A Faith Journey

Dan Barker said, “I was living a delusion.” He made this declaration on the Oprah Winfrey show as one of her guests back in 1984. He'd been a fundamentalist Christian preacher for 17 years before becoming an avowed athiest. That's what earned him a spot on Oprah's popular talk show.

When she questioned who was in charge during those 17 years of ministry and why he even believed back then in God. “The reason was my own personal psychological feeling that I was in touch with the higher mind I prayed every day I saw suppose answers to prayer.” I can relate to this, but let me go back to the beginning.

HOW IT STARTED

I was born into a Catholic household and baptised as an infant. I have godparents. I went to parochial schools and took Communion. I went to Confession. We left the church after mom and dad's "conversion," before I was able to become an alter boy or go through catechism and Confirmation. But I really wanted to, first, be an altar boy and ring the little bells during Mass and then to one day become a priest. I was so devout at a very early age (5 or 6), that my mom made me vestments because I liked to play like I was presiding over Mass in our basement "sanctuary." I'd feed my sister, Heidi, soda crackers, as Communion wafers, and grape juice, as Communion wine. I was deep into it.

That didn't change when we left the Catholic church and became Independent Baptists. I was again baptised--fully dunked this time as a pre-teen--and not only immersed myself in baptismal water, but also in Sunday School, VBS and youth group. My parents became high school youth group leaders, so that in 7th and 8th grade, I was hanging with the cooler, older kids.

That grew old and uncool by the time I reached high school. We returned to the Catholic church part-time so my folks could get the tuition discount at my parochial high school. I lost interest in my faith and going to church.

SELLING OUT

We moved to Tallahassee a week after my high school graduation and my parents found a new version of Christianity they liked better in a Charismatic, full Gospel church that believed in miracles and speaking in tongues and stuff like that. Again, I got baptised, dunked a second time, so that I began to call myself a CATHO-BAPTI-COSTAL!

I was baptised into a wide range of Christian orthodoxies. But that last one happened as I was reaching adulthood and seemed to help me make sense of life, so I bought in fully. I mean I "sold out to Christ" as they would say in the 1980's. I burnt all of my secular albums and tapes and immersed myself again in youth group and ministry. I became a youth leader, a men's leader, a drummer for the choir and various "praise teams." I bought in 100%.

I got married in that Charismatic church, where I'd met my wife and where I'd start my family in 2001. It played a very instrumental part in my life for over 18 years.

QUESTIONING THE NARROW INTERPRETATION

When I entered college to expand my intellect and my horizons, I decided to minor in religion. It interested me. Our assistant pastor was a professor of Old Testament Studies. He intrigued me, as a Bible-believing academic. I never enrolled in one of his classes, but I did take an elective called "Intro to New Testament." It was taught by a Jewish professor. Talk about opening my eyes to other ways to look at Jesus and his Gospel.

I'd say I grew up with a pretty narrow, fundamentalist interpretation of the Scriptures. I mean, my dad started reading Hal Lindsey and end times "prophets" like him. He took a very literal view of the Bible, and so did I.

College and life brought me to newer, broader understanding that wasn't so rigid or literal. Like, I understood science and the Big Bang Theory, so I already knew that Genesis was not a literal account of how our Universe began. I started trying to reconcile my long-held faith with scientific discovery. It was like trying to fit God into a non-religious context. It wasn't easy.

EMERGENCE

Back when I started this blog in 2005, I was raising two daughters and working closely with meteorologists who studied hurricanes and climate change. I had fully embraced science and was leaning heavily away from fundamentalism and my upbringing. I was extremely curious about the Universe and other, more liberal interpretations of the Bible and Christian theology. There was a growing, online community of Emergent Christians, who I joined on message boards and whose blogs I read (before podcasts became so popular). I wrote of The Emerging Ooze in May 2005.

That curiosity about differing views on Christianity led me to philosophers like Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen, a gay Catholic priest. This was the spiritual path that led me to considering Eastern mysticism, where I found many parallels to the teachings of Jesus. I even read some outlandish ideas about Jesus as an Eastern Mystic, somehow inspired by the "three wise men," who were also "from the East." I considered how Jesus' teachings and healing ministry align well with the Gnostics of his time, that might be the desert dwellers he lived among during his "desert period."

