Why growing up in church can kill your heart Part 2

I didn’t know there was a lesbian couple right in front of me keeping watch. The head of Christian Ed was a woman that had lived with the first head of Christian Ed, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Mears. Henrietta Mears lived with Ethel Mae Baldwin until her death and then Ethel Mae took over and no one ever thought that they might be in a relationship but after Henrietta died, Ethel May moved in with Adrienne. Ethel Mae was evidently keeping watch over me and I think she knew pretty early on about me. She is the one that encouraged me to start camp counselling at Forest Home, the camp church had founded.

Year after year I did it, starting in 9^th grade and until I started working full time at the YWCA camp. She always gave me the kids that were going to be a challenge in some way and one time I asked her why and she told me that because I had been the kid that was a challenge she knew I could handle them with love and I did. It wasn’t until I came out many years later and she was gone I realized just how close an eye she was keeping on me considering how big the Sunday School had grown but she did know my mom and dad.

The first year I came home from working at the YW camp I had changed. I had created different person to be. I was more out going, I knew what I liked and didn’t like and I had learned to stand up for myself. I wasn’t as shy and retreating. So I came back with the first inklings that I really, really didn’t fit. The only place I felt safe and where I felt holy and sacred was outside and church was feeling like a prison. And I was oblivious to men. When the married choir director hit on me someone else had to tell me and since he had known me since I was little and mom worked for him it was more than a little creepy. So I ignored it.

Working at a Girl Scout camp after 2 years at the YW camp, I was beginning to be sure I liked women but I would be in the closet for 4 more years. I went to women’s music concerts with my friends but until I fell hard in love couldn’t take the step. Meanwhile my parents were freaking out that Cam was gay and I was still invisible. Although mom did ask one of the ministers about lesbians and he told her there was no such thing. Right, his daughter was a dyke. At that point every single minister had a kid that was exploring gay behaviour in some way. All but one came out and stayed out.

But I was really struggling because church was making it clear gay people were evil even though I knew several men were in choir, I was the lone lesbian. I literally lay awake many nights knowing that if the people I had known all my life knew my heart some of them would hate me. I lived in fear that people would know by looking at me and it appeared some did when my brother finally asked if I was because the gay men in choir had been discussing me. This was not helped by a male friend in choir was making shy overtures to date me and I was trying to figure out ways to avoid it. I had no desire to hurt his feelings but the quiet ones always seemed to think I was date material. I prayed so hard to be straight, guess what? the Gods and Goddesses don’t care if you’re gay.

But I kind of wanted to be caught because I cut my hair off very short and only wore t shirts, jeans, boots and flannel shirts. But finally the fear and the stress got too much and I walked away from my church home. And the minute people found out why, my parents lost friends.Some people who had known me since birth decided Cam and I were evil and that my parents had raised us wrong. Church friends gave my mom books on how to straighten us out.

Mom tried to trick me into going to the church psychs by driving her to her alleged appt and she wanted me to go in with her and I told her I had a good book and I refused to get out of the car. So she went in and came back out again and we went home. Mom being a severe narcissist did not take my coming out well at all because it reflected back on her.

I did not see any of those people again for over 15 years at my dad’s funeral where my mom had the minister give an altar call because of me and the pagan friends that came to support me. I was so furious and none of them came to my brother’s funeral, they did come to mom’s and barely spoke to me.

So I lost the place where I did a lot of growing up, where I thought people loved me and found out I was mostly only loved if I didn’t step out of line. They should have known something was up when I was 9. The first time I went to church camp in the third grade we had to write down what we wanted to be when we grew up and they sealed it in an envelope. When we closed up my parent’s house when dad died, I found it in mom’s dresser. I had written in crayon, “I want to be a minister”. When I had said it at camp it was one of the few times in my life I was told that girls couldn’t do something.

Joke was on them. I’m a priestess of the Goddess and an Arch Druidess and I’m a dyke.

Note: the church I grew up has now voted to be part of the retrograde Presbyterians that want nothing to do with gays. You would think as many of us that grew up there would have changed a few minds but I guess not

Why growing up in a church home can really hurt – part 1

I’ve been thinking a lot about Orlando and about how so many pastors condemned the dead and not the shooter. It brought back a lot of bad memories of growing up in church and hiding for all the years before I came out and had to leave the church or rather, they left me.

I was raised in the largest Presbyterian church in the US at the time. We always had a minimum of 5 pastors, an executive pastor, an asst, a pastor that did hospital visits, a youth pastor, a college pastor and we also had Christian ED heads, usually the only woman on the executive staff and a Minister of Music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Presbyterian_Church_of_Hollywood

There were a multitude of choirs and we were world famous for the one that ranked the highest. I started in Carol Choir and moved up to the all girl Lyric choir in Junior high, I was also in a special choir that sang at Junior Church, Wylie Chapel Choir during second service which was supposed to be an honour to be asked to be in but most of us were choir brats whose parents were in the main choir, The Cathedral choir. There was also a High School choir and a choir that was a mix of people not good enough to be in Cathedral Choir and college kids that I skipped called the Chancel Choir and got into Cathedral Choir after High School and I was in the Sunday night choir called the Happening, (hey it was the 70s.) and we got to sing more modern music. We also had a bell choir for each age group and I was in those along with my brother and eventually my sister.

