31 Days Blogging Challenge

October 6 - Total Random Stuff I'm taking the 31 days blogging on a single topic challenge from Write 31 days.


October 1 - Playlist Update "Hallelujah"
October 2 - Why Breaking Up With Jesus 
October 3 - First Steps
October 4 - The Secret
October 5 - Drunken Ramblings
October 6 - Total Random Stuff
October 7 - Scumbag Brain
October 8 - Morality and Identity
October 16 - This Space Intentionally Left Blank 

This Space Intentionally Left Blank

I've rejected multiple titles for this blog post:

Failure

On Suddenly Discovering Things Were Not As They Seemed

Stumbling Toward Wholeness

Thawing

I'm just full of half formed, tangled ideas that I can't completely articulate right now. And that's okay. I'm in a place right now where it feels like things are moving: energy, thoughts, relationships. That feels less okay, even though on some level I think it's progress.

I'm not sure why I thought that participating in a 31 day blogging challenge while actively doing deep trauma work was going to go smoothly (or happen at all), but here we are.

I have several half formed thought experiments from the last week that I'm going to try to finish editing over the next couple of days and put up in the blank spots from October 9 - 15. Today's post is just more about acknowledging that I'm very much in a holding-the-space kind of place.

Morality and Identity

I was reading this post a while back in which the author posits that the central identity of the self isn't memories but instead moral choices. It made me start thinking about my own morality, and how that's changed over the past year.

I don't know how objective I'm capable of being. Objectivity is not really part of the basic human skillset. You generally have to move into one of the prestige classes to get it as a class skill. (Yes, I know I'm throwing out nerdy gaming terms as if they actually apply to real life.) But I'm going to try to be objective over the next few posts and explore how, if at all, my morality has changed since becoming a non-believer.

So, these are the basic areas I'm going to try to cover:

Sexuality and Gender Identity

Trans identity
Same sex relationships
Monogamy
Birth control
Sexual ethics

Social Justice

Poverty
Private charity vs. public policy
Supporting the Church
Crime and Punishment
Drug Use

Life Issues

Abortion
Euthanasia
War
Self Defense

Scumbag Brain

My brain apparently only has two settings on the old self-esteem spectrum. On the one extreme is the "Worthless" pole. I tend to second guess myself a lot. I don't feel confident in decisions. I can really berate myself and start feeling like I'm not (nor will I ever be) good enough. I'm too fat, I'm too old, I'm too clumsy. Whatever you can think of, I've probably been paralyzed for a while trying to think my way out of it. But then, on the other hand, when I think I'm honestly evaluating the feedback I've gotten from other people, and I start to feel okay about myself, then that's when my brain kicks into high gear and I get the other scumbag brain attitude treatment. "Who the hell do you think YOU are?" "Why are you being such a know-it-all?" "G-d you're so embarrassing." Had one of those panic attacks earlier in the day and it was really unpleasant.

Total Random Stuff

I wonder if other ex-believers, especially women, feel that their maturity has been somewhat stunted while they were still in their belief systems? I have a pretty clear history of taking a subordinate role at least in my career path. I'm often pretty sure that there's got to be a more adulty adult in the room, and I tend to defer to them. I don't really think that's my personality, but I dunno. Just something I'm wondering about tonight.

Yesterday I had dental work done in the morning, and a thing at my school for their program grant review by Rutgers. So, I just got home and crashed. Today I spent the day figuring out that no, I do NOT want to work at that inpatient behavioral health unit. I know an n=2 is no more useful than an n=1, but maybe psych nursing just isn't my bag. I want to help, but maybe that's just Survivor's Mission. 

Drunken Ramblings

Yep, I'm admitting it, out loud even. Sometimes I drunkblog.

Here's the random crap:

I wrote a letter to Papa Frankie. I actually mailed it. To. Vatican. City. This is probably the only time in the history of the world that some random unimportant woman from the middle of nowhere Oklahoma could actually write a letter to the Vicar of Christ and have a snowball's chance in hell of getting an answer, so there's that.

I got a new therapist. She's with Trauma Dynamics of Denver. They're involved in the Phase II trials of the MDMA study by MAPS. I hope it helps, because I am really done with all this top-down processing bullcrap.

My Beloved is awesome. Even though I no longer believe in souls, I believe he is my soulmate.

Finally, I'm trying really fucking hard to figure out why I'm not a homeless, drug addicted, dead prostitute. I have an ACEs score of 9.

