Being Schooled and Groomed by My Church Nearly Doomed Me

Not the Lamb in This Story

It's time.

I've known for years now that the reason I fail to maintain regular posting here every time I set out to revive my blog is that I've been shielding too much of my whole true self.  There are too many topics I've made taboo.  Yet they are the topics that I spend most of my time thinking about, writing about, reading about and watching or listening to media about.  If I were to lift the taboos off myself I've got enough material in my daily life to post something meaningful to me nearly every day.  But I just can't stay motivated to prep the safe posts that used to be enough for me.

Safe is shallow.

Safe is boring.

Safe is irrelevant to both myself and what's left of my audience. 

But I have a story to tell that is relevant to current events.  So in spite of still feeling constrained by the taboos (some self inflicted and some specters of childhood) I'm also feeling called to contribute to the conversation that is attempting to ensure our rights to continue having conversations on any topic we please.  Because if I stay silent and that right is lost I will have been complicit in that loss.

Yesterday I watched a YouTube vid by Rev Ed Trevors of the Parish of St Margaret of Scotland in Nova Scotia commenting on some statement made by Kirk Cameron suggesting that every Christian parent should be homeschooling.  Watch it here: Kirk Cameron v Public Schools.  I was moved to tears by his story of how he and his wife had considered the possibility of homeschooling but in the end opted to keep them in public school because the obligation to equip them to be adults in the world was equal to the obligation to keep them safe from exposure to unsavory topics.

I was crying not because there was anything emotional about his presentation but because the topic itself had triggered an ocean of inchoate feelings from the trauma inflicted by my own sheltered funde (Darby offshoot) childhood.  Being schooled and groomed by my church nearly doomed me. The homeschool craze hadn't started before I graduated but the five or six meeting hall events each week added to the many culture participation taboos added to the taboo against fellowshipping with Christians outside our sect and then encouraging us to choose unchurched kids to 'befriend' so we could 'lead them to Jesus' by quoting bible verses, inviting them to Sunday School and Vacation Bible School, all added up to social isolation.  That along with the indoctrination that ensured that I never learned to think for myself about any topic meant I was ill prepared for adulthood--even the trad wife role which was the only thing I was groomed for.

It also left me with no mental or emotional or social resources to turn to when a traumatic series of events imploded our sect with a fusillade of excommunications that split up families.  Since my father and my mother's twin sister's husband were on opposite sides my uncle limited their contact to about once a year for the last ten years of my aunt's life.  A cruelty I could not fathom. That plus all the other married sisters and all the cousins and all the close friends among children that were cut off just broke my heart.  Staying neutral was considered worse than choosing a side.  All wives and unmarried daughters were expected to follow their head of household's lead.

My husband favored neither side and had no interest in imposing a choice on me. He had been one of those unchurched friends I had in high school and only started attending various church functions with some Marine Corp buddies a couple years before we were married.  He was completely blindsided by what he had married into.  It wasn't until I'd confessed to him several years after the events that imploded our Assemblies that my studies had led me to identify 'the meetings' I'd been raised in as a cult and I no longer felt any affinity with their teachings that he confessed to me that he had withdrawn his heart from them within the first year or so of our marriage--essentially the first time someone behind the pulpit had relegated all members of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God to hell on the basis that their salvation was unreal because their doctrines were heresy.  His Grandmother had been a Sunday School teacher in an Assembly of God church.  That was the moment he was done with it. He kept his feelings and his thoughts to himself for decades out of deference to me.

Thus I was left to try to figure it out on my own.  I was leaning toward the side that seemed to me less mean spirited and a tad more permissive.  It also helped that it was the side my Dad favored.  But then I witnessed someone I loved and respected from that side discipling his infant son for 'inappropriate use of his voice' justifying it to me later with verses and the 'original sin' doctrine insisting it was a father's duty to break his child's will as early as possible.  He added that he was concerned that 'my heart for babies' was clouding my reason and leading me astray.   

His definition of 'loving father' made that phrase an oxymoron and when I tried to apply his concept of it to my Heavenly Father my brain and my heart broke and so did my faith. I was suicidal for half a year before I began to try to reconcile the shreds of my soul. It took me ten years to sort it out.  I read widely across the Dewey decimal system and learned to think for myself.  Something I gave myself permission to do after realizing all the Elders had forfeited their authority over me in light of the mess they had made.  I swore then to never submit my mind or my heart to any human authority over my relationship to God. 

The one thing I never lost was the Jesus in my heart. I can thank my Dad for that as he was the one who introduced me.  It is one of my earliest memories.  I was still in the crib and possibly not walking yet because I still had to hang on to the rail with at least one hand to not plop on my butt. He was singing little Sunday School songs and quoting verses and pantomiming the meaning with gestures and my stuffed lamb.  (not the lamb in the picture) The message was that Jesus was a good shepherd that loved his little lambs and I was Jesus's little lamb and he'd always hold me in his arms and he knew my name and my name was written on his hand and he wanted to live in my heart.  I think I got some of it confused for a time because at least for as long as I remained in the crib I thought my little lamb's name was Jesus.  But those concepts were written on my heart as deep as a computer's operating system.  To erase them would have erased me.   

When I laid my new foundation it was with Jesus' own words, the declaration that God is Love coupled with the definition that Love casts out all fear, and the list of the Fruits of the Spirt in Galations along with the admonition that 'By their fruits you shall know them..  I added to it later but only things that were fully compatible with those things.

My goal when I started studying outside the Bible and the approved doctrines was to find a new faith family but of the hundreds of sects I encountered in my studies of church history none met my fundamental criteria that dogma and doctrine MUST bow to the Fruits of the Spirit.  I cannot tolerate even being complicit in a group practicing bullying.   There is very very little in organized, hierarchical religious communities that does not favor power, authority, control and the use of fear over the fruits of the Spirit.

I have teetered on the edge of giving up identification with Christianity for awhile now because I do not see (especially here in America) any churches that reflect the Jesus in my heart.  All I see is bullies and insistence on certainty as the definition of faith.  But every time I'm about to slip over that edge I encounter someone like Rev Ed Trevors who reflects back to me the Jesus in my heart.

After well over a year of reading and contemplating I came to understand that faith had little to do with believing a set of doctrines or adhering to a set of taboos. This was the first key solving the paradox that almost broke me.   Faith is about confidence in the loving-kindness and mercy of my Creator and then living from that. If I am not letting my light shine from that place then all the bible verses I might quote are worthless hypocrisy. 

'By their fruits you shall know them' became my motto. And then the philosophy at the root of my Fruits of the Spirit storyworld.  I suspect my reluctance to break those self-imposed taboos is also what is keeping my stories and poems trapped on my hard drives.

This key--that faith is not related to certainty--broke me free from the fear that the loving gentle Jesus in my heart might just be an illusion, an imaginary friend or even a manifestation of Satan impersonating Jesus to keep me on the path of disobedience.  All among the explanations given me by those offering counsel during those years.

I have found only a small handful of Christian pastors, teachers or writers in my decades of exploration  that I can tolerate listening to. Rev Ed Trevors is one of them.  Encountering him over this past year has given me hope that I may yet find someone on my side of the continent that I can tolerate listening to or fellowshipping with without loosing myself. 

I get the sense that even tho he might not agree with some of the new understandings I've developed he would still accept me where I'm at without insisting I either conform or keep my thoughts to myself.  I can never again do either in any sustained relationship like church fellowship requires.  In fact I've come to understand I don't need a big faith family..  Just one or two of like mind would be enough and fulfills Jesus' promise to be present if two or three are gathered in His name. 

I rarely comment on social media but after I got the emotions triggered by dark memories under control I was filled with gratitude just to know there are Christian fathers out there that encourage their children to learn to think for themselves.  It gives me hope.

