Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
I had to memorize that poem in the 6th grade, the same year I learned to diagram sentences, I still love both.
Currently I have a heavy weight on my shoulders. I am having to make some hard decisions. The kind that changes peoples lives forever. The kind you can't undo. I would prefer to not have to choose nor have to weigh which I love the most, but that is my reality at this time and I am seeking guidance and direction and strength.
Being agnostic doesn't mean that I worship the devil. It means that I neither believe nor disbelieve. People assume that because I'm not religious, or more specifically that I'm not a church-going bible-quoting Praise Cheeses! kind of person that I don't have faith, but I do. I believe in the greater good. I believe in nature and science and the ability to think for oneself. I believe in perseverance, hard work, and determination. I also believe that life isn't fair, that some people are inherently evil, that even good people sometimes do bad things.
So I recently shared my trials and tribulations with someone and she let me know that I had been on her mind lately, that she felt God brought my daughter into her life so that she could "save" us from an eternal life of hell and damnation. She said no matter how good I am, how good of a life I live, no matter how much good I put forth into the world, that I will still go to Hell if I don't accept Jesus Christ as my Savior. I must be taken to a local creek and dumped into nasty ass water to be reborn. Then she proceeded to spend several hours witnessing to me. There was the time that so and so got hurt and lived to tell about it. God had saved him. It had nothing to do with the medical crew that responded quickly. Or the time so and so had a life threatening medical emergency. God had chosen to save him, not the doctors doing CPR and stuff. Meanwhile, our lives are predestined meaning it is all laid out for us by God and we can't control it. He knows who will get raped, which innocent child will die from cancer, who will be abused as a child, how many will come into foster care this month ... because he planned it all. He did it himself! It is predestined.
And God is a He. Otherwise the Bible wouldn't be filled with such patriarchy affirming bullshit*.
There have been a few times when I have felt that there might be something out there that is greater than us all. I do not believe in calling this thing a human-like diety. I believe in evolution, swamp water, and gases but I also think something created the water and gas ... yet if some diety created the swamp water and gas, who created the diety? It appears to be never ending. Why can some people accept the fact that God is the creator of all things, that He always exist, yet He wasn't created himself by anyone or anything? I know, it's called BLIND faith. But anyway.
This person, whom I like, has gone against my wishes and taught my child about her version of religion. Not as a possible option, but as the only option. As in all other religious text are wrong and all other belief systems are wrong. Buddah's too fat to be a God anyway, pshaw. In my opinion, this is called intolerance. This is why I have such a hard time with local religious people. It seems hypocritical to preach their way or the hellway, no gays allowed, no divorcees allowed, no drinkers, no sinners, no cursing, no sex, etc yet of course there are all those things going on, they are just hidden. We must use every interaction with every individual as an opportunity to convert them into our
I feel at peace when I am sitting in the warmth of the sun, with my hands in the dirt, smelling the earth, hearing nature. That is my God.
When I "pray" I don't get down on my knees and clasp my hands and say stuffy sayings that have been
And so this person who knows what I am currently going through chose to proselytize instead of helping me to figure out
Maybe our answers are given by something inside of us, perhaps our conscience or unconscious, and have nothing to do with a diety or a spirit at all. What's to say that if we listen to and follow our inner voice that it will always lead us in the right direction? You sometimes just have to trust it, have faith, right? But meanwhile your mind/brain is working out all these options and scenarios and who will be affected by this and who will be affected by that and sometimes it is hard to figure it all out. But clear as day when I asked for guidance I immediately thought "follow your heart". The problem? My heart feels two things and those things could happily reside together but a third party is refusing to allow those two things to reside together and so I have to choose which thing I love the most or which thing I want the most or which thing will do the least amount of damage to the people involved. And it's hard emotionally, especially when I feel that I can't share the details with people, and those people might be able to share some insight although I guess that would mean I wasn't listening to my own inner voice but to that of others, which may actually help anyway, a fresh perspective if you will. Or maybe not.
So I'm sending this out there to the cosmic void of the internets
*Why, yes, this is alienate your readers day. Didn't you know?