LEAVING IT COMPLETELY BEHIND

After quitting the church where we got married and started a family five years earlier, we started a "home group" of sorts of about four or five families who were about the same place in their Christianity and faith journey. That didn't last long. We met a few months, sharing meals, conversation, prayer and taking up a communal offering that the host family was supposed to use to meet a need in the community.

We moved out-of-state to be near my family. We occasionally attended church with them or the church where my wife worked, a Lutheran church with a progressive, older pastor who loved Henri Nouwen. We had several conversations about faith and the church, but when the denomination split over the issue of "gay priests," I lost all respect for him, the denom, the faith...

I began questioning everything, even the existence of God.

I took aim at the heart of Christian orthodoxy--blood atonement. WHY IN THE HELL DID AN OMNIPOTENT GOD HAVE TO RESORT TO HUMAN SACRIFICE?!?! That practice predated Judaism by a long time. And you mean to tell me that an all-knowing deity couldn't come up with a better concept, a plan for humanity??

According to Google A.I., "Human sacrifice was practiced in many societies beginning in prehistoric times, but became less common in Africa, Europe, and Asia during the Iron Age. In the Americas, human sacrifice continued to be practiced until the European colonization of the Americas. Today, human sacrifice is extremely rare and is treated as murder by secular laws."

That made no sense to me...that an Iron Age practice was being carried out (human and/or animal) in Judaism until the time of Christ and that the Roman crucifixion of a convicted criminal was viewed as the "ultimate" human sacrifice, once and for all humankind.

God couldn't come up with a better way, a more humane and moral way to "save us?" He needed to rely on ancient practices dreamt up by mere mortals or "lesser gods?"

MY NEW AGE SPIRITUALITY

I use the term "New Age," sorta tongue in cheek. It was a dirty, demonic word in my parents' home. LOL! But the spiritual teachings of gurus like Eckhart Tolle and Mooji became more relevant to my faith journey. They blend a liberal view of Christian teaching with Eastern mysticism and other traditions to come up with a universal set of truths, like being good to others and loving oneself.

I no longer believe in the Biblical version of "Father God," a very patriarchal and archaic system of keeping people in check, namely women and minorities. If there is some deity out there, it possesses both feminine and masculine qualities and could give a shit what gender you identify with--as in maybe you are both, just like He/She/It. The Divine, as I see it, and you can find Jesus say the same in the Gospels, is WITHIN!

If you believe in created beings shaped in the image of their deity, then this isn't a totally demonic or foreign concept. Christians believe they are the "bride of Christ." They believe bride and bridegroom to be one. Therefore, I don't see how the idea that we all have the Divine, or are one with Source, is in any way heretical.

I try to tap into my "I AM energy" all the dang time. I find it deep in the core of who I AM. Or as Tolle, would say, "the essence of my being, the conscious mind."

This allows me the freedom to trust in scientific discovery. I don't have to fit God or theology into my belief in science. I don't have to limit a deity to dark matter. I don't necessarily believe in God, per se. Something existed before the Big Bang. We all came from SOMEWHERE! Maybe that's "the Source" as many gurus call it.

Popular astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about “the god of the gaps,” referring to believers whose faith takes over where science leaves off. He sees that as a diminishing god and labels believers as ignorant “because the god of the gaps principal is like a philosophy of ignorance. Science is a philosophy of discovery.”

I'm all about discovery. That's what my faith journey is about--being curious and STAYING OPEN TO POSSIBILITIES!

You don't need a theology to learn to be a good human being. Tolle reminds us that we are, indeed, BEINGS AND NOT DOINGS! We live our lives like Human Doings most of the time. But you don't need to DO anything to be accepted as you are. No one has to shed blood for you to find goodness and morality.

As Barker puts it in the first video, up top, “There can be an objective scientific basis for morality outside of the supernatural outside religion based on the value of human life, based on the fact that life is preferable to non-life; making a hierarchy of value systems, which has nothing to do with receiving an edict written in stone from a God. I am free with the rational mind to determine a hierarchy of values which suits me fine...I have control of my own mind now.”

