annunciation on paper bag

I was at the SBL/AAR in Atlanta some years ago and I drew this annunciation on a bag I'd bought some books in. Note the dove waddling on the ground. Part of my bottoms up theology. Putting the scat into eschatology.
I ponder what sort of theological memoir I might compose. What argot shall I mortgage, to thank thee dearest friend/ for this lamentable mortality, extraterminable pity.
I grew up a Methodist. But both my parents were Baptist. We went to the Methodist church because it was up the road. In an example of how my 9 year old mind worked I reasoned that Baptists were baptized and Methodists were methotized. I was methotized that year. In a few years at 12 our church had a confirmation class and I memorized the apostles' creed: I have to say that this bit of liturgical inscribing was a saving act for me. It gave me the sense that my relationship to God and to the Church was tied to something ancient and universal. Once I had the language inside of me, a language of God's saving purpose through history and Her loving creation of humanity, I was anchored.
The creed was a bulwark for me against the non-creedal preaching of the Baptist church and found in most revivals. I say non-creedal because of the reliance on provoking the super ego: those who practice it love to call it being under conviction - but it is simply nothing more than assailing introverted souls, riven with guilt and shame, to come forward at altar calls - where they'll receive the "free mercy of Christ" which always seems to be conditional, and from which they'll have fallen by next Sunday. Such churches are fertile beds of masochism. I wonder with Earnest Becker in his Denial of Death if revival-oriented preachers are conscious sadists beating their flock of masochists or if they actually believe that they are preaching the gospel.
I remember when I was a young teenager reading the letter to the Galatians. I was astonished. I had never heard this before in church: Christ forgave us and makes us free from laboring under a regime of works; God loves us apart from anything we might do or not do. Mom quickly told me that you have to be careful reading things like that; you could take them the wrong way. So it was back to the flogging stand.
In the midst of all this flogging the creed saved me.
At some point I remember we had classes on higher criticism. The revival sermons disappeared for the most part, replaced with more charismatic emphases. I was caught between these two poles: the intellectual and the "heart strangely warmed" emphasis with a pentecostal edge.