Category: Religion / Spirituality

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Hate and How We Handle People We Hate [ Post #9 ]

Well, There’s a word that packs a punch, that throws life off-center, that destroys and kills, often literally.  It’s a word that’s very topical in our world today.  I wish it wasn’t so, but, as they say, “it is what it is,” and we are living in a very hate-filled, hate-obsessed world if one focuses on that aspect of life.

As a child we probably didn’t think much about the emotion of hate.  In childhood we would casually say we love something or we hate something. No big deal.  We love our parents or we hate our parents.  We love or hate our siblings.  We hate or love broccoli, etc.  We love school or we hate school.  I don’t think we were taught the potential damage hating could have at that stage of life.

But advance to the later years and we see hate is a very destructive energy to live with.  Gangs thrive on hate as do most criminals.  Left unchecked, hate just becomes a way of life or at least a part of life.  Yes, it has always been that way.  History is a continuous story of war and killing.  Look at religion, another continuous tale of wars and atrocities.  

Looking over my life, I do not recall actually hating anybody.  There were a lot of people I did not like, people I did not see as good or nice people.  But “hate,” I don’t know if I would say I hated anybody.  I do recall one time when a supposed “friend” all of a sudden decided he hated me.  We were co-workers and I thought good friends until one day in casual conversation I mentioned I was gay.  Kaboom!  He flipped out and started screaming at me how I was evil and God was going to kill me.  God was surely going to kill me, no question about it.  I deserved to get AIDS and die, and soon!  Wow, I did not see that coming.  He hated me ever since that moment.

Now, I grew up in an environment of hate.  I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s, in an all-white area of Los Angeles.  In my immediate environment I was taught that we hate Catholics, Jews and ni**ers.  I did not understand this attitude, so of course I was called a ni**er lover by family members.  I, of course,  was confused as I did not understand this concept of hate that was so natural in the people in my environment.    I guess I was the proverbial “black sheep” of my family and environment.  Over time I’ve been labeled a communist, un-American, bleeding-heart liberal, etc.  Wow, all because I was not hate-filled in my attitudes and thinking.

So now, here we are in later adulthood, and it just doesn’t change much, does it?  Look at the world, look at how people are treating each other. Turn on the news.  I was at the grocery store recently and two people were going at it, screaming awful, nasty things to each other.

So, how do I handle the people I hate in my life.  Well, for starters, I don’t feel that I hate anybody.  Really, I mean that.  Can’t stand some people, that’s for sure.  I find some people awful, disgusting, even evil, but I would not say I hate anyone.  I think hate is a line I will not cross.  I find hate to be too destructive and harmful and dangerous in my life.  My getting worked up and hating people is not for me.  I’ve got enough to do making my life work out how I want it to be.  I don’t have the energy to hate and be distracted from all the good in life.  I will let karma and God work out dealing with the awful people in this world.  Really… as they say, “it’s not my job, man!” 

  


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Why I Love Funerals [Post #8]

Well, that title probably got your attention.  But there is truth in that statement.  Let me tell you why I love (good) funerals.  Now, I know funerals are very sad events.  At the last funeral I was at, the best friend of the deceased started his eulogy with the statement that “funerals suck!”  And that is true.  Of course funerals suck.  But there is a sense in which I love funerals.

At most funerals (and at memorial services) I get to hear the deceased’s life story.  I get to hear stories of their life that I would never hear otherwise.  It is my last chance, usually, to find out very interesting facts about the fascinating life they lived.  I happen to love people’s life stories.  After all, we never really know most of the people in our lives.  We know very little, usually, about our friends.

So I sit there and am amazed by what I learn as people share their experiences and knowledge of their dear, deceased loved one.  I am sad that it takes a funeral to learn about my friends, to really know who they were.  As I see it, by then it is too late to appreciate their life and let them know.  I guess it’s better than never knowing the stories, I just wish they had shared more of their real selves while they were alive.

Which brings me to today, and me and my writing, blogging, and speaking.  Several years ago, while visiting my nephew in Florida, he handed me a book.  The book was my father’s memoirs, an autobiography.  My father apparently typed out these pages of his life story a long time ago, but nobody knew of this until my nephew found them among boxes of family “stuff” after my father’s passing.

My nephew had these pages printed up in a book and gave a copy to family members.  What a surprise!  I never knew much about my father and reading the book filled in a lot of the gaps in my knowledge of him and gave me an appreciation of what he lived through.  And that got me thinking, Maybe I should do something like that, get my stories out there, out of my head and into the world, or at least out there for my friends to know.  I thought about it, realizing, yes, we don’t know people and their life stories until their funerals, and then we don’t know very much, usually.

The problem is, writing your memoirs or autobiography can be a daunting project.  I was interested, excited and committed, but it is too easy to procrastinate to just write the long story of one’s life.  I realized I might never get very far with the project.  That’s when the thought of internet blogging came to me.  I realized I am not a “techy” type person and probably couldn’t handle writing a blog, but doing some research I discovered even people not computer savvy could do it with a little help that was available.  So, I plunged in, and here we are. I realized that besides my life stories, there are other subjects I could write about.  I have lots of ideas, so there is always something to write that might be of some interest to someone.

I have a little public speaking/preaching  background, having been to seminary.  I enjoyed that and I got some good reviews.  But that takes a lot of work in preparation, plus I have to seek speaking opportunities (sell myself, etc.), and then the audience is usually rather small, and who is going to remember anything I said a few days later.  I find it easier to sit down and write and when I do, there is a written record to come back to if I or someone else chooses to.