I decided that warranted reaching out to thank the one who had given me many occasions over the past year to be grateful for encounters with someone who models Christianity in a way I can still identify with.  Then I found myself sharing my story in more detail and more candidly than I ever had here and when I found myself barely hesitating to post that comment, I realized it was time.

It has been 30 years this November since the incident that nearly broke me.  That baby now has two babies of his own and is 7 years younger than I was then. Until 2015 I'd maintained fairly good and semi-open relationships with my siblings and most of my extended family in spite of my refusing to attend church.  Then in 2016 it became obvious that I'd have to cloak over 80% of my true self while in their presence to preserve harmony (and at that time a roof over my head) which is a lonely place to be.  Even lonelier than living alone as a widow.

That brings me to the relevance of my story to current events.  It was when I learned that the Evangelicals were endorsing Trump in 2016 that I first began to feel alienated from my identity as Christian.  It was getting harder and harder to feel at home in that identity because the Jesus in my heart did not feel at home in that identity as it was being modeled all over the media.  NONE of the fruits of the Spirit were being exhibited.  Instead of Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Mercy, Kindness, Compassion, Moderation and Hope I saw instead a passion for Power, Control, Riches, Hate and Vengeance.

One of the things I was grateful for as I studied the history of the Church and it's relation to the state from the time of Constantine to the framing of our Constitution was that the Elders in my sect had not had weapons to use on each other and their flock or the power of the state to back their use of beatings, imprisonment or execution.  Nor did they have the right to invade our homes to confiscate forbidden media or to deny those they deemed heretic the necessities of life--jobs, food, homes, dignity, healthcare.  But that is the aim of those behind Project 2025. Which I began reading about a month ago.  I am unlikely to finish it's 900 pages before the election so any review I might produce at that time would not be useful in preventing it's implementation.  So I intend to start sharing my journey through it in other ways.

That is just one book of many with relevance to this topic that are in my currently reading or recently finished lists.  I think I'm going to start treating all of them more like I treat the books I read during the readathon (see My Brain on Books posts). By that I suppose I mean less formality, more reflection than review and spiced with elements of my personal story whenever it sheds light on the relevance of subject or story to me. Also sharing more than one book in a single post when they seem to be in conversation with each other.  I will do the same with other media.

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ROW80 Round 2 2022 Check-In

 

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 2 2022

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

Since the last time I made a goal post many things have changed in my life circumstances.  I became a widow and then a few months later moved into my own apartment where I depend on the aid of caregivers for many daily chores and errands.  It was a big change and a steep learning curve which I'm still climbing.  But things are settling down enough now I feel able to make commitments again in this area.  

I'm thinking now that it might have been a mistake to think I needed to get past the move chaos first and instead look for a way to fold the writing into even that and add the move related goals to the list here to teach the living goals how to play nice with the writing goals and visa versa.

At any rate I'm back now and highly motivated again after a hugely successful Camp NaNo win that was about way more than reaching the word count goal.  I reached the much more important goal that the project had been designed to obtain and that was breakthrough in the psychological blocks keeping me from owning my truth which was also keeping me from completing any of my WIP because every time the stories began to touch upon the themes that triggered my anxieties I shied away.

Last Friday's post Of Flux and Fuss and Frustrations describes the breakthrough and how it relates to my leaving the fundie cult I was raised in in 94 and then using the FOS storyworld to explore my thoughts and feelings about it tho only just so far...

Because I am in my own place now and no longer having my elderly mother's needs dominating my attention I have more autonomy over my schedule and so I've been able to double the time investment in many of the non-writing goals like reading and craft study. But even there I know myself well enough to know that setting my mind to any task for at least 20 minutes increases the probability that I will still be at it two hours later.  Even four hours or fourteen hours later.  That is an aspect of my autism spectrum that transitions between tasks or any mind state actually are very difficult but once the transition is accomplished I'm all in.  

Focus once it kicks in is my superpower but it can also be a super pain in the butt for myself and anyone forced to deal with me.  Thus one of the things I need to make an aspect of my goals is to keep a watch for when the problem isn't devoting too little time but devoting an unreasonable amount of time.  Unreasonable defined by how it impacts my health and wellbeing in other areas.

Because in order to keep this place as a viable writing haven I must keep myself healthy, the environment clean and clutter free, the bills paid and the errands ran.  That means keep a constant sleep schedule, set task alarms, answer the door when my caregivers ring, eat regular healthy meals, plan and execute the tasks required including prepare for HUD inspections, make appointments and keep them and continue to purge and organize the stuff I moved in as I bring more over from Mom's.  I may discuss some of these in the check-ins as they impact my writing goals but unless they become such a problem they start to threaten my health or my ability to hang onto my place then I may have to define a goal.

2022 Round 2 ROW80 goals:

Sleep 7.5 hours Daily Minimum --  Used to be a challenge but I've kept it fairly steady for over two years now.  

Move/Breathe/Meditate 15 min Daily minimum  -- Swaying on the mini-tramp can include all three simultaneous.  There are a number of other ways I can do any one or combine two but it is essential that each one is included every day. The MOVE part is going to be the most challenging as I injured my knee during the move last summer and every time I increase activity I tend to tweak it again. But these have proven to provide a high yield return on investment as whenever I've practiced any of them it stimulates creativity, memory, and insight; lowers anxiety, and increases energy, stamina and a positive mood.

Storydreaming with note-taking tools at hand. 30 min Daily MInimum -- This is a technique I learned from Robert Olen Butler in the book From Where You Dream.

Read Fiction 60 min Daily Average

Read/Study Craft 60 min Daily Average 

Social network activities 30 min Daily Minimum (writing Joystory posts doesn't count only social reaching out like reading/commenting on other blogs, guest posts and posting to fb, twitter, pinterest etc) -- something I've a strong resistance to.  The autism diagnosis helps explain this but doesn't let me off the hook.  If anything it makes it more important.  Plus this is preparing the ground for future promotion once I'm ready to publish

30 min Daily minimum engagement with a scavenger hunt though all my creative writing files including Joystory looking for better than shitty first draft scenes, sections, stories, poems and essays and edit, organize and make hard copies. --  It's been years since I've made clean copies of manuscripts in my portfolios and for most of the noveling writing challenges I've never printed hardcopy.  That is a lot of words to mine as between 2004 and 2015 I participated in more than one such challenge per year-- Nanowrimo, Junowrimo, Camp Nano, ROW80 and Sweating for Sven among them.  That is a lot of novella length WIP just gathering electron dust.  A conservative estimate is over 20.  This is an exercise in honoring old work to encourage new work.

Create and maintain a FOS Storyworld Bible as part of the file mining.  The aim is to collect in one place all the Character rosters, character sketches and monologs, family trees, timelines, themes, real world history that backdrops the story, landscapes and floor plans and other such story criteria that may be relevant between multiple stories in the storyworld.  This should also help me sort out which of the individual POV WIP really need to stand on their own and which need to be blended together.   Another exercise in honoring old work to encourage new work.

To prep for self-pub: Gather all my poems into a single Scrivener file. Minimum one poem per day until all accounted for.  Adding new ones encouraged.  See Poems by Joy Renee Portal.  Another exercise in honoring old work to encourage new work. 

Continue writing in the Camp NaNo True Joy memoir file 1000 words Daily Minimum -- This is the heart of the writing challenge.  The preceding provides the structure and the nutrients that nurtures and honors the work which I've learned over time must exist to ensure that this becomes more than just dabbling.  This has been an exercise in honoring my heart and mind to learn to stand in my truth and to explore the events in my life that either inspire or block the writing of the stories. The breakthrough I made during April Camp NaNo gives me hope that the words will soon flow again in the stories. They have already started to haunt my waking and sleeping dreams again.

