Life's Long & Winding Journey

Gifts come in places we don't often expect. Sometimes major gifts arrive in the most seemingly painful of ways.

I remember being a child and being fearful of death and what it entailed.

Our culture was already fairly compartmentalized and human death of loved ones was not part of the fabric of our daily lives. Living in separated nuclear families, the very young did not often live with aging/dying relatives as a normal experience. We had lived in close proximity to life and death for probably most of our 1.5 million years on earth, but in the last few hundreds of years, we have drifted away from the basic ebb and tide.

The dominate forms of religion that surrounded my childhood exacerbated my fear. The religious things I can recall, before briskly walking away from it at 12 and declaring myself and atheist, were harsh.


I recall from childhood things like put the fear of God in them, the judgment, and some others I now cannot recall.

I think I just hit the exhaustion wall where my brain may now be mush.

I recall during my 12th summer riding a church bus that picked up the neighbor kids. During that summer the church had a contest, the boy and the girl who brought the most new kids on the church bus during the summer session would win brand new 10 speed bikes. One for the boy, one for the girl. In Sunday school we were showered with candies for answering bible study questions - correctly or not. At church picnics we were plied with tons of ice cream for free.

I recall quite clearly my displeasure. I questioned why, if what the church had to offer was so good and valuable, they had to resort to what appeared to me to be bribery to recruit kids and keep them. They then talked about fearing god, eternal damnation and all manner of things that made their god seem highly undesirable and their church desperate to get kids any way they could lure them.

Today I would probably see this as a recruitment and conversion objective. Terms leveled harshly at me throughout my life, by those claiming to represent Christianity.

I guess this church elected to go for the kids. Most Jehovah's Witnesses I have talked to at any length were recruited through jails and rehab centers, when the person was at a very low vulnerable point in their life... I guess my beef is that if what you have is so daggone good and worthy...why the vulnerable and innocents are the ones targeted. If it is truly good, let them come on their own, with strong minds ready to accept while standing upright and clear headed. I am sure many come under this condition, but I do struggle with what to me feels like organized predatory approaches.

I recall being very disgusted with the religion available. A mean god and the church has to resort to bribing kids. That is just how it felt that summer.

One night at girl scout camp, my close friend slid out of her cot and onto her knees to pray before going to sleep. We had been laying in the dark joking, giggling and such, as 12 year old's will do. When I did not get on my knees she asked me about it. I told her I was an atheist and did not believe in her god, so it would be wrong of me to pretend to pray to her god.

I had decided I was an atheist. I only knew the judgment and fear centered religions that surrounded my childhood. I knew nothing of the existence of the Bahai's the Hindus, etc.

In my world it was the god that must be feared or nothing. I had little difficulty in electing to become an atheist. What I had seen of religion did not mesh with my own morals, values and desires for my life.

I felt I did not need a god that was mean and must be feared. The constant conflict the church represented did not help.

God is Love. Put the fear of god in you.

Judge not lest ye be judged. Those who do not believe as we do are sinners and do not know god and are heathens and so on, worshiping false gods/idols, not worthy, etc..(isn't that judging them? it sounded very judgmental to me).

My friend at camp was extremely visibly upset by my assertion that I did not believe in god. Had I understood just how she would melt down, I might not have been so matter of fact about it. She ran crying to our leader's tent. I was going to incur the wrath of her God and she feared for me. Truly feared for me and my eternally damned soul.

If I had any doubts about walking away, her palpable fear dispelled them. She was a wreck.

I had no trouble walking away from what was presented to me as my religious option in life.

It was not until I was 17 that I knew what a Jew was, and then only sort of. It would be many years before I understood anything about Judaism and I still know very little. I do know that if I was forced to make a choice only between Christian and Judaism, I'd be a Jew without the bat of an eye. Fortunately, the world is broader than that, I am not forced to make that choice or be ostracized.

In college as a 21 year old I learned of Bahai's and was intrigued. I became aware vaguley of Muslims, Hindus and so forth. I gradually shifted my stance from aethist, to agnostic during my early to mid 20's. In my mid 20's I began to open my life to newer experiences. A few years into my life in SF and I was open to explore the world's bounty.

I transitioned from agnostic to something undefined in my mind. I remained open to the idea of a universal force but heavily rejected the label God and Jesus Christ as it smacked so hard of that which was problematic to me from childhood. I continued to reject the word God and stumbled with Christ until I gradually became aware that Jesus was only one of many Christs.

