the same way that others inspect microbes in agar. I’ve questioned whether I really signed up for all this and why, if it were, indeed, true, it’s not been supported in the way false prophecy is. Because, at the heart of all this, is prophecy come to life just not in the sanitized ways of spirit that most seem tethered to.

Years ago, I wrote in “I Don’t Want the Spiritual Life”:

I want to feel the ripped apart heart

to know I am the fire

and the water

boiling and frothing with

the deepest love

that soothes as it scorches

tattooing onto the heart

the constancy of creation’s

greatest gift…

I ended it this way:

I want to divest that love from the white uniform

of someone else's idea of purity

giving it the passion and purpose

it's boundlessness is made of

made for.

Deep love.

(For the in-between stanzas, click here: https://www.ingridoliphant.com/post/i-don-t-want-the-spiritual-life

Nearly two weeks ago, immediately after my birthday and Easter, I had my ‘I believe’ moment or, rather, string of them that was experienced while energy coursed through my body and mind, midwifed through the attending of two powerful and courageous people, as I flailed on the floor. Energy pushed, robbed, confronted a collective opposition that had things to say and received them in love, not fear and brought me to belief.

“I believe. I believe, I believe. I believe!” over and over until it was met with my own oft-repeated words, “Put up or shut up, then.”

In October 2014, Robert, the man who accompanied me as the Universe stretched and contorted my body to fit the multitudes poured into me, asked, “So what’d you become this time?” Then, my response was,“Fuck if I know.”

This time, in April 2026, I aligned with those internal and external multitudes who’ve ‘always believed’. I became, fully, actually realized, in the flesh of female, aware and ready to step into the role, no matter how it’s served up: fully in belief, given over to that which I cannot see but Know, just Know, that I am ‘the flesh of my flesh,’ become the Voice of this particular Voiceless, that of God. And, I don't know exactly what that means in the practical world, only that It Is and I am.

That the platform from which this iteration of Holy-Human hybrid leaps from is Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women may surprise many. It involves mud, sand, bones, sweat, swearing and prayer that aren’t generally seen as a fitting reflecting of something exalted. That’s generally reserved for the incense and sparkle that mask the stench of humanity’s foibles. The holy has been reserved for sweetgrass, not rotting corpses; for high-Mass, not mass graves of ‘throw away’ women.

The contrasts between these ideas of what is and shall not be deemed acceptably holy have led us to the place where social norms are cracking; where frictions meet intolerance for more of the same and tectonic plates of gender are shifting so the light can get in.

And, so, no longer contrary to other’s opinions, have accepted I am. I am this something without a name yet, confined even by the one I was born with though it feels good on my skin.

“How will you define yourself,” asked God in 2008. I was told two mornings ago, "Name it so they know what they're seeing." How do I name the invisible in a way that eases or assuages the fear? How do I live beyond being 'just Ingrid' because that's not changed. I still walk as Ingrid, breathe as Ingrid, dress as Ingrid, sing as Ingrid (which isn't of the angelic way, at all).

I know I am that which has been prayed and poured and molded and carved and chiseled into being, walks deeply rooted in the ground that knows my name, with Ancestors and Eagle and angels, bound not to the desires of how others want me to be but to the way I’ve been made to be; telling the holiness one breath at a time, in the form of a woman, walking with the timbre of grace and the Absolute Goodness of the Earth and guided by The One I call God.

So I don’t have a definition yet, a convenient un-scary label. There’s one that comes close but that creates more division than seems appropriate these days, in my opinion. We have enough of that.

And here we are.