Choose a story or POV character WIP to focus on for the month of June for JuNoWriMo.  This would be a rewrite more than an edit but there would be both editing and added words involved.  I already suspect which story it will be but I need to take a fresh look at it before I commit. It is even possible I might choose two.  One that needs mostly editing and another that needs significant words added.

Post one review of a book or a video every week.  See this week's review of M K Wren's A Gift Upon the Shore

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Book Review: A Gift Upon the Shore by M K Wren

 

A Gift Upon the Shore
by M K Wren

M K Wren's A Gift Upon the Shore was a gift to readers everywhere and everywhen back in the day before smartphones and internet.  It's a post-apocalyptic story about saving the books for future generations.  

I read it first time decades ago when it first came out in the early 90s and felt the need for a reread in this day when the book burners and banners are at it again.  

What might happen if they gained the upper hand?

The premise:

Civilization is gone.  Nuclear winter just set in.  Two women alone in a house on a bluff above the surf on the Oregon coast not yet knowing if there are any survivors in the local rural community and if so are they the friendly kind?  

The runup to the nuclear End had seen a  plague that killed millions in America alone, roving gangs of nihilists terrorizing those still civil, half of California fell into the sea taking 2 million more souls, the president had been assassinated by a bomb and those taking the power canceled the constitution and set up a Federal Information Broadcasting System.  

You saw that right: FIBS.

But even that was gone on the day the bombs fell as the EMP took out all electronics including car ignitions and digital clocks, home appliances and power tools  And then nuclear winter set in within days.

Is there hope?  And if so will they choose it?  

The only clue is in the author's choice of names for her protagonists: Mary Hope and Rachel Morrow.

This book came back into my life like a miracle.  I'd thought about it often over the years as memories of scenes haunted me as did the mission the women took upon themselves after the initial shock wore off and they had assured their basic survival needs by looting the abandoned buildings and vehicles within a day's travel on horseback.

Instinctively, part of their looting had included every book they encountered until the volumes they found together with those they'd already owned topped 10K not counting duplicates.  It was nearly a full year after the End when they had the time to contemplate a future for themselves and for humanity.  And that is when they devised the mission to preserve the books for the future.  

I had vivid memories of images of them wrapping the books in aluminum foil and then applying a waterproof sealer which I could not remember.  I remembered they had built a vault by digging a cave into the side of the bluff above the surf and lining it with stone and cedar planks.  I remembered that later in the story someone had tried to dynamite the vault.  And that that someone was related to the Christian cult they had encountered years after the End.  The first and only survivors they did encounter within the decades the story covers.

I had remembered that much but even that more vaguely than that summary implies.

I had lost my reading records in a move and could no longer remember either author or title.  But I did remember we had once owned a trilogy written by the same author and that it had been a sci/fant story involving another fundie cult and that the title of book one had the word Lamb in it.  That wasn't enough to find a viable search term for online resources.

But then one day while searching something else altogether (which I no longer remember what it was or the search terms) there in the results was one of the books from the trilogy and there was the author's name and from there it was just a click to find her list of titles and there it was.  A Gift Upon the Shore.

That happened no more than a month before Dewey's thon and I thought what a perfect read for Dewey's legacy.  So I made myself wait for the morning of the thon to start the book.

Reading this book was a slow slog due to eye issues (legally blind with RP) combined with emotional issues related to the events in my life in the late 90s that caused me to excommunicate myself from the cult I was raised in.  I wonder now what role this book played back then in helping me identify my own faith community as similarly toxic to the one featured in Wren's book.  

It must have had some impact if even unconscious as I read it when it was still a new hardback at the library in the early 90s and the first inkling I had of the doctrinal disputes that were about to implode our faith family was in 92.  Then in 94 I witnessed the disciplining of an infant for "inappropriate use of his voice" as the men in the room calmly discussed scripture and the women calmly handed out dessert plates and the small children calmly played their little games on the floor.

That scene became a tornado that devastated my soul. That picked me up out of my world and set me down in what might as well have been another planet. That turned me from a True Believer into a skeptic and set me on a mission to learn to think for myself.

There is a scene in this book where a 13 year old is whipped with a belt for blasphemy for asking in church why the begets for Jesus in the gospel don't agree with each other and both lead to Joseph and not Mary who was supposed to be a virgin.  Reading that scene again after spending the month of April writing my memoir of the events that catapulted me out of my faith community was so surrealistic I can't even...

It was like pouring salt on the wounds I just ripped the scabs off of.

See Friday's post, Of Flux and Fuss and Frustrations, for a more in depth explanation of the roots of the emotions this novel is stirring up.

The read-a-thon was supposed to end at 5AM Sunday for me but I read on until 7:30 trying to finish this story. I was still just over 10% out when I had to give up. Then I woke up after only four hours of sleep and after coffee picked up the book again--and fell asleep over it waking at 9pm after another 4 hours of sleep.  I finally finished it after 10PM. 

This story is going to haunt me for the rest of my days.

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I Want to be a Woman of Courage Using My Words Like This -- ROW80/CampNaNo

The power I felt coursing through me as I listened to Congresswoman AOC is what I had been hoping to find in myself via my writing this round of ROW80 and July Camp NaNo.  This is why I chose journaling and editing my poetry portfolio as my project for these summer months and thus my goals for the writing challenges.  

Instead I find myself woefully lacking in courage, my jaws locked and my throat spasming as I choke on the words I won't let myself speak or write. I find that a good portion of the fear blocking my words is fear of being found out by those in my life with similar attitudes toward women as that of Congressman Yoho whose verbal abuse of AOC was caught on camera on the grounds of the congressional buildings and whose later inadequate and insincere apology on the floor of Congress sparked this retort by AOC.  

There are many still in my life from the 'church' I was raised in whose relationships I don't want to loose but whose respect I can only keep if I keep quiet about how far my personal philosophy has deviated from that I was raised in.  Many would be shocked to learn that I consider AOC my heroine, that I find the platforms of feminism and progressivism completely compatible with my concept of Jesus and that if not for my disabilities I would be out on the streets with the protesters demanding dignity and justice for all.

Oh, none of those I'm thinking of would speak to me with the crass words and obnoxious tone that Congressman Yoho spoke to Congresswoman AOC but they would ground their exception to my beliefs in the same doctrine and in the name of the same God and express their 'disappointment' in me and they would pray for me that God would show me the error of my ways and thoughts and they would 'share' their concerns for me among each other via conversations, phone calls, prayer chains, text messages and emails.  When I've found myself the focus of this form of 'love' bullying in the past I have felt like I was smothered in marshmallow cream and as unable to resist as I would have been if subjected to a choke-hold or the weight of a body kneeling on my throat.  

Thought police come in many forms and some of them apparently live inside you.

It has been less than two months since I ended my marriage of four decades because it was no longer physically or emotionally safe for me to remain in that relationship and now I'm faced with the prospect of risking nearly every other significant relationship in my life or voluntarily smothering my own soul.  

No wonder my words are rotting in my craw.

I want to be a woman of courage using my words with power and conviction like AOC.

Or so I say.

Why can't I follow thru?

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 3 2020

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

Camp NaNoWriMo July 2020

2020 Round 3 ROW80 and July Camp NaNo goals check-in:

* Sleep 7.5 hours Daily Minimum --  Satisfactory effort

* Move/Breathe/Meditate 15 min Daily minimum  -- Satisfactory effort

* Storydreaming with note-taking tools at hand. 15 min Daily Minimum -- This is a technique I learned from Robert Olen Butler in the book From Where You Dream. -- Unsatisfactory

* Read Fiction 30 min Daily Average --  Above and beyond

* Read/Study Craft 15 min Daily Average --  Above and beyond

* Social network activities 30 min Daily Minimum (writing Joystory posts doesn't count only social reaching out like reading/commenting on other blogs, guest posts and posting to fb, twitter, pinterest etc) -- something I've a strong resistance to.  --  Satisfactory effort

* 30 min Daily minimum engagement with a scavenger hunt though all my creative writing files including Joystory looking for better than shitty first draft scenes, sections, stories, poems and essays and edit, organize and make hard copies. --  Unsatisfactory

* To prep for self-pub: Gather all my poems into a single Scrivener file. Minimum one poem per day until all accounted for.  Adding new ones encouraged. --   Satisfactory

* Personal Journaling 45 min or 1000 words whichever come first Daily Minimum -- This is the heart of the writing challenge.  The preceding provides the structure and the nutrients that nurtures and honors the work which I've learned over time must exist to ensure that this becomes more than just dabbling.  --  Unsatisfactory

For an explanation and links to backstory see the ROW80/Camp NaNo Goals post.

