Vestiges of God

May 11, 2004

Musings

When I travel around on the back of our motorcycle, there is much time to just be. I love it, I’m swallowed up in it, I’m lost. It’s a good lost. I don’t know how else to explain it.

Yesterday, as we traveled, we passed a pre-historic site on the side of the road. I made note of it. We’ll stop by & take a look around the next time.

I saw various churches, gospel halls, & old churches with steeples. I got to thinking about steeples. Were they a type of tower of Babel or something? Were the believers trying to get to God, point to God or just advertising? I wonder if church builders use to have steeple competitions? ‘My steeple is better then your steeple, or, my steeple is higher then your steeple, or, my steeple has a bell in it, yours doesn’t.’ I don’t know. Just makes you wonder. As I traveled along I thought, Zoe (edited to add current user name), you need to do a search on the history of steeples.

Let’s see, what else did I notice? When we reached the lake I noted that Canadians are desperate for some warmth, for the sand & for the water. It was blustery near the water, however, the inhabitants of the land were gravitating as though pulled by a magnet to the beach. It’s amazing what we Canadians can do with our ‘mind over matter.’ It may not be a balmy sunny day by golly, but, we’re going to pretend … because well, technically compared to this past week, freezing cold temperatures, hail, rain, more hail, more rain, wind, & funnel cloud … well, it IS balmy.

I found myself almost in a trance considering the reality of God. For example, I wondered about the way I believe, or that I believe. Sort of pictured myself living in Nepal & wondering about my belief if I’d been born & raised there. Then I got to thinking about being born where no one has ever heard of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I felt really tiny when I considered the galaxy, other galaxies, the universe in it’s totality. Me, a speck on the planet called Earth, beep boppin’ around on a motorcycle. A blip on the radar screen, in time eternal. Are we here, on this earth, the only life in the universe? If we are, I’m thinking, it’s got to be God. What are the chances we’d be here without God?

There’s something so peaceful about questions, doubts & musings on the back of a motorcycle.

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So, here I am, four years later, May 11, 2008 with an anniversary of sorts.  Those musings were the last vestiges of me attempting to hold on to the belief in God.   Shortly thereafter, if not by the time we arrived home, I wrote this in my then blog and by it’s completion I was aware, the little traces of God that remained, remained no longer.   

 

Summertime And The Living Was Not Easy

This post has been scraped again by my recent splogger.  Sorry for having to put this red notice here again, but I want those who arrive here through the jerk’s site to know the truth about what that site is doing.

*NOTE:  If you are reading this site and the URL in your address bar reads anything other then http://acomplicatedsalvationreborn.wordpress.com/ you are reading from a site that STOLE my blog post which is a copyrighted all rights reserved post.  Just so you know.  Don’t click their ads.  They are making money off of my site.  They do NOT have my permission to do so.  They are liars and thieves.

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Do you believe in God? my friend asked, as we laid on the warm ground, looking up at the fluffy white clouds of summer.

Yes, I said, with a ‘well duh!’ tone to my voice.

She continued. God, if you are real, show us your face in the clouds.

It all seemed a little nutso to me. We searched for God’s face.

Suddenly, she sees God’s face, there, in the clouds, as she points towards the sky. There, see God?

I didn’t see God. She tried to help me see God. I never did see him. She seemed to be content, but, personally, I just didn’t think God even worked that way. I’m not sure how I thought God did work, but showing his face in the clouds, surely not?

I guess it never occurred to me to ask God to show his face. Certainly, I had seen enough pictures of God at church, in Sunday school papers and in my Bible. Questioning the existence of God wasn’t part of my conscious vocabulary. Jesus was God. Jesus was to me, not only God, but a helper for a little girl, who believed that he stood by unconditionally, as she grew into adolescence and a life sprinkled up to then, with traumatic experiences that she took seriously and could not understand.

What’s this Zoe? my younger sister asked, as she handed me a letter and an opened envelope addressed to her. Is daddy going away? she asked. She had already read the letter, and though too young to understand it’s true nature, she knew enough that it seemed to be a goodbye letter from our dad, to her. It was in fact, a suicide goodbye letter and in that moment I decided to protect my sister and simply asked her where she found it. I explained that the letter didn’t belong to her and we needed to put it back.

It has my name on it, she said. I explained that I knew that, but that we needed to put it back. Is dad going away? she asked again, while I slipped the letter back into place. I told her no. The next thing I remember is sitting at the desk, alone and looking at the letters I had pulled out and placed on the desk. One addressed to each of us. There was mine. I had both rage and despair pulsing through my system. How I wanted to know what I meant to my dad. I longed to know how he’d say goodbye to me. My fear of how he might react to his children snooping through his private things, if he ever found out, secured my decision to not risk opening my letter. I returned all the letters to their hiding place and didn’t speak of them until years later, when backed into my corner of fear, brought on by the fact that my parents were splitting up. At that time, all that I had held within, poured out into time and space, exposed, raw and real. What happened to us? he asked. We use to be so close?

