In addition to offering this assurance to Dot, Happy S. deployed another element of the Peace Mission’s theology that allowed her to express a more personal message in the movement’s vernacular. Father Divine preached, “BE STILL and know that God is in you. It is indeed wonderful! God is in you . . . WAITING for the STILLING of your conscious mentality, that HE might work through you and that HE might not only work through you, but that HE might manifest Himself, as a reality in the lives of the people.” When read in light of the knowledge that God was in her and that Father Divine could work through her, Happy S.’s poetic rendering of Father Divine’s ability to make Dot fall in love takes on new dimensions beyond the movement’s official theology. That Happy S. found a way of speaking her desires, unacceptable in the normal and literal course of things within the Peace Mission Movement, in the movement’s own spiritual vernacular comes into sharpest focus in the postscript to her poem: “from Father in me.” At the same time that Father Divine’s theology was intended to limit the development of emotional attachments and sexual contact between members, the movement’s theology, practices and spiritual vocabulary made it possible for Happy S. to form a connection to Dot that remained true to her commitment to the divinity of Father Divine.
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