10 comments:
lol i love you and we are SO MUCH ALIKE!
you will know what to do.
ps.
i loved diagramming sentences too and i live where robert frost grew up.
Wow, lots of stuff in that post. I'll try to give my opinion and response but I may have to read and comment several times to cover it all :) I'm not trying to win your agreement, just trying to share another point of view.
I'm sorry you are facing such difficult decisions. I'm sorry you were hurt by the person you chose to trust. I am a believer in the one true God, but not so much in religion. I think organized religion repels as many as it attracts. I'm suspicious of big churches, the 700 club etc. I have a love/hate relationship with that.
I understand why they do it but irks me when people decide to witness to people who come to them for help. People should realize that can just make people feel more confused, more alone. You can witness gently, you don't have to beat some troubled soul about the ears with the new testament.
I personally don't believe that God so much plans everything as knows everything. Like when you see your toddler trying to pull a full pitcher of tea off the refrigerator shelf-you know how it's going to end but it's their decision good or bad. Sometimes those decisions bless others, sometimes they rip people's lives apart.
I also believe in evolution from a creationist view. What better creation than one that can evolve to what's needed? As far as who created the deity...there are some things I just turn over to faith. I am only human, there are things I will never understand in this life and life is too short to waste my time trying to figure it all out. Some think it's an important question, I personally don't; to each their own.
I call God He because it is how it's written, how I was raised and eliminates confusion. I don't really "see" God as all that human anyway. Jesus, yes. God, no.
We agree on the religion thing, the hypocrisy and haughtiness of it. I personally don't believe in Buddah or Vishnu but everyone has the right to chose their own path.
Only recently has God been interpreted as nice and loving. In Jesus' day he was jealous and merciless. I think He's a bit of both, like any good parent :) I don't think you'll burn for perfume, God is forgiving of much worse if you ask. I think for anyone to presume they what heaven or hell will be like and force that image on others is presumptuous. The Bible is somewhat vague on specifics, it speaks in metaphors. And I personally believe it's incomplete, I don't think we've found all the books. And some have supposedly been repressed like the book of St. Thomas.
To everything thing else, I think it's hard to know what's right because there are so many paths and who's to say what's right? You know how when the day goes all wrong, nothing is the way you expected or wanted but overall nothing bad happened, everyone was happy and all was well? That's what I think life is like. There are some decisions that can bring your life crashing down around your ears, but those are usually few and far between. We mostly have different paths to choose from, most of them end up in Okay-ville, it's just the scenery that's different, ya know?
Sorry, no luck alienating me. I plan to keep reading :)
I'm sorry you didn't get advice or guidance from this friend. I think I know a little bit of what you're having to think about just from what you've said here and elsewhere, and I have full faith that you'll make the best decision even if it's hard.
And as an atheist in what may or may not be technically the Bible Belt (I think we're too heavily Catholic as an area to truly count, but we're borderline) I've somehow been able to avoid a lot of that kind of evangelizing but the little I have has been plenty. I don't think the people doing it have any idea how off-putting it is. Very frustrating from the outside, though.
New to this blog - very interesting ...
I am Buddhist - and I do also share your feelings and concerns here.
and - I remember diagramming sentences too -- I recall in school - being caught passing a note - and the teacher made me diagram the contents!!
I have grandchildren who DHS placed with MORMONS - who actively and aggressively prostelesized at them ... and when I complained - MY visitation rights were removed.
There is so much wrong with so much about the way this country treats the least among us.... (i.e., the children)
I hear ya. Our worker wrote write in our homestudy that our negative attribute as a family was that we were not religious and not active in a church. And why is that negative?? I just don't get it.
My dad tells me I will burn in hell, too. That will be tricky since I don't believe in hell. But if there is one, you and I can keep each other company while we sip our margaritas and sin endlessly ;)
as a christian, and believe me, it took a long time for me to relate to the label, let me at least start by saying that what I BELIEVE is the woman who witnessed to you is an asshole. Perhaps my god would prefer that I use a less offensive term, and I am probably insulting someone you like, but lord that burns me up. My own journey to god was much delayed by people like that. MY personal faith tells me that we need to respect each other, and that an effective witness is one who uses their actions much more than their ability to lecture and be self righteous, and tell you how WRONG you are, and how CORRECT they are. Witnessing to your children, especially those who haven't reached the age of reason, with lectures that recommend dishonoring her parents, is just UNCONSCIONABLE.
