Mini Epiphany

Some events of the past week have conspired to awaken me to a simple truth about humanity.  At least it's something that appears to me to be true - your slant on it may be quite different.

First, there was a planned march last Saturday (Oct. 15) in Palm Springs that linked up on
Occupy Together and other websites to the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Since my financial status places me in the lower, fat middle of the probably pear-shaped middle-class diagram, I felt it was time for me to register my complete dissatisfaction with the way our financial system's overlords have mismanaged our economy.  It's time to tell our controllers that greed is not the basis of democracy.  I marched in protest - for the first time ever.

Several days later, on Thursday, I attended the funeral of a friend.  No connection, right?  Absolutely right.  But during the throes of another half-sleep early morning mental montage session, I came upon something that hit me as though someone suddenly turned on a light.  Not entirely different from that moment back in 1963 when I was suddenly overwhelmed by some need to become a devotee of Christian fundamentalism while watching some emotional evangelist pace the stage at a tent meeting, his arms flailing and pages of his open bible flapping in the quick movements and night air.  That was what I have referred to elsewhere as the night I "saw the light."  It was a blinding light I had to extinguish with much effort thirteen years later - I chose not to be blind any longer.

No sudden light came to me during the funeral this week, and to be very strictly honest here, the person being honored at the ceremony was a woman I had not actually met.  She was a lady in her fifties, and I knew her by name only.  But some members of her family I have known for all of my adult life, and it was chiefly due to this younger sibling's crippling disease and her living arrangements away from the family that I had not met her nearly fifty years ago.  My desire to show respect for the deceased, but more to express friendship to her sisters and one brother whom I know pretty well, placed me in that funeral chapel.  And put me there at the grave site in a vast, sprawling memorial garden at the family plot.  This was a rare event for me, indeed.

Bear with me as I say only a few brief things about the service.  It is important to lay the groundwork for my epiphany, but I dare not ramble on as I am wont to do over religion and its mysteries.

The more years that pass between my rare visits to that arcane world of religious mutterings that are the requisite syntax of ceremonies such as funerals, the more I am mystified when I hear the mouthings again.  It was part of my responsibility for eight years of my [misspent] youth to conduct these ceremonies and try to somewhat sooth the hurt being felt by loved ones of the deceased.  But in the particular denomination to which I gave my obedience, it was also my instructed responsibility to preach the gospel to unbelievers.  Yes, it was told to us as the young tentacles of that little sect, that it was at funerals where we had an opening and a moral duty to speak truth with forceful directness to perhaps reach into the hearts and souls of some of those attending a service who may never otherwise be within earshot of the gospel.  A captive audience, in other words.  Hit 'em hard!

Following the graveside service on Thursday, the minister came around, being friendly to all and shaking hands.  Since he had been of the amiable sort when we arrived prior to the service at the chapel, had made the effort to approach me and offer his simple, first-name introduction to me, I felt I could cut him some slack.  I told him he did "a nice job."  He didn't need to know (but perhaps could read me a little and had some questions about what I really thought), that my compliment was extremely qualified.  "Nice job" meant in my mind that within the accepted, traditional framework of his responsibility to make soft sounds and utter empty promises based solely on biblical blatherings, he was okay as an officiant.  He did as his beliefs instructed him.  At least he was somewhat personable and had a decent talent for walking that line between being somber and light in his delivery.

The guy was practiced too in his stagecraft.  He was theatrically capable.  But something that irritated me in his graveside speech actually helped me toward my moment of clarity early this morning.  He quoted the last lines of the beautiful song, The Rose.  Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows - lies the seed that with the sun's [love], in the spring becomes the rose.  "Love" is placed here in brackets because, even though it is the word chosen by the lyricist, it was replaced in the ceremony by the word "warmth."

Why?  No way did he forget the actual lyric; he made the change purposely.  (Reminds me of those days long ago when I had to re-learn some old hymnal staples to be sung with changed words approved by the lyric arbiter of that little sect which had its divergent beliefs.)  My assumption here is that by saying "sun's love," the man might have felt he would be in some way practicing sun worship.  He had to have been subliminally asserting that it's only God's love that grows those flowers, not some ethereal "love" passed along by the inanimate sun.  (Surely the beautiful song's gifted composer will forgive this tiny correction!)  The man spoke as he had to speak, was afraid not to speak!  I far more respected my friend, the older brother of the deceased, who plainly spoke of questioning why things happen as they do.  He was honest and thoughtful.

So - my epiphany. 

To help me reach it, something I myself had written earlier in the week was a spark.  My facebook account on Friday flagged me to a comment on my wall post.  So I went to read the comment and perforce, read again my own post, seeing it differently somehow.  here it is:
You can still be my friend if you'd never stoop to marching in protest, however, I am proud to have made my first march ever - last Saturday. I'm quite sure I don't personally know anyone in the 1% but I'm equally sure I know a few who court that group. I cannot imagine why, as our democracy grows ever less concerned with the masses and more completely controlled by the extremely wealthy minority. I prefer democracy.

And I suddenly saw the answer.  The reason I know people who court the 1% of the world's wealthy, is that I know many Christians!  When I openly proclaim I believe in democracy, it now occurs to me, I am slapping in the face Christians - many of my former associates and some who are still friends.  (Please don't take offense; I mean none and had not known this was the case, until now.)  Why are Christians less likely to be democratic (small as well as large D) in their thinking?  Simply because the very devoted (as was I and are still many friends) have no fundamental feeling for the individual!  Besides, the very concept of thinking has never been encouraged by devotion to religious beliefs!  Our sect was openly, even vociferously, ruled from the top down.  No individual in our denomination had the right to question the apostle who ruled in Christ's stead.  (No surprise here, folks - a dude named Saul who was one of the better educated of his day was able to start a similar sect and he ruled in the same fashion.  These guys were simply opportunists.)  Our sect (some say derisively, cult) was a Theocracy.   And we had no part in governing - we were tightly (iron-fistedly) governed!  We were also instructed to have no part in the government of men.  We did not vote in national or state elections, did not even buy homes or become civic-minded citizens.  We were in this world but not of this world - a biblical principle I've seen quoted again recently in consternation by former sectarians who write in the Non-Believer website. 

Think about it!  The whole mystery of why dirt-poor and moderately well-off middle-class folks alike, who are devoted to a Christian ethic, would support the wealthiest 1% to the detriment of the masses - is simple!  All Christians, to greater or lesser degree, were strapped and bound to this top - down concept!  Voting?  Seriously?  Having a say in anything while being a worm (the scriptural degradation handed believers) and small dust in the balance?    

Seriously!  When I was a devoted Christian, a fundamentalist minister, completely given to that way of life, I had no leanings toward any government type at all outside the theocratic idea that God rules; I follow.  Once a devoted follower of any strong Christian belief system manages to leave a specific sect behind, does he automatically begin to think rationally and have individual strengths at hand to begin to use in building a personal life free of authoritarian guidance?  Not often, I perceive.  People struggle to shake off the old regime and most seem to gravitate toward some other, perhaps bigger, more mainstream denomination.  The bigger the more likely to be - what, right maybe?  At least safer, surely!  But few of us turn to reason and individual self-determination concepts because we simply were never prepared for such bold self-assertion.  We were trained, indeed commanded, to be humble.  Subservient! 

Cutting in here is ragged, but  I am ending this part of my insight, my epiphany at this point, having gotten long-winded and gone into more extensive philosophy as I tried to wrap this up.  My next post will pick up where this one leaves off.  For today, I will go about my routines feeling far from any routine I've followed in a long time!  I saw the light!

markman