What it looks like today

Good morning. I have written about five blog entries in my head since this second year of schooling began.
My lack of actual entries attests perfectly to the crazy workload I am juggling.
This sort of ambition is not for the faint of heart.

One of my new school mates is a woman whose family accidentally shut down the White House for a day this past summer (I LIKE this woman!). They had innocently set their knapsack of home-made sandwiches under a bush while touring. Consequently their family was separated and angrily interrogated for several hours, while the bomb squad prepared to detonate egg salad for the safety and democracy of the free world.
God bless America.
(Those scary Canadians. You gotta watch them every step of the way!)
I feel much safer now.

Back to school: I have several new professors this year, and continue to be impressed with the calibre of teachers here at WLS.
I alternate between deep frustration and profound gratitude. I remain good-naturedly different in many of my views and interpretations, at times struggling to be understood, and at other times lapping up the generations of wisdom. There is so much about the practical side of my coming profession that I never imagined. Yesterday we had an eye opening discussion about what is gained and what is lost in "crossing to the other side of the rail." Good stuff!
It would be fasinating to compare notes with those trained by the GCNJ (the group that raised me). Do they talk about these same things?

I've been noticing a great deal of rage lately --- deep, profound rage. I have been avoiding it for YEARS.

But now there is mounting evidence that our ancestors' unresolved issues are passed down to us, and on to our kids, until they are dealt with. This theory helps me push away the fear and shame of simply experiencing the rage, and allows me to step back and study it. It gives me an opportunity to learn about my legacy, and possibly help to ease the load for the next generation. Instead of viewing myself as an evil loser for having these feelings, I now see these feelings as bringing a motherload of information about my parents, my parents' parents, and so on.

What a relief! It also explains the enormous disproportion of the rage to the apparent causes.

So anyway, for anyone coming after me on this path, it is HARD to juggle all the housework and school work. My family (currently all male) is really testing the boundaries of how much they can demand of me and avoid helping with the house work, which is part of my frustration. While saying they support me, they are ramping up their demands. "Change back," they say with their actions, while their lips vow helpfulness.
I get it. It's normal. It's what people do. It's in all the psychology text books.
It sucks.

Not "doing for them," according to some, makes me a bad wife and mother. The program is running in my head. "Bad wife! Do more!" Guilt gnaws at my stomach lining.

So I get pissed off! (This adds to the evidence of my being a bad person.)

It takes a lot of work to stand strong in such social programming and social dynamics. For me, it seems to take rage in order to yell at the guilt, "I'm not going to be a door-mat any more!"

And it isn't good for my son or my daughters to see me being a door mat. I'm a GOOD mother for setting the example of living out my life and my dreams. I have taught them independance for a reason. I will not live through them.

Also, I experience grief and loss on a daily basis for the heritage I have had to leave behind.

HOWEVER. . . .
I was dying. Now I am alive again.
No matter what "they" say, I had no choice but to go forward. Yes, I'm mad as hell that "they" didn't want me. My death wasn't worth growing or changing for. The profound repeated message that I wasn't wanted unless I fit their mold came through loud and clear. When I refused, I was a nuisance that they were better rid of.

How's that for a message of love and respect and human worth?

No wonder I'm so stinking angry!

Is your protasis in your apodosis?

Only when it's hortatory.

That pretty much says it all.

Is it a whole sipple, or just a part-of-a-sipple?

Lego moi ego!

When in doubt, pretend it's second aorist.

How do you translate the subjunctive, anyway?
Very carefully....

If it has a thigh, it's one of those sexy infinitives.

Furthermore, if it has "eh" or "moose" in it, we are looking at a Canadian kind of greek word.
Hence, "po-leh-moose" would be "Moose wars..."

That also makes canadians imperfect, which we knew, but also AORIST!

Hah hah!

Agh! GREEK!!!

The Dragon and the Woman of Babylon

Swedenborgians have their own, somewhat unique spin on the book of Revelation.