You want to know what happened Dad? I’ll tell you what happened. We found your suicide letters. How in the world am I suppose to trust you when I’m waiting for you to leave us? Horrified and shocked, he had forgotten to destroy those letters, he penned during a dark night of his soul, so long ago. Obviously, he hadn’t gone through with his plan to end his life and never looking back, simply never remembered the letters. In looking back, I wished I had confronted him at the time, but, we were raised in a home that did not excel in the area of communication. I’m not sure any of my friends were either. You simply didn’t talk about private matters and if you did, you risked discipline, which in our day was being spanked, sent to bed without supper or the silent treatment with that look that made you wish you were dead.

My parents stayed together. Unfortunately, none of it really helped those of us who found the letters, stay together. The impact of those letters shattered lives that were all pretty much in a shattering state of being anyway. Parts of us were fractured and it would be well into my adult years before I started trying to put all the scattered pieces of me, back together. Until then, as children, we lived out the rest of our lives at home. Life progressed, but never easily. Always, for me, I waited for death. I looked for it, planned for it, tried to figure out how to prevent it and to stay one step ahead of it. By the age of thirteen I was almost burned-out, even considering at one time myself, jumping from our balcony.

Did I want to die? I don’t think so. Mom and dad were fighting, again. I felt like I was breaking. I didn’t want to hear it, and I didn’t want to feel my tears. I so wanted to be noticed, to be seen, to be heard. I wanted to say, I am here, we are here, do you see us? I didn’t jump. I remember thinking, nah, I’ll break a leg and then I won’t be able to swim this summer. So, I swam that summer. It’s own type of salvation for me. Ah, the glorious days of chlorine baptisms. Here I could swim with carefree abandon, lost in a world of play that gave me great joy. I also went to camp that summer. As I mentioned earlier, here is where I’d find my salvation from an eternal hell, and the hope of eternal life when I did die. Then, in the white fluffy clouds of a warm summer sky, I would see the face of God.

The Uncoiling of Zoe

I’ve had another dream that has me yelling at the boys who keep climbing over my backyard fence in order to get into our neighbours back yard. This dream has me frustrated beyond measure. I think what I’m doing is continuing my need to establish boundaries with that old patriarchal belief system. Ya think!?   I’m very upset too that the boys are careless about closing the gates. Don’t they realize that small children may wander in and fall into that pool of water? I look down into this muddy, dirty pool of water. Oh oh. Think there’s a bit of symbolism there as well? 

I’d like to say I enjoyed my recent massage therapy by my registered massage therapist. Instead, what she found in me, was a “coiled-up” mess of tissue and she had to really work to uncoil me. I felt as though I was being ripped and stretched on a rack. I actually found myself thinking of people who have been tortured in history. I thought of those who were killed because they were labeled witches. My pain can’t even touch one fraction of what those poor tortured souls went through.

When my therapist finished working with my right side I was so glad. She’d move over to the left side now and it’s usually not near as painful. It actually feels quite distant from me, as though it’s not me. For lack of another term, I refer to the feeling I have on my left side as, numb. Well, so much for my numbness. My left side just ended up hurting big time. The massage therapist said, “Maybe that’s a good thing?” I murmured, ‘Yes, maybe it is.’ I didn’t say anything about the work I’m doing taking a look at my feminine side and it’s wounds. In order to heal, numbness won’t do. It’s time to feel.

Three nights ago, another dream.  This dream I had a big plastic device locked down on my left arm.  If you’ve had an MRI on your head, the plastic device is like that one.  In this dream, I break the device off my arm, piece by piece with my right hand.  I wake up, amazed by my strength.  I get a kick out of the symbolism in these dreams and the whole “right” side, “left” side interaction.  Seems to me I’m trying to free up that feminine side again.

 

How to Handle my Anger?

What Has Divorce Got To Do With It? by A Thinking Man, stirred my own anger over a recent conversation with someone I know.  It’s a good article.  Give it a read.

I think I’m finally moving into some hardcore anger where Christianity is concerned.  It’s taken me years to get to this point.  I quite honestly don’t know what to do with it.  I’ll have to sort it all out I guess and figure out a way not to burn at every mention of Christians and Christianity.

