exit interview

You’ve nailed it in this one, David.

The problem is clear to see, right there in the caption.

*Whose* church is the preacher referring to?

God’s church, or *his* church?

Oh, yes, I know that friendly smile and ‘blessing’ only to be replaced by gossip and ill-will. Thus, I draw closer to the relationship God has provided for me. What would prompt someone to curse another? That reveals a dark side in which God does not reside.

Nobody likes to be rejected…but people want what they want and will come and go with great regularity.

We prefer very sharp parsnips for our exit door.

(no…we let them go with no ill will – what good does doing anything else do for anybody?)

In my case, everything and everyone was left so far behind when I did leave, that I didn’t experience the jabs of spikes, but the wayward drift of loneliness and unanswered questions.

Ha ha, yeah that’s how THEY see it. They only wish.

I think this gets to the heart of what “spirituality” is all about. We only feel the need to “do something about” things like curses when they seem real to us. The wolves who showed me the exit to what they believed was certain destruction were dead wrong. I didn’t “escape” the destruction they intended for me. On the contrary, the very things they did to curse me were exactly the blessings that led me to freedom and a kind of life I would not have believed I could live at that time. If I could have seen then what I know now, I would not have gotten freaked out like I did. At that time, I didn’t understand that the way things looked to me might not be the way they really were.

This isn’t about making lemonade from life’s lemons, because that assumes they are lemons. What if the real problem is being so sure that they are lemons? What if the real problem is that the INTENTION of those who curse us seems more real to us than the INTENTION of God who blesses us? We can’t just change what seems real to us, but we can start asking whether what seems real actually is real. If we skip that step, we can end up obsessing about how to change things that are not there to change. We can end up jousting windmills. Even if everyone we know also believes that they are giant enemies, they would still be windmills.

We tend to assume that how we see things is how they are and jump right to fixing them. The first step is NOT figuring out how to counter the curses or transform them into blessings. That assumes that they are real. Jesus and the Apostles told us otherwise. The first step is to find the CORRECT way of looking at a situation so that reality is real TO ME, something that Churchianity not only doesn’t encourage, but explicitly discourages. Churchianity doesn’t preach that we should get our sight restored; it preaches that we must learn to live with blindness. Its words declare healing, but as soon as someone starts to see, Churchians beat him or her down as a dangerous “opposer” (what they called me) or heretic or person of malicious will. That reaction is not the exception, but the nearly exceptionless rule.

Figuring this stuff out will remain a trial-and-error proposition until enough of us explore it and put our heads together. It has to do with:

1. looking at “curses” from different perspectives and understanding why dysfunctional perspectives (the ones that make the “curse” seem real, dangerous, and frightening,) are so much more real to us than functional ones are (the ones that make God’s blessing seem OBVIOUS and real to us)

2. dealing with the disconnections we discover between our knee-jerk perceptions and what is actually the case (disconnection = sin)

3. rewiring our circuitry so that we see what is really the case, instead of seeing what we see and talking ourselves into believing that it is not the case, while we try our best to believe something that in our hearts seems unreal to us

Telling ourselves that what we see is unreal, i.e., the world as we DO experience it, that something ELSE is actually real, i.e., the “spiritual” reality or truth that we rarely if ever experience except in specially contrived situations, and struggling to change our behavior to deny what we DO experience in order to act according to what we DON’T experience IS WHAT CHURCHIANITY CALLS FAITH. It’s what psychology calls the makings of schizophrenia. Churchianity affirms that our perception of the world as we see it now is normal, while experiential perception (as opposed to indoctrination) of “spiritual reality” is the exception. Bullshit. That’s just a way to convince us to remain blind so that we are forced to rely on Churchians to lead us by the hand.

I call #3 above “internalization.” Many spiritual traditions offer information about ways to CONTACT reality as it truly is, i.e. “spiritual reality,” ENCOUNTER perceptions of what is real, i.e., being filled with the Spirit, enlightenment, epiphanies, hearing God’s voice, experiencing oneness with the universe, etc. but NONE OF THEM offer information about how to INTERNALIZE those truths so that our NORMAL experience IS experiential perception of that “hidden” spiritual reality. The best source of internalization information at this point is psychology, not religion.

In other words, what if the REAL problem is NOT that spiritual reality is “hidden,” but that WE ARE BLIND? What if the insights we get once in a while are not peeps into another dimension, but little shafts of light that managed to poke through our insensibility? What if the answer is to get our blindness healed and our sight restored, not learn to twist our minds with obscure methods that do no more than make the best of living blind? What if we could as a matter of course SEE that those punji sticks are actually something else, say, made of a a nutritious kind of marshmallow that will cushion our fall, tickle us on the way down, and serve as a scrumptious treat when we get to our feet, giggling? What if THAT were the truth, even though all we see is punji sticks? It would revolutionize our notions about “humility” for one thing. It sounds preposterous, doesn’t it?

I’m learning that it is not preposterous at all. I’m also learning how hard it is to stop clinging to my default perspectives with a desperate death-grip, but that we can, and it doesn’t require magic. We really don’t have to wish and hope and strain and sacrifice and cry and groan for miracles from God. Jesus said that the spirit of truth will LEAD us into all truth. He didn’t say the spirit would explain it first, and he didn’t say that our local pastor or spiritual leader could substitute. The spirit leads each of us personally, independently, in all kinds of different ways, but always without intermediary. The spirit might lead through others and through circumstances, but our receipt of the messages and our responses to them occurs in utter solitude, entirely and solely between us and God, and with us accountable only to him (or her, if you prefer.