Swedenborg, a man of 1700's Europe, wrote his explanation of the Apocalypse using somewhat divisive language, identifying "The Reformed" Christians as "the dragon" and The "Roman Catholic" Church as the "Whore of Babylon."

Maybe it's just me, but that strikes me as a bit off-putting if you belong to either (any?) of the above-mentioned organizations. And, uh, doesn't that pretty much cover the whole of Christianity? (Except for a few splitters, like, say, Swedenborgians which, of course, didn't exist at the time of Swedenborg's writing....)

The thing is, Swedenborg's style of writing makes it oh-so-easy for Swedenborgians (or anyone who self-identifies as not Reformed and not RC) to point fingers and say, "Thank God we are not like they are."

"The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men. . . ." Luke 18:11

Whoops. My experience is that the Word is never about somebody else being wrong.

If a weakness or tendency is highlighted in the Biblical narrative, it is in all of us, no matter what our flavour, colour, gender, or planetary origin. Nobody gets to say, "Thank God I'm not like them...."

The more dramatic an image in the Bible, perhaps the more God is asking us to pay attention to the attitudes and qualities embodied in that image.

The dragon and the woman of Babylon are fairly dramatic images. Yet nobody wants to point at either and say, "Yes! That's me!"

These images are not in the Bible to shame us---they are there to remind us to pay attention. All of us tend toward both the intellectual arrogance of the "right club" mind-set (dragon); and the "my choices and actions are saving me, so I need to help control and educate everyone else (who are not as lucky as me) so they can be saved too" (whore of Babylon) mind-set.

The dragon and whore basically boil down to Arrogance and Control, two qualities which may appear to oppose each other, but actually mirror and complement each other. Whenever you find the one, you won't have to look far to find the other. They are like partners in an unhealthy marriage, appearing to oppose and fight, while depending on each other for their very survival.

Arrogance (dragon) includes certainty of one's rightness, an attitude of entitlement, a "chosen people" mind-set, and can be clothed in a buzzing energy of fear for "loved ones," praying for them to join the same "right club." It can manifest as all sorts of social and emotional manipulation of others "for their own good,"---a decidedly unattractive and divisive quality in a family member. It can also manifest as intellectual arrogance, unnatural emotional attachments or lack of attachment (all religiously explained and justified), and behaviours that illustrate an attitude of special status---like breaking copyright laws and tax evasion, and justification of the oppression of the poor. (Did you know that some of the worst tax evaders are Christians? According to them, they are justified because they are "saving money for God." What, exactly, is their definition of God?)

Control (whore) goes hand-in hand with arrogance. It has a different spin, but is just as dysfunctional. The thing about control is that it can't stand to lose power and influence. By necessity, it needs its adherents to stay dependent on it. It requires a hierarchy in which an upper echelon dictates to the lesser ranks The Rules. Members are rewarded for proper adherence to The Rules, and there are definite consequences for non-adherence, from simple social coldness, to gossip, to demotion or job-loss if one happens to be employed by the Powers that Be, to shunning or out-right excommunication. The Roman Catholic Church by no means holds a corner on this dynamic. The Mormons, the Amish, and the GCNJ all practice variations on the same theme. I'm sure lots of religious bodies wrestle with this dynamic from time to time.
But any religious order that requires dependents is like a parent that needs to keep her children under her thumb, even though they've reached maturity. A church's job is to raise spiritual adults, not perpetual spiritual children.

The dragon is in all of us. We steer clear when we develop humility, and when we refuse to fall for the attractive illusion that our one denomination is the one true-est, rightest faith system. Each faith is one among many in God's created universe. Each is from God. Each has gifts and weaknesses. Each serves a purpose. There is no chosen people. We are all chosen people.

