Another goofy ass attempt at an epilogue (one 3 1/2 years in the making,) as I stare down the end game strategy on this here BLOG. The BLOG was always intended as a chronicle for the Boy(s). My remember when, for then. The operative word being my. As the Boy(s) get older, the need for this chronicle lessens. I don't want my memories to overwrite their memories, or turn into a Team Tinsley does Rashomon thing. There's also that line in the sands of cool that I don't want to cross. Writing about the Boy(s) as babies, toddlers or small kids is fine. Writing about them when they are older and their MySpaceFaceBook generation friends can read about their (mis)adventures, not so fine. We're not there yet. But we are getting close. Back story might help. Poke your magic finger here to read Fear Factor.
"Nothing is in vain. You don't go anywhere in life Eliza, you just keep walking." Isabel Allende, Daughter of Fortune.
You'd think, as many times as I've recounted the universe is trippy with divenely tinged synchronistic shit on this here BLOG, that I'd be on the street preaching. Or holding up a John 3:16 sign for tv screen time at major sporting events. Or at least this super devout, reverent, God-fearing cat.
Truth is. I'm not. Far from it in fact.
I struggle hard with matters of faith. This is never more apparent than when one of the Boy(s), usually the Elder, ask if something, or someone, is good or bad. Good or bad. Fuck me. If only it were that easy.
Which is why when the Elder Boy asked, during Indiana Jones And the Last Crusade if the German Nazis (as he calls them) were the bad guys, I caught myself spouting some middle of the road bullshit.
If the Elder Boy wanted a definitive answer he needed to hop in a time machine and find a younger version of me. Back in the day, I could call black or white, in a heartbeat.
I lost my penchant for that type of thinking roughly seven months after writing Fear Factor when My Lovely Bride and I worked up the courage to attend church. September 11, 2005 to be exact. After that first visit we attended church regularly, even going to, what I dubbed, Methodists for Dummies (a newcomers class.) After seven months of attending church, we (which was me to be honest) were stuck. To join we had to go up in front of the congregation and do a profession of faith. I also needed to be baptized.
Since I had faced my fear in regard to organized religion, even getting to the point of enjoying the church experience, and reading the Bible, I decided to cut to the chase and discuss my issues with Alice, who was then, the Associate Pastor of the church. This meeting took place, coincidentally on Ash Wednesday.
Alice and I talked in circles for a long time. I explained my fears of religion. My upbringing. The fact that I felt my Mom was dying, and that I had a hang-up about my joining church being some goofy ass attempt at absolution for Mom's cancer. Alice listened kindly to all my crap and then cut me to the bone by saying, "Maybe you are afraid to ask God to help because of what you feel it will mean to you in your journey of faith if you Mom doesn't get well. If she does die."
As I digested that statement, trying hard to come up with a reply, Alice smiled at me and apropos of nothing, said, "Have you ever seen Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade?"
"Excuse me?" I said.
"Have you ever seen Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade?" She repeated.
"Yes..." I said.
"Do you remember the part, toward the end, when Indiana's Dad has been injured, and to save him, Indy has to get the Grail which is across a great chasm."
"Yeah, I remember that scene." I said.
"Eventually he has to step off into the void." She said. "There's a path there. But he can't see it."
"Yeah..." I said.
"He had to take that leap of faith. The path was there all along. He just couldn't see it. It didn't mean that it wasn't there though. He had to have faith."
"Yeah..." I said.
"Stuart, we all have to take that leap of faith at some point."
Three weeks later, on March 26, 2006, we joined the church after I was baptized at the age of 39.
Which brings us back to what was then, now, a few months in the rear view. The Boy(s) and I watching Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade.
After I spouted my middle of the road bullshit answer, I told the Boy(s), who have been very into Indiana Jones movies (and the Legos toys and game) this Summer that it was possible that I would have never joined our church or been baptized if not for the very movie we were watching.
The Boy(s) being boys gave me their standard strange, who gives a shit, because you are probably messing with us, look. A few minutes later the Elder Boy again asked, are the German Nazis the bad guys?
To which I spouted more middle of the road bullshit answers, about how the German Nazis were just doing what they thought they had to do for their country, their families. That they were doing their job.
Which is when I realized that the younger version of me would have said, without a doubt, yes, the Nazis are bad, even evil. Even though the basic foot soldiers more than likely were not. This is ironic considering how anti-organized religion that younger version of me was...how my thinking was a lot like those that preached the hellfire and brimstone dualistic rhetoric that at first terrified me, and later irked me.
Today, I struggle with matters of faith daily. But overall, I feel I'm a lot more religious. Know a lot more about the Bible. No longer scared by it. Yet my thinking is as such, that I can't even tell the Boy(s) that the Nazis are the bad guys in an Indiana Jones movie that convinced me to take that leap of faith and be baptized.
Fuck me.
I guess I had to find religion to lose it. To realize that life is never either/or. Black or white. Good or bad. Heaven or hell. Decisions are complex, and there are always competing factors. It's human nature to look for simple explanations, but that doesn't correspond to reality. Nothing is ever as straightforward as it appears. Even religion.
I'm amazed that it took me so long to take that first step. So long to even get to this goofy ass BLOG entry. But in the end, the destination isn't really that important. The journey is.
Until I BLOG again...Not the only one, Who's happy to go blind.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Saturday, August 02, 2008
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