My neighbour mentioned a few things to me recently and I suggested she didn’t want to “go there” in conversation because we’d never get our gardening done.  In other words, don’t get me started.  A member of our mutual ex-church died recently and she made a comment that even after death, “they” still get your money.  Then she wondered about this born-again Christian being a Mason and having a Masonic funeral.  As well, there were several mentions of the women/girls who’ve had to get up and apologize for their sin of premarital sex and pregnancy out of wedlock, before the pastor of the church would marry her.  It’s all the woman’s fault I guess.  Gee, I wonder where she got the sperm to make that baby out of wedlock?  And of course, the conversation could easily have gone down the path of how after it got found out that the pastor was having an affair, how he didn’t even have the balls to stand up in front of the church and confess his sin, like he made all those young girls/women do.  No, he resigned first, in hopes no one would find out the “real” reason he jumped ship and then later, had another man in the church read his confession.  Give me a flippin’ freakin’ break! 

I hold a lot back in my writing online.  I hold it all in.  I never really let it go.  ‘Oh Zoe, you can’t get that angry, they are just human after all.  People make mistakes.  That’s the way the world is.  They don’t know any better.  There’s no point in calling a spade a spade anyway.  Who the hell cares?’

I’m so bloody sick and tired of tip-toeing through the tulips.  ‘Walk on eggshells Zoe.  Don’t rock the boat.’  Why do I hand-cuff myself?  Why can’t I just say what I want to say? 

I have an acquaintance who is teaching in the Catholic Educational system.  He’s been teaching for a few years but he can’t get hired to a full contract because he isn’t Catholic.  He has to convert in order to get a contract position.  They want him to convert and he’s been approached more then once about doing so.  See, they don’t want to lose him.  They’d hire him at the drop of a hat, if he converted.  I can’t give anymore details then that, but I tell you, it just ticks me off!

Perhaps the Catholic schools have become lax over the years and now they’ve got themselves in a bit of a bind, not being as Catholic as they should be?  Well, if there’s any doubt about the future of Catholic Education and their goals for the future here in the province of Ontario, have a read HERE.  (PDF file.)  If Catholic Education hasn’t been Catholic enough, there is no doubt, it’s going to get more Catholic darn it and the fact that it’s in the process now of weeding out it’s non-Catholic teachers is proof of that.  Now, I wonder, will they also weed out their non-Catholic students (not a chance) and stop receiving government funding (not a chance) though it’s the only religious school system funded by the Ontario government.

Can you imagine the uproar in the Public School System if they went through and asked all the Catholic teachers to deconvert in order to keep their jobs? 

I put my bat away to early

*NOTE:  If you are reading this site and the URL in your address bar reads anything other then http://acomplicatedsalvationreborn.wordpress.com/ you are reading from a site that STOLE my blog post which is a copyrighted all rights reserved post.  Just so you know.  Don’t click their ads.  They are making money off of my site.

Here we go again.  For those who want to know what a Splogger is or a Scraper or a Jerk who steals content for their own benefit is, here’s a site I found in my SPAM this morning.  A so-called Bible site that took my post, lied about the author’s name, apparently I’m not Zoe, according to this site, I’m now Raymond Pert, and though they link back to this site so that anyone with a half a brain can see it’s clear the so-called Bible site stole my copyright material without my permission and lied about my name, the Spoggers don’t give a damn.  Maybe, just maybe you’ll be curious enough to click on one of their ADS and they can make more money if you do so. 

raymond pert wrote an interesting post today on
Here’s a quick excerpt
Dream 1 - I’m looking out my window and I see our neighbours cutting down their big pine tree. It falls on a slight angle, and lands between the house and the other pine tree. I’m not an dream expert. Even so, dreams have been a very …

Here’s the LINK to this site and though I’m loathe to point you in this direction I do so to demonstrate how these sites steal our information in hopes you will click on their site ADS and make them some profit.  Notice, my post is about Dreams and below it you will find ADS to click on related to the meaning of dreams.

Also, notice how the ‘chickens’ keep the Comments Closed so you can’t point out they’ve broken at least two of the Ten Commandments, being a so-called Bible site. 

Apparently, there’s not much I can do about this.  READ.  And so, life goes on.  Tree planting season.  I’ll be in the garden. 

April Dreams

*NOTE:  If you are reading this site and the URL in your address bar reads anything other then http://acomplicatedsalvationreborn.wordpress.com/ you are reading from a site that STOLE my blog post which is a copyrighted all rights reserved post.  Just so you know.  Don’t click their ads.  They are making money off of my site.  They do NOT have my permission to do so.  They are liars and thieves.

Dream 1 - I’m looking out my window and I see our neighbours cutting down their big pine tree. It falls on a slight angle, and lands between the house and the other pine tree.

