Weird religion stuff // influences
A lot of time in my life I have wondered why it is that things have gone right for me (us; the ‘I’ in this is very fluid).
I mean a lot has gone badly: sexually & emotionally abused as a kid by various people, some of it in a cult-y context maybe-sorta-possibly (I hang onto my denial) and Emily’s death top the list, although I’d throw in a gang rape at university too, particularly as we stand at the entrance of October again. Focusing on the child-stuff though, I often really have wondered why it is that things went right too. And a lot of it was that there were people to stand in our life as “enlightened witnesses.”
One of the stranger set of witnesses were literally that - Jehovah’s Witnesses, Carrie and Alan. I don’t know what the impulse was that led my mother, Presbyterian by breeding and United Church going at the time, to engage in bible study with two JWs and, more importantly for me, send me off with them once or twice a week for at least a year (I think more because we went to two annual meetings). And if you asked me what the result of that was I would have said until lately it was:
1. An abiding love of maple-frosted doughnuts, perhaps an unusual choice for the clean-bodied JWs as bribe of choice to my 10 year old self
2. A lasting suspicion of anyone that tells you God doesn’t want you to have Easter eggs or a birthday party (No one ever bought into that aspect of the JW faith)
3. Yet Another Contribution to the child prodigy aspect of my youth: not only were the JWs fascinated by my 10 year old ability to read and interpret the Bible in two official languages (I think Lynn may have been floating around here), but this was during the time that Quebec had just de-criminalized JW as a religion (yes, it was illegal) and so there was a sense that anyone that could witness in French was on a fast track to saving the world, or whatever.
Lately - remember we had some JWs come to the door and Lynn had a snippy encounter with them and in fact, they came back with a pretty good answer (God can’t be a terrorist ’cause he’s the government - the George W. Bush defense, really)? Well they have kept coming.
And Lyria welcomed them which is typical Lyria - show up anywhere near my house and it radiates herbal tea and cookies, on the right days anyway. And so they’ve kept coming and actually…
… I think I’m kind of glad. And so are other people, or at least, other people participate.
You may be surprised. But let me continue.
I don’t know if all JWs are like Carrie and Alan and these two women. But given how awful so many fundamentalists are I have to kind of explain why these are not.
Today I said point blank that I didn’t see why God would care if people were gay or not, and in fact I believe that if there is a God he made them that way, and that I didn’t want to discuss it because it would just make me frustrated and angry with JWs for their prejudices and is one of the reasons I find it hard to respect their literature, and that was - fine with the JWs in my living room.
Whatever training the JWs get they come to some almost Buddhist-like state - I think it is how they emulate the Jesus they believe in actually. They don’t back down and pretend something’s okay if they don’t think so. They just drop it. But they drop it in the nicest possible way, respectfully, like a yoga instructor admiring your form in a Pilates pose or something.
It’s hard to explain but for me, it’s made the whole experience of choosing to talk religion with these particular people okay. We don’t all agree, and that’s actually okay.
Lynn enjoys them I think because she is having a religious/existential crisis. After all, she loves Noah in her own way and that brings a whole lot of things to a head. It’s one thing to believe in eternal damnation for herself, but what about Noah? And she’s done enough therapy to agree that raising Noah in a fairly normal way - you know, to basically be on the side of God and good and all that - is How Things Will Be. But she isn’t sure if she believes that and how to implement it either way.
I wouldn’t say she is looking to the JWs for an answer. If anything, Lynn can out-Bible them any time. But she is studying the actual women who come quite intently, and it’s not in a mean way (in fact, she has become rather solicitous of their mental health and if she says something disturbing, often gives them a way out… like today she pointed out that Lucifer does what God asks in tempting Job -after- Satan lures Eve out of the Garden of Eden, and that confused things for a while until Lynn allowed that Lucifer might obey God for his own evil ends, or something like that. I lost the thread of it but I saw the relief happen, in the two women.)
I can’t really say what Lynn’s learning, but I think I’m glad she’s having some space to do it anyway. I really haven’t felt ready to try to find her the right people to talk to (whoever that would be). But in the meantime it has been very convenient to have some kind of religious um - instruction? - show up at the door.
But Lyria’s surprised me until today when I realized that the JWs are pretty much the granola Christian cult: they have to take care of their bodies because they will be resurrected in them and God therefore wants them to respect them, and so they don’t consume any drugs (including, MY GOD, caffeine) and the two JWs who come to see us, anyway, say in great innocence things like “well you know how fruits and vegetables don’t have good vitamins in them any more? Well imagine how healthy they were when Adam and Eve ate them! And when God brings paradise on Earth they will be that healthy again!” (And then have a whole digression about figs in a certain area of the former Yugoslavia, now Croatia.)