The harlot of Babylon is in all of us too. It is far too easy to become drunk with the notion of our own superiority. Sometimes we seem to think we can speak for God---that we have more truth than others and need to control and protect the things of the church for God. The flocks of such churches become spiritually underdeveloped---specifically trained to subjugate their intelligence to the dominating leadership. Thinking for oneself---challenging the status quo---is highly threatening to the church and is discouraged in every possible way, even when the church claims to encourage thinking for one-self (so long as you think the right things).

We need to hang in there, always steering back toward humility, both personal and institutional, and back to minding our own spiritual business. I have enough work keeping my own house clean. It is far from helpful for me to be trying to tell others how to clean theirs.

Instead of supporting the disfunctional alliance of Arrogance and Control, we can support the healthy alliance of humilty and respect.

(We all live in glass houses. Could we please stop throwing stones?)

Religious Boundaries and Fundamentalism

One topic that comes up repeatedly among the seminary students is how to achieve a mutually respectful dialogue with any group of people who are certain of their rightness. Intensely religious people are often of such a type, which tends to make ecumenism a singularly oxymoronic effort.

ec·u·me·nism
A movement promoting unity among Christian churches or denominations.
A movement promoting worldwide unity among religions through greater cooperation and improved understanding.

ox·y·mo·ron
A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined, as in a deafening silence and a mournful optimist.

"Is an oxymoron better or worse than a regular moron?"

How can there be a respectful dialogue, when one member is invested in recruiting the world to its mind set? There is an inequality in the approach.

About six months ago, Larry King had a panel of religious leaders on his show to discuss varying religious teachings about life after death. Apparently it quickly broke down into a squabble over The Rules, and Who Would be Saved and Who Wouldn't, and was far from a mutually curious and celebratory information exchange on our various heritages and their differences and uniqueness.

What is it that makes us do this?

How do I feel mutually respected when there isn't mutual respect? How do I find respect for someone who is so invested in trying to save ME according to THEIR rule book, that I can barely stand to be in the room with them?

Let's say the People of the Superiority of the Supreme Ectoplasm (POSSE) have decided that they have latched on to the One, True Religion. AND, even though the Supreme Ectoplasm has emitted sacred writings about tolerating other religions, there is still a certain tendency among the followers that bar them from appreciating all that is good and precious about, say, the followers of the Great and Loving Glob, or the believers in the All-Encompassing Goo. (Not to mention the Disciples of the Almighty Amoeba! They are the Anti-Ectoplasm itself!)

Now, let's say the greater part of the planetary population has discovered certain patterns of behaviour that are beneficial to all planetary beings, and certain patterns that detract from planetary good will and peace. But POSSE (see above) in its certainty of rightness and superiority, doesn't stick to the beneficial patterns, because it "has a mission from God to educate the world to follow God just like POSSE." This recruiting mindset precludes mutual respect, because there is such a heavy agenda in the way. The non POSSE member is, by definition "wrong," and won't be "right" until they become a member of POSSE too.

"Fundamentalist" is the popular name to call any religious individual or group who is so certain of its rightness that it is above the rules. Though the broader population may be doing its best to establish and live by broadly accepted group rules that promote peaceful co-existence, fundamentalists tend to forget the "Thou shalt not kill" part of these group rules, and the "Trust God to handle the salvation of the other" part as well. Fundamentalists don't see much point in peaceful co-existence with different religions, if their JOB, as they see it, is to obliterate all other faiths, because they are WRONG.

It is a puzzlement. The United Nations, though flawed, has as its goal mutual respect and peaceful co-existence. But many Fundamentalist Christians have decided that the United Nations is the Anti-Christ---I kid you not---which lets them decide they don't have to abide by UN rules. They are "above" them.

Sigh.

Fundamentalists tend to have a certain notion of entitlement. They are entitled to pick and choose which UN rules they'll stick by. And they are entitled, even obligated, to charge across other people's religious boundaries and trash their faith systems "to save them."

I see no way to have an open respectful dialogue with someone who is not open nor respectful.

