I noted this morning that I had this huge conversation going on in my head. My father is ignoring me at the moment. Since I truly still love this person, it hurts. Much of this is my of my own doing, but as I go over and over the events of a life time of interactions with this man, this is how he has always handled difficult situations. Most recently I confronted head on some old family issues and my take on some inter-personal conflicts that have had a long history of going unresolved, all in the name of "standing for truth".
My wife wants to know why I want to change my Dad so bad.
It's not him that I want to change, its me that is struggling with a shit load of cognitive dissonance. Its getting harder and harder to imagine living a life of ignorance and being able to be happy. I'm talking about myself. I cannot tolerate willful ignorance, and as soon as I find new and better information I'm ready to scuttle the old that does not work.
This struggling is over the double binds that reality presents to each of us. I'm part of a larger collective of this huge thing called life. Its a human predicament. There are plenty of samples of how various individuals in this predicament handle their individual predicament.
Its hard for me to imagine that my dad has never questioned the idea of a personal all-powerful being known in the rural ranching communities of the South Dakota prairies as God, even to some as Abba. I review various life histories that I've heard. I think about the public stories, the testimonies, and the story lines of those testimonies. These were the public image. Sermons and story lines in the sermons, the very many sermons I've heard my father preach over the years.
There was family devotions, intimate loving family times where dad read the bible, or a bible story, or a missionary story, with the whole family sitting around the living room after a long day of work, and our stomachs were full and content after a homemade meal. In these settings of just our family the story line of these conversations would be about exactly the same as the public.
I remember a time when I was about 12, my dad had these morning talks with me in a prayer cabin in Indiana. We would pray together and talk about adolescent stuff. I'd consider this one-on-one interaction. The stories were pretty much all the same: public, family, and private.
I've thought perhaps, looking back that I might find that intimate personal feelings might be disclosed at varying degrees between public and private. So I identify that there is really no difference. All stories appear the same under all environments and interactions. This seems abnormal to me now. What does this indicate? There appears to be no true introspection. There is a story that has a surface acceptability, and has gained credence and acceptance among a group of people that handle life in the same manner. Crowd mentality might be one answer.
On several occasions I've heard a story that goes something to this effect: "I was a rebellious teenager, was standing out by the horse pasture by a light pole, looked up at the sky and said, "There is no god". I felt smitten the moment the words popped out of my mouth. I noticed my horse Blaze (dad cried when Blaze had to be put down, when we we were in Guatemala as missionaries) loping across the horse pasture. God spoke to me and said, 'Only I could create such grace and beauty'. I said your right, and from that time on I started to hunger after god."
The above seems so much like the red letters in the bible, and Jesus said . . . . ; obviously this is not verbatim, but this is the story that repeats over and over again. At the moment, there seems to be a likely environment that would accept this as an authentic story. Everybody listening to this story in the pew would be nodding the head, and matching up this experience to their own personal "deep" conversion story. The automatic error correction programming of the hardware known as the brain would chuck out the response, "Amen. Brother. Isn't God faithful!" So the insiders get a kick out of a great testimony, and the outsiders, we might be scratching our heads.
What is lost to the awareness of the insider is only obvious to an "outsider". My father questions god, and articulates that concept--mind you privately to the barnyard! None for a minute would notice, insecurity, nobody would hear a young teenager being a teen, or that for a moment that person spoke something perhaps of inner truth. No. all listening would quickly pass over the obvious to the part that "GOD responded": "See god does reach out to struggling people: 'Thank God, God is so Good, or whispered in hushed tones: 'Great is Thy Faithfulness'."
I see little to celebrate as great! That's the outsider in me now remembering the insider's scoop on this story. I fail to find much authenticity. It's not very deep. There is no revelation of who this person actually is. It's a story. A story that through repetition is believed to be true by the teller.
The reference point seems sketchy at best. The same person verbalizing a thought, next "hears" a response in his own head??? The story proves nothing, except a teen's searching for himself and that search process aborting abruptly. Instead of finding self and his own identity, the boy finds god. Did he find his alter-ego? Did he succumb to some god virus? What is the fundamental need for god anyway? Is it a somebody bigger than myself to throw myself on in humiliating dependency? Why do we imagine a being? Why did not my father select the light pole as his god, the pebble at his foot, or perhaps his wonderful horse to worship and adore? Was any selection of a god actualized in this interaction? Once again, the story is developed after it actually happened. What we know about memory is that it's not an actual record. It's merely an imprint of an idea, and the memory does it's own work in the context of the present moment.
Well, depending on the viewpoint the story of god revealing himself, this story could be seen as a tragedy or a victory. Is this a sampling of human predicament? I think the alteration of a life perspective could be at least an example of the predicament.
