Blog Your Blessings and Sunday Scribblings (Simple)

The prompt for this week’s Sun­day Scrib­blings is “sim­ple.“Con­sider Matthew 5:21–24:

You’re famil­iar with the com­mand to the ancients, “Do not mur­der.” I’m telling you that any­one who is so much as angry with a brother or sis­ter is guilty of mur­der. Care­lessly call a brother “idiot!” and you just might find your­self hauled into court. Thought­lessly yell “stu­pid!” at a sis­ter and you are on the brink of hell­fire. The sim­ple moral fact is that words kill.This is how I want you to con­duct your­self in these mat­ters. If you enter your place of wor­ship and, about to make an offer­ing, you sud­denly remem­ber a grudge a friend has against you, aban­don your offer­ing, leave imme­di­ately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God.

Today is a day for clo­sure. And that’s where the bless­ing part of this two-for-the-price-of-one arti­cle becomes relevant.

Among the def­i­n­i­tions of “clo­sure” I found in the dic­tio­nary is “bring­ing to an end; con­clu­sion.” With regard to psy­chol­ogy, the def­i­n­i­tion is “a sense of psy­cho­log­i­cal cer­tainty or com­plete­ness; a need for closure.”

I believe that there is also, at cer­tain times in our life, “a need for clo­sure” from a spir­i­tual van­tage point. Today is one of those days for both me and this blog.

If you have been read­ing along from this blog’s gen­e­sis, let me first say “thank you” for par­tic­i­pat­ing. This blog began on Jan­u­ary 13, 2007, as a place and means to facil­i­tate my recov­ery “from life­long Protes­tantism, vol­un­teerism, and church mem­ber­ship as a gen­er­al­ized prin­ci­ple.” I started out call­ing it “Recov­er­ing Lutheran: Here I Stand” to express where I was in my spir­i­tual jour­ney at that time, as well as jab a bit at Mar­tin Luther and the church he unin­ten­tion­ally wrought, while also empathiz­ing with him and his call­ing to speak out. He cer­tainly suf­fered because of his con­vic­tions and, at the time, I was still feel­ing hurt from being spurned on account of my integrity and honesty.

My orig­i­nal tag line was “insights, obser­va­tions and ram­blings from a ‘neg­a­tive and dis­rup­tive spirit.’” You see, my for­mer pas­tor ((I have referred to him here as “Nox­ious Pas­tor” or “NP”.)), after lying to and about, and manip­u­lat­ing me, told me in his final e-mail that he was “at an end of patience with the neg­a­tive and dis­rup­tive spirit you bring.”

So I took on his mis­be­got­ten words like a man­tle — in protest and defi­ance because, if you are a loyal reader, you have seen that I am any­thing but a “neg­a­tive and dis­rup­tive spirit.” Hav­ing stud­ied psy­chol­ogy, I imme­di­ately rec­og­nized in his words the prin­ci­ple called “pro­jec­tion” which is “the ten­dency to ascribe to another per­son feel­ings, thoughts, or atti­tudes present in one­self.” In other words, when NP wrote those vicious words to me, he was really writ­ing about him­self.

I am, on the con­trary, an upbeat, some­times still naïve ((My naïveté is what got me into trou­ble in the first place, i.e., I believed that because NP was a pas­tor, he was inca­pable of the con­duct in which he engaged.)), but always “Hope­ful Spirit” which is why, after a few weeks, I got bored with and tired of the old tagline.

Car­ry­ing some­one else’s bag­gage never has been my style. When I hap­pened upon the quote that is now the tagline, I knew it was time to move on.

On Feb­ru­ary 2, 2007, I wrote what I still believe is one of my best posts ever: Sticks and Stones. In fact, I did some­thing I had never done before: I sub­mit­ted it to a blog car­ni­val. And you know what? It was rejected. But that was again the work of the Holy Spirit, telling me that by sub­mit­ting it, I was attempt­ing to play in the wrong sand­box, a place I had already left and had no busi­ness try­ing to go back to.

I find it end­lessly ironic, how­ever, that the host of that week’s car­ni­val, in reject­ing my entry, wrote these words to me:

I pray that you find a con­gre­ga­tion where you can be fed and find com­fort in God’s Word and in His sacra­ments. To a Lutheran, that is where we find God’s grace.

I still scratch my head in amuse­ment and won­der when I read those words which served to rein­force why I can no longer be a Lutheran. Or get involved with any other orga­nized reli­gion. I have not and will not spend waste time look­ing for “a con­gre­ga­tion where you can be fed and find com­fort in God’s Word and in His sacra­ments.” I don’t need to be in a so-called “sanc­tu­ary” to find com­fort in Scrip­ture or enjoy the sacra­ments. I spent years and years and years in rooms called “sanc­tu­ar­ies” and came out time after time annoyed that I had just wasted an hour or more of my life because I did not feel “fed,” nour­ished or blessed by the rit­u­als I wit­nessed there. If oth­ers find such expe­ri­ences valu­able, they should par­tic­i­pate. I find spir­i­tual nour­ish­ment and com­fort in a vari­ety of places and times, none of which have any con­nec­tion to the patri­ar­chal, misog­y­nis­tic church. NP’s evil words and deeds were a bless­ing because they finally forced me to con­front that real­ity in a tan­gi­ble way.

“To a Lutheran, that is where we find God’s grace.” She obvi­ously missed the “recov­er­ing” part of this blog’s then-title.

