Relationships
This is a toughy. I loved the relationships I had in WCG. In all the churches I ever pastored, I found my best friends. Of course, what joined us was the common hope that lay within us.WCG provided me friends and relationships I never would had in any other context. The people I met at AC were very sincere and just good folks. They came from everywhere in the country and in fact, the world. I never would have known them were it not for the church.
I did date some of the same girls Garner Ted did. ( :( ) Naive and very fine human beings with a desire to do and believe the right things. They were not insincere. They were not looking for power or recognition. They simply wanted to be a part of the right thing. They wanted to do the right thing and see the Bible in the correct way. The best friends I ever had were members of the WCG.
One of my best friends was a guy I met in Ohio when I was transferred there. He always spoke his mind and while , at first, it made me nuts and distrustful, I now realize he simply knew how to express what he was observing and it made me, as a young minister, uncomfy. The problem was with me, not him. We moved to Ohio and rented a house next to the railroad tracks , which to us was a palace. Ok, we had to put up with the train going past, but it was steady and predicatable and I loved the sound of it. It relaxed me at night. We lived so close to the tracks that any accident would have taken us immediately into the Kingdom of God.
I remember well this fellow, who helped us move in, saying..."I just wanted to see what my tithe money was doing." Ugh....give me a break. I have to live somewhere. But he was honest and it was that honesty that bound us rather closely over the years. He eventually got booted as a deacon from the church for being too honest and observant. I returned for a reunion of ministers in this Ohio congregation. The present minister was "honoring" the deacons for their work in the church and, of course, he was left out. He was sitting in front of me and while listening to the minister tell of the other men's service, I took out a piece of paper and wrote:
" In honor of Gary________, For years of dedicated service and care in the Worldwide Church of God."
I reached around him and put it in his hands. He looked back at me with a look time can never erase. "Thank you," he said somewhat stunned. We have been closer friends ever since.
I made and lost some of the best friends I ever had in the bonds made in the WCG.
This past weekend I went to celebrate the 3rd birthday of my grandson. He is the only boy of three other goddesses I call my grandchildren. Sheridan, Maggie, Lily and Nicholas. My ex wife was there and it was difficult.
Nothing that has transpired is her "fault." Everything just fell apart. When you life church, church, church 24/7 and it goes as WCG went, it just all falls apart. She came from a long time WCG family. We had our good years raising two great boys. We went to the Toledo Zoo after church services on the holy Sabbath and took some heat but mostly made people think perhaps life was not to be such a church burden. This was in the 70's. Every Friday night in the winter we went to the YMCA to swim with the kids and have "family time." No one gave us a hard time for that and I told them that's what we did. We ended the Friday night swim with a trip to Dunkin Donuts with the boys in their "jammies" and life was good.
Once my youngest climbed into a locker at the YMCA and locked himself in. I told him to keep talking and Dad would find him. It was hilarious. I finally found the appropriate locker and liberated this small, naked and goofy kid from his prison. We laughed our butts off.
Another time, I took my oldest, then 5 , to a funeral in Kentucky. On the coffin there was a spay of flowers and a red toy telephone with a sign that said, "Jesus called." He asked me what the toy phone was all about and I explained the concept to him. Then I got called to give the sermon. He grabbed me almost in a panic and I said, "Let go, I have to speak." He said in a panic not since heard, "Dad...if that phone rings, please don't answer it!" Another great memory. All through the service the coffin between me and him sitting on the front row, he glared at me as if to say "Dad...don't answer it." Now he'd probably say, "Dad, go ahead and answer it." But that is another story :)
Anyway, driving home from the weekend alone and having seen everyone in my past life was a bit difficult. I can't unring the bell. I can't fix all that is broken. I never would have predicted the route my marriage and life would have taken, and yes, I did make my decisions along the way that have cost much.
I have had a couple relationships since then. Mistakes were made and the price has been paid. It's me, the Shih Tzu and the Lionhead Goldfish at the moment and it's not been easy. I have endeavored to meet new people through the various web based sites, but somehow I am the most comfortable with those that know my past and understand. Loneliness is a concept I never knew until the last couple years. I am sure somewhere along the line there were singles who expressed this concept to me and I said some really dumb shit stuff as how they needed to solve it. Boy, has the Karma Fairy flown over and taught me a lot about shallow advice not based in reality.
