(no subject)

[cabbitzilla]

Every night I say a prayer in the hopes that there's a heaven.
and everyday I'm more confused as the saints turn into sinners
All the heroes and legends I knew as a child have fallen to idols of clay
And I feel this empty place inside so afraid that I've lost my faith.

Show me the way, show me the way
Take me tonight to the river and wash my illusions away.
Please show me the way.

Monday proved to be a very interesting day, at least up to the point where my stomach rose in rebellion to smite me, desk, keyboard, monitor, carpet, bathroom, and toilet. Bleah. Anyway...

Cornerstones
Long-time readers are aware that Mondays for me revolve around a pair of mid-afternoon therapy appointments; both my individual therapy appointment and the GID Focus Group hit that same day. Various bits and pieces have been mentioned over time, but never anything focused and purposeful. Outside of my therapist and (to a lesser degree) the other clients in the GID group; nobody's ever gotten a full look at what goes on. Questions about how the group meeting went generally get fielded with 'It was group-like.', and a similar answer is given for the individual therapy. It's not something I generally talk about; I tired a long while back of being raked over the coals for being a transsexual with Faith.

jhyanmar and rowandoll are likely the only ones in my list of regular readers that have any accurate idea of just how deep that Faith runs, and what it takes to shake it even a little. I'm far from perfect, and there're times when circumstance and/or depression simply overwhelm me entirely, but it's been a steady foundation for years. Even when I stalked away from the Brethren branch of the Protestant church, enraged by the backstabbing and gossip and pettiness that'd driven me from several other branches of Protestantism, my Faith remained... though it had crystalized by that point into a concrete focus on God coupled with scorn for the human-created churches. Betrayed and outcast, the only thing I wanted from the church was distance.

While the LOLB (little old lady brigade) was more than thrilled to see me go, a small knot of friends refused to accept that as The End. Mike & Becky, who together with Becky's younger sister Sarah had crowbar'd open my mind and heart in the first place, Becky & Sarah's mother Nancy, and Nancy's second husband Mike.... they're the ones that flat refused to let go. None of them were terribly pleased with the events that'd prompted me to part ways with the church, and each of them seemed to see some sort of potential in me. A scarce few years later saw me leaving the east coast, bound for Chicago and a new job/environment/life. Initially I'd been staying with Mike and Nancy, but things just never synched up properly. I'd managed to walk far enough from the church that my own life had slipped into Shadow, and that clashed with their views and foundations. My own fault, and I can admit it, but it put a rift between them and I. The chaos that followed still gifts me with nightmares, a decade and more later... and drove me headlong back into scripture in order to retain fragments of my sanity.

Two, maybe three months ago, the topics of religion, Faith, and the church were broached in my individual therapy sessions. Since then, at least half of each session has been devoted to musings and explorations. While it amuses me a bit that my therapist is taking away at least as much as I am from these discussions, it's been MORE than a little helpful to have someone I can trust enough to dig out the pieces of that foundation, dust them off, and figure out where they fit again... rather than flying on instinct alone. With the world turned inside out with the move, the associated financial chaos, my growing frustration with Megan, and the upswell of feelings of futility with my own position, instinct was no longer sufficient. The last couple of sessions have revolved around the New Testament, Divine Inspiration, and the rather obvious issues Paul has with all things female... and the fact that so many of the splintered shards seem to be a little (or more) misguided. It was something that I'd mulled over in the past, but for whatever reason the contemplation either never concluded or was trampled and lost in some burst of madness.

Bear with me, please. I know this is lengthy, but there're a lot of pieces to put into place.