What are we to do?
http://www.rk-world.org/peace/wcrp.html

Integrity and Trustworthiness

I've been pondering the forces that push people toward integrity or support people in being divided.

By "integrity" I mean "an inner wholeness such that we are able to be fully true in any environment, and will not betray ourselves, our friends, or our beliefs." Our heart and mind are in unity. We walk undivided.

But by this sort of integrity, I don't mean "certain of our rightness." This integrity leaves space for the other to be whole in themselves too, even if their view is different.

I have always liked to think that I had that sort of integrity. But over time, I have observed how quick I have been to speak disrespectfully of certain others behind their backs. At the time I was doing it, I didn't even see it. I think it has been a raw "survival" technique. Primitive. Immature. Hurtful.

I have begun to choose consciously not to partake in this behaviour, and am appalled every time I realize I have done it again.
Sometimes I find myself in a group that begins speaking disrespectfully of someone or something I love, and I am speechless. I don't even have the awareness, the brains, or the courage to stand up for the thing or person I love in real time. It is like watching a friend being stoned, and yet being unable to stick my own neck out to help them. After the fact I feel ashamed of my immobility, ashamed of my unwillingness to step in and defend. Why can't I consistently stand up for my loved ones or my values?

We all know what the phrase "two-faced" means. I wonder if we don't all start out more or less "two-faced" and have to learn over time to have genuine integrity? I hope it is true that we are all in the process of learning how to be more loving and respectful.

I'm particularly wondering about any system that values ideology over humanity, or that encourages people to be so disconnected from their hearts that they will sacrifice their souls and sell out their children for the sake of the preserving the ideology. There are many religious systems that develope this tendency. Truth is NEVER more important than humankind. In fact, when it makes itself so, it ceases to be true in any way.

Yesterday, one of the channels was having a preliminary show for the Da Vinci Code movie. They were taking a look at the Opus Dei organization. A former member was discussing the psychological manipulation used to gain and hold onto members. She said that she was taught to see everyone as a possible recruit, and to befriend them, so long as the person was a possible convert to their faith. If a person was happy elsewhere, or was walking away, they were no longer worth any energy. They became meaningless and invisible. In this mindset, there is no real human or heart connection. There is no respect for the individuality of the other, or of the way God might be leading them. It is all about the rightness of the ideology (in this case, the Opus Dei sect) and about making its organization swell in numbers. There is no sense of loyalty to friends or family, because primary loyalty belongs to "the one true, right" belief system. The belief system is seen as the only true path to God. The belief system becomes the only God, because every other belief system is seen as wrong or false, never as an alternative path to God created BY God.

The heart can't but help to scream out at the injustice and inhumanity of this attitude. This mind-set produces a highly attractive and deeply manipulative hold on the psyche of the follower. At first it is very sweet. How wonderful it feels to have found the one most correct path to God! (How full of loving compassion I have felt, when I believed myself to be in the one true right organization, for my poor fellow humans who had not yet found what I had found. It felt really good. I was completely unable to see how arrogant and simplistic my faith was at that time.)
But with these groups over time, one is asked to sacrifice more and more for the group---sacrifice family time and means, sacrifice friends if they don't wholeheartedly come on board, even sacrifice your health by endless serving and self-neglect (which is called "being unselfish".) Give time, give money, give your whole self to the ORGANIZATION, because if you don't, you don't really love God....

When people from my childhood denomination have lived out in the world, and subsequently moved back to our "Mecca" in Pennsylvania, a common (and insulting) statement is, "It must be wonderful to be back, where you can have REAL friends." (Clearly, the friends one had "out in the world" were disposable and insignificant, because they weren't "in the church." They weren't "real.") This is believed with genuine sincerity and backed up with fervent explanations.

Emanuel Swedenborg has a big problem with "faith alone," and the group that raised me always pointed fingers at the reformed churches when they discussed how terrible faith alone is.

Now I'm wondering if "Ideology alone" might not be exactly what Swedenborg was objecting to.
Ideology over humanity. Doctrine, to the sacrifice of heart experience.