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Book Review: In the Days of Rain: A Daughter, a Father, a Cult by Rebecca Stott

I read this via BARD (nls..loc.gov) audio for the print disabled. It was the recording released commercially--read by Rebecca Stott herself. That contributes to the experience. I suspect some of the history might be difficult to wade through for anyone not personally vested in learning it if not for the author's own voice infusing emotion and personality.

I read this book three times in two weeks. I seldom reread a book inside of a year. So that should say something about its quality even if personal motives played a role.  Which they did.

Before I proceed I must correct the record of my three readings in my Goodreads review. I'd registered the book as 'reading' the day I started the second read and forgot so tried to fit the three reads between April 17 and 28 tho a closer look would have revealed that was less than ten days when I knew it had been two weeks on the 27th the day before the thon.  The correct dates are:

• First read: April 13-16  listening at normal speed for the full effect of Rebecca's voice. 5hrs Friday.  3hrs Saturday.  1.5hrs Monday
• Second read: April 17-24  listening with Mom at lunch 40 to 120 minutes at a time with a couple skipped days
• Third read: April 28  for the read-a-thon listening at 225% speed, start to finish in 4.5hr focusing on facts, keeping the emotional maelstrom at bay

I can't share my reaction to this book without sharing my own story as the two are entwined. I was raised in a splinter off a splinter of the original Brethren sect which imploded in my late 30s. I kept telling myself that one year and then five, one decade and now two should be plenty of time to get past the trauma and move on but I keep stepping in mental and emotional mine fields. Following Rebecca's story as she lived through similar experiences resonates so with me its as tho a church bell rings inside me vibrating my bones.

Bibliography, citations and notes were not part of the recording. If they exist I need to find a copy so I can follow her sources. I'd be grateful for leads to any material shedding light on the history of the Brethren sects (Exclusive, Plymouth etc) and their spread across N. America and the globe (It was news to me it went global) and John Darby, C. I. Schofield, or our founder, Nels Thompson. I'm also interested in anything regarding fundamentalism of any religion including scholarly studies, diaries and biographies of members and memoirs of escapees. And anything relating to the psychology of fundamentalism and the aftermath for escapees, including any online support groups for escapees.

This book fits three genre. It is biography when telling her father's story, memoir when telling her own story and history when she follows the family trees back to the founding of the Brethren. The history sections sound like a professor wrote it--which is so after all. The professor often seems in control of the father's story. But when her story and his story converge it becomes memoir and that's where her writing shines. The history sections can be pedantic but when it's personal her story is moving, at times poetic; wrenching and dark but with moments of laugh-out-loud humor and often glowing with the dawn of hope.

I craved the history as I knew little from before our founder split from a Texas Plymouth Brethren Assembly in the early 1900s. My mom was a toddler when her family joined in California in the 30s.  My dad was in high school when his mom joined in Idaho in the early 50s. They met while the Longview, WA Meeting Hall was being built in the mid 50s.  The Hall I attended Meetings and other functions in several times a week until age 21.

With Rebecca's relating of the early history I now have a good sense of what happened between the 1830 founding and when John Darby split the Plymouth Brethren off and left Britain to found dozens of Assemblies across Canada and America using the traveling tent revival meetings to seed them.  I know only that much about the North America beginnings and wish to know more.  Stott had little to say about it other than their leader J.T. Jr. actually lived in New York. If she explained how it came about their British Assembly was controlled by an American I missed it. Three times!

It was heartbreaking to hear of families fractured by Withdrawal from any who did not join, believe without doubt or obey the rules without fail, and the many suicides as a result.  I witnessed similar splitting up of families. We called it Removal from Fellowship. After three generations families were so intermarried few escaped the trauma of separations. In the final implosion my Mom's twin sister's husband and my dad were on opposing sides and my Uncle kept their contacts rare and brief for the last decade of her sister's life.  I forgive most offences easily but that one...

I never heard of suicides due to Removals but I was suicidal for over a year as a result of the events leading to my own repudiation of the Doctrine between 1992-4, involving witnessing the abuse of children and recognizing it for what it was--a direct result of belief in the doctrine of Original Sin.  Watching an infant disciplined for crying, I said NO to any god who requires breaking a baby's will or use of corporeal discipline on a preverbal child.

My own father, who was the gentlest of men, spanked my buttocks and thighs black and blue one July 4th night when I stood in my crib screaming 'Boom. Boom. Mama' between wails for hours. I was 19mo. He 26yr. I have no memory of it. It's just a family story and Daddy's remorse was part of the story. I never experienced conscious trauma associated with it. But hearing of the time Rebecca's father beat her black and blue at age three because she would not stop crying on command triggered a series of flashbacks so intense it must mean the PTSD, quiescent so long I thought it conquered, has not released its grip. Maybe because I've self-isolated such that I get little exposure to the triggers. Or maybe unconscious memories still fester.

Rebecca relates incidences of physical abuse by the men against their children and wives. And mother's against their children. One of her grandmothers threw her daughter across the room, breaking her arm. The same grandmother who, epileptic and 'willfull' was committed to an asylum in Australia for over two decades.  A practice not uncommon with men who couldn't control their wives. That was not done in our Assemblies. Thank God for that!

Imagine growing up without holiday or birthday celebrations, TV, radio, music other than hymns or classical, movies, parties, card games, county fairs, amusement parks, proms, carnivals, parades, make-up, dancing, comic books...that was my mom's upbringing and to some extent mine. Tho many strictures were relaxing as I entered school we knew not to flaunt it in front of those who still held to them. Enforcement for us was via mild to moderate shaming. For Rebecca's family it was all of that and more with enforcement akin to the Inquisition (including coerced confessions of imaginary sins) with emotional torment instead of the rack and shunning instead of immolation.

The strictures Rebecca lived with until age 7 were much more confining than ours. The list of don'ts was long for us but at least they didn't forbid the library. I can't imagine my childhood without the library. Rebecca lucked out when a teacher who didn't know her parents forbade it gave her a pass to the library when she finished worksheets well inside the allotted time. There she found hope and windows into other worlds than her own.

I highly recommend this book. Especially to anyone who escaped, knows someone who escaped, or knows someone in a fundamentalist sect/cult. Or anyone wishing to know what life without freedom looks and feels like--when every thought is dictated and every act is witnessed with judging eyes; when the judge lives inside you monitoring everything and finding it wanting. So what if it destroys self-worth. You are not supposed to have a self.

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Thursday Thirteen #47

Thirteen Things About My Wretched Wednesday

1. It didn't start wretched if you count the hours between midnight and 1PM during which I had a very good--exceptionally good session--first spending several hours creating my second official post on my new Wordpress site and then visiting the recipients of the award I was passing on. You could say I was riding a bit high during those hours. I ran into a few snags as I fumbled my way around a new platform but each time I solved the problem I felt a little tingle of pleasure. I do not handle change well at all so I expected to be anxious and I was. But the fun associated with receiving the award and anticipating visiting the ones I was tagging in return to alert them of the award and at the same time of Joystory's move kept me motivated. Scroll down to the post below to see a crummy facsimile of the post I'd created.
   
