I am lost in unchartered territory. I have to get this right. I'm bad with maps, but that is beside the point. There are no maps for this one. I"m taking my firstborn and letting her go to the land of grown-ups, all by her wild, 20-year-old self. The land where she will make her own decisions, make her own mistakes, make her own successes and where she swears I've done my part to equip her for adulthood.

    We have just this three-day, cross country journey to be together before she begins intense training for participation in a fundamentalist Christian mission experience in Kenya. I can't seem to think straight. I'm afraid to sleep because of the distance it will put between us. She was my first true love - my first experience in knowing what is real, never-ending love. She says she wonders when it will hit her, when she will start to cry. I wonder when I will stop crying.

    She sits now, on the dock by the river, her long legs drawn up close, guitar in her lap, this "grown-up" kid of mine in red and black flannel hunters shirt, her grandpa's oversized, yellow cap on her head. She plays her guitar, sings and watches a lovely deep rose/pink sunset. I hear her voice and music through the wind as I sit on the bed upstairs at the cottage. Time feels unreal. I am bracing myself.

    The 20-year -old woman/kid isn't like other women her age. Not the young, alienated, drug users, people users, self-destructive, numb-to violence "young adults" you read about in the papers, watch your neighbors struggle with and see on the tabloid TV. She is in danger though. She's been sold a dangerous and life-threatening bill of goods as sure as sure as if she's been baited to heroin addiction. This child I love says that she is no longer "my" child. She's a child of the Holy Spirit. She's radical for Jesus. She embraces literal, apocalyptic, scriptural, fundamentalist Christianity and I am to "get me behind her, Satan."

I understand her attraction to "clarity", one true answer and to the ecstasy that makes her feel she is "one with the Spirit". That ecstasy is real - I've known it myself. It's that place where the holiness of reality and nature can visit us, inhabit us and we feel whole. But ecstasy and a sense of connection with all that is good and true and noble doesn't have to be bought at the price she's being asked to pay.

    I know I am not, can't be, the only parent whose child is embracing a dangerous, creative-spirit suffocating, apocalyptic fundamentalist Christianity. I cant be the only parent who fears the wall it builds, the barriers it creates to our truly feeling "family" to one another. I think I know how Mary felt when her newly adult son, Jesus, snapped at her for her motherly concerns. "What have I to do with you? I must be about my Father's business." I intend no blasphemy and I believe there are forms of faith and Christianity that harm no one and enhance the life of the believer. But I will bet that Mary feared for his life and was tortured about how to reach him, how to keep him safe. Poor, grief stricken mother! I wonder how much consolation it was to her that Jesus disappeared from the tomb and people kept saying (still say) they still see him every once in a while.

    And my lovely, grown child - innocent, strong and beautiful, in her craving for safety, peace, harmony and eternal life - has fallen prey to this limiting, soul-suffocating, wall-building, war-creating monstrosity that is called (ironically, if you ask me) salvation. And when I tell her how deeply opposed I am to fundamentalism, how very dangerous and divisive I believe it to be, I am the heathen to be retreated from. I see in her eyes her silent mouthing, "Get the behind me, Satan." And I who have unconditionally loved, accepted, applauded, and given her space to explore, to question, to grow; I - she's being taught - I in my ignorance, my rejection of Jesus Christ, am to be avoided, worked around; loved but pitied. She's being taught not to listen to me. I am the voice of the "world", which is evil, which is Satan. No wonder I think this stuff she's buying like bait on a hook is so horrible, so threatening - it's caused my daughter, who God knows is safe in my love and acceptance, to flee my arms and run to fools.

    With every move and breath of my disbelief I fear sending her further into the hands of lunatics. This "putting it all in the hands of the Holy Spirit" and being taught it's a faith worth dying for takes away her self-trust, her own good sense. She's being taught it is necessary to run every thought by the Word of God, a la literal interpretation of the New Testament Gospels. She's being taught "we are as filthy rags", "lost in sin." And this concept of "sin" as she's learning it is being used as a tool for your entrapment and control. I want to scream, "Honey, listen. You are so good, so very alive and beautiful. You are a gift to the world and always have been. You can survive reality and it's diversity of thought and faith".

    She has asked me to keep my views to myself. She says she's heard it all before. What is my responsibility? I think a young adult just beginning to face the world on her own is in a very vulnerable spot, and there are dangers against which it is appropriate to warn her.

    I have had a steady diet of fundamentalist Christian views from the day I was born. I've read the books, the dogma, the rationale and I had to overcome years of brainwashing to recognize that fundamental monotheism can be dangerous, just as fascism and Nazism are dangerous. I think of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. I think of Jonestown, or last month's allegations against the Christ's Household of Faith commune in St. Paul. Keep my mouth shut? Stand quietly by and do and say nothing? To me it's the worst betrayal and abandonment of my daughter.

    I feel like I'm trying to wake my daughter from a coma, and I have no idea if she can hear me or even know I'm here; touching, stroking, "Wake up, honey, please wake up." And, as long as she is drawing breath, shouldn't I try to reach her? I promise to be gentle, but I can't be silent. "I'm not asking you to deny Christ or quit reading the Bible and praying. I'm asking you to look beyond the confines of your faith and listen to the admirable, intelligent, loving, truth-seeking people who want you to know what gives life, outside of a narrowly defined fundamentalism, it's richness, meaning and peace."