I'd note whether the voice of god was actually heard. Who spoke? god? or was it: the imagination spoke? God is an out-side identity from the viewpoint of an adult man looking back on an event that marks a turning point. He searches through the memory banks after he's converted to find a common theme. This theme may be well marked by other stories this person is hearing around him---cultural conditioning. Attending church a minimum of 5 times a week with a weekly investment of at least 11 hours, and in my father's case during Bible School at least another 2 hours of personal ministry, add 30 min to 1 hour a day in private worship!!!! god! does this really add up to a full time second job? At least a 21 hour weekly part-time job. This does not count the accumulated minutes of every waking day "keeping your mind stayed on him". This is getting crummier by the moment.
There is no out. The Christian life is just that a life inside of a life. WARNING: identity crisis
Lee Denzler looks back now to find a common theme. My search for god took me eventually back to myself. Why after 30 years of investment, has my father's road not circled back on itself? My search lead me to question what I was searching for innately. His has led to deeper commitment to maintaining a story.
Why? How did I figured out for myself after many disappointing attempts that nobody's a savior, or a redeemer. No one is spiritually lost needing "found". It's all bull-shit. True self-worth is not built on the shifty sands of popular opinion. No, I think we all at some point come to understand deeply that we must look inside. Accept the good and the bad, and figure out from the in-side out who we are as individuals. Is this viewpoint bull-shit? My father would argue that I'm infected with a self-god virus. IT'S DANGEROUS TO LOOK INSIDE!
A truly Abba (dear daddy) god, if he, she, it existed, could handle non-belief, after all it is the only god, it has no competition, or does it? Right! One would think this god could be much happier looking after more important things than an impertinent remark from a speck of dust struggling to learn the meaning of life or the human predicament, which, by the way has had taken no responsible course of interfering with my father's mind until this vital moment!
It's a cold reality, if nobody is out their listening or caring for my personal best interest (apparently, at the moment this god-filled person, my father, is ignoring me!). To turn inward, to make our lives meaningful, that perhaps is the most difficult proposition of our human predicament. Is our search for god, a search for ourselves? Why does it seem I long for validation from everyone except the most important person: me? Maybe the "abortion", as I may come to think of this event in my father's life's history, is a sampling of many factors of tremendous complexity. A critical element of reason seemed to abort at this point, and the trajectory of a young life would seemingly alter forever.
Side note: I like to tend a couple of orchids. I noticed the other day that a very delicate small orchid aborted several buds. Why? I did not water it enough, I suppose. Colorado is a dry climate, I've got the thing totally under my control. It still appears like it will bloom magnificently minus these shriveled aborted buds. Apparently it did not have sufficient resources to set on all the buds. It aborted by natural selection I bet. The plant knew that it could survive with three less buds. Was the bud of reason aborted in my father's case?
Self rejected. God embraced. Its just a slight modification. Or is it? Who or what is trying to survive, the individual or a belief held by that individual? Is this a moral or immoral tale which is now believed?
My wife wants to know why I want to change my Dad so bad.
It's not him that I want to change, its me that is struggling with a shit load of cognitive dissonance. Its getting harder and harder to imagine living a life of ignorance and being able to be happy. I'm talking about myself. I cannot tolerate willful ignorance, and as soon as I find new and better information I'm ready to scuttle the old that does not work.
This struggling is over the double binds that reality presents to each of us. I'm part of a larger collective of this huge thing called life. Its a human predicament. There are plenty of samples of how various individuals in this predicament handle their individual predicament.
Its hard for me to imagine that my dad has never questioned the idea of a personal all-powerful being known in the rural ranching communities of the South Dakota prairies as God, even to some as Abba. I review various life histories that I've heard. I think about the public stories, the testimonies, and the story lines of those testimonies. These were the public image. Sermons and story lines in the sermons, the very many sermons I've heard my father preach over the years.
There was family devotions, intimate loving family times where dad read the bible, or a bible story, or a missionary story, with the whole family sitting around the living room after a long day of work, and our stomachs were full and content after a homemade meal. In these settings of just our family the story line of these conversations would be about exactly the same as the public.
I remember a time when I was about 12, my dad had these morning talks with me in a prayer cabin in Indiana. We would pray together and talk about adolescent stuff. I'd consider this one-on-one interaction. The stories were pretty much all the same: public, family, and private.
I've thought perhaps, looking back that I might find that intimate personal feelings might be disclosed at varying degrees between public and private. So I identify that there is really no difference. All stories appear the same under all environments and interactions. This seems abnormal to me now. What does this indicate? There appears to be no true introspection. There is a story that has a surface acceptability, and has gained credence and acceptance among a group of people that handle life in the same manner. Crowd mentality might be one answer.
On several occasions I've heard a story that goes something to this effect: "I was a rebellious teenager, was standing out by the horse pasture by a light pole, looked up at the sky and said, "There is no god". I felt smitten the moment the words popped out of my mouth. I noticed my horse Blaze (dad cried when Blaze had to be put down, when we we were in Guatemala as missionaries) loping across the horse pasture. God spoke to me and said, 'Only I could create such grace and beauty'. I said your right, and from that time on I started to hunger after god."