Like him, I look back on my prayer life and my "relationship with God," as a figment of my imagination. I created a cool, laid-back dad-god who I could converse with casually and who I could depend on to take care of me and look after me like a father. It was very convenient. I just couldn't understand his sense of fairness and justice, like when it came to disasters or death.

I was just watching the aftermath of Hurricane Helene the other day, and one victim who was spared thanked God for watching out for him, when the rest of his neighbors were drowned in a flood. Well, what about them? God just didn't care? He doesn't care about babies suffering and dying a horrible death? He didn't care about millions of Jews, his supposed people, being murdered or burned alive in the Holocaust? Too many inconsistencies in his form of justice...and in the Bible, for my taste.

Who was I really praying to or conversing with? Myself, I presume. It was a psychological construct meant to soothe my soul and help me make sense of this chaotic world that just randomly exploded into existence some 14 million years ago (or maybe not--the James Webb Space Telescope is casting doubt on our entire cosmic model). Like Barker, I had the best intentions. I was attempting to connect to the "higher mind" for my own betterment and the good of those around me.

I'm still trying to connect to that "Universal consciousness," as the gurus call it. That "higher mind" might just exist universally, on some vibrational frequency "out there," that most just haven't tapped into. I don't pretend to know.

These days, you'll find me just conversing with "the Universe." I'll be out on my beach putting my intentions out there and speaking positivity, trying to find my vibration on that frequency. I tell the Universe, whenever I go out there to practice my "New Age" spirituality, that "I'm open to possibilities." I'm still curious and ready for the next adventure.

Evidence of a Purple Wave?

This white guy from rural America is hardly what you expect.

Dick and Liz Cheney are the LAST Republicans I ever expected to defy party for decency.

But defections like this are becoming common.

We are mere weeks away from a Harris/Walz landslide. Don’t believe the polls. It ain’t that close. All anecdotal evidence points to a large blue wave coming. Let’s hope they win Congress, too.

Young voters and Republicans voting blue are going to turn this election. Mark my words!

WE'RE NOT GOING BACK!!!

 

THESE CRETANS!

These uneducated (presumed) white dudes, all MAGATs, all blind Trump supporters, want to remind women of their place in the home and in society. “Stay barefoot and pregnant in front of the kitchen sink” (to paraphrase VP candidate JD Vance/Hamer/Baldwin) and “Stay out of our White House.”

They’ll tell you that Kamala Harris is a “DEI hire” who is unqualified for the presidency and only rose to the position of VP by “going down on her knees.” Well, which is it, Misogynist America? Was she picked solely on race and gender? Or did she “blow her way to the top?”

These same idiots couldn't even tell you what DEI stands for, let alone SPELL IT!!!

None of them qualified for even a middle management position, yet believe this former prosecutor, Attorney General of California (border state the size of a small country) and Vice President is UNqualified to hold the highest office in the land. Let's say the Chief Operating Officer of a Fortune 500 company is promoted to CEO. Are they unqualified, too? Oh, they are...because of their race and gender, perhaps??? Your sexism and misogyny is exposed! Just quit with the dog whistles!

White dudes in America feel their grip slipping. Propping up this wannabe Dictator who is rich and white and who will "protect" their rights/power, is their last hope to hold onto power. The patriarchy is crumbling and this scares them! They want to regress instead of embrace progress and change. They believe the stereotypical myth that America was "so much greater" in the postwar flee to the suburbs where Jews, blacks and other minorities were restricted from homeownership. America was never that great for these Americans, just ask them.

I grew up watching these same whitewashed re-runs, from a bygone era in early TV days when neither a black person nor a minority (lone exceptions being Tonto on Lone Ranger and Buckwheat on Little Rascals...which were bad racial stereotypes) were represented. These false, white archetypes just bolstered the patriarchy and made sure everyone else, from women to minorities, KNEW THEIR PLACE! And this falsehood is when Trumpites (cultists) thought America was "great." It wasn't. Again, just ask the women and minorities who lived through the turbulent 1950s.