Just let that sink in, will ya?

The Secret

No, not that abysmal movie nor the idiotic philosophy behind it that is just like Prosperity Gospel but with less Jesus and more woo. I'm talking about the real secret. The secret that all the grown ups kept from us when we were young. You know the one. At least, I hope you do. You may not know. But that's why I'm here. I'm going to tell you the secret.

There are no grown ups.

None of us know what we're doing for certain. We are all just doing the best we can with the information we have at the time. If we're smart, we gather all the information we can, and we try to keep in mind the fallacies that our species frequently falls into, and we double and triple check with peer review, but we still don't KNOW.

This includes world leaders. This includes religious authorities.

Earlier this week that stupid "Pay $5.99 to Facebook or ALL your information becomes public, on, and copy and paste this stupid, meaningless blurb on your wall to prevent "them" from doing this." thing was going around for the nine millionth time it seems. And one of the people who posted it was the priest from the ECC church we sometimes, if we feel like it, attend for mass. I laughed till I cried.

Yes, apparently I'm staying awake nights and going through existential angst because of things I was taught as a small child by people who cannot consistently remember Snopes exists.

First Steps

I was having a conversation with Eldest Son earlier this week. He asked me what "gay" means. I answered his question by saying that when two people are in love and they want to stay together forever and make a family we have different names for those couples depending on who the partners are. If they are a man and a woman then we call that relationship straight. I used his father and I as an example. I said that if those two people are both men, or both women they call those relationships gay. He thought a minute and then said "Is gay bad?" I said "What do you think?" He said "I think it's weird, but I don't think it's any of my business." I said I didn't think it was any of my business either. He asked "But why do some people think it's bad?" I said that some religions thought it was wrong, that G-d had forbidden it. He asked "Why do they think that?" I told him that I didn't know about other religions because I just didn't know enough about their beliefs and their holy texts to say, but that Christians look to the Bible for their morality and that there were a few passages, mostly in the Old Testament, that seemed to say that being gay was offensive to G-d. He interrupted me at this point and said quite forcefully "The Old Testament? But G-d killed off thousands and thousands of the Egyptian's children in the Old Testament! That's supposed to be moral??" He seemed quite outraged. I was taken aback, and we wound up the conversation after that. 

It reminded me of when I was around his age. In my church growing up we were all encouraged to read the bible.Every year I got a little check card that was supposed to help me read the entire bible through in one year. Something like this, if I recall correctly.

I remember that I got awards for reading the bible through about eight times while I was growing up. The first one was when I was about eight years old, but I missed a couple of years in high school. 

Thinking about what my son said, I remembered when I was really young and I had read disturbing things in the bible and I would ask my parents about it. Their advice was always the same: to talk to our pastor, Brother Williams. As I remember him, Brother Williams was a very kind, soft spoken man. He wasn't a fire and brimstone preacher. We got those a lot, in the semi-annual revival meetings. We would bring in some preacher and he would scream and pound the pulpit. Brother Williams wasn't like that, but in retrospect it was pretty insidious. He would read the passages and give a sermon that used a lot of pleading and exhortion. It was like he regretted telling us this ugly truth, but he was compelled because it was in the Bible and he just didn't want us to not have this essential information.

Brother Williams always seemed patient and kind to me. He never told me to stop bothering him with my questions about the bible. I had a real problem with the Old Testament and G-d's actions throughout. I remember I kept saying that things didn't seem fair, like the bears that ate the children for teasing Elijah. That was an especially hard conversation because at the time I was being bullied at school rather mercilessly. I had to somehow reconcile the fact that I was supposed to forgive any offense, no matter how bad, seventy times seven (which I was instructed did not mean 490 times, but forever) but that G-d himself had the option of sending motherfucking bears to eat kids for calling a prophet bald. When I pointed out that wasn't fair I got told, ever so gently, that it didn't have to be fair, G-d can do what G-d wants because he's G-d.

So looking back over my life, it seems that the things I'm wrestling with now aren't new. They certainly aren't new to human discourse. These are big questions that people ask, especially about fundamentalist religions. And the answers I was given are pretty classic thought stopping answers designed to shut down dissent and bring the questioner back into line. 

I still wonder when Eldest Son read the Old Testament. 

Why Breaking Up With Jesus?