2. In fact, I was so motivated that I was still riding a high when I finished making the rounds. I seriously considered starting a draft of my TT immediately. The prospect of having my TT ready to go before noon on Wednesday was rather appealing. Because of the time constraints on use of the PC, I've been encouraging Ed to use my laptop for his TT on Wednesdays from whenever he gets home between three and five to whenever he is ready to give it up. Which means that since I seldom have mine ready to go by early afternoon, I seldom get it posted before late night. So it was really tempting to go ahead and use the energy of that high to at least get started on it and if possible have it ready to go in draft so that I could use Thursday evening to start my visiting rounds.
3. But I bowed to Sven instead. I wondered what might happen if I applied that energy to my story world instead. I made a deal with myself to give Sven at least one hour of sweat before moving on to the TT post. And that hour went so well I didn't want to stop. It turned into seven. Yes, I said 7. Now most of that wasn't directly applied to writing narrative and dialog which can be counted toward the 70 Days of Sweat challenge but some of it was. I guestimate 1500 to 3000 words. It is hard to do an exact word count on two counts. One has to do with deciding what qualifies as actual story versus ramblings and musing about the story, characters, plot, theme, motives, descriptions of people and places etc etc. AKA notes. Stuff that will make it into actual drafts of scenes is all mixed in with the other stuff because it tends to come spontaneously while I am musing in a rambling fashion. The second has to do with the application I am using which allows me to have up to fifty topic windows open at once. It allows me to tally words for individual windows or a selection of windows. So I can see the words accumulate. It is just not possible to keep perfect track of each day's new words. I can barely keep track of which all topic windows I visited let alone what I might have added or subtracted from them. One of these days I intend to do a post about this ap with screen shots to illustrate what I am talking about.
4. I reluctantly quit working at one. I knew I had to get a few hours of sleep in before dinner if I wanted to get my TT up by midnight. I was very reluctant to quit though as the pattern has been for every excellent session like that to be followed by a day or two of struggle both with pulling my head and heart out of the swamp where sleep takes me and strings of events difficult to cope with, which are probably more to do with the swampy head than bad luck but which feels at the time like life is just taking delight in sucker-punching me.
5. And sure enough if it didn't happen again. I swear, if there was any way to get away with it, I would swear off sleep like a bad habit. Waking again--and by that I mean, fully conscious and engaged in life--might take anywhere from an hour to twelve or more hours. In the meantime I am down fifty IQ points and so physically klutzy I'm not safe to be in my own company. Add to this 95% plus visual impairment, over 50% hearing deficit and moderate to severe joint pain. Sometimes, like just recently, it can be weeks before I get back to a state of mind I can call truly awake and with it.
6. Actually though, today was one of the good days in the sense that it only took me a couple hours to pull out of the swamp and start to feel mentally and physically energetic. That was most likely because I only slept a bit under three hours and it wasn't really deep and continuous. I was thinking/dreaming my story world, the neighbors were talking and clanking (working on a car?) right outside my window and the sun was too bright. Ed woke me up when he got home about three-thirty but I went back to sleep for another hour or so though I kept waking up enough to be cognizant that he had not taken off with the laptop. I was tempted to get back to work but I didn't want to get started only to have him come ask for it. So I daydreamed and dozed off and on until just before five when he brought me my coffee which is also when he told me he was too beat and was waiting until after dinner to do his TT. But by then it was too close to dinner to start on anything.
7. So I spent that time reading news online while watching/listening to news on the TV. Probably not the best waking up activity. In the forty minutes before I was called to the table I heard or read stuff about the trapped and dead miners in Utah, the downed helicopter and dead soldiers in Iraq, the path of Hurricane Dean, the floods in the Ohio River Valley, the earthquake aftermath in Peru, the Katrina victims still suffering, the rising suicide rate among our soldiers, campaign gobbledygook, and a woman named Joy who had dropped a spoon while stirring something on the stove and bent to pick it up just as her house exploded around her, which probably saved her life but...
   ...which got me to thinking that I would have rather not have survived it. Not if it meant starting over again with nothing. I've told the story here before about losing the contents of our apartment/house twice during our marriage so I won't go into it again. But that is one of the reasons why watching news about disasters that destroy peoples homes is so distressing for me. I don't have to imagine too hard to know what it must feel like. Our losses were due to combinations of personal and macroeconomic mismanagement but the stuff was gone all the same. You can say it is just stuff and stuff is replaceable but sitting here six years after the second such loss still living with my in-laws, still being called to the table most evenings like any teenager I see that stuff as symbolizing an autonomy that is much harder to regain than accumulation of new stuff or replacement stuff. Which is what I see as the most egregious suffering inflicted on the Katrina victims who are still essentially homeless two years later!!!
   
8. So this was what was on my mind when I was called to the table. I sat and ate in silence, probably resembling nothing so much as a sulky teen. I noticed that conversation around me was more subdued than usual as was everybody's appetite and struggled not to think it was my fault somehow. Then I realized my father-in-law was wincing repeatedly and a glance at his arm where the ping pong ball sized growth had been removed last Monday, revealed a dressing oozing with blood and fluids. He had just gotten the staples removed yesterday and everything had been fine. It wasn't until his folks left the table that Ed told me what happened.
9. His Dad had driven over to his Mother's house where his sister has been house sitting since Grandma died in June. She had taken on the care of Grandma's elderly dog Spot and had called to say Spot was refusing to stand up this morning. So Ed's Dad, who wasn't supposed to be using that arm yet, had driven over and as he got out of the car he bumped his arm on the door and broke open the incision. Meanwhile, a trip to the vet with Spot revealed extensive cancer in her hip. So they had to put her to sleep today. Another grief whammy for the family. I had a hard time finishing what was on my plate after Ed told me. I might not have wanted to eat at all if I had know before I came to the table. While Ed was filling me in, his folks left to go after supplies to redress his Dad's arm. As I began clearing the table, Ed went after the laptop and brought it out to the front porch where he prefers to work. (Because he is free to smoke out there is the main reason. But whatever.) Meanwhile, as I cleared the table and washed the dishes, I began planning a memorial post for Spot. I had lots of memories from all the time I spent sitting with Grandma over the last two years. I had a general plan and felt good about it by the time I was done in the kitchen. So as my summer habit has been when the weather permits, I took a book, an iced-coffee and our cat Merlin out to the back yard. Merlin ate grass and rose petals while I sat and read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince until I lost the light about eight. Gads but wasn't it just last week, I had enough light until after nine? I guess it must have been more like a month.
   
10. Anyway. Ed's practice has been to join me out there for a chat before he goes to bed and then help me and Merlin across the dark yard, but on Wednesday's sometimes he doesn't get finished with his TT before Merlin or I loose patience. Such was tonight. Merlin began pestering me to go in twenty minutes or so before I was ready. He kept climbing my bare legs, meowing incessantly and grabbing at my hand on the arm of the chair which sometimes was holding my tumbler. I'm sure he was hearing the ice but I didn't want to fish one out and suck the coffee off before giving it to him while holding a book that didn't belong to me. Forget about putting the book down. About the time I was loosing the light, he grabbed at the bookmark and managed to sling it far enough away I had to stand up to retrieve it. He took off towards the back porch at such a clip that when the leash ran out he about did a backwards flip. I gave in. As I was hooking Merlin back up in the bedroom, Ed was returning with the laptop. He said he would meet me in the back yard after I got it plugged back in since he had something to tell me. I didn't like the tone I was hearing in his voice. Ominous is not an exaggeration.
    