The above seems so much like the red letters in the bible, and Jesus said . . . . ; obviously this is not verbatim, but this is the story that repeats over and over again. At the moment, there seems to be a likely environment that would accept this as an authentic story. Everybody listening to this story in the pew would be nodding the head, and matching up this experience to their own personal "deep" conversion story. The automatic error correction programming of the hardware known as the brain would chuck out the response, "Amen. Brother. Isn't God faithful!" So the insiders get a kick out of a great testimony, and the outsiders, we might be scratching our heads.
What is lost to the awareness of the insider is only obvious to an "outsider". My father questions god, and articulates that concept--mind you privately to the barnyard! None for a minute would notice, insecurity, nobody would hear a young teenager being a teen, or that for a moment that person spoke something perhaps of inner truth. No. all listening would quickly pass over the obvious to the part that "GOD responded": "See god does reach out to struggling people: 'Thank God, God is so Good, or whispered in hushed tones: 'Great is Thy Faithfulness'."
I see little to celebrate as great! That's the outsider in me now remembering the insider's scoop on this story. I fail to find much authenticity. It's not very deep. There is no revelation of who this person actually is. It's a story. A story that through repetition is believed to be true by the teller.
The reference point seems sketchy at best. The same person verbalizing a thought, next "hears" a response in his own head??? The story proves nothing, except a teen's searching for himself and that search process aborting abruptly. Instead of finding self and his own identity, the boy finds god. Did he find his alter-ego? Did he succumb to some god virus? What is the fundamental need for god anyway? Is it a somebody bigger than myself to throw myself on in humiliating dependency? Why do we imagine a being? Why did not my father select the light pole as his god, the pebble at his foot, or perhaps his wonderful horse to worship and adore? Was any selection of a god actualized in this interaction? Once again, the story is developed after it actually happened. What we know about memory is that it's not an actual record. It's merely an imprint of an idea, and the memory does it's own work in the context of the present moment.
Well, depending on the viewpoint the story of god revealing himself, this story could be seen as a tragedy or a victory. Is this a sampling of human predicament? I think the alteration of a life perspective could be at least an example of the predicament.
I'd note whether the voice of god was actually heard. Who spoke? god? or was it: the imagination spoke? God is an out-side identity from the viewpoint of an adult man looking back on an event that marks a turning point. He searches through the memory banks after he's converted to find a common theme. This theme may be well marked by other stories this person is hearing around him---cultural conditioning. Attending church a minimum of 5 times a week with a weekly investment of at least 11 hours, and in my father's case during Bible School at least another 2 hours of personal ministry, add 30 min to 1 hour a day in private worship!!!! god! does this really add up to a full time second job? At least a 21 hour weekly part-time job. This does not count the accumulated minutes of every waking day "keeping your mind stayed on him". This is getting crummier by the moment.
There is no out. The Christian life is just that a life inside of a life. WARNING: identity crisis
Lee Denzler looks back now to find a common theme. My search for god took me eventually back to myself. Why after 30 years of investment, has my father's road not circled back on itself? My search lead me to question what I was searching for innately. His has led to deeper commitment to maintaining a story.
Why? How did I figured out for myself after many disappointing attempts that nobody's a savior, or a redeemer. No one is spiritually lost needing "found". It's all bull-shit. True self-worth is not built on the shifty sands of popular opinion. No, I think we all at some point come to understand deeply that we must look inside. Accept the good and the bad, and figure out from the in-side out who we are as individuals. Is this viewpoint bull-shit? My father would argue that I'm infected with a self-god virus. IT'S DANGEROUS TO LOOK INSIDE!
A truly Abba (dear daddy) god, if he, she, it existed, could handle non-belief, after all it is the only god, it has no competition, or does it? Right! One would think this god could be much happier looking after more important things than an impertinent remark from a speck of dust struggling to learn the meaning of life or the human predicament, which, by the way has had taken no responsible course of interfering with my father's mind until this vital moment!
It's a cold reality, if nobody is out their listening or caring for my personal best interest (apparently, at the moment this god-filled person, my father, is ignoring me!). To turn inward, to make our lives meaningful, that perhaps is the most difficult proposition of our human predicament. Is our search for god, a search for ourselves? Why does it seem I long for validation from everyone except the most important person: me? Maybe the "abortion", as I may come to think of this event in my father's life's history, is a sampling of many factors of tremendous complexity. A critical element of reason seemed to abort at this point, and the trajectory of a young life would seemingly alter forever.
Side note: I like to tend a couple of orchids. I noticed the other day that a very delicate small orchid aborted several buds. Why? I did not water it enough, I suppose. Colorado is a dry climate, I've got the thing totally under my control. It still appears like it will bloom magnificently minus these shriveled aborted buds. Apparently it did not have sufficient resources to set on all the buds. It aborted by natural selection I bet. The plant knew that it could survive with three less buds. Was the bud of reason aborted in my father's case?
Self rejected. God embraced. Its just a slight modification. Or is it? Who or what is trying to survive, the individual or a belief held by that individual? Is this a moral or immoral tale which is now believed?
God my brain is spinning out of control!
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