I don't find people all that honest about what makes them tick. As I have written in the past, everyone wears masks. Masks tend to grow into the skin and are ever so hard to take off. However, dropping them is liberating. I imagine the cost of being oneself, by most, is considered too high and so they fake it.
At any rate, the best friends I ever had were the members who drove me nuts when I was their pastor. They were right. They had nothing to lose being right, well except their membership in the group think.
I find that lost relationships is a very big issue in the demise of the WCG. We all had absolutely nothing in common and at the same time, everything in common.
I miss those relationships and am sorry they ended as they did.
I do not miss my relationship with "Headquarters." What a mess that always was. Were you telling me the truth or were you shitting me? In hindsite, you were shitting me. You were my friends but then you became my worse enemy. You lied and made excuses for the obvious and proved to be shallow friends at best. "We will take care of you," came to mean, "by screwing you." We "wish you well and will pray for you," meant "We dont give a rats ass about you and probably won't pray for you either." Those in high places were relationships that taught me well what "be warmed and be filled" really meant.
Life is relationships. Some people come into our lives forever, for a time, for a season and then either stay or leave. There is much to learn from each, but it can be very painful.
My thanks to those who have hung with me through the years. For those who have come and gone, I thank you as well and wish it may have been better or different.
I never came into the WCG for anything less than doing and believing the right thing. I have learned much from the experience but the price has been high.
They say that experience is the BEST teacher, BUT the tuition is high. I have learned that experience is the ONLY teacher and all else is mere hearsay.
That doesn't mean it's easy or how one wish it had gone...
My impression is that there are very few cults that have as strong an exit support system as thos of us who were once affiliated with the WCG have found.
ReplyDeleteWe have people like you, Dennis, and other very creative writers that have been there, clearing the litter & baggage on the path ahead of us, as we travel down the road to recovery.
Some of us have high structural visualization: The ability to think in three or more dimensions. The talent gives us the ability to do such things as take things apart and put them back together (and make them work better in the process), become engineers, physicists, surgeons, mechanics, to work in technologies and appreciate and love the technical. Most people aren't like that.
ReplyDeleteWhat this means is that those of us who have this ability have an interesting Universe to explore. There are wonders out there. We're more than satisfied to investigate what makes the world work -- from the weather to earthquakes to volcanoes to DNA and biology to astronomy.
While people can be interesting, truth is much more interesting.
And the truth is, relationships in the WCG were mythical crap. If you were disfellowshipped, that was it. If you left, no one called. No one bothered. Most people were so bound up to be a narcissistic source for Herbert Armstrong, Stanley Raider and all the rest of the selfish self-serving ministry and administration, that they really didn't have time for relationships -- not really. It was obsessive compulsive disorder on overdrive to do all the things demanded of by the Masters of the Universe -- and the rest of us were abstractions and not real people, to do the will of sociopathic false prophets.
And for those of us busy with constructing our own PCs at home out of different parts and those of us building and using 3D printers, the world around us is a wonderland.
We don't miss the chaos of the relationships in the WCG, since most of them offered us nothing in the first place and we're rolling in clover, not missing the irritant of having to deal with people with whom we have nothing in common.
I always enjoy what you have to offer, Dennis. Some of the best friends I ever had were in the old organization. Most of them deserted me when I left, but a few were true friends, so I understand what Anonymous had to say.
ReplyDeleteWhen you quit your ezine articles, i thought you had quit entirely, and I was very disappointed. I'm very glad you're now posting elsewhere. If you had a notice on the ezine site, I missed it. If not, I'd recommend one.
Now, to comment On Douglas' comment. I'm one of those lucky people with analytical reasoning and structural visualization in the the 95 percentile area, according to the Human Engineering Labortory. It really enhances life.
To illustrate, just yesterday, our mail lady left a notice that the mailbox we had inherited with the property was too low and too far from the road and to please remount our mailbox if we wanted mail delivery after the end of this month.
My structural mind went into instant action. Months ago, we had bought a lot of cement blocks at a yard sale to use when we needed them. I grabbed a couple and went out to the road. In a few minutes I had leveled a spot just a few inches from the