We started Sunday School at 2 years of age and started learning the Bible and memorizing to for awards, a Bible in third grade, filling up shields with memorized passages, (they were shields because they represented the armour of God). This why the holy rollers and Bible beaters can’t get far with me because I usually know the Bible better than they do. I was in Church every Sunday and at Bible Study during the week when I was older. We took catechism in 7^th grade to become members of the church and that was the first big time I was aware that maybe I didn’t fit in. I had feelings before this about it. I had difficulty memorizing and Saturday nights before I had to recite some new thing were absolute torture, if I couldn’t sing it I had real trouble remembering  it. I felt really bad about it. I was told I wasn’t trying hard enough.

The year I joined the church I had to make some decisions. At the time I was dad’s punching bag when he got mad and I decided to tell the Elder that interviewed us to join about it and I did and I was told to honour my father and mother in all things. So I made my first act of rebellion. I refused to get baptized when I joined the church. Presbyterians dedicate their babies to raise them in the church and you are supposed to be baptized when you join the church. I told my parents it was because I didn’t want to get up in front of the church which shouldn’t have made any sense since we had to be in the front of the church to join and I was in front all the time when I was in choir and when I did other things but they bought it, even though my best friend was doing it.

My Dad was Head Usher, he was an Elder, he had been a Deacon. He had status in church and I did not. My mom was in Cathedral Choir, and was at one point, President of the Women’s Auxillary, She was President of Elder’s Wives and when women were allowed to be Deacons and Elders she became a Deacon. Wives and husbands couldn’t be Elders or Deacons at the same time. They were in their adult Sunday School classes. Mom was also the Executive Secretary for the Minister of Music. She had status.

We were in church at least 3 days a week, usually more. The only respite I got was summer when I was with my grandparents who for some reason did not go in the summer. That was when we took trips to be in nature. That was when I became a sponge to what my grandmother was teaching about nature and faeries and family stories. That was when I was free.

About 7^th grade I became aware that I liked girls way more than the girls around me who liked boys. So not only did what they were teaching in church make me in uncomfortable but the only kind of church I felt at home in was when we went to camp.

They sent us to some conference where the minister yelled about the evils of holding hands and kissing boys and I felt relieved because I had no desire to do it anyway.

I would sit in Sunday School and make up questions to ask my Sunday School teachers. Miss Pringle was our 7^th grade Sunday School teacher. She was older than God and had no business teaching a bunch of 12 year olds in the late 1960s. We were smarter than her and we knew it. I remember asking why is was okay for Mary to be an unwed mother and not us? She freaked out at the question and scolded all of us. This was on my mind because my mother has started going on about being an unwed mother and that it would be the worst thing in the world if I did that. Since I didn’t like boys, I found it amusing.

But I was feeling more and more alienated and out of place and the feeling only grew as I got older. No one ever told me there was such a thing as lesbians and this was pre-Stonewall. I only ever heard about gay men and how it was so sad about them being “HOMOSEXUALS” even though I could see Jim in my mom’s choir was anything but sad and I loved him because he was always encouraging me to try new things like design needlework patterns. He loved to needlepoint and at the time I did a lot of it too.

Why #I stand with Ahmed

If you wonder why I’m so mad about the way Ahmed has been treated, there are two reasons.

The first is that I was a geek kid that people got weird around. They would complement me on my smarts and then act like they were a little frightened of me, particularly some of my parent’s friends. I didn’t act like a kid. I was fairly solemn and quiet and that weirds adults out. It never occurred to them that because I couldn’t see very well even with glasses that I might be trying to figure out exactly what was going on or that I knew they were weirded out and pulling their chain. Bad combination in a child.

One of the first things I ever got a whopping of a spanking for was taking apart an alarm clock. It glowed in the dark and was probably laced with radium because it was really bright and it was loud. I wanted to know quite literally, what made it tick, so I completely disassembled it and of course being about 4 years old, couldn’t quite get it back together. I managed one of dad’s screw drivers to take it apart but not enough to screw it back together. It’s always easier to take something part you shouldn’t than get it back together. Because I was both a night owl and a dawn riser at the time I had way too much time on my hands and it got me in trouble often, (We won’t talk about the incident with lipstick, nail scissors and my mother’s purse).

Anyway, I think both mom and dad got their licks in on that one. I think one of the reasons was they had already taken my brother to the ER once thinking he had swallowed the phonograph needle. I had removed it, again, to see how it worked. I could have told them that if they had bothered to ask me. Only got a swat for that but I think they were afraid he’d eat clock parts so that one was a bigger spanking. I think my dad’s spanking was for taking his tools without asking, but he had been showing me how to use them so…

Around that time things like Lincoln Logs and erector sets and finally when I was 6, I got the microscope and multitudes of science books were keeping me out of the household electrical devices.

So I understand the need for a kid to build or take things apart. If you’re curious and intelligent you want to exercise it and grownups can be incredibly stupid if they don’t know what you are doing and incredibly fun to mess with when they are being stupid but sometimes you just want to show what you can do and you scare them. Stupid, uncreative people are still the bane of my existence. There’s certain kind of stare they get when looking at you and it gets old really fast.

The second reason is that I was accused of making a terrorist threat several years ago when I worked at a company. A new member of my dept found out I was a witch at Hallows and harassed several people to go after me. They prayed over me at my desk. They went through my Disney cartoon a day calendar and removed all the witches from it. They would spout incorrect Bible verses and would get infuriated when I corrected them on the meaning, translation or if it was even in the Bible and not Shakespeare and they harassed anyone that tried to associate with me.

I did what any witch would do and put a protection spell on my workspace. It was tied to a tiny pentacle the size of dime on a post it under my monitor and not in plain sight. M, my chief harasser somehow found it mysteriously and reported it to our new manager who was a friend of hers from church. I was put on probation for that tiny pentacle in my desk because It allegedly terrified M. M outweighed me by about 100+ lbs and who was meaner than a snake was allegedly terrified of my tiny pentacle and there was not a damn thing at the time I could do about it. So about 6 months into my probation the company was bought by a company who had a very strong antidiscrimination policy and I figured I had nothing to lose in my misery so I went to the new HR and got an immediate response. They took me off probation, removed all mention from my file, moved M to another dept and made my manager go to sensitivity training and when she kept behaving badly, they took all of her employees away and gave her an tiny office in a closet and she left shortly after. So I know very well about being accused of being a terrorist because of your religion and it’s wrong and it hurts but you can fight and occasionally you can win.

I hope Ahmed wins big time and all those police officers and teacher have to eat their socks. You go Ahmed!

Note: if they were really so scared of his creation, how come no one called the bomb squad and they never evacuated his school if he was such a threat? No they just withheld his parents and harassed him because they could.

A thought on September 11

On September 11, 2001 in this country, Buddhists got up to go to work, Hindus got up to go to work, Jews got up to go to work, Muslims got up to got to work, Pagans got up to go to work and Christians got up to go to work and by the end of that day, one religion would be demonized and one religion would be out for blood. I will leave you to decided which was which. All I know is that the world changed forever that day and not for the better.

We have lost freedom in so many ways because a few men decided to hurt people they had never met and never broken bread with and never looked in the eye to see their humanity. This was an evil deed.

But the revenge of another set of religious fanatics caused just as much harm and set into position that most of us could not even imagine before that day of the Tower card of the tarot deck.

The Tower card is about catastrophic change that you are supposed to learn from? I’m afraid the US just learned how to hurt people more and for a few people it created enormous wealth, and all of them believing their Book is the real one and that their Book was the truth and all of them wrong.

There are many truths and no one person has the right to tell another there is only one truth and only one book or only one god and I can’t remember anywhere in that book where it says there is only one god, it doesn’t. It says it’s god is the right one among many.

Thou shalt have no other god before me for I am a jealous god – it flat out says there are other gods and that you must choose the Abrahamic god not that he is the only one.

In my father’s house are many mansions, I go to prepare a place for  you – there are many gods and Jesus went to clear a place for his followers, it doesn’t say that heaven is only for his followers.

I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes unto the father but by me. Again it doesn’t say there is only one god just that you should choose his father over others.

Now, fourteen years after that fateful world changing day. We live in a polarized world where one selfish bunch of twits say they are being persecuted while they persecute everyone they don’t agree with and call it freedom.

Another bunch of selfish twits across the ocean force their followers to kill everyone they don’t agree is practicing their religion in the RIGHT way. This leads to little three year olds dying on a beach instead of gleefully playing in those waves.

I hurt for the world I see now. I hurt for the children to come who may never know a peaceful world. I hurt for the world where people think it’s more important to kill their neighbor than love them. I hurt for the world that lives in fear of another fateful day instead of living this one for all it’s worth. We are never promised more than today and the people who died on September 11 and all those since then who have died learned that.

We have only today and really only the minute and hour we are living in. Nothing more and nothing less. Make this minute count. Can we live it in love? Can we live it in peace? Can we live it free from want or pain? Can we ease another’s want or pain? Can we live?

Truth!

9 Famous Women With the Perfect Response on Why They’ve Ditched Religion

http://m.mic.com/articles/114666/9-famous-women-with-the-perfect-response-on-why-they-ve-ditched-religion?ts_pid=2

Truth

Indiana – You suck, you legalized bigotry in the name of fake religion

I work at a large health insurance company that has offices in Indiana. Now I am faced with the choice of refusing to be sent there for any training or other thing my bosses might send me to. Thanks Indiana, you bigoted bunch of asshats. Thanks for bringing back Jim Crow single handedly. Since now you can legally not serve anyone you say your made up religions says you can in whatever your interpretation of religion is. Don’t like gays and lesbians okay. Don’t like people of other races or mixed races, alrightly then. Don’t like Jews or Muslims,, that’s just fine. I think they call this the law of unintended consequences because Indiana just lost a lot of money.

For a good time check out Audra MacDonald’s twitter stream yesterday.

LOL!

Hmmm…