Thursday, June 28, 2018

Spiritual Autobiography


      How does one begin an autobiography about spirituality?  What I think of writing is a “religion” autobiography, but is that really spirituality? My search for spirituality continues, so the autobiography is quite incomplete.   In many ways, my spirituality does in fact begin with my early religious experiences.
           My family was one steeped in fundamentalist christianity and white supremacy, which in my mind still go hand in hand.  Not the same white privilege that all white people enjoy through no accomplishment of their own, but the inherent belief that white people are supreme.  Superior to all others and possess the manifest destiny to not only conquer the world, but to save it as well.
           The church I was born into and attended until beyond my marriage was called the Church of the Nazarene.  So named I suppose after Christ of Nazareth, the original Nazarene.  The church was one of legalism, based completely on performance.  The belief system was one founded on “original sin.”  Everyone was born wicked, wrong, and sinful and in order to gain redemption, Jesus Christ was the way, the truth, and the life.  No one came to God other than through Christ.  Salvation was full and free, but must be asked for and once found could also be lost.
           Salvation was not guaranteed and if you sinned, than you must ask again for salvation.  At some point (a point I never reached) one could arrive at “sanctification.”  To my understanding, this kind of meant the second level of salvation; that once this has occurred, the person no longer sinned.  (I may have this understanding wrong.  By the time I reached the age that this was part of my thinking, I had begun to think the entire process was a crock of shit.)  My church believed in baptism has an outward sign that one had died and been reborn through the resurrected Christ.
           From a very early age I attempted to “be” a good girl.  To behave accordingly and not sin.  For a female, this behavior included submission to my parents, the church elders, and any other adult simply because they were an adult. Age automatically made them wiser. My father was the church treasurer and sat on the board, my mother was the pastor’s secretary and cleaned the church on Saturdays.  We attended church twice on Sundays and again for mid-week prayer meeting on Wednesdays.  Annually there was a week-long revival, which we attended nightly.  What exactly we were being revived from is still unclear.
           The sermons were geared toward making people feel like failures.  Feeling as if you were not good enough.  That just being you with all your human foibles was somehow wrong.  Every Sunday the pastor led an alter call for anyone who wanted to get saved.  Without fail, the song we sang was “Just As I Am.”  “Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me.”  I can still hear the haunting tune in my head.   Several times as a child and young adult, I was “saved.”  It never stuck.  I lived my entire life as a backslidden christian. 
           After several failed attempts at redemption, being voted out of church membership for having divorced, and re-thinking a lot of teaching, I left the church with a pretty big chip on my shoulder and a sizeable contempt for God.  Many times throughout my life I have lain awake in the dark and screamed out to god for proof of his existence.  (In my world, God and all related to him were white males.)  Equally as many times I have cried out in the dark about how much I hated god.  Actually said “Fuck You” and told him to stay away.  Even more times I’ve blamed myself fully for the wrong turns my life has taken for having said those words. Deep in my soul, it is hard to let go of the belief that I told God to fuck off one too many times and he has truly turned his back on me, rejecting me beyond hearing my cries for help or the need for proof of his existence.
           Do I actually believe this?  Honestly, I don’t know.  I would like to say I don’t, but sitting here now writing these words, I feel sadness in my soul.  Some belief, some regret, some thing still lingers there. I want to know a connection with a source of peace and power greater than myself or something I can name. I want to trust in something that I cannot see – have faith.  Trusting in things I can see, feel, and smell is difficult for me.  Trusting in humans who give me their word is something I struggle with on a daily basis. How then do I trust in something that is not tangible? 
           The search continues for the ability to trust something outside myself, and at times to even trust myself.  Early teachings haunt me, leading me to question myself and my ability to reason. Fear enters my being at the mention of “women’s religion.”  This means wikka to mean, which means an attachment to satan.  Whether or not this is true, I have no idea. I’m afraid to explore.
           Hell has a hold on me.  I fear eternal damnation more than I fear that there may be no god.  Like almost all things christian, this is not rational.  Intellectually I know that, but emotionally I cannot escape the feelings of fear.  Every once in a while the thought that today may be the day of the rapture and I’m going to be left behind, enters my head and I wonder what the world will be.  All these earthquakes happening recently are signs of the end times.  And then, I think that’s why George Bush is president again because christians have an irrational fear based on irrational beliefs and elected an irrational president to carry out an irrational system based on manifest destiny.  And we wind up back at white supremacy where this all started.  A vicious circle of fear and irrationality that keeps my mind anything from quiet, my spirit far from content, and my intellect saying fuck you to the entire system of belief outside myself.