People like JD Vance/Hamer/Baldwin still believe the mythical standard set by June Cleaver is the gold standard for all women. Women everywhere are chanting the refrain, "WE'RE NOT GOING BACK!!!"

We are not. Progress demands that we look forward, we move forward. White men have had all the power forever and a day. They've believed these false 1950s stereotypes are what kept the family, the economy and America strong. But we don't live in the 1950s! We've made 70 years of progress since then...progress for women, Jewish Americans, minorities, civilization. Those who would look back through rose-colored glasses are willfully deluded. 

Take the inbreeders in the photos at the top. How would they react to an infringement on their personal rights...on their private parts? What if women said to them, "God gave you that limp dick and you should just live with it." If he wanted you to get hard and be able to impregnate a woman, he would've given you the ability. Then, they outlawed erectile dysfunction treatments of all kinds, from pills to pumps. If men were threatened with imprisonment from seeking such treatments on-line or across state lines, you'd hear a VERY DIFFERENT TAKE on bodily autonomy. But their autonomy has never been challenged or questioned. So why do they believe they have the right to limit and take away yours? That's exactly what the Dobbs decision did overturning Roe v. Wade.

The polls show a growing wave in support of Harris/Walz, including young people, disgruntled Republicans and NEVER TRUMPers of every race, creed and color. Data also shows record numbers of young people, Gen Zers who 2/3 of them hate Trump, registering to vote. If they turn up in numbers, this will be a landslide for the left! I welcome the trend towards progress. Change is good.

SYSTEMIC RACISM

I've written about race in America quite a bit in the last eight or so years because it affects me deeply and personally, like on a soul level. From the above pics, you can see that I live in a very MULTI-RACIAL family. My sister adopted an African-American sibling pair the year before I adopted my first daughter, who is white, and four years before I adopted my second daughter, who is multi-racial. So when Americans started shouting "ALL LIVES MATTER" in 2016 and again in 2020, I had to dissent. ALL lives haven't mattered even though the preamble to our Declaration of Independence signed in August 1776 PRETENDS THEY DO!

I wrote in June 2016 that "the backlash to the Black Lives Matter campaign is rooted in ignorance," and it very much is. Ignorance of history. Ignorance about white privilege and how this country was founded. "ALL MEN" were endowed with "UNALIENABLE RIGHTS." But even as our forefathers penned that, they didn't really believe that ALL LIVES MATTER. In fact, they ruled that African men were 3/5 of a human being, justifying their lower status and white ownership of slaves. The founding fathers believed in Manifest Destiny and that it was bestowed on WHITES by their Creator. Hell, it is believed that George Washington's "wooden" teeth were actually those of slaves...but I digress.

Cartoon I posted in March 2016

I concluded in my June 2016 blog post that, "It wasn't blacks who created the divide amongst humanity. By and large, it was white people. It began with the premise that races OTHER THAN white were somehow inferior. In the case of Africans, they were classified subhuman. The African slave was classified chattel. They were no different than livestock and often treated WORSE! So white people created the US v. THEM culture between themselves and everyone of a "lesser race" (blacks were often referred to as "mud race")."

That STAIN ON AMERICA is what we are still living under the dark shadow of. It is the basis for the systemic racism we see in our Institutions, from governance (at all levels) to housing policies to media disinformation. But even still, in white-controlled America, we still have African-American's towing the line to protect the status quo of racial inequality. Watch this video about Tim Scott, one-time Republican Presidential Candidate, narrated and produced by a black man who compares Scott to a "magical negro" from Hollywood lore.

Not only do "conservative blacks" like Scott distort the narrative, they effectively try to REWRITE it! And our national narrative, as told in history books and propogated by the far right, is ALREADY AS WHITEWASHED as it can possibly be. It's why Republicans vehemently OPPOSE the ideology behind Critical Race Theory and want it banned from any and all curriculum. HOW DARE BLACK PEOPLE TELL THEIR OWN STORY IN THEIR WORDS!!! White America would rather keep them shackled and muzzled. WHAT'S NEW?!?!?!