We can’t be led to see anything new if we won’t let go of the way we look at it now. And I’m here to tell you that IT’S SAFE to let go! It’s also scary as hell for that desperate little person in there who is afraid to let go, but the reason he or she is so desperate and afraid is because he or she INTERNALIZED LIES. Letting go of the lies that tell us that the curses are real seems risky. Brainwashing ourselves into “believing” something that remains unreal to us is self-abusive. Guess where we learned THAT method from? Looking for perspectives that make sense to us, so that we CAN SEE a way to proceed, THAT is what gives us the experience of finding a “way of escape” from the temptation to believe that it’s dangerous and hopeless. Don’t worry about the perspectives that cause dread or that put us into Catch-22s. Those are not our way. When we find the right perspective, the course that will work, here is what happens:

1. We laugh, usually out loud.
2. We see HOW we can follow the course we now see.
3. There are no guarantees; questions about possible negative outcomes remain unanswered. We only see the next few steps, which is what “being led” means. But we have a confidence we can’t deny that THIS COURSE will be good.
4. We feel that WE CAN, that we have what it takes to follow that course. WE FEEL IT. No one needs to talk us into it, not even ourselves.
5. We can hardly wait to tell someone about it. THAT is what “gospel” means.

@Millard Melnyk. When I left my previous church, I felt abandoned and angry. Over time, I’ve realized that it was my stuff. My perceptions that needed to change. And while at first that is scarey, it is also a place of great freedom. No longer do I need to fear what others do or don’t do, I have the power to envision my own reality (and hopefully be aligned with God’s desire.) Thank you for your words above. And thanks David for another thought provoking cartoon.

BTW, is there a name for these like “political cartoons”? If not, I think we should have some fun and come up with a word for what you do.

@Beth, I know exactly what you mean. One tweak, though… What I wrote was about finding those new perceptions in “real time,” i.e., in time to change our behavior and so influence the situation, even “overcome” it. Hindsight shows us perspectives that were available at the time, although maybe not accessible by us at the time. The “trick” would be to find them when we could use them! I think that’s clearly promised in the N.T.

To “One of the Cursed” this is something that I often think about. That’s a whole other outreach, ministering to those who have been hurt by the ‘church’. Growth numbers can be deceptive as the throughput can be huge. I’ve met many people with very shabby, scarring experiences. I liked how David addressed the label of being called bitter. I’m still cogitating on Millard’s comments, but I do believe the effect of curses to be real. Probably comes from my contact with indigenous peoples. On a different level, a friend lent me one of Jampolsky’s books a few years ago and I was challenged by the premise “you can live your life under curses, or as a blessing”. My attitude changed from that point forward. I’m not new-age, and have become very sceptical towards much Christian teaching of late, but I guess where I stand with it now is that I pray for protection from curses – that they will be negated and go back to the sender.

@Helen, if you have an interest in indigenous outlooks, check out David Abram’s “Spell of the Sensuous” 1996 Pantheon Books. WOW! It not only presents some very convincing thinking that sheds light on the fragmentation that attends Western religions wherever they go, his writing mesmerized me, actually helped me to relate viscerally with the intimate connection that indigenous peoples feel to what he calls the “more-than-human world” and the “animate earth.” Beautiful, impressive book.

@One of the cursed: SPOT ON!

I believe that what you described was what Paul referred to as principalities, powers, and fortresses that we are supposed to carry on warfare against. Problem being, we’ve been looking to those very adversaries for information about how to conduct the war. No surprise they don’t offer any.

The problem is systemic, I agree, and I think it goes deeper than the systems themselves. Any system is the result of intentional work that installed a repeatable mechanism. I think that our “warfare” needs to be directed at the intentional sources of the systemic problems, i.e., the spiritual sources. Paul wrote, “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.”

I’m trying out the idea that instead of “flesh and blood” or even systems, the targets are PERSPECTIVES. For example, that “the flesh” as he and Jesus used the term does not refer to something corporeal or tangible, but a perspective that over-prioritizes sensory information, i.e., the information we get through our literal “flesh.” The literal flesh isn’t the problem. It’s passions and desires are not the problems. The short-sighted information that we get from immediate sensory experience isn’t even the problem. The problem is prioritizing that information incorrectly. No matter how powerful a sensory experience is, (and ALL spiritual experiences are mediated through our senses, if even just our internal “senses” of wonder, joy, awe, love, etc.,) we need additional information to make good sense of them. We need information from spiritual perspectives, which for me includes reason, insight, foresight, hindsight, planning, intuition, and pretty much anything else that helps us get a better fix on context and transcends the puny temporal slice of awareness we are capable of at any point.

So, I’m working with the idea that we should destroy circular, enclosed “fortresses” of thinking and speculation that keep people locked into abusive situations, e.g., the ways that victims get locked into abusive relationships for years on end, never believing that they can escape. They get trapped by LIES that they can’t leave and that they do not deserve anything better, and by FEAR OF DEATH, when death is understood as unbearable alienation and separation from anything that makes life worth living.

Just think of being able to stop abusers, to destroy their stongholds and their strangleholds on their victims! Just think of the sparks of life and dignity that ignite in prisoners of abusive situations when they realize that they can escape! And just think of the sudden “Oh shit!” dawn of recognition in the abusers’ eyes when they get the message that their time is up! I believe THAT’S what Paul was talking about. I’m trying to learn how it works.