Category Archives: disillusionment
My Journey from Agnostic to Christian
As a Catholic from childhood, I had four children in the first five years of marriage. Unfortunately, I had to have them by Caesarean Section. Then the doctor told me I would die if I had another C section in the next few years. When I asked the priest what to do since birth control was considered a mortal sin, he said,
“Many children have good stepmothers.”
I decided that men who had never married or had children shouldn’t be making that kind of decision for women. Since I unknowingly had made the Catholic Church my God, when I left the Catholic Church, I threw Jesus and God out with it.
I was not a typical woman who loved to cook and bake, sew and make flower arrangements. In fact, I felt totally inadequate as a wife and mother. We were affluent then and I had help and we both enjoyed giving parties. So, for several years we led a party life, and I began drinking even before the parties and on weekday afternoons when we didn’t have parties.
I got scared that I was losing control of my drinking and found a therapy group for alcoholics. After several months of reading and going to therapy, I broke down weeping one night, admitting that I felt totally inadequate as a wife and mother and didn’t think I was capable of loving anyone, even my husband and children. The group did not judge me, but rather seemed to hurt with me. Somehow it was a beginning of healing.
The next day as I was vacuuming, I had a sense of someone standing behind me with their hand gently on my shoulder. My first thought was that it was Jesus, but then decided since I didn’t believe in Jesus it couldn’t be. So, I just put the feeling into my “need more information file.”
Unexpectedly my father died.at fifty-two years of age. I closed down my feelings, so I could deal with it intellectually and cope with life. I took a course at Vanderbilt Divinity school on the Christian View of Death and another on other World Religions. Neither made much impression on me, so I began to visit various Christian denominations and reading the bible. The book of Acts was an eye opener and made me a bit wistful that Christians might still have life changing experiences. About that time some affluent friends of ours gave up their lifestyle and his Vice Presidency in his family’s company to be missionaries in a non-denominational ministry, Campus Crusade for Christ. I hoped they had kept some investments for the future for their three children, but I was intrigued by their willingness to change their life so drastically.
Sometime later they came back to town asking our group of friends to give a Christian coffee where several women would talk about how Jesus had changed their lives. I laughingly invited women to come, saying I didn’t know our current gatherings weren’t Christian, but come and enjoy the great food we were going to have.
Several women gave talks about the changes in their lives and relationships when they said a prayer asking Jesus to be their Savior and Lord. Then they invited us to say the prayer with them. I was impressed with the changes they described, but since I didn’t believe in God or Jesus, I didn’t say the prayer. As the other women who prayed the prayer were being embraced, I started washing dishes.
One of the women came in and asked if I had said the prayer. I said I didn’t believe in God or Jesus, so I had not. She didn’t hesitate, suggesting I say the prayer this way, “Jesus, IF you are who you claimed to be, I want you to be my Savior and Lord.” That seemed like a win/win, so I said the prayer and went back to washing dishes wondering if this would make any difference.
Suddenly, I was simply over come with the feeling of being totally loved with no small print. The joy was so great, I was afraid I’d burst from it. And that began my fifty-seven-year spiritual journey that has had awesome times of joy and very difficult times when I sometimes felt that loving presence even when in great pain.
It has not been easy. And there were times when temptation was so strong that God literally intervened in amazing ways to keep me from screwing up my own and others’ lives.
I have learned that saying the prayer isn’t a magic incantation. For some of us it makes an immediate difference, but it doesn’t make us perfect. And for some it doesn’t make a difference for years. Asking Jesus to be our savior is one thing. Letting Him be Lord is a whole other ball game and for me it’s taking a lifetime. Different personalities experience the Spiritual Journey in very different ways. Some of us are relationship people. Others are worker bees and doers. Some are thinkers and questioners. God did not make His children with a cookie-cutter.
Following Jesus means literally following in His footprints in His journey through the Gospels. And that takes grace in our emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual lives that changes us in many different ways over the years.