So, that was the genesis of my blogging project.  I like having good conversations with people.  I like really learning about people. I want to know about people before they die.  I say, let’s be more open with our lives, that’s my wish and desire.  We get too hung up on the unimportant things in life.

Wally

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Time for a Little Religion: Born Again Christian, Atheist, Then ??? [Post #7]

Okay, I’ve covered briefly my chronological life in blogs 3 through 6. Nothing controversial about that, just pretty objective.  Now it is time to get into controversial subjects.  Yes, we’ve all been warned to stay away from religion and politics in polite conversation, etc., but well, a blog does get into these areas sometimes.  I’m hoping to stay away from politics, there’s enough of that elsewhere in the world and on the internet.  But religion, well, that’s a factor in my life that’s always been of some significance, whether good or bad.  So, we will take a quick tour of my spiritual journey, if you will.  We’ll start at the beginning.

When I was a child, my family made us go to church, even though we were not a religious family, as I saw it.  I really did not understand why we were made to go, but I guess that was pretty much the norm back then when couples had children, even rather “secular” couples.  We did say grace before meals and I was taught the bedtime prayer, “now I lay me down to sleep.”  But that was about it for religion in our family.  My dad did like our minister because he talked football a lot, but he was not big on religion, really (my father, not the minister).  My father did use God’s name and Jesus’s name, but not in a sacred way, if you get my drift. (Unfortunately, I picked up this habit from him and haven’t quite rid myself of it yet).

In high school I had what you could call a “born again Christian” experience.  A coming to God and Jesus was good for me at that time as I was having problems living with my family and a spiritual/religious dimension in my life helped a lot.  I do not regret that experience at all at that time.

After high school I went away to college, to a Christian college in Seattle where I had three friends from my high school days.  It was a new life for me, being away from home.  I got involved with a group of friends there, good people.  They were charismatic Christians, which means they were really on fire in a religious sense during that chaotic time. It was the 1960’s, a wild time of the Vietnam War, the Kennedy assassination, Martin Luther King’s assassination, Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy, Kent State killings, etc.  Sometimes I am amazed that we lived through such an insane time.

There were drugs, there were the Jesus freaks, Woodstock, all of that.  But I ran around with my “spiritual” friends and it probably helped me survive being in such a group.  We had good times hanging out together and going to church.  

When college was over I continued on to a theological seminary.  I was there for one year and I learned a lot.  I got to study deeper  the interesting subjects of church history, theology, ethics, etc.  I remember being told that what we learned in seminary we do not want to tell our congregations  when we become ministers because it may damage or destroy people’s faith.  Like I said, I learned a lot.

I left seminary, got a job with an airline and did the career stuff.  Life was rolling along pretty well.  For a while.  At some point, I began experiencing a “crisis of faith.”  I challenged my religious beliefs with deep study and deep reflection and thought.  I guess real life was beginning to affect me and my spiritual assumptions.  Not an unusual experience for some people.

I do realize, and I do know a lot of people that never seem to waver in their religious beliefs since they were children, indoctrinated into whatever church or religion they were brought up in.  But this was not my situation. I went from no faith to a fundamental, conservative Christian faith, to theological study and on to the dog-eat-dog real world of cruelty and awful people and situations in the world.  I could not put it all together.  So, I decided I was, after all, an atheist.

Well, this was an unexpected turn in my life.  But one I took seriously.  When I decide something, I really make a decision and commitment.  So, I joined the American Atheist’s Association, based in Austin, Texas.  It was headed my Madalyn Murray O’Hair, a very famous atheist activist.  I even attended one of their annual conventions and got to be with her and her family (pictures were posted on Facebook a while back).

The convention I attended was a very interesting experience.  I met a lot of people who felt like I did about religion at that time, but something began to gnaw at me.  I realized a lot of these people were very bitter, unhappy people.  I realized that atheism is really just another “religion.”  They have their strong, set beliefs and they hate anyone who does not agree with them.  In fact, they really hate agnostics who question whether there is a God or not, as they see agnostics as weak people unable to be strong and stand up and be atheists like they are.

So, I learned a lot being with those atheists and it caused me to reevaluate where I really stood on this religious/spiritual thing.  As I thought it over, I realized I have always felt there was “something else” in life, something in the invisible world of the unseen forces or energy active in life.  Maybe it wasn’t the childhood concept of God that I (and most children) had at one time early in life.  Even the concept I had of “God” in college.  Maybe I had to grow up my concept of God or whatever was active in life behind the scenes, in the invisible, unseen world of the spiritual dimension.

I studied a lot on religious and spiritual subjects.  I began checking out churches again.  I discovered a branch of religion and even Christianity called “new thought,” not “new age,” but new thought.  It was a much better match for me than the standard,  conservative, mainline, fundamental protestant Christian church.  I found the Unity Movement (Unity churches) and Religious Science churches fit me better than anything else.  I find Science of Mind (the teaching of the Religious Science church) and Unity teachings are my best expressions of my spiritual experience now.

That is a brief trip through my spiritual journeying of my life.  Recently I sat down to draw up my most simple definition of my beliefs. It turns out it is very similar to Jesus’ statement of his theology (if we can call it that).  He said the ten commandments from the Hebrew Bible can be condensed into two commandments, to Love God and to Love your neighbor as yourself.  I came up with a seven word religion that really is it for me: Trust God and Love and F the rest.  That really covers everything if you think about it, as I see it.