11. I wasn't imagining it. He hadn't been working on his TT all that time. He had been trying to fix a problem he had created for me. He had discovered that my new site had been suspended for four days because he had forgotten to insert a piece of code in the footer. There had been no warning. Personally I think that sounds like abysmal customer service even for the free level. Let me clarify that Wordpress is not to blame here but the host site which I am being careful not to name in this rant for fear of Teeing them off while they are holding my content hostage. Ed has been signing up for and testing free host services for nearly a year, trying to find one that will accommodate the plans we have: that will give him access to PHP and CGI and other webmaster goodies; that has above 90% percent up time; good customer service; allows multiple accounts from the same IP; has plenty of room to grow for several months in terms of both storage and bandwidth; and all of this at the free level which is all we can afford. See, this isn't just about moving Joystory. It is about finding a place where I can host all four of my thematically related sites and weave them together into a single entity: Joystory, Joywrite, Joyread and that one I'm being secretive about though I've mentioned it obliquely like this a few times. That last one is the one with the potential to get huge fairly fast once it is up and running. Ed estimates 100,000 visitors per month within 3 to 6 months. Which causes us to pin our hope on it helping us regain that autonomy I mentioned above. To think of having that shut down without warning when a simple robot email could have issued a reminder. Ed was teed by the guy in the site forum he dealt with who sounded a bit like Snape to me. Unforgiving. Just, You had seven days the rules are what they are. Seven days might seem like plenty of time for someone who spends fourteen hours per day on this or has a team of techies to do their bidding, but for someone with a day job and other restrictions on access to the net, seven days can mean as little as seven man-hours. So this was a blow.
12. Yes, it is probably just a temporary setback but its timing really gave my paranoia pucker power. (For the kiss of a Dementor for all you HP fans.) That whole fundamentalist training which maintains that such setbacks are God's way of punishing rebellion just wakes up and snarls every time stuff like this happens. Then there was the issue that I hadn't really wanted to make the move until after 70 Days of Sweat was over September 20. But Ed had been so pleased with himself for what he had put together for me, I hated to dampen his mood by being my usual timid change-resistant, she-who-gets-wet-one- skin-cell-at-a-time. So I took the plunge Monday night and posted the announcement on both blogs. And now this. Just what I had been afraid of when Ed started talking about moving Joystory. Which was a good part about my anxiety issues. But, I had watched him putting up and abandoning a number of his own blogs and websites as he 'researched' the parameters of hosting. I knew how his initial enthusiasm blazed only to flame out without warning. I did not want to subject my audience, myself or my content to that instability. And sure enough if Ed isn't unhappy enough to be unsure if he wants to invest any more loyalty to this site. I think it is only his knowledge of my aversion to change that keeps him from outright saying, I'm outta here.
    
13. So I cried a bit and ranted a bit and then we stood in the dark yard and hugged for a bit before heading back in the house where I proceeded to redo (sort of) the awards post from Tuesday night (see below) and then got started on this TT which was supposed to be an easy, short, recounting of this day's woes. Ha. When have I ever done short. But the woes weren't finished with me yet. When I pasted the TT code into Blogger, the blue background of the table I have used every week for nearly a year now was missing in sections. Blogger was rewriting the code after I switched over to compose and changing the tags to ones I couldn't decipher. I tried for an hour to get it to work and finally decided that now was as good a time as any to abandon the blue table as I had been contemplating ever since I started working with Gimp and began to imagine what cool TT headers I could create. Well I haven't time to create one this week but I might as well take this opportunity to ditch the table. I fished out the code for the header graphic and the official TT code below and started typing.
    

That was five hours ago. If you think this is long you should have seen it before I cut about half of it out. Give me another two hours and I could edit it down by half again. But what's the point really. Besides it just goes to show what I was talking about in point #3. See I have no trouble at all generating 5000 words per day. I just have trouble judging the relevance of it. What counts as genuine story narrative and what is just rambling musings, wild tangents, and idea jottings. This isn't as rough as it gets but it is rough enough I am reluctant to post it which is why I am still typing....


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Monday Poetry Train #13

Since so many of my posts lately have been referencing my upbringing in a fundamentalist sect, I thought this would be an appropriate time to present this poem which I wrote while in the midst of the psychological turmoil I was thrown into when I came face to face with the dark side of my religion, my fellow believers, my family, and my self.

The extended metaphor I use in it references the destructive power of gossip. A power I saw deployed both as conscious tactic and unconscious means of social positioning among my classmates on the playgrounds and school buses, in lunchrooms and classrooms; had frequently been the victim of it even; but never recognized for what it was when it was used by members of our assemblies until after the events that forced me to question the very foundations of all of my understandings.

I was shocked I tell you, electric-socket-finger-hairdo shocked, the first time I realized that teachers and elders and their wives were using the prayer chain to spread information calculated to disempower the prayer recipient: "Brother J and Sister K need our prayers because they are having financial problems, you know J had to take the credit cards away from K." or "Please Pray for Brother P and Sister D. Brother L's son saw their little R, only 13 you know, applying lipstick on the bus last week."

I could go on and on but I'm sure you catch my drift. You may not see the deeper implications though. See, teachers, elders and deacons were not considered worthy of positions that put them in authority over any segment of the flock if they could not keep their own houses in order. Thus, an easy way to discredit a teaching from the pulpit one might not like was to discredit the teacher by implying his wife or children were out of control.

See we didn't have pastors who were hired as full time preachers. There were about sixteen assemblies of various sizes from about 20 to just over 100 regular attendees spread between Saskatchewan Canada, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Arizona. Each one had two to ten Brethren capable of giving a lesson from the pulpit. All of them had day jobs 'out in the world'. Each assembly held four meetings per week, not counting the Bible Conferences some of them hosted at Xmas, Easter, Memorial Day, Labor Day etc that ranged from one to four days with three two hour meetings per day. Even if there hadn't been doctrinal disputes at issue, there would have been a bit of a shortage of slots for those who aspired to teach. But it was more about controlling the message I think. And it worked pretty well for nearly sixty years.

One of the events that catapulted me out was when I recognized that a message from the pulpit had been directed at one of the other teachers with whom the speaker was having a dispute with. Something clicked in my mind then. I asked why I should trust the words of someone who was using the Word of God to manipulate opinion about a Brother. And then I wondered how I could tell the difference between what was true about God and what might just be someone's opinion about God. Not long thereafter I became convinced that most of what was spoken about God from the pulpit, the airwaves, the press, etc was nothing more than gossip about God.

Just like the Telephone game.

Telephone Giclee Print by Diane Ong for sale at Art.com

Rule of Tongue
by Joy Renee

I’ll thank you not to speak of me
For you know nothing.
Only speculate upon illusion
Then speak my name in vain
When you proclaim and postulate
And spew out views
To congregate your pews
A fellowship of shrews

I’ll thank you not to speak of me
For you hear nothing
Not fear nurtured in the ground of hate.
Then speak my name in vain
To create the cruel rules
That castigate the other--the not-you--
To confirm your chosen few
A rulership of Rue.

I’ll thank you not to speak of me
For you say nothing
True. For shame is not my game.
And you take my name in vain,
Your guilt a project incomplete
You give another to do
To escape the dues
A dictatorship accrues.

I’ll thank you if you’ll keep for me
A silence of unknowing.
Then contemplate your ground of being
Where my name nurtures like rain
The blooming of your soul--
That making all things new
True worship will imbue.

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Thursday Thirteen #45

Last week I touched once again on the issue of my fundamentalist upbringing and the impact it had and continues to have on my life. Because so many of my posts during this 70 Days of Sweat challenge mention in some way the story world I am working on whose main characters are involved in a similar sect, the subject keeps coming up.

My post last Wednesday touched on the emotional impact the images of the bridge collapse had on me, coming as they did in juxtaposition to my recent immersion in my memories of the milieu of my youth inside that sect, imagination of the lives and thoughts of characters involved in a similar isolationist and Apocalyptic world view, and research on the web sites of members of similar sects.