We are loved unconditionally, but we are on a journey of change from being needy to being loving. And that is not easy and takes commitment, courage, and grace.
Once Upon A Time
once upon a time
in a land far away
no one got old
and no one died
very few people
ever even cried
life was simple
people were kind
no one seemed
to need very much
living was so easy
no one had to struggle
but after a few decades
they all turned to mush.
Ann Lamott: I Am That Frog
June 24 at 11:04 AM •
The world can feel like an alcoholic father sitting in the living room in his vile underwear, tranced out or abusive; and the world can feel like your favorite auntie who thinks you are just great, still likes to hike, always brings trail mix, and knows her wildflowers.
These are excruciating times, and this is the kingdom. It’s two, two, two mints in one.
So yeah, some of us are a little tense.
But we are not flattened. Nor do we look away from the suffering of others. And no matter how bad things look and how long change is taking, we don’t give up on goodness. Here is proof: we still take care of each other in ways that are profound, loving and sacrificial, by the bedside of our most beloved, and in the streets. We show up: the secret of life.
We gather in cities to rise up, and at local parks for live music in the sun, where we and our cranky neighbor end up doing the old tribal hippie two-step in the same shaft of light.
We are still laughing—some of us perhaps a bit maniacally—and people are creating the greatest, most live-giving routines and cartoons and responses. This is what saved me during the Cheney years. It was chemo.
So, great laughter, community, joyous and/or sacrificial love. We can work with this!
It is more than enough.
Here’s the one fly in the ointment: we have to do this in dim lighting, what with a political fever dream, and our own failing memories and overwhelm. Life is always like E.L. Doctorow’s great line about writing, that it is like driving at night with the headlights on—you can only see a little ways in front of you, but you can make the whole journey that way.
You still have to buckle up, no matter how slowly the car is moving. Put on the radio and sing along, loudly and off key. You just have to trust that, as John Lennon said, “Everything will be okay. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”
I heard a story last week from a sober friend that almost completely captures my understand of goodness and life, a story that has been medicine for my worried, worried soul:
Caroline stopped drinking 30 years ago, at the age of 40, with zero interest or belief in any kind of higher power to whom she might be able to turn when cravings overcame her. But after a year of white-knuckle sobriety, contemptuous of a higher power, hanging on through will power, she one day heard and then found a frog in her shower.
She lifted it and gently carried it in her cupped hands through the house. She could feel and, of course, imagine its terror. She took it out to the garden, where there was a moist patch of earth over near the blackberries, and set it down. It sat stock still for a bit, and then hopped away into the bushes.
She said, “My name is Caroline. I’m that frog.”
I am, too, and I am also a big helper. When I have felt most isolated and lost, I have always ended up being carried back to the garden in people’s good hands, to where I need to be, afraid and not breathing. for much of the way. And I have helped carry scared people, the best I could. You have, too.
Isn’t that what grace is, when some force of kindness, against all odds, with unknown hands, brings us from fear and hard tiles to a moist patch earth, and sets us down?
If I were God’s west coast representative, I would speed up the process a bit, and hand out klieg lights but I can’t. All I can do is to try and help you get back to where there is moist soil and fresh air, and let you help me. And those happen to be the two things I most want in life.
Humor and Hope
Only when we have experienced humanity in its range and complexity is our humor at its deepest and truest. Redemptive humor is more than the ability to enjoy the isolated humorous situation. It is an attitude toward all of life. Not only is humor a gift of the later years; it is indispensable to hope and healing during that time. Humor recognizes that limitations and failures are not final and unredeemable tragedies. Like a ray of sunshine piercing a dark and overcast sky, humor suggests God’s abiding presence and brightens our human prospects. Humor recognizes the tragedy of the human condition, the finitude which in one way imprisons us. But by laughing at this condition, we declare that it is not final. It can be overcome. Humor is a gentle reminder of the reality of redemption……..Humor is social because the joke is finally on all of us……We are laughing not simply at our own condition but at the shared human condition…………………..A mixture of good and evil is inevitable in this life. Our successes are mixed with failures, our joys contain sadness, love can coexist with hate, health is marred by illness, and possessions are threatened by loss. Excerpt from Winter Grace by Kathleen Fischer.