Tim Scott shucks and jives with the very best of them, selling his version of "the American Dream." Ask most African-Americans what they think about this dream! Just like the preamble to the Declaration, it's HORSE MANURE! It doesn't apply equally. What Scott's story wishes to ignore (dare I say, WHITEWASH) is the struggle his parents and grandparents faced in a country that didn't see them as equal human beings! It ignores the fact of how they even got to this country. MOSTLY BY SLAVE SHIPS ACROSS THE ATLANTIC!!!

Most Black Americans did not immigrate here BY CHOICE, they were dragged here BY FORCE in some of the MOST INHUMANE means possible! And though their blood, sweat and tears built this country, sustained the Southern U.S. Economy until the Civil War, and was spilled on the battlefield (from the U.S. Revolution through the latest conflict in Afghanistan), they were not treated as equals until the civil rights movement some 100 YEARS after Emancipation!

So spare me the false narrative Tim Scott. Even today, you could just as easily be profiled, assaulted and killed as George Floyd!

To that point, I have to worry about my own daughter.

Unless you've had to "have the talk" with your kid, YOU DON'T GET IT!

My daughter has faced micro-aggressions her whole life! She doesn't look any more African than Kamala Harris. But she's a lot more brown and "ethnic-looking" than her white friends. If a group of them is caught smoking weed (a legal drug where she lives) out in a public space, guess who the cops are going to single out! 

You don't think racism still exists in America?? YOU ARE BLIND. Maybe you're just too white and need some black friends, I don't know. But it is a SYSTEMIC problem rooted in our very dark past. It's just a fact.

And if you don't understand white privilege, I invite you to read my post from August 2017. In it, I write how us whites "benefited from the way the system had been rigged for all of history." That was an inherent privilege bestowed on us by "our Creator," I guess. It goes back centuries to Europe and the Roman Empire. It was the basis for the rise of Nazi Germany and wanting to engineer an Aryan society of blond-haried, blue-eyed whites. Nazism was very strong in America in the 1920's at the height of the KKK movement. Look it up. Manifest Destiny all over again.

The bottom line is, YOUR EXPERIENCE is not your neighbor's experience, regardless of the class or race of person he/she is. HOWEVER, the white American experience is VASTLY different than the black experience in this country, and if you'd just take the time to ask or to look into it, you'd see that. JUSTICE FOR ALL doesn't mean for folks on both sides of the tracks and it never has! We see it every day in stories of police brutality and racial profiling.

That's proof of systemic racism. It's built-in. It's always been there, from slave times forward. America is a melting pot and we all give society it's flavor. Without the black experience, told by black voices (not the Token Tim Scotts), we lose some of that flavor that makes us all Americans. I see that when I go to one of our oldest cities, New Orleans. You talk about rich American history, rooted in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean! Jazz music, which started in the Treme', a historically multi-cultural neighborhood in the heart of N'Awlins, is the most American music there is! Cultural diversity is our strenghth, not our weakness, and it should be celebrated.

This isn't my white angst or guilt coming out. I don't hate myself or the race I was born into. I had no say in the matter. Neither did my daughter. But this is deeply personal to me, not just because of her, or my brother-in-law or my many nieces and nephews. I got sick watching the original Alex Haley's Roots in the 1970's as a kid. It was so eye-opening and stomach-turning revelational to me. It changed my perceptions from then on about race and how one was so disgustingly treated. So please don't come at me with your white angst about how your power and circle of control is vanishing. White Americans will be in the minority in another couple of decades. Get used to it!

History Repeated

When I got back into a committed relationship with Lynn Ann Farber, nearly TEN YEARS TO THE DAY after we first broke up, I knew I was treading into dangerous territory filled with emotional land mines. But we both convinced ourselves to ignore the obvious red flags and warning signs. She adopted my narrative that I really only left her here in February 2014 to be with my kids. That wasn’t a complete fabrication, it just wasn’t the whole story. Our demons got the best of us and my flight response was triggered.

It took several weeks to heal and this blog captured much of it. Even though I wanted out, did the breaking up and the leaving, I was still heartbroken. My pain and recovery all spilled out into my journal and onto this site. I wish I could simply repost my March 3, 2014, post “Moving Forward.” I’ll share a couple of snippets below by screen capture, but please take the time to read the full blog post by clicking the link, above.