More­over, that’s nei­ther what I was taught dur­ing my pre­vi­ous life­time of Lutheranism nor is it con­sis­tent with Scrip­ture. The grace bestowed by the Divine is not doled out solely to those who fre­quent the insti­tu­tional church nor exclu­sively within orga­nized reli­gion. The Holy Spirit reminded me, by hav­ing my post rejected, that I should not affil­i­ate myself with any group or indi­vid­ual who espouses such a nar­row, lim­ited, and mis­guided view­point. That was indeed a bless­ing.

In “Sticks and Stones,” I wrote about NP’s words:

“[I]f NP had said [those words] to me 30 years ago, he could have destroyed me. He could have com­pletely oblit­er­ated my self-confidence, my self-esteem, my sense of self-worth, my core iden­tity … all those things could have been dam­aged. Per­haps irrepara­bly.” Had he said some­thing so vile, hate­ful and hate-filled, spite­ful, and just plain cruel to me back when I was a young adult in col­lege just learn­ing to live inde­pen­dently and find my way in this world, he might have changed the course of my life. His label, so glee­fully flung at me, could eas­ily have side­tracked or derailed my pro­gres­sion into adult­hood and fun­da­men­tal self-concept.

Matthew 5:22(b) puts it more suc­cinctly and directly: “[T]he sim­ple moral fact is that words kill.”

In this instance, NP’s words did not kill my hope­ful spirit, self-esteem, belief in the Divine or desire to con­tinue and expand my spir­i­tual jour­ney! But with his words, the NP did com­mit mur­der. He killed my life­long rela­tion­ship with the Lutheran church, my desire to have any affil­i­a­tion with any other insti­tu­tional church, the ongo­ing cast­ing of my pearls (time, tal­ents, ser­vice) before swine (the ungrate­ful, unap­pre­cia­tive mem­bers of my for­mer con­gre­ga­tion), and my rela­tion­ships with some of the mem­bers of that congregation.

Most impor­tantly, he killed my old spir­i­tual iden­tity and self-concept. But like the myth­i­cal phoenix, a new being arose from the ashes of my for­mer self. That new being is the one who cre­ated this blog and con­tin­ues to evolve, day by day, through new dis­cov­er­ies, insights revealed, and life lessons learned (the hard­est way, most times).

Chris­tians know that evil can exist only when it is a means to a greater good. NP’s con­duct was but a means to an end uti­lized by the Holy Spirit to move my life for­ward along the path intended for me. Tremen­dous bless­ings came out of a very bad chap­ter in my life and I con­tinue to be blessed each and every day as I lis­ten to dis­cern and am obe­di­ent to the Divine’s call­ing and pur­pose for my life.

So where is the clo­sure, you ask? Because based upon the above, this blog is obvi­ously not clos­ing down and my jour­ney is far from over. I am, as I describe in the right side­bar, a “work in progress” and will con­tinue to write about that.

No, the clo­sure is in the fact that NP is leav­ing town and mov­ing sev­eral states away. In fact, today is his last Sun­day as the pas­tor of my for­mer con­gre­ga­tion. I need never again encounter him at the doctor’s office or any­where else. I will never again have to receive e-mails from or engage in con­ver­sa­tion about him with well-meaning friends and rel­a­tives who are deter­mined to share with mewhat goes on in that con­gre­ga­tion. Those are indeed bless­ings.

He is going off to serve vic­tim­ize another con­gre­ga­tion and its members.

No, I hope that’s not right. . .

I truly hope that he is going off to serve a con­gre­ga­tion and its mem­bers, and bring the per­fect, holy light of the Divine into his own and their lives. I wish him no ill will and hope his new con­gre­ga­tion will be blessed by his presence.

NP has not lived up to Matthew 5:23–24 because he has not made “things right” with me and, I’m sure, has no inten­tion of doing so. How­ever, that is his bag­gage to carry with him past the city lim­its signs on his way out of town. Not mine. And it is up to him to fig­ure out how to work that out with the Divine. It’s not my issue. His Karma. I wish him luck with that.

Even though he has not asked for my for­give­ness, he has received it because to let anger and resent­ment eat away at me would poi­son only me, no one else, and vio­late the Sec­ond Agree­ment (“Noth­ing other peo­ple do is because of you. It is because of them­selves.”), “Don’t Take Any­thing Per­son­ally.” I must live by Luke 6:37: “For­give, and you will be forgiven.”

There will be no fur­ther men­tion here of NP, his mis­con­duct or the events that pro­pelled my exit from the Lutheran Church. It’s over. Done. History.

Today I cel­e­brate the bless­ing known as “clo­sure.” Sim­ple as that! My eyes are fixed on the far hori­zon where the future that the Divine has in store for me awaits.

Track­posted to Out­side the Belt­way, Perri Nelson’s Web­site, The Vir­tu­ous Repub­lic, Right Truth, Shad­ows­cope, The Amboy Times, Lean­ing Straight Up, Pur­su­ing Holi­ness, Here’s look­ing at … me!, The HILL Chron­i­cles, third world county, Right Celebrity, Woman Honor Thy­self, Stageleft, , stikN­stein… has no mercy, Pirate’s Cove, The Right Nation, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, A Blog For All, DeMe­di­a­cratic Nation, Maggie’s Note­book, Adam’s Blog, Weblog­gin, The Bull­win­kle Blog, Cao’s Blog, Phastidio.net, Col­lo­quium, , Con­ser­v­a­tive Cat, Blue Col­lar Muse, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Allie Is Wired, The Crazy Rants of Saman­tha Burns, The World Accord­ing to Carl, Blue Star Chron­i­cles, Gulf Coast Hur­ri­cane Tracker, CORSARI D’ITALIA, Gone Hol­ly­wood, and The Yan­kee Sailor, thanks to Link­fest Haven Deluxe.

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