Why use the language of a shattered relationship instead of simply saying that I don't believe any more? Penn Jillette, of Penn and Teller, famously says that he is not an atheist because Christians treated him badly, he is not an atheist because he's angry with G-d, but rather that he is an atheist because there is no G-d. That's the story of a lot of unbelievers, but it's not my story.

I was steeped in Christianity before I could speak. I converted to Catholicism over two decades ago. For me, this is the ending of a relationship. Sure, it's ending because I'm convinced *now* that it was a fantasy, but it's still something ending. And I'm experiencing that end as a loss.

There are many unbelievers who experience leaving their former faith as personal freedom. The pain for them comes from the way they are treated by those in their circles who still believe. Again, that is not my story, that is not my experience. For me, I am as supported now by my close friends and family as I ever was before. The Christians who would have turned their backs on me and rejected me for this have already turned their backs on me and rejected me because I wasn't the exact right kind of Christian for them. And as far as personal freedom, I already do pretty much what I wish and what I believe is right. Again, as Penn Jillette has famously answered the hypothetical question "If you don't believe in G-d, what keeps you from raping and murdering all you want?" with "I already rape and murder all I want. And the amount I want is zero. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

I was staunchly pro-life as a believer, I am perhaps even more so now that I believe that there is nothing more beyond this life. At least as a believer I could console myself with the fact that somewhere was a Love and a Presence who was keeping track and who would make everything right in the end. I was a pacifist before, I am as much or more so now that I believe that when we kill someone we destroy them utterly, not just destroy their body yet leave their true self remaining somehow. My sexual ethics are unchanged. I still believe that sex is best, most fulfilling within the context of a committed relationship where the participants are honest, vulnerable and intimate with each other on every level possible. I still believe that someone else's sexual preferences become my business only at the point that they want to have sex with me. I still believe that sex is only ethical between persons who are equal in power and control, whether that power and control is seen through age, experience level, intellectual ability, emotional maturity, or any other factor.

So, sorry to disappoint everyone, but I won't be running around naked fucking everything that moves, toking up, swigging rum, shooting people in the face and screaming "FREEDOM!"

The loss for me is the Fantasy Jesus who was with me through every difficulty in life, who knew me better than I could know myself, who loved me more than I could love myself. That intimacy, and that felt sense of belonging is unimaginably hard to give up.

Playlist Update - Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah

Hallelujah.

A friend posted this song on their Facebook profile a few days ago. I can't stop listening to it. It's like Leonard Cohen crawled inside my head and just started writing. I've listened to several versions, and I've added the Leonard Cohen live from London version to my "Kickass Songs" playlist. Point of fact, I've made a new playlist called simply "Hallelujahs."

Weirdly enough, even though this song resonates so strongly with me, I think I'm putting my own spin on its meaning just because of where I'm at right now. Every version seems to emphasize a slightly different point, and not one of them is an exact match for my interpretation, though the original by Leonard Cohen is closest. I'm considering slightly tweaking the lyrics and recording it for myself.

<voice over> Blessed be You, Oh L-rd our G-d in Whom we live, and move, and have our being.

I've heard there was a secret chord

That David played and it pleased the L-rd

But You don't really care for music, do You?

It goes like this:

The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall then the major lift

The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Well your faith was strong but you needed proof

You saw her bathing on the roof

Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you

She tied you to her kitchen chair

And she broke your throne and she cut your hair

And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Now maybe there's a G-d above

But all I've ever learned from Love

Is how to shoot at Someone who outdrew you

And it's not a cry that you hear tonight

It's not some pilgrim who claims to have seen the light

It's a cold and it's a very broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Oh yes, I've been here before

I've seen this room and I've walked this floor

You know, I used to live alone before I knew You

And I've seen Your flag on the marble arch

But listen, love is not a victory march

It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Well there was a time when You let me know

What was really going on below

But now You never even show it to me, do You

I remember when I moved in You

And the Holy Ghost was moving too

And every single breath I drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

I’ve done my best I know it wasn’t much

I couldn’t feel so I learned to touch

I’ve told the truth

I didn’t come here just to fool you

And even though it all went wrong

I will stand right here before the empty Throne

With nothing, nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

If you imagine that this rendition sounds raw,  angry, and conveys a sense of betrayal, you're right.
And if you imagine that "hallelujah" is bitter, tastes like ashes, and is roughly equivalent to "fuck you", well, you're not wrong.