And although my fae Lyria thinks the idea of God Almighty, you know, Mr. You’d-Better-Shape-Up-God is pretty funny, she is totally down with a future that involves healthier fruit.
So on that level I see why we’re enjoying it.
There’s also the spiritual elephant in the room all the time, of course, which is Emily. It’s one thing to be living with Noah and wondering how to raise him with respect to spirituality and to wonder if we should baptize him or attend a church with him or do a comparative religion thing with him and basically how to shape his moral development.
But it’s an even bigger thing to wonder not only how say, God could have let my baby Emily suffer and die but also to wonder - well - did she have a soul and if so, where is it? Reincarnated? Frolicking? (One of the more horrible episodes with the kinderlynn that has rolled through over and over during since March of 2004 is whether there might be a general sort of afterlife and if so, what if my (abusive) grandfather is there with Emily and if so would he be being nice or being a shit? Because we aren’t there yet to protect her.)
And in the midst of all that - I don’t know.
As a faith itself, I am somewhat uncomfortable with Christianity in general and “young” Christian faiths - faiths that have not, say, had hundreds of years to be corrupt and go on stupid crusades and totally fuck up and have to deal with that a little - kind of make me feel like I’m watching Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure as a serious attempt at world history.
Do they really expect me to believe that the prophets wrote down the mind of God that was translated accurately and can be understood in words? Dude!
JWs are kind of a far out branch of this innocence. They commit some of the usual err “sins” of fundamentalism - gays bad, marriage good, Catholics icon worshippers, everyone else wrong.
They also have this (to me) touching and childlike belief that what God wants for us all is to return everyone that’s died onto the Earth into their bodies, but better ones really, and all the animals get along (and the lion shall lie down with the lamb) and there to be no sickness and death or anything - on Earth - and for God to have his council of Really Special Snowflake People (I think this is what keeps a lot of JW psyches going) and run things right. And then we’ll spend our days frolicking about and eating really good fruit and be like Adam and Eve before Eve messed up.
And soon; any day now; in fact the deadline was misunderstood twice I think.
I don’t know what quirk it is in my nature but to me this just about goes along with the whole Wish Foundation sending dying kids off to Disneyland. It’s lovely and you can see that it would really make some people (people less perverse than I) happy. But MY GOD WHY DO KIDS HAVE CANCER! You know?
I just don’t see at all how this can possibly relate to either any understanding I have of human nature, where I think people would immediately start to argue over whose apple was bigger, After Death or No After Death, or the God of the Bible (locusts, etc.) or any God I might care to conceptualize for myself. Etc. ad nauseum.
So for me exploring the JW faith -itself- is kind of like reading light chick lit, where buying shoes and meeting the right man makes you happy. It’s nice to visit for a couple of hours but it in no way relates much to my life except you know, that I think about it and enjoy it and might like shoes a bit myself and it says a little bit about people but not always very much.
And yet.
And yet, and yet, and yet.
I suddenly see how Carrie and Alan, who were gentle and kind and loving and really, despite the whole birthday party thing, amazing Christians - in the sense of hanging out, talking about God and Jesus politely and rationally, and not say -raping- you or even making you feel any less than special - may have helped us keep a concept of a benevolent universe going.
And that the Bible was involved probably helped promote some internal communication between Lynn and us, without which we would have been sunk later on. And bingo, perhaps some of the body-respecting stuff that kept us out of the darkest of self-destruction and mostly thanks to Lyria, came partly out of that. (Although I still think Lyr is just plugged into something totally else and cool.)
It has not escaped my notice that the JWs happen to have shown up on the doorstep right when we may have needed to start to reconnect a bit with spirituality. And that this is not the first time in our collective life that two kind people identifying themselves as Jehovah’s Witnesses have shown up at the door when, perhaps, we could use a little bit of innocence and a trip to Disneyland.
All of which is to say that if there is a benevolent universe - Goddess - God - trinity - AllThing - flow - it certainly works in mysterious ways.
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I often find myself (as I get older especially)envious of those folk who have such strong faith (in any god/dess ??).
Its like they have this secret decoder ring that lets them know everything is going to be “OKAY!”. Not that they dont have bad days, or have bad things happen to/around them, but that even with those things they still believe strongly that everything is going to be “okay”.
They seem to have an internal peace (okayness) that I lack.
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