When I was thirteen years old, my longing to connect spiritually made me leave my family’s religion and seek a more meaningful spiritual life. This led me to the Catholic Church. I loved the music, the incense and especially the chanting in Latin, but was soon confronted with Mother Mary and the story of the virgin birth, of her “only son”, Jesus.

As a teenager who had never been exposed to this idea, I found it insulted my intelligence. It was obvious to me that she was a woman like myself and must’ve had a sexual encounter to produce the child. The absolute absurdity of this belief ended my brief conversion to Catholicism, but my wrestling with this myth remained a lifelong interest.

I later came to understand that this myth was dangerous—a form of spiritual abuse if the only woman considered holy was one who became a mother while at the same time abstaining from sex. This closed the door to any other woman who was also a mother from being holy and sanctified. In addition, any child, male or female, born of woman (meaning everyone) was conceived in sin. This act of disenfranchising everyone from their native divinity, I considered nothing less than evil. I felt called as a songwriter to use cultural dynamite to blow up this myth.

After a discussion of the immaculate conception at a gathering I finally translated my feelings about the purported virgin birth into the song, “Mary Did It And She Dug It,” co-written with singer-songwriter, Dawna Hammers, who was so uncomfortable with the content, she’s asked to make it clear that she just co-wrote the music. This song has proved to be extremely controversial. The following is a link to a clip. phobos.apple.com/WebObject.../viewAlbum