I’m not an dream expert. Even so, dreams have been a very important part of my life. Some of them I pay attention to and never forget. Others, I take note of and then, I let them go. I do think that often, dreams are our way of working out stuff we don’t want to work out in our waking moments.

First some background information. In the fall of 2006 I saw a Neurologist about migraine headaches, vertigo and dizziness. An MRI of my head and neck, showed some narrowing of the two internal carotid arteries, but it was only considered to be a very mild narrowing. Other then that, the MRI was clear. I started low doses (10 mg. daily) of Amitriptyline, now used for migraines, fibromyalgia and even for cancer pain among other things. For several months, the migraines eased and my sleep improved. About two months into taking the drug, I went to a concert and that night I had ringing in my ears that to date, has never left me. I stopped the drug just in case it was causing the tinnitus in my right ear. For five months now, the tinnitus has not stopped. I have not resumed the amitriptyline. The headaches seem to be coming back, along with some very slight vertigo and a sense of not quite having my balance. I’ve had my hearing tested and I’m not going deaf. In fact, I found out I have great hearing!

I live with chronic pain that is called Fibromyalgia. Almost always, I am aware of the pain in my right side. I do have pain on the left, but as I say, consciously, the right side takes precedence over the left. During a massage treatment, when the tissues are manipulated, then I become aware of the pain in my left side. In natural medicine, the right side of the body is often equated with the “male” side of our being and the left side of the body with the “female” side.

In this dream, the tree that is cut down, is one of two. It’s the one on the left. The house represents me, but I am also the two trees and I am located outside the house, as trees are, but in this dream I see the disunity of me. I feel cut down, especially the feminine side of me. I feel like it’s been cut down from outside sources in life, as well as by myself. It struggles to feel the pain and because of that, that part of me struggles to heal. The right side of me, the masculine side, it hurts the most because it’s always fighting with all that is masculine in this world. In a way, it’s become overdeveloped and in the dream, the right one still stands. It’s not cut down. The tree on the left, it’s fallen on an angle. This represents to me the loss of my actual physical balance, my vertigo and dizziness that I’ve suffered with from time to time, for more then a couple of years. I also believe the tree on the left represents my injured feminine side. It’s been knocked off balance.

Now, it’s not that this dream was telling me anything I didn’t know. More then anything, it was a confirming dream. Confirming what has been pushing to the surface for years now but my mind (the house in the dream) has kept it outside, over there, because it’s just too tired to bother. The dream is telling me, it’s time to bother.

Dream 2 - I’m standing outside looking out over land, a field. I see a few dark clouds gathering and storm clouds forming. I watch as a funnel cloud starts to form. It becomes a long, narrow tornado and it starts to move directly towards me. I watch it and my eyes never leave it. I don’t panic, I don’t run, there is no fear. The tornado is clearly bearing down on me and headed in my direction. There is a sense of it’s power. There’s a thought that maybe I should move or get out of the way, but, I’m still. It won’t hit me.

Now, it’s close and it crosses a fence that is there just in front of me. The type of barbed wire fence you see in fields. As it passed the fence, it’s now clear and I feel it’s intent, it’s coming right for me.

I look into the face of the tornado. I sense it’s fury and determination. I hear in my own head the words I might have used at one time during moments like this, something like, “in the name of Jes…” and I stop. I then stand firm and look into that tornado and I tell it, “you will not hit me.” I repeat this again with even more of my own strength and willpower and the tornado makes a right-hand turn and it’s gone.

This dream was amazing to me. For almost all of my life I have had dreams where either someone is chasing me or after me Mission Impossible style, or dreams where a tornado is coming. In my tornado dreams I always see them with my own eyes and I always am in a rescue mode, yelling to people to get downstairs, calling out to children to get inside, ‘Run, a tornado is coming.’ The sky is dark, the winds violent. I never think of my own safety. Then, in the process of several years of therapy and healing, I had a tornado dream where I was caught up in the centre of the funnel. Everything whirled around me, but I remained untouched. Chaos outside, peace within. It was a clear indication of the emotional understanding I was gaining, of things in the past and a current way of showing me, things are getting better. I didn’t have another tornado dream for over a year if I recall correctly. Then, out of the blue, this one. I’ve come to think though, that not everything is just “out of the blue.”

A number of very emotional things took place in the course of about a month’s time. The more the emotional stuff got to me mentally, the more physical pain I was feeling and the more my mind wanted to chose to go numb. I’ll just go over here and I won’t think about it, my mind would say. Maybe it will go away? Umm, yeah, NOT.

