This is a heavy rant today in that I’m digging into painful memories that have been buried for some time. It is a bit long and if you are hoping for something funny, you might skip me today.
The blogosphere is just abuzz w/the news over the death of Pope John Paul (whatever # he is). For clarity, I am NOT a practicing “christian”. I’m sure that wasn’t hard to figure out if you are regular reader. Because of so many extreme radicals under the umbrella that is christianity, I’ve come to detest the very term itself. From my perspective, its become a term of oppression and hate used to control the masses using ignorance and fear.
I had an interesting conversation w/TH as he is bit more religious than I. And when I use the term religious I mean he seems to be educated about religion and follows the tenets of the faith vs a fundamental approach. He has my utmost respect for being able to see past the nonsense. Anyway, we had a conversation about the death of the pope. He made a compelling case for the pope however, I still think he was an evil man. Out of fairness, I never once heard the pope condone violence against anyone. However, being as educated about religion as he claims to have been, he had to know a lot of the so called ‘faith’ he taught was based on fallacy and misinterpretation. This is why I think he is was evil. Again for perspective, I see evil not as demonic but as doing great harm.
If someone as lowly and simple as myself can discover fundamental differences in interpretation due to translation errors (whether by purpose or simple mistake), someone as educated as the pope must know that large parts of his ‘teachings’ are false. As hard as I try, I can’t shake that belief.
This brings up memories of my past. I believe I’ve touched god twice in my life. I say god because it was the most powerful feeling I ever felt and the joy I got from that moment is still w/me even today. I’m getting ahead of myself though. Lets back up a bit.
God Who?
I spent a good chunk of my adolescent life trying to discover god. I went to every church around in an attempt to find god. I ran the gambit from the very charismatic to the mundane and ritualized. I never once found god in any church. I did find a lot of hypocrisy and procrastination. I did eventually find what I believe to be god but it was never in a church or prayer. I found god in my darkest hour on this Earth.
Even to this day the power of it still brings me to tears. To understand the pain I was in you should probably read the history one and two if you haven’t so far. (links are in the old blog as it didn’t transfer over so well when I switched to WordPress)
*I copied this from an old written journal and edited it for brevity. The original post was 9 pages long.*
A few weeks before my high school graduation at 9:30pm central time, M and I were riding home from the store and we were hit head on by a drunk driver. The car (a T-bird trans-am) went off the road and rolled I don’t know how many times down a hill. M was thrown from the car and it rolled over him. I, on the otherhand, was wearing my seat belt and it was probably the only thing that saved my life. The bad side was the car landed upside down and I was trapped. The heat from the exhaust started a grass fire which quickly spread all the way around the car. In hindsight, the fire probably saved my life as it was a back road, dark, and the driver of the other didn’t stop. The fire began to spread around the car and soon it was apparent I was going to die if something didn’t happen. As fate would have it, someone did see the fire and came to investigate. Two burly truckers helped to pull me from the car and to safety. It was at this point I remembered M had been thrown and began to search for him. He was lying not 50 feet from me. I am not ashamed to admit I crawled every inch of the way on my hands and knees to get to him. The truckers barely took notice as they had no idea anyone else was involved and were completely distracted trying to put out the fire. M was barely alive as the car had crushed most of his internal organs. I managed to pull him into my arms and the last thing he said to me was “I love you”. He died after that.
Most would assume that this would be heartbreaking but I felt nothing but love at the time. After being abandoned by everyone who ever should have loved me, here was one soul who used his last breath to tell me he loved me. How could I not feel unconditional unceremonious love? That moment is burned into my mind as if it were a brand. To this day, I can still smell the fire and smoke thinking about it.
It wasn’t until later that the pain hit. Physically, I came thru the ordeal w/just minor scratches and bruises. Having nowhere to send me, the hospital kept me overnight. I had to be sedated due to waking up in uncontrollable screams from nightmares. I kept reliving the moment over and over in my dreams. That sedation turned into a 6 month ordeal. I lost my will to live and refused to eat, speak, or even get out of bed.
*skipping a huge chunk here*
God Found
After another 6 months of learning how to speak and walk again, a friend offered me a place to live in a seaport town away from home and all the painful memories. I jumped at the chance. I showed up on the beach at 3:30am almost a year to the date that M died. I was so overcome w/grief I didn’t know what to do. I contemplated suicide at that moment. I walked out onto the beach and began to wonder what would happen if I just kept walking? Who would miss me? Would anyone even care? The water so blue and warm looked so inviting. As if it could wrap me in it’s warm embrace and slowly take away all my pain. By this point, I was crying so uncontrollably I couldn’t even stand up. I fell back on the beach just bawling w/such raw uncensored emotion. Pain, anguish, fear, worthlessness all washed over me in waves so hard I began to vomit. Finally, at one point I just lay back exhausted. It was at this dark moment I found god. Not by looking above or reaching out for him but by looking into myself. There it was all this time just waiting for me to reach for it. A part of my soul I didn’t consciously know even existed. Words cannot even come close to explaining the moment. It was as if someone had taken the very fount of Joy itself and ripped it open in my heart. That is the only way I can describe it and make sense. Once again I found my body gripped in the vice of powerful emotion. But this time instead of being pain it was pure joy. I found myself looking up into the sky w/the coming of morning laughing uncontrollably. I’m sure if anyone had been watching they would have though I was a person possessed. I don’t know how long I lay there just basking in the glow that suffused (spelling?) me. But I did finally get up! I got up and I moved on w/my life. All this while, that joy stayed w/me and is still w/me today. Sometimes not so obvious but when I need it most, I find it again.
That my friends is my god.