History, indeed, repeats itself when we don’t learn our lesson the first time.

Breaking Point?

Is American Democracy at a breaking point? I think it is. Watch this Mother Jones video to see why.

My daughters have told me for years that it’s mine and their Papaw’s generations fault for propping up the patriarchy. I cannot argue their point. We just mindlessly go along with the system that we know is horribly broken and corrupt!

I’ve felt for years that the Electoral College is skewed in favor of red, less populated areas of Rural America. The Senate, meant to level the playing field between states, gives a vastly disproportionate advantage to rural red states, like Wyoming, the least populated state in the Union. So that when the Senate votes, to say nominate a Supreme Court Justice, two votes representing just over half a million voters (580k) carries the exact same weight as two votes from California’s Senators who represent almost 40 MILLION! California has nearly the population of some countries (39.03 mil) yet in the highest legislative body shares an imbalance of power with Wyoming at 1.5% the size.

So basically a very smal minority of our citizens are actually represented in the Senate and by our Supreme Court. Shows you how the MAGA cult took over and reversed a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. If American women don’t control their own bodies, what control DO they have??

And to the point of this video, if the founding fathers who rigged the system this way, many of them slaveowners who believed black men were only 3/5 a person, HOW could they possibly write the preamble to the Declaration of Independence?

The same author featured in the Mother Jones video, above, also appeared in a Democracy NOW! video three months ago. The host of that video said the attack by the right-wing minority “violates one person, one vote,” further bolstering the populous view, especially among millennials, that our votes don’t matter, they don’t count. Author Ari Berman lays out a compelling case. Watch the above video or the one I just linked to for more.

To put an exclamation point on this post, I turn to the ladies of I’ve Had It Podcast. They point out how President Obama was ready to place Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court. Obama who won the Electoral vote AND the popular vote TWICE in 2008 and 2012, yet he was BLOCKED by Republican Mitch McConnell and Trump’s cronies in the Senate. WHY? So they could stonewall a moderate pick for a radical like Neal Gorsuch, who Trump then appointed. Trump who didn’t win the popular vote EVER!

The younger base is energized!

I blogged just ELEVEN DAYS AGO that, “Gen Z and younger millennials are going to become the main voting block in this country.” And we are seeing it happen already. In the week since KAMALA HARRIS became the Democrat’s presumptive nominee for U.S. President, voter registrations by this group have gone through the roof in states like New York and Michigan. Regisrations surged by 38,500 in just 48 hours according to Vote.org, and USA Today reported Friday that number had surpassed 100k.

Don’t believe me? I watch a lot of progressive political YouTubers like The Rational National, David Pakman, Adam Mockler and Luke Beasley and their audiences are energized, just watch this clip from Beasley’s channel.

 

The USA Today article says, “A number [of younger voters] described  themselves as ‘double-haters,’ or said they planned to turn to independent candidates if they'd bother to get off the couch at all.” They are tired of establishment Democrats, mainly old, white men, running the party and our nation’s politics. Harris, a middle aged, woman of color, has been a breath of fresh air to them and her team’s excellent use of social media, namely TikTok, has touched a nerve. On Saturday, The Guardian called it a “gen Z-powered wave of online ‘Kamalalove.'"

This surge in popularity is reflected in the polls. The same article states that Harris is up 18-20 points over DJT among voters under 30, depending on which poll you look at, NYT or Axios. It’s reflected in the energy you feel surrounding this fledgling campaign. With every TikTok that goes viral or the daily releases her campaign posts, you see these young progressives on YouTube get more on-board the “We Will Win” train.

And while this post might feel like an “I told you so,” IT IS! I’ve been saying this! I raised a 20 and 23-year-old daughter in this millennium. I’ve listened to their views on the world as well as their friends, several who are openly gay or live somewhere in the rainbow.🌈 They hate the patriarchy and were just waiting for someone like Harris to emerge to the forefront of American politics. As the USA Today article headline asserts, this presidential race just got a lot more interesting. Stay tuned.