The tornado dream represented the terrible turmoil of another emotional storm. A storm of emotions, built on the past, that threatened me then and still continue to threaten me, though not as often. When you decide to leave old established beliefs behind it takes time to lay down some new tracks in those neuropathways of your mind. It takes time to replace the broken-record of destructive messages. It takes time to believe you can face the storm alone. It takes time to believe in yourself again.

In this dream, the storm forms and advances in the form of a destructive tornado, tormented past threats, directed straight at me. There is no one else in the dream. Just me and Tornado. The intention is clear. A full-on strike. I face the threat and almost instinctively, I reach for the old pattern of belief that was laid down and well travelled over the years. Half-way through though, I stopped. No! Face this storm without the old beliefs. “You will not hit me!” It can be done. Off went the tornado, that old patriarchal storm. It took a right turn and headed off into it’s masculine trajectory of misery.

I woke up, liberated. Did I do that? (In my best Steve Urkle (sp?) voice.

Dream 3 - I’m holding a baby in my arms. The baby is younger then two years old. It’s drinking a bottle of milk but it holds the bottle to the right, sucking on the nipple while holding the bottle to the far right corner of it’s mouth and face. Here, I’ll show the baby how to drink from the centre of it’s mouth. I place the bottle in the centre but the baby doesn’t understand. It only knows how to drink from the right. It’s never known anything else. There’s a deep sense of understanding I feel for the baby and instead of trying again, I accept that the baby only knows this and is content this way and besides the baby needs to eat. So, let the baby eat.

I place the baby on it’s feet beside me. I take the baby’s little hand and we walk. And then I’m behind the baby and the person who was me, the one walking the baby, but now, I’m separate from the two and I’m watching as a third person watching the scene. I see the two of them walking hand in hand, their backs to me, and they walk away.

In this dream, the baby is me and the adult is me. I’ve been an adult most of my life and I’ve been taking care of the baby, me, the only way I knew how. Some bad habits formed, but not by choice, only by necessity. Babies don’t choose. The adult me wanted to fix the baby’s story, make it right. Now, the adult me, sees and understands. It’s okay now to make peace. Let the baby be. She made it this far. She’ll always be a part of you, you can put her down now. Take her hand, let her be the baby, you be the adult and the two of you can walk away together.

As the adult bystander, now outside, watching the scene, I can say, “It’s okay now.” It’s time to nurture them both with understanding. Give them wings.

Blog Blues

Okay, okay, okay…maybe I’m not done here.  One moment please while I have a friggin’ brain fart.

I’ve been off working in another WordPress blog trying to sort out things.  I wanted to use Kay’s little pink ‘a’ in my sidebar.  The media centre tells me “File type does not meet security guidelines. Try another.”  Though I have the little pink ‘a’ downloaded in my own files, it among all off my files, won’t download.  All my other pics do.  So, I have no idea which end is up.  (Peanut gallery keep your thoughts to yourself.)  Some of you won’t know what I’m yammering on about, that’s okay, neither do I. 

If you all don’t mind, please go on about your business and ignore my meltdown while I try to sort myself out. 

Zoe wanders away, girl, you have got to get a life!

Addendum

It’s done, I figured it out.  The little pink ‘a’ is in my sidebar now.    I think I’m ready for another weeks blog vacation. 

Not here, over there

A Complicated Salvation -> Reborn and curently, Upside Down, is HERE.  If it doesn’t suit your fancy I won’t be offended if you stop linking to it.  The original ACS Blog was started at Blogger.

I’ll leave this blog up as it appears I can not import it at Blogger.  Maybe just as well.  I’m not sure the direction of my new blog.  It may not be to your liking and it’s focus may shift.  The place is currently under construction. 

The new blog will provide a link back to this site.

Thanks.  Now, back to my new garden.  It is spring after all. 

BTW, I will be back here for comments and SPAM on a daily basis.

I’m about to take a bat

… to this WordPress blog.  Now, I know to all you readers, that what you see here looks so nice and calm and relaxed and you think, everything works so nicely behind the scenes here at A Complicated Salvation.  Do not be deceived.  And apparently, I’m not the only one going a bit stir crazy with some issues/bugs that have occured here as a result of the recent new WordPress upgrade.  I’m tired of it.  Don’t be surprised if I quit blogging here.  I’ll leave the blog up if I do quit because it gets hits every day for the spiritual abuse, toxic/legalistic church and women in church content.  If it can help someone or help lead them to another site that can be of help, that’s good. 

I’ll be around visiting you all. 

Canadian Christian perspective on Intelligent Design

Canadian Christian television show takes a look at Intelligent Design.  Those following the Expelled movie (Ben Stein is interviewed) will be interested.  Links provided to view the entire program.