The rest are my reflections:
Often midlife is the crisis time of recognizing that we have used up as much time as we are likely to have left. So often, it is a time of admitting we have not achieved all we had expected and that there not only may be too little time left, but we may also have to recognize that we do not have all the attributes or resources needed to accomplish our dreams.
There are four roads out of mid-life. 1: Become obsessed and abandon everything and everyone that doesn’t contribute to your goals. 2: Become disillusioned, cynical and angry at life. 3: Choose an addiction to dull the pain. 4: Or adjust our goals to fit a more realistic assessment of our chances to reach them.
Only when we have survived enough of life’s contradictions and made some adjustments to our assumptions can we laugh in the middle of the mix. By then we know that the only thing permanent in this life is change. Often there is a greater freedom to live by our own values and priorities, rather than for an image that pleases others. Hope becomes open ended. We gain a wider perspective for all our limited hopes. And as our lives narrow, we can begin to find true joy in the small things. Happily there are many more small things than large.
Sometimes, as we age we find fulfillment in passing on our hopes and dreams to the next generation, who may be able to take the next step in working toward them. But often, we find more than enough meaning in simple kindness or creating pockets of beauty to be shared with others. Either way, the focus becomes others, instead of our “self.”
The Merry Minuet
You can learn a lot about a person from their favorite song. Here’s mine.
The Merry Minuet (Composed by Sheldon Harnick in 1958 and Popularized by the Kingston Trio)
They’re rioting in Africa.
They’re starving in Spain.
There’s hurricanes in Florida.
In Texas it’s rain.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans; the Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch.
And I don’t like anybody very much!
But we can be thankful and tranquil and proud
that Man’s been endowed with the mushroom shaped cloud.
And we know for certain that some lovely day
someone will set the spark off and we will all be blown away.
They’re rioting in Africa.
There’s strife in Iran.
What nature doesn’t do to us
will be done by our fellow man!
Deja vue!
Are We Becoming Emotional Terrorists?
Americans are becoming emotional terrorists. We publish totally false information on social media without checking on it’s validity. That is slander. It’s immoral. We have degenerated from arguing logically on issues to name calling and ridiculous irrelevant criticism of any one remotely related to people we disagree with. We are shrinking to the level of moral gnats. And it not only accomplishes nothing positive, it alienates us from one another more deeply than ever before, since the civil war. We aren’t just targeting the politicians we disagree with, but one another. For me face book has been a wonderful source of information about friends and family, photos of grandchildren, connection to family living in other countries, and virtual travel to places I’ve never been. In the last two years I have been more home bound by both my own health issues and my husband’s than I have ever been in my life. The internet and face book have been a great blessing. But now, trying to wade through all the political posts, advertisements, and memes someone else chooses for me takes more time than I have to spend for finding the things I want to see or read. Perhaps we should set up our own face book pages as ones limited to one or more of the following: politics, or spirituality, or jokes, or cute animals or travel experiences, or mental health, or venting, or personal ones just relevant for family and friends. I really need to cut down on the vitriol I have to wade through on my face book page. At my stage of life, there are many serious personal challenges that I have to face each day. Some people may find an escape from personal struggles and our sense of the helplessness of individuals in our modern world through a vicious verbal war on politicians and the people who support them. I don’t. It just adds to my sense of helplessness and vulnerability. Discussions with accurate and comprehensive information are helpful. Writing our representatives to express and give logical support for our opinions on policy is a vital part of a democracy. Peaceful protests like those of Martin Luther King Jr. have been an effective part of the democratic process. But it’s beginning to look like we lost the patience, self control, and commitment needed for those some time ago.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 