I have mentioned frequently the huge lacuna in my cultural experience because of the restrictions imposed by that sect. I thought it was about time I got more explicit. Today I focus on the cultural and behavioral taboos.

Thirteen Things My Childhood Religion Forbid or Frowned Upon Dramatic Performances: TV, Movies, Stage Plays Games without educational purpose. Zero tolerance for playing cards. Most post civil war era music other than hymns and classical. Opera? No way. See #1. Dance? Triple no way. See #6. Besides dance was a temptation to immoral thoughts and improper contact between the sexes. Celebrations of days or events: holidays, birthdays, anniversaries. (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Labor Day, we attended Bible Conferences. July 4th was Youth Camp.) Literature without explicit religious framing. Since they had as little esteem for most of the other Christian sects as for secular culture, there were few trusted writers of stories. Besides, all of these first five things fall under: Frivolity. Defined as any activity not related to attending to the necessities of living, study of the Word, prayer, fellowship with believers or proselytizing. Thus the closest I ever got to carnivals, fairs, concerts, sports arenas, parades and amusement parks before my teens was handing out gospel tracts outside the gates, in the parking lots or, in the case of parades, on the route in the hours before it began. Missing Bible Study Meetings Sunday mornings and Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings for any reason other than illness or a job. Schoolwork was an iffy excuse. Taking on jobs that required working on Sunday was discouraged. Mothers working outside the home was not encouraged. Embellishments or decoration of the self including make-up, tattoos, piercing. But apparel, for adults, was encouraged to be free of beads, ribbon, lace, sequins, bright colors, embroidery, etc. Simple, plain jewelry was tolerated by some. Major frown inducers: Short hair for females. Long hair for males. Any display of strong emotion. Aanger was often equated with either murder or rebelliousness, the latter considered a sin 'worse than witchcraft'. And joy in anything other than the 'things of the Lord'? see #6. So having the name, Joy, was, well...a bit confusing. The usual suspects: Alcohol, tobacco and recreational drugs. Gambling. Cussing and vulgar language. Physical intimacy outside of marriage. Higher Education. The curriculum of both secular and religious schools contained too many 'false doctrines', including among others: Psychology and philosophy that attempted to explain human behavior by any frame other than the doctrine of 'original sin' and scientific theories that assumed an age for the earth of more than 6000 years or anything other than 'creation ex nilo (out of nothing) by the Word of God, or any expectations for a future extending more than a few decades and ending in any way other than destruction of the earth and all of man's creations along with all 'unbelievers' expected to consist of 99.99999% of those living at the time of the end. Divorce for any reason other than infidelity. Remarriage after a divorce? Not an option. Hanging out with anyone whose standards on these points or whose doctrines differed for any purpose other than proselytizing. Which of course made formation of sincere friendships outside the fold impossible. Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

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Really Not In the Mood

For those of you come looking for my TT, I guess i won't be posting it until sometime tomorrow. I just can't get my mind wrapped around it. While Ed was getting his TT prepared this afternoon, I turned the TV on. Just minutes after the story of the bridge collapse in Minnesota broke. I was caught up in that story for the next four hours or more and probably still would be if my niece hadn't arrived. Though I probably would have had to turn off the TV a few minutes later anyway when Ed came to bed. My niece and I then went out on the porch to visit for the next three hours. Most of that time she was listening to me talk about my story world and the problems I was having getting certain plot elements pinned down.

I was especially disturbed by the images of the bridge collapse on so many levels. I feel as though I am in some stranger's dream world. It doesn't help I suppose that I never slept today. I worked straight on through the night and the morning and into the afternoon. What I was working on was research related to my story world. And that research took me into a netherworld of blogdom and web sites that made me feel like I was lost in an X-Files episode.

See, I needed to learn something about non-mainstream Christian sects with doctrines and belief systems that are related to but even more out there than the one I was raised under. Bea use I have some characters who come out of a very controlling sect have to totally relearn how to think and how to interact with the world around them. Yes, similar to what happened to me. But I did not want this to be autobiographical to any further degree than that. I wanted the sect to be distinctly different. Possibly even more bizarre seeming to me than my childhood world view was to my schoolmates. And I wanted the events in their lives to be totally unrelated to any specific events in my life. As I don't want there to be the least suspicion that I'm basing any of these characters on anybody I know.

I am exploring, through them, the experience of having your entire belief structure collapse on you and then having to put the world back together in your head like a jigsaw puzzle. No, like multiple jigsaw puzzles mixed together with missing pieces. The trauma of it really cannot be expressed in simple expository prose. My story world may have actually been my therapy, and my working out the complexity and trauma of what happened to me via a sort of parable. Maybe that was why I was content to keep it to myself mostly. Until a year ago when I let my niece read one of the stories from it and was amazed at her reaction; by how touched she was by the characters and their plights; how accepting she was of their eccentricities; how enthused she was to know what happened next. It is because of her reaction that I began to think seriously again about getting back to work on Faye and Julia's story. [followthe Friday Snippets or Fruit of the Spirit Storyworld lables if you are clueless as to what i'm talking about here]

But neither of the two stories I've completed so far have touched on the substance of the plot line, which is their religious upbringing in an isolationist, fundamentalist sect and their eventual repudiation of it as adults. It was at least partly fear of tackling this issue that had been holding me back. The two stories I have completed are slated to be chapters one and three. Chapter two is the story that introduces the sect and its squabbling factions. This story also involved Apocalyptic themes of catastrophe--real, imagined, prophesied, historical. Floods, famine, plague, war, nuclear annihilation, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, vehicle collisions, collapsed bridges.....

So I've spent most of the last week inside the heads of characters who are anticipating or experiencing or remembering catastrophes. Then I spent most of the last twenty-four hours reading about bizarre doctrines, sects, theologies on web sites put up by their adherents or their detractors who are adherents of equally bizarre world views.

And then I turn on the TV.

Photo from Kate at Visual St. Paul

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Adapting To Change

Tonight is the third out of the last four nights that I have moved out to the living room with my laptop as my husband and his mother headed to bed. Change is hard for me as I've mentioned here often before. But I knew there would be benefits to making the move. Fewer interruptions of my work from my husband and cat for one. Better place to sit. Just about anything that is not the bed is a better place to sit. Once I get used to it, I should see more productivity. I mean just the time saved from having to wake up my snoozing legs or shake out a cramp should pay off in dividends don't you think?

One of the benefits of moving out did not occur to me until this afternoon though when it suddenly flashed into my consciousness that there was no reason I had to let the PC sit idle just because I had my laptop. I could keep the PC busy surfing for credit. Sometimes with the autosurf version where you don't have to watch to earn the credit and other times with the ones you have to click a number to prove you are human and watching. The autosurf could run while i was working on a post or some other type of writing on the laptop, or researching online with multiple windows already open in my browser and thus not wanting my laptop busy opening autosurf pages every ten to thirty seconds. And then when I wanted to take a short break from what I am working on I could swing around to the other computer and earn some credits by browsing the blogs in one of the other type.

This project would be good for me in more than one way. As I have mentioned before, I have as much difficulty with self-promotion as I do with change. I don't mean difficulty grasping concepts of methods of promotion. I mean difficulty grasping the concept that self-promotion is a thing to be desired and not despised. This is partly due to the innate shyness I was born with but more substantially due to the fundamentalist Christian principles of the vamily and Church community I was born into. Calling attention to ones self was considered more than bad taste or improper but outright sinful. This was especially true for women and even more so for children.

We were reminded constantly that 'i' was the middle letter--and thus the center-of sIn, prIde, and crIme. Of course most who purported to live by this principle were much better at spotting the I-centered behavior in others than they were in themselves. But that is neither here nor there. Except that it explains why I get so anxious whenever I am confronted with promotional tasks. This includes asking someone to read my work which makes the idea of mailing out manuscripts or query letters nerve wracking. And it also explains why I tended to shy away from doing those things that were essentially designed to call attention to ones blog.