Second, I'm going to be completely hypocritical, and tell you she is WRONG, and I am RIGHT, that as a christian, ever since god let adam choose whether or not to eat the apple, men have had freedom of will. I don't doubt that god can intervene, but we are responsible for our own choices. I have never believed that b/c god has a plan for my life, that he deliberately chooses for me to suffer. OK, I didn't come here to witness, so shutting up now. But I get so furious when I hear that other christians say that god chooses for the innocent to get hurt on purpose. I mean, who is really alienating who here? PS MY god will still love you if you don't dunk your butt in nasty water.
Third, there have been choices in my life that I made that I will never know whether or not they were right, I just tried to do the best I could with the information I had, and sometimes all possible outcomes are crappy, and I just try to find a way to live with it. We are doing extraordinary things by taking someone else's children into our homes, and so far I have hated all the times when I was forced to make a choice between my biological children's best interest, and the best interest of my non biological child. And while I believe those two things should be able to be harmonious, as you said, sometimes there are third parties that get a vote and refuse to let it be so. I have made choices where I was not happy with the outcomes, but I didn't know what else I could do that was in my control. Someone did in fact once tell me how DARE I put that "other" child ahead of my "own" kids. And it may have been the wrong choice, but it was one of small options I had at the time that seemed the least damaging. It did suck, but it seemed then to suck the least. I know what you mean by life altering, can't be undone kind of decisions, not yours specifically of course, but, pretty horrible areas between a rock and a hard place.
All I can say is, I hope you can find better mentors, or at least better friends. Someone who can be a little more supportive or at least a little more helpful. Good luck with your struggle.
I didn't like diagramming sentences, but I did/do like Robert Frost, so can I still be your friend?
Oh how I wish I hadn't just lost a day and a half completely to travel and had more time to read and process and respond thoughtfully to this post and the really thoughtful comments!
So let me just say that:
1. I never learned how to diagram sentences and I can't say that I'm the worse for it, despite the lack of commas where needed in this comment. (For which my explanation is that my fingers are expressing the logorrhea that comes from my lack of sleep/jetlag, not a lack of proper English skills.) However, I remain envious of people who did learn the skill. I'm such a dork when it comes to grammar and punctuation that people tend not to believe me when I say that I don't even know what diagramming sentences is.
2. I really, really hope that my agency doesn't discriminate against me for not being Christian when the time comes. My Big City (I don't remember if that's what I call it in my blog) is pretty religiously conservative at least when it comes to the parts of the city that are more likely to be involved in the system. (Hello, stereotypes!) But we have also only one foster home for every four-plus kids in the system, so they kind of need me. I guess.
3. They'd better not discriminate against me because I already bought Christmas decorations for next year, and I'm not even licensed yet.
P.S. I love your blog, though I think this is my first time commenting.
LOL Ali, we have got to meet one day!
Cheryl, its always interesting to read your viewpoint. Thanks!
Thorn, yes ... what I wrote elsewhere is key.
Tuba, that was listed as one of our weaknesses as well. Cheers!
Silk, this person means well but yes, it is a little suffocating at times to live in such an area where the majority believe this way and can't seem to accept any other viewpoint. Oh yeah, we're totally bonded by our past toenail biting secret. LOL
Foster Ima, Hopefully all will go well with your licensing. I think it says a lot about you that you are willing to celebrate Christmas if that is what the child(ren) in your home want. Hopefully they will reciprocate and be willing to learn about Jewish holidays as well.
To All, I continue to hold hope and think positive thoughts that this person in my life will have a change of heart and all will go well. But just in case, I'm also preparing for the alternative. I appreciate all of the support. It's encouraging. Thank you!
STILL laughing out loud at this part... 'I must be taken to a local creek and dumped into nasty ass water to be reborn'.
awesome. although, full disclosure, i would be one of those christians. but, less american megachurchy, more church with the addicts (seriously, my youth group is never boring)... although it's the same God.
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