I learned what Christ meant in the bigger world, the universe. The core essence of Christ made sense to me, more so than the fear of god that has always been presented with Jesus Christ as though Jesus was the only Christ.

I still choked over God with a capital G. It still had a singular meaning tied to the religion of my childhood, not acceptable.

I gradually became aware of an approach that many organized religions with strong hierarchical structures in place did their best to marginalize and relegate to the "kooks" - metaphysical or my favorite name "new age" despite the fact that most ideas reach much farther back in time than the founding of the relatively new religion of the Judea Christians. But new age, spirituality and metaphysical became the playground of the weirdos, the kooks, the fairies (derogatory in nature) and the hippies and druggies. Judge not lest ye be judged? Is this not judgment? I simply do not understand that whole piece of it... Perhaps all religions that are fairly organized and hierarchical have many conflicts within them. I have not studied them and only know the seeming incongruities of Christian based religions because it was what surrounded my life.

I was happy to explore an approach that said this is not a contest, this isn't a situation in which there is only ONE single correct way to worship or one way to interpret the Infinite Source of love, God, Allah, the spirits, whatever language and imagery works for you, because it is all the same in the end, that life source of energy that connects, that allows life to continue, it is the essential building blocks of living organisms.

Interpret how you will, but know love, the pure love, of the infinite source and live your life in love striving to be Christlike.

It took a while to wrap my mind around all those things that had been driven from my consciousness during my childhood. I gradually became aware of the IS within me and sometimes it was a scary revelation and I would run the other way for many years. Then I would peek back, ready to peel back a bit of another layer. An entire layer of our existence pushed out by people who are taught to fear.

Time passes, life happens, we seek, we explore, we grow, we shrink, we move, always moving.

A friend of mine who lives her life in a very linear path once made a comment to me about how I needed direction in my life.

I was silently amused at her comment, in a warm way, not mean spirited. She viewed life as one straight rugged climb up the side of the mountain, straight line, just go.

My climb up the mountain was a trail with many switchbacks and false spurs. Totally different approaches to the path of life, both equally valid, both elected by those traveling them. For her, mine was not working. It was working beautifully for me, just as my kook spirituality is.

I'll keep my switchbacks, thanks very much.

My fear of death began to truly morph when my friend Wayne was dying of AIDS related concerns. He died at 37. He gave me the honor and gift of being at his side throughout his last years and days of life. He slipped away from me one night, waiting, I know, for me to doze off. I woke to his final exhale. His death and his sharing of his experience removed the fear that had occupied my childhood. My buddig awareness of spirit and IS was not bound in fear, but love.

I now feared not living, rather than dying.

It was not dying that was the problem, it was a life not lived, a heart not at peace. For many years I was caught up in a life not lived being partially equated to the material plane, the activities with which we fill our time, and slowly segued into experiences, people and personal growth to define a life lived.

There have been other deaths between Wayne and Dad. I am still trying to get clear on a way to write about Dad's gifts to me. I am probably too close to it, still working out what his main teachings are, wallowing around in the muck. And then there is Betty.

Betty's spirit put me "in my place" so to speak last night. She bounced me back out of her space and spiritually said she was not in need of me, she was strong and growing stronger on her way. It was Pete and those whose hearts were heavy who needed my spiritual energy. I checked in with Pete as he slept next to her body. I gave him what I had. It wore me out to have that experience. A few short minutes in the wee hours, but fully exhausting.

Betty's request for me to take care of them was multi-dimensional, and last night she made that clear. It wasn't just about making sure Pete ate and did not lay in bed in a depression in the coming months. It was so much more.

Her eyes tonight held mine as I told her I intended to make good on my word. Every last dimension I am capable of comprehending and taking action on.

Betty will teach me much in the coming hours and days. I am very exhausted, have no one local to process with or share with as I unravel her lessons, but that will only slow the comprehension down, not thwart the growth.

For the Betty of my childhood I give many physical hugs and kisses. I thank you for your 3 slap on the face warmth and tenderness to show how much you love.

For the Betty of my adulthood, my teacher, I receive your lessons with a most gracious heart. May I have the strength and fortitude to receive all you have to offer.

Holding you in my heart as you journey on your path. Gradually receiving the baton of the physical existence, as it is passed from your generation to mine. May we have the wisdom to use it well.