I would ( it is hard even to begin a paragraph with 'I'. Usually I would sit and stew over how to word what I want to say until I could find a way of starting the sentence with a different word. Instead I am adding this parentheses and moving on.)

I would occasionally implement one of those site promotion techniques but even if I managed to work up some enthusiasm at the beginning, I would soon find myself overwhelmed by doubts and feelings of self-disgust. Events like last week's loss of my laptop's power cord were all too easy to interpret as punishments for hubris.

This type of swinging from one pole to the other is not conducive to making a success of any endeavor but especially one where the element of self-promotion is absolutely crucial. Setting aside the issue that writer's can't get an audience without calling attention to their writing....

Without some kind of reaching out there is also no way to take advantage of how well this Internet and computer technology can accommodate my special needs and turn my special talents and skill-set into something marketable and thus allow me to become a contributing member of my family and not just one of the burdens dragging the rest of them down.

Probably the only reason I can occasionally contemplate the necessary promotional tasks is that the dictum to be productive and to pull your own weight was at least as strong as the one against self-promotion. If my husband and I are ever going to get into our own place again, it is going to take more than the single paycheck from a job with seasonal fluctuations in hours.

So taking baby steps once more I am going to practice self-promotion. As I achieve 21 straight days of posting with this post, I will celebrate with the resolve to add the habit of promotion to my daily checklist. One small thing every day. Maybe by the end of another 21 days the harshest edge of the anxiety associated with self-promotion will be blunted. Don't they call that immersion therapy?

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Thursday Thirteen #24

This is continued from last week. Next week will be the thirteen research projects related to my fiction works in progress.

For those of you curious about the reasons for the library closure, I finally posted an explanation last weekend. Sort of. Because it isn't the piece I intended to write based on my own research. But there is a link to the San Francisco Chronicle article for which I was one of about a dozen library patrons interviewed three weeks ago. See Southern Oregon Library Closure. Or you could just scroll down if you are on the front page and it hasn't dropped off yet.

Thirteen Research Projects Which Will Be Impacted By the Impending Library Closure Part 2: Specific Topics In Support of Essay Thesis or Tangible Goal 1. Movies. Lots and lots of movies from every era of film, including drama and documentaries. The goal is to fill in a gaping culture gap. Can you believe I never saw Casablanca until a couple months ago? And I have yet to see an uncut, in color version of The Wizard of Oz? My memories of it are of the winter I was nine and the three of us kids were all sick with chickenpox, then mumps and then German Measles and thus for months could not attend Bible Study Meetings. We watched it on a black and white TV with rabbit ear reception. 2. Filmography. The availability of commentaries and other extras on DVDs has got me interested in how movies are made. It is storytelling after all. I believe the intense viewing of movies over the past year has garnered a lot of insight into the art of storytelling. 3. A formal study of poetic forms. I haven't studied this since high-school. I write free verse. But I would like to learn the rules and rhetoric of everything from haiku to iambic pentameter so I can at least read it, with better appreciation. 4. Design. For two purposes: Designing fine needlework projects and designing the elements of web page layouts. 5. Needlecraft: needlepoint, embroidery, cross stitch. Especially the aspect of turning the stitched project into the finished product--the book cover, the pillow, the wall hanging... 6. Small Business how to. 7. Journalism and the Media. 8. Health and Fitness. 9. Let's not forget Fiction reading. Keeping caught up on all my old favs and discovering new authors is part of any aspiring author's job. It is also my joy. 10. Mind/Body studies. Including Psychoneuroimmunology. 11. Christian Fundamentalism. Because of my history obviously but I'm especially concerned about those who have gained considerable political power whose stated goals are to reform America into a theocracy. 12. Evolution vs. Creation controversy. 13. Bible. History of the cannon, translations, and textual criticism. With special attention to the history of the Scofield Reference Bible, which was the one I was raised on and whose underlying premises I no longer hold to. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. JennyMcB 2. Raggedy 3. impworks 4. L^2 5. Laughing Muse 6. Tink (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

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The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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The Measure of a Man by Sydney Potier

I really can't call this a review. Not a formal one at any rate. I no longer have the book with me to refer to, nor did I take notes as I read. I was practically speed-reading it Sunday and did not finish until nearly midnight. I set out to write a quick review while it was all fresh but my laptop was in a balky mood and had to be restarted and during the restart I started Stephen King's Lisey's Story. Thirty pages into that it was my eyes that were balking.

I had to let the Potier memoir go back to the library when my husband left for work at seven this morning. I hate trying to do a review without the book in front of me but I just can't let this one go by without commenting on it. It moved me tremendously. He talks about the struggle to live with integrity. He confesses to not always measuring up to his highest standards. He talks about the necessity of confronting one's own darkest impulses, which must begin by acknowledging they exist.

He confesses that if pressed, he will admit to a belief in God. But he considers this to be, not an entity, but an immense consciousness that holds every particle of the entire universe in its awareness at every instance. He is uncomfortable with even this much defining and demurs at naming it even with the word 'god' as he sees naming and defining as the beginning of devisiveness. I am paraphrasing horribly here and hope I have not shredded his meaning too badly. I just had to share this part because this was where I got goosebumbs as I read because he was describing so closely the understanding that I have come to through my own studies and contemplations since I broke with the Fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity in 1992. And like Potier, I still hold a great affinity for the Christian story, its metaphors, images, rituals and aspirations but also like him, I hesitate to name or define. I would go so far as to say that attempting to pin it down with a name is the beginning of idolatry.

My favorite part was the first couple chapters that cover his life from early childhood on Cat Island in the Bahamas to his discovery, in his late teens, of a passion for acting. Events in between had taken him from Cat Island at ten, to Nassau and then to Miami and eventually to New York.

The bulk of the book consists of anecdotes and reflections for each of his major stage and screen roles. I have missed most of them, tho I faintly remember having seen at least part of To Sir With Love as a teenager and having been moved by it, however briefly, to consider becoming a teacher. I remember wishing that I had ever had a teacher who could 'see' me like that teacher 'saw' each of his charges.

I went up on the library's online catalog this morning to see which of his movies were available on DVD. I ordered several of them on my husband's card because after Wednesday, I will be unlikely to be able to check anything more out on my card for at least two weeks as I have to work my card's load down from 97 to under 30 items in order to check out any more of the requests coming to me. I am highly motivated to do so though as among the requests I am next in line for are To Sir With Love and the Defiant Ones. Both Sydney Potier movies. Also Crash and Dangerous Minds and Waking Ned Devine. All three of which I've been waiting months for. So the next couple of weeks are going to be an intense exercise in letting go.

Among the Potier DVDs I ordered on my husband's card were Look Whose Coming to Dinner, Raisin in the Sun and Lillies in the Field (which he won the Oscar for). I, (or rather my husband) got either first or second slot on each these so there is hope I will get to see each of them before April 6. It would be nice if not too much time goes by between reading Potier's commentary on them and actually watching them.

I was dissappointed to not find A Patch of Blue in either DVD or VHS in the library system. I was most eager to see that one as it features a blind girl. And I don't believe I have ever seen it. I think I would remember as visual impairment was such an issue in our family with my Mother and her Mother both suffering from RP, and me learning I also had it just before I turned thirty.

Well, back to Lisey's Story. It has been an exercise in delay of gratification to not pick it up again before I at least tried to say something about the book I spent most of Sunday with. The large print of the Potier book has spoiled me tho. That is probably why I was able to read over 300 pages in under ten hours. Something that used to be so common I never thought twice about it but has become as rare as slugs in a salt mine in the last five years. My plan is to intersperse DVDs with reading whenever eyestrain gets the best of me.

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