But we aren't supposed to place truth over love. The minute we do, it stops being truth.
Humanity matters. Christ illustrated that by taking it on and walking among us. "Stop rejecting your human part!" He says. "Look, I unite it with My Divine. I don't chop it off! YOU beat it up and kill it! I raise it back up."

The twelve-steppers say, "We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it." To me that means, I will not hide or cover up or beat myself up for all my faults and stupid behaviours---they are part of who I am. I'm not proud of them, but I'm not ashamed either. (Well, I AM ashamed, but I try not to let it cripple my forward movement.) They are for learning from.

To me, that is connected to not chopping off our humanity, but letting it be gradually raised up towards something divine.

Swedenborg talks a lot about the marriage of good and truth, and how we are born with our heart and mind disconnected and must seek to have them be reconnected in a healthy way.

It seems as if some think this will happen by stifling, shaming, blaming, and banishing all uncomfortable feelings, and being "nice." Feelings are treated much the way girls are. They are to be pretty and ornamental, never angry or expressive. "Anger is from hell and is to be shunned."

But we remain blind, ignorant, and stuck until we learn to value and listen to our feelings. There is an immense richness of information in the simplest of feelings. If you stifle the ones that aren't pretty, you stifle them all. That's what depression is. If you don't believe me, there is an enormous amount of data about this in Psychology and in the field of study called Emotional Intelligence.

Others think that the union of love and wisdom happens if you contract a heterosexual marriage and stick to it. These people promote heterosexual marriage with tremendous energy, with hardly any attention to personal growth skills or personal integrity and development skills. I think this approach is missing the main point too. An external marriage won't ever substitute for an internal one, period. It is better to be externally single and internally united, than internally split no matter how externally married one might be, IMHO. (In My Honest Opinion).

Sigh.
And we are all internally split, most of the time. External marriage has all sorts of great things about it, but it isn't the path to salvation. Life is the path to salvation. Personal humility and integrity and reliance on a higher power are the paths to salvation. Kindness and compassion and a passionate investment in the common good are part of that path too.

For me, personal integrity returns when I remember love. It isn't about battling stupid thinking. It just keeps looking like it was stupid thinking that caused all my hurt, so my first impulse is to go slay the stupid, hurtful ideologies, or to chastise those who promote them. ("Hurtful and stupid" by MY definition. There I go, missing the point again.)

Battling about ideology always comes down to winning and losing. "Rightness" is the ultimate value. "Wrongness" is the greatest fear. I can love the person but hate the ideology. But when we disagree, especially in the church, it can be so hard to separate the ideas from the people who promote them.

Perhaps that is why I have been the target of so many personal attacks, and why I feel like I want to attack the people themselves who represent all the hurtful attitudes and practices to me. I keep swearing that I don't want to go there, and yet I keep waking up there. Again.

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...."

How does one accept spiritual alcoholism and sexual abuse, because I don't seem able to stop it or change it?

How do I find integrity in such a mire? I refuse to stand for any abuse, but I don't want to hurt ANY people, even the abusers.

I believe the only truly trustworthy people are the people who truly know themselves, who understand the bulk of their feelings and motivations, and who exercise rational choices based on their best thinking AND intuition. The only truly trustworthy people respect the other as much as they respect themselves, no more, and no less.

Will I ever have that?

Thou shalt not commit publicity

In Martha Beck's "Leaving the Saints," with her usual candor and humour, she expresses that one of the unspoken commandments of her faith of origin is "Thou shalt not commit publicity."

Thou shalt not ever say anything in any way that might reflect badly on THE CHURCH.

She comes from a different denomination, but the dynamic is the same for me. I am amazed at how deeply the fear and hesitation runs. Even if the church has abused me and hurt me and denies my pain and dismisses me and minimizes me, I have been afraid to ever, EVER actually mention this in public. No longer. Now I commit publicity.