While the buildup of philosophical and Faith-based explorations have been going on, the texture of the GID group has changed. Originally comprised of three GID clients and a therapist lead (who also happens to be my therapist, Tina), I was the 'new kid', and the youngest of the clients. Adding me to the group had shifted the balance of power, forcing the group to be more flexible in the face of someone younger and more passionate than the original clients, but the stagnation Tina had warned me of was beginning to creep back in. A was consumed by bitterness, C seemed driven solely by anger, and N represented madness (a very long story, and not mine to tell; you'll simply have to accept my assessment). Me? It depended on the day, and bounced between 'distant hope' and 'sorrow'... sometimes shifting repeatedly during the duration of a single session. I'm still struggling with the sorrow, and probably always will, but my lack of consistency was allowing bitterness to lock things down again.

About a month ago, the group was joined by B... who in spite of a past as checkered as mine (and quite possibly worse), has consistently represented a quiet but determined hope. The introductory session proved very interesting; A and C were completely caught off guard... and B's hopeful views gave me something to bolster my own with. The resulting session seemed to put -everyone- on a slightly brighter baseline, something badly needed. The next session repeated the first, leaving me more than a little curious about what B was using as a foundation plane for herself. The third session occurred without A's presence due to a conflicting doctor's appointment, and continued the pattern.

Yesterday, the GID group consisted only of Tina, B, and myself. My earlier individual session was spent specifically exploring Paul's ... well, to be blunt, misogynistic views and their impact on the early church. In the one hour gap before the GID group, I wandered off to turn things over in my mind, and had a kernel thought formed before I went into group. With only the three of us present, the conversation dove -immediately- into matters of Faith, Gospel, and religion. For reference purposes, Tina is a fairly mainstream Protestant with Pentecostal leanings, B is a Kabbalistic Jew, and I... well, I'm out there somewhere...

Yeah, I've gotten to where I was going...
The initial topic of God's purported views on transsexuality turned rapidly to the perceived conflicts between the Old and New Testament, and to Paul the apparent misogynist. Form there, it settled into a steady sifting of where exactly the conflicts were, differences in tone, conflicts completely within the New Testament, and the issues of Divine Inspiration. Of the ones that I'm aware of (and I'm HARDLY a biblical scholar), every one of the conflicts and clashes and contradictions can be isolated to one of the 'Letters' included in the New Testament. While there are changes embraced in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, they all are acknowledged as changes or revisions or addendums.

It's long been my stance that Divine Inspiration or no, the presence of a human element adds the potential for misunderstanding or error. I've got no quibble with the argument that the presence of God for these things minimizes or eliminates most all of them... but what happens when an oral history is passed down a generation or two and THEN put into writing? Most public school graduates in the USA have seen or participated in the exercise demonstrating the inaccuracy of passed on information:

• Students stand in a line
• The teacher whispers a phrase in the ear of the first student, who then passes it to the next and so on down the line
• The initial phrase and the result are then compared, usually to the accompaniment of laughter.

When my class did this, the original phrase was The dog dug a hole and buried the bone.... and after fifteen students, it came back as The dog dug a hole in the bone.

No matter how much care is taken, oral histories are all subject to this kind of degradation.

That created a pause in the (up until then) steady cross-chatter that'd been going on, all three of us arriving at roughly the same point at the same time. Tina was still trying to wrap her brain around it as B and I launched into examining the New Testament book by book... and crossing off the list anything that was a specific personal letter or specific to culture or region. The books we were tossing out weren't going into the conversational trashbin, mind you; they retain their value, but ONLY when viewed in the context they were written. A companion volume, if you will, detailing the history of the reformed church and some of the pitfalls out forebears had encountered. When we'd finished, there wasn't a lot left as Divinely Inspired... but what was left made complete sense when set beside the Old Testament. The remains of the Protestant New Testament?

