Feeling Unsettled
I seldom reach out in prayer anymore and that saddens me. It was an exercise that both grounded and centered me. I miss it.
We used to be solid members at Hosanna, leading a weekly bible study in our home and helping out on Tuesday nights at the church where they would offer a meal and a sermon to those in need within the community. Tammy and Rachel would paint the fingernails of tiny hands while I would apply stick-on tattoos to little arms and faces while their parents rummaged through the community clothes closet for items they could use.
Sunday mornings at Hosanna were the highlight of my week—the music; the message; the sense of community and belonging. But then I noticed a shift away from the welcomeness of the church toward one of exclusivity. It began to eat at me until one day when the lead pastor, Bill Bohline, stood before us and interjected politics into his sermon—politics that I wanted no part of. I wrote about it here.
I would leave the church soon after my encounter with Bill as I couldn't in good conscience sit and listen to him any longer in a church setting. Tammy suggested we try a more progressive church, which we did, but neither of us had the desire to continue on and after a couple of years, we left. We'd had our fill of organized religion.
And that's where we remain today. Disillusioned with Christianity.
It's an unsettling place I find myself as I move into my later 60s. Where I once had the afterlife all figured out, or so I thought, I'm struggling more than ever with questions related to a supreme being and what if any sort of existence there may be beyond this one. Watching now from the outside, I feel affirmed in my decision to leave the church as I witness its embrace of the vilest and most corrupt man to ever disgrace the office of the presidency of our nation and his tens of millions of bible-believing followers who lap up his divisive and hate-filled words in a heart-sinking display that resembles nothing of the Jesus they claim to follow.
I feel like I'm channeling the cynic that was my father and his seemingly reluctant, halfhearted faith walk.
I never saw this coming.
But I have an idea where it's going. (I'll save those thoughts for another day.)
I've been dealing with knee pain that is hampering my riding. My doctor wanted me to give the cholesterol-controlling statin I'm on (10 mg daily of Rosuvastatin, aka Crestor) one more try to make certain that it's the source of my knee pain. It appears to be because the pain began again soon after going back on the drug. I stopped using it one week ago and have noticed a little improvement but I'm still hurting some.
I rode the Earth Day Ponderosa Pine gravel ride last weekend and struggled in the strong headwinds that faced us on the return. I rode mostly solo as I lost touch with the riders I'd have normally ridden with due to my knee pain. A patch of slushy sand caught my front tire and washed it out at mile 48 of 70, sending me to the deck. It was a relatively slow-speed crash but it left me with a bruised and tender left hip.
It's a gorgeous Sunday morning and I really need to get out and ride. The wind machine has been turned off, finally, and for that I'm grateful
That's all I've got.
Comments
As for the physical activity, I understand that one very well. Hearing about and seeing some of your rides, and reading about the adventures and joy they brought you, must be tough to consider losing that.
You've made a full and good life for yourself and your family. Hang in there. I bet you appreciate what you do have, and who knows what tomorrow will offer and excite you.
I try and keep my physical limitations in perspective with the understanding that so many have much more difficult roads to travel; you in particular with the loss of your leg. I mostly make mention in my blog about such things so if I ever need to, I can do a search and look back in my writings to see when it was that I was dealing with this or that condition. And also, there may be others out there dealing with the same thing.
Yes, I do make time to take an inventory of my life and give thanks. I think it's important to do.
Take care, my friend, and thank you for your comments.
I have changed much of what I believe about prayer, salvation, eternity, and living as a follower of Jesus.
Truthfully, there aren't a lot of people that I feel like sharing with would be beneficial to either of us. It's weird coming from a former preacher.
I never imagined myself being in this place a dozen years ago when I seriously began to question what I was hearing in our church and reading in my bible. My life had always had a church component to it, even while I was serving in the navy and I would ride my bike to the chapel on base each Sunday morning. There's always been the quiet skeptic in me that questioned some of what I was reading in my bible but I allowed that voice to have more say in my life when it became clear to me once Trump came on the scene how willing church leaders were to abandon any affilitation with the Jesus they claim to worship to cozy up to the most un-god-like man imaginable for political power. Church leadership was and always has been willing to abandon principle for power. Today's church leaders would've loved Emporer Constantine.
Some simply "believe" because of fear. Fear that if they don't buy into the "cult" of one type or another that when they die, it will be nothing but some kind of torture forever and ever. It does ten to keep the "faithful" in line and providing a steady flow of those "gifts" and prayers.
Try as I might, like you Kevin, I have to be honest knowing that if there is a god or spirit it must know where my faith is or isn't. I tell people like my former pastors, "You can't fake out god because he knows when you are faking it".
Looking at those people that think people like Trump or his followers tend to accept his failings as OK because everyone is a sinner and god does good things through sinners. They will use David as their case in point or cherry pick something out of scripture to illustrate their point. You could use the term brain washed of course but I think it's more than that. Trump is the person that provides the OK to be bigoted and hateful to those that are different. He sets that example. Anyway they will never change and like I've said, if you believe a man can walk on water, you can pretty much believe anything you are told.
Willful ignorance is a common element in the Trump followers. They have their eyes and ears closed to the facts and reason of reality.
The so called christian nationalists are nothing more than a political party now. If you have watched any of their Sunday services, it is actually a bit crazy and unhinged.
I have only seen one what I will call a person that has spoken to his congregation that calls out the evil that such organizations promote.
And for those preachers, priests, pastors that don't call them out in the same way, I feel the in essence condone it. They don't have the courage to challenge it.
But looking at the demographic of my local churches, they are by and large dying and no longer have the youth they once had to continue to support and fund them going forward. I can say that the last two church I attended had two or three kids attend on a regular basis and not even enough to present a kids christmas service.
I think I can paint myself as a "none" or agnostic but I don't want to pidgeon hole myself. And that's all I've got right now.
None of us knows with any certainty what awaits us after we take our last breath. I fully expect to have an 'Oh, wow. I never imagined this!' kind of experience. Those who believe they have all of the answers about what awaits us are kidding themselves. Personally, I think we're all coming back to do it all over again in a reincarnated form. That belief makes about as much sense to me as any other at this point in my life. I also believe in guardian angels, although I'm not sure they're angels, but rather beings or entities who are behind the scenes of our lives and helping us navigate them. It's part of my own personal religion that shares nothing with any religious teachings I've had throughout my life.
I identify as agnostic today as well and I'm very comfortable with that label.