Other women in the church who have confessed their deep pain and hurt and disillusionment, still have enormous hesitation in letting anyone outside the church know it or see it. We are deeply socialized to maintain the reputation of the church at all costs.

"After all, the General Church is the Lord's True New Church, isn't it?"
How could we ever criticize that? We might as well criticize God!
(Actually, God is much more forgiving. God is also not co-dependent, nor does He have financial interests that He values more than His children.)

Why are we so afraid to commit publicity?

I am not the first to observe that the dynamics of the alcoholic family runs true in every aspect of the General Church, all the way down to the "look good to the world at all costs," dynamic and the "keep the family secrets---especially the sexual abuse!" dynamic---we shame and blame and cut off the the ones who dare to try to break through the denial.

"That's not true any more!" some cry.
(Except for all the ways it still is, and is still hurting and wounding and dismissing and invalidating and minimizing....)

I have been getting slapped about for committing publicity. I am "personally disparaging" and "insulting" people. Shame on me.

Martha Beck's family of origin has published very rational sounding objections, which imply that she is sadly mistaken and mentally and emotionally unstable. (They are all card-carrying members of the Mormon faith. Actually listening to her means they would have to question the underlying dynamics, the pain and deep disfunction and fear and control that runs in their dear mother church. They simply can't do it. The only alternative is to make Martha wrong.)

She's my hero.

ow, ow, ow........

We are so horrible to each other. How do we bear it?

To the church

When I was born, you were disappointed because I was not a boy.
That told me that boys are better than girls.

When I was growing up, you told me that boys can do whatever they want, but girls really should be wives and mothers---that a GOOD girl would want nothing else. You criticized and gossiped about the women who had jobs and careers, and questioned their femininity.
That told me that, as a girl, I had no real choice in my future, and was wrong to even want anything besides the role of wife and mother.

I wanted to be a good girl.

When puberty hit, I was feared and controlled and told to wear special clothes that show I am a girl---alluring, but not too alluring---and I was told that wanting to keep wearing pants because they are practical and comfortable is worldly and unfeminine.
That told me that my freedom was over. That I was special in a way I didn't want to be. I was to be ornamental, curbed, and feared for the rest of my fertile days.

If a girl was unattractive, she was criticized. If a girl was pretty, she was praised. If a girl was too pretty, she was feared and criticized.
That taught me that a girl's essential worth is in her appearance---and that I, too, should expect to be discussed and criticized and judged by the group like a piece of merchandise. It also reminded me to be afraid of my sexuality.

When our sister denomination started ordaining women, you shrieked and howled and mocked and laughed. You questioned their intelligence, their doctrine, their love for the Lord, and their ability to understand the Word.
That taught me to mock, howl, shriek, and laugh at different ideas. That taught me that only our denomination was right. It showed me that, if I ever agreed with the other denomination, I too would be mocked, reviled, and laughed at---that my intelligence, judgment and mental stability would be called into question.

In our denomination, only men are allowed to be ministers. Women are taught the doctrine, but are not ever to question it. Women are taught how to translate ancient texts, but are not allowed to officially translate, except as proofreaders, or when there are not enough men. When intelligent, educated women question the church positions, they are called "clever but undoctrinal."
That showed me that women's voices would never, ever be respected unless they say what the boys want to hear; that women will always be second class, and that even when the girls play by the boys' rules, the boys will dismiss and invalidate them anyway.

When the loving, respectful, women-honouring minister was taken from our congregation and replaced with a conservative, "Let's celebrate men's wisdom!" minister, I cried out in pain and anguish. When he took away our artistic, circular, inclusive contemporary service and insisted that everyone should be content to worship in the traditional manner, I watched the death of the only acceptable avenue of heart-ministry for me. When I told you I was suffering, and please, please, was there no way to allow our contemporary service to come back? you told me I was an essentially unhappy person who did nothing but complain, and really should get counseling.
I died.

You criticized me for dying.