• The Gospel According to Matthew
• The Gospel According to Mark
• The Gospel According to Luke
• The Gospel According to John
->Four accounts detailing the same time period. When taken together, the resulting composite is going to be as close to Divine Truth as mere humans are going to get.
• The Acts of the Apostles
->A composite book, detailing the initial founding and ordering of the church, offering a template to followers.
• Revelations

At the time, none of us had an exhaustive list of the 'Apocryphal' texts with us, and really the only intelligent way to view them would be to take each one on an individual basis. And at that point, we were not only all of us out of our respective elements, we were 20 minutes over our allotted time for group. B's ride was getting antsy, and I had to go pick up Megan from work. But where many conversations simply vanish into the no-longer-well-indexed cavern of my memory, this one's stayed with me. Entire chunks of the interchanges are still fresh and clear even after a long night spent emptying everything I've eaten in the last six months into the toilet. I certainly am not in the realm of 'feeling okay', but it's nagging at me enough that I've got a cup of diluted coffee at my elbow and fifteen tabs open in my browser chasing down fragments from years ago.

And the suddenly mournful thought that most of my reference texts ('The Apocryphal New Testament', 'Jerusalem Bible', 'The Nag Hammadi Library in English', 'Jung and the Lost Gospels', my NIV Study Bible, and a handful of others) were packed into the same boxes that my computer textbooks went into.... the ones that I know are at the bottoms of the piles in the addition. The ones that're almost certainly destroyed. :( I remember titles, and vague fogs of passages... and that's the extent of what I've managed to dredge up out of my mind. Given the fact that resources are still near nonexistent, my fallback position is to get the address changed on my driver's license and get myself a Howard county library card. I've no idea if any of them are available through the public library, but it's what I'm limited to at the moment. I -have- located my King James Bible, the Book of Mormon that my explorations this past year netted me, and I -think- I've seen a battered copy of the Quran here at the apartment somewhere, so I'm hopeful it's survived. And my casting of nets o'er the nets (sorry, I can't help it) just turned up The Gnostic Society Library; it looks like part of what I fear is lost can at least be gotten online.

And all of this means? From a practical viewpoint, precious little. From a philosophical standpoint, I'm hopeful that I can nudge (or cannonade, if necessary) some of the still-offline portions of my mind back into motion. I may never manage 'biblical scholar', but I can at least search for the answers I personally need. Given who and what I am, that ... is likely a sizable undertaking, but it's still one I'll attempt. While I'm not sure -why- I'm being pushed this way, it's been made fairly obvious to me that it'll simply keep coming up until I chase it down properly.

And that would seem to be what matters.

Comments

[tarragon918.livejournal.com]

While I'm uncertain if you'll be able to check out actual religious texts from a library, you should at least be able to find many providing info on them (I hope!). If you're looking for a faith that you can share with others, look into the Society of Friends or even the Unitarian church. Both of these are probably quite different in expressing faith than what you've been used to in the past, but they may be helpful to you. Also, if you're into exploring other faiths (as you mentioned the Quran), I'd suggest checking out the Sikh faith, founded in the 15th century by Guru Nanak in India; Sikhs believe in one God; their God is embodied in the religious text the Siri Guru Granth Sahib, although the faith was led by a succession of Gurus from Nanak through Gobind Singh--at his passing and at his direction, the text become the Guru. It is writings from Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh, which are sung as hymns (or shabads as Sikhs call them) during their religious ceremony. I can't really describe it, but I can say that it is some of the most beautiful and moving music I've ever experienced.

Sorry for going into such detail! There was a time in my life where I followed the Sikh faith for a while, btw. I still feel very drawn to it, although unsure of how to deal with it; I've tried to return to my Christian faith roots, but found it wasn't satisfying me spiritually. If you do decide to study about the Sikh faith and have any question, please feel free to ask me.

And think too about the Quaker and Unitarian alternatives--they are there, and may fill the need you have. Check them out. Good luck to you; spirituality is a very personal thing, but I'm glad that with all you have been through that you still feel the draw. {{{{{{HUGS}}}}}}}}

[elisabeth.livejournal.com]

I've both Sikh and Baha'i friends, and there're several other paths I'm looking to explore. Quaker is one I've looked at afore, as are the Unitarian/Universalists... As I said above, I've no clue where the road goes, I'm simply looking for an on-ramp.