My religious upbringing

[becca]

I didn't have much religion around me at all growing up. We never went to a church on Sunday... or Saturday... or any other day of the week except maybe for a rummage sale or some kind of dinner at a church hall. My Grandmother had a huge Bible with full color painting reproductions and lists of births and deaths, but I can't imagine it was ever actually read by anyone. I had a small white Bible given to me by her on my 11th borthday. Later on I threw it against a wall and kicked it around when I was angry as a teen. I've managed to glue the cover back on and it's still with me, and the bangs visible to it are sort of embarassing but I feel a need to remember they are there.

I don't know what all was wrong with me as a teen. I didn't get picked on particularly, just once in awhile. I shoplifted, I was involved in minor drug dealing, I was on the street a lot. Oh well, I survived it all, it seems much worse out there for kids today. Anyway, my folks thought a religious school would maybe be the answer. My Mom even got a job to help pay for me to go and hopefully at least finish grade 10. My idea of religion up 'til then pretty much came from old Carter Family and Johnny Cash stuff my dad was into and with my Mom covered their songs with his band. Maybe Elvis was in there a bit. To me they had the real thing, something that was there that you called faith or hope or something but didn't really need to discuss a whole lot, but when the little hairs on you arm stood up hearing a gospel song you knew it was real.

The school they found for me to go to wasn't really anything like this. It was all young teachers in sweaters and they had fish sickers all over everything. Their eyes were kind of glassy, the smiles a little empty. We had to watch the 700 Club tv shows taped from that morning in class sometimes. I didn't care for the singers they had on that show at all. Remember, this is Canada; we were there in a partly government subsidized classroom getting told crap like Satan was singing backwards on Beatle records, that almost all of us were possesed, that if we didn't fast for a boy with lukemia God would know. The only half way normal teacher at this place was the Bible teacher, if you can call being coached into coming up with answers to questions about why Elijah had to violently oppose the false agricultural God Baal. You learned what to say back and got a phony smile and condescension. One thing this school did do for me is help me feel relatively normal by comparison to the adults running the place. I felt my grip on reality was a heck of a lot firmer than everyone connected to this southern U.S. merchandizing ghetto I had stumbled into. And did they have the merchandise... Christian music nobody else had ever heard of, Christian self help cassettes and books, tv and radio stations you always skipped past before, a directory of all the businesses in town who displayed the 'secret' fish symbol on ads and signs... and the Amway sales force.

No wonder people have felt these born again know they're types are in borderline cults! No wonder they are criticized as living on another isloated planet, many only see, read, or think what is supplied to them by these giant Christian companies. And wow, did these people love to talk, to tell you they know more about you than you yourself, like being possessed as just one example, but that must be a case of it takes one to know one! Basically I feel I was subjected to classic brainwashing techniques, and it would get more emotionally manipulative the more I supposedly resisted or rebelled. I just wanted to finish high school! Well, maybe, sometimes. If I'd have known more I think I should have written a letter something like what I'm writing now to the school board to try to get their public funding revoked. I just ended up back on the street again, a bit angrier maybe, and not feeling any closer to God just more baffled by the whole religion thing.

I can still listen to old country & western (as they used to call it) gospel tunes and feel moved. Will the circle be unbroken, come to the church in the wildwood and all of that. I guess it's just most of us here's roots. I don't really care for the white people I know who get swept up in a consumerist fervor for Buddhism and all things Asian as being superior. It's just a variation on the born again Jim Bakker/700 club business, and most Japanese people I've known have told me they hate sushi and wish they could eat suteakus and hamuburugas all the time. I had a bit of Zen Buddhism growing up along with some martial arts, a lot of it was a load to me at the time, things about a circle of nothing surrounded by nothing and there isn't really any circle either. Well, all I'm saying is that in spite of all of the other noise going on around us, I value the words attributed to Christ and I can only say I try to be a Christian. I like having the Upanishads, the Quran, and other things around to read now and then when I feel drawn to. I have no knowledge of being saved already to be picked like cotton while others will be tortured horribly and can't wait for those end times to come oh boy oh boy. That stuff is nuts. I suspect there are many plain unexciting Muslims who shake their heads over others calling themself Muslim.

It's weird but somehow, in spite of or because of going through some very bad times I am genuinely more thankful toward God than ever, and my faith feels a lot more solid under giving me strength. I shouldn't have hope, what with the religious zealotry and nutism running loose, what with the media hollering about asteroids and sick ducks and lefties and righties. I hope that circle will be reunited at 'the throne' as Johnny cash and the Statler Brothers sang. That feels right, to all see each other again, in a place we are probably unable to come close to imagining on this side, and that we must never try to hurry toward.

I feel sorry that there is so much hostitlity toward the trappings and merchandise of religion that it might actually keep or delay people from simply reading and carrying what they can from any holy books. Sad because people do need something more, and music isn't going to fill the entire need, and sad that people even thinking they are not religious are doing the exact same thing as those who wrap themselves flamboyantly in religiousity; buying more and more stuff in some kind of competition or to fill space and time. The quiet peaceful voice can get drowned out, at least for awhile, but maybe my faith is in knowing that it always comes back and hope that we will listen.

Not exactly chit chat is it? I write stuff and never have anywhere to put it, so I thought of this as a good waste basket...