Jesus Goes to Charm School

Susan Blue

Now that I’m getting older and such, I’ve found a whole new sense of happy adventure. Entirely as a coincidence, I also started blogging. Specifically, I’m blogging about my quirky religious background and the charming path out that I found.

Jesus Goes to Charm School* is my light take on one of our world’s most vexing problems: religious fundamentalism. For these purposes, my little window into that world is the right-wing school I attended, where the boys went outside for P.E. and the girls studied the Christian Charm Manual under the implied tutelage of Jesus himself.

After experiencing a gentle religious un-conversion in my 20s, I began putting all of the pieces back together to form a stronger whole. For me, that meant several years of gradual shifts – after I knew what I didn’t believe, I wanted a full intellectual and emotional grasp of what I did believe. I rewired my brain and found a new way of being in the world. And I think it’s downright charming.

By having a little fun with my old pink manual, I hope to undo the work of what I call “The Charm Marm” and reveal a few effective techniques for finding a more peaceful, loving way to function than what most of us learn through today’s fundamentalist, evangelical strain of organized religion.

So on this blog, you’ll find charm school lessons from my old textbook revisited – including scanned images from the workbook I saved – and some techniques, people and fun things that helped me find my way out.

The past I talk about in Jesus Goes to Charm School led me to invent the Charm-o-Matic, a handy little metaphorical machine that generates conscious delight at the push of a button. On the Charm-o-Matic, you’ll find even more things that embody charm – or charm-i-ness, if you will – for me now.

I love talking about these things, and I hope you’ll share what makes you happy, too. I look forward to knowing you.

*No offense to the actual Jesus intended. Jesus is not a registered trademark of organized religion and was quite the divinely brilliant rebel.