Glennon, you refer to God as “she”—why do you believe that God’s a female?”

I don’t. I think it’s ridiculous to think of God as anything that could possibly be gendered. But as long as the expression of God as female is unimaginable to many while the expression of God as male feels perfectly acceptable—and as long as women continue to be undervalued and abused and controlled here on Earth—I’ll keep using it.

I received an email recently from an old acquaintance at that church I left.

It said, “Can I ask you something? I know that you and Abby love each other so much. It’s really something. At the same time, I still believe that gayness is wrong. I want to be able to love you unconditionally—but I’d have to abandon my beliefs. What am I supposed to do with this…God conflict?”

I felt for her. She was saying “I want to be free to love you, but I’m caged by my beliefs.”

I wrote this back:

First of all, thank you for knowing that you have a choice to make. Thank you for not landing on: I love you, but…We know that Love has no buts. If you want to change me, you do not love me. If you feel warm toward me but also believe I’m going to burn in hell, you do not love me. If you wish me well but vote against my family being protected by the law, you do not love me. Thank you for understanding that to love me as yourself means to want for me and for my family every good thing you want for yourself and your family. Anything less than that is less than love. So, yes. I agree that you have a choice to make. You have to choose between loving me and keeping your beliefs. Thank you for being intellectually honest about that.

Second: I understand this conflict because I’ve experienced it. I still do. For a while I felt scared because I thought the God conflict was me challenging God. Now I know that it was God in me, challenging religion. It was my true self awakening and saying: Wait. This thing I have been taught to believe about God, about myself, about others—it doesn’t fit with what I know from my roots about love. What do I do? Do I reject what I know from my roots or what I was taught to believe?

I can only tell you what I have come to know for myself.

Returning to ourselves is confusing at first. It’s not as simple as listening for the voices inside of us. Because sometimes the voices inside of us, which we’ve assumed speak Truth, are just the voices of human beings who told us what to believe. Often the internal voice telling us who God is and what God approves of is not God; it’s our indoctrination. It’s an echo of the voice of a teacher, a parent, a preacher—someone who has claimed to represent God to us. Many of those people have been well meaning, and others have only sought to control us. Either way, not a single one of them has been God’s appointed spokesperson. Not a single one of them has more God in her than you do. There is no church that owns God. There is no religion that owns God. There are no gatekeepers. None of this is that easy. There is no outsourcing your faith. There is just you and God.

Some of the hardest and most important work of our lives is learning to separate the voices of teachers from wisdom, propaganda from truth, fear from love and in this case: the voices of God’s self-appointed representatives from the voice of God Herself.

When choosing between something you Know and something other people taught you to believe, choose what you Know. As Whitman said, “Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul.”

Having the courage to dismiss what insults your soul is a matter of life or death. If those who claim to speak for God or Truth can convince you to believe instead of Know, to live from their rules instead of your roots, to trust the voices of middlemen instead of the still, small voice inside you—then they control you. If they can get you to mistrust yourself—to stop feeling, deny knowing, quit imagining—and instead rely only on them, then they can get you to act against your own soul. If that happens, they can get you to follow them, vote with them, condemn for them, even kill for them—all in the name of this God who is constantly whispering to you: That is not exactly it.

Perhaps the God conflict is not just about God. Perhaps it is God. Listen deep.

Good art originates not from the desire to show off but from the desire to show yourself. Good art always comes from our desperate desire to breathe, to be seen, to be loved. In everyday life, we are used to seeing only the shiny outer layer of folks. Art makes us less lonely because it always comes from the desperate center of the artist—and each of our centers is desperate. That’s why good art is such a relief.

People often tell me that my writing feels like a relief. What they feel next is a desire to respond to my offering by telling me their story. For many years I’d stay for hours after my speaking events while one woman after another touched my arm, saying, “I just need to tell you this…”

Eventually I opened a post office box and promised people that if they wrote down their stories, I’d read them all. Each week, letters pour in. Boxes of letters are piled up in my bedroom and office. I imagine I’ll be reading them until I’m ninety. A few times a week I put down my phone and turn off the news, snuggle up in bed, and read letters. It is always such a relief. Ah, yes. This is what people are like. We are all so fucked up and so magical. Life is so brutal and beautiful. Life is brutiful. For all of us. I remember now. If you want to get jaded and numb, watch the news. If you want to stay human, read letters. When trying to understand humanity, seek out firsthand accounts.

One night, surrounded by letters that my sister and I had been reading for hours, we looked at the pile and thought: Many of these people have more than enough. Many don’t have enough. All of these people are hungry for purpose and connection. Let’s be the bridge between them. We decided to start Together Rising. That’s how I became what they call a philanthropist.

Since Together Rising was founded eight years ago, our five-woman board and fierce volunteers have spent day and night frantically and relentlessly connecting suffering people with every resource within our grasp: money, service, sisterhood, hope. Since we connect with every person we serve, we’ve learned firsthand that folks are generally doing the best they can. Yet so many still can’t put food on the table or get medical care for their sick mothers or keep the heat on or secure a safe space to raise their children. Every night we’d go to bed wondering: Why? Why are all of these people who are trying so hard—still hurting so badly?

And then one day, I read this:

There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.

—Archbishop Desmond Tutu

When I started looking upstream, I learned that where there is great suffering, there is often great profit. Now when I encounter someone who is struggling to stay afloat, I know to first ask, “How can I help you right now?” Then, when she is safe and dry, to ask, “What institution or person is benefiting from your suffering?”

Every philanthropist, if she is paying attention, eventually becomes an activist. If we do not, we risk becoming codependent with power—saving the system’s victims while the system collects the profits, then pats us on the head for our service. We become injustice’s foot soldiers.

In order to avoid being complicit with those upstream, we must become the people of And/Both. We must commit to pulling our brothers and sisters out of the river and also commit to going upstream to identify, confront, and hold accountable those who are pushing them in.

We help parents bury their babies who were victims of gun violence. And we go upstream to fight the gun manufacturers and politicians who profit from their children’s deaths.

We step into the gap to sustain moms who are raising families with imprisoned dads. And we go upstream to dismantle the injustice of mass incarceration.

We fund recovery programs for those suffering from opioid addiction. And we go upstream to rail against the system that enables Big Pharma and corrupt doctors to get richer every time another kid gets hooked.

We provide shelter and mentoring for LGBTQ homeless kids. And we go upstream to renounce the religious-based bigotry, family rejection, and homophobic policies that make LGBTQ kids more than twice as likely as their straight or cisgender peers to experience homelessness.

We help struggling veterans get the PTSD treatment they need and deserve, and we go upstream to confront the military-industrial complex, which is so zealous to send our soldiers to war and so willing to abandon them when they return.

If we are to create a truer, more beautiful world, we must be the people of And/Both. Let’s keep pulling folks out of the river forever. And every single day, let’s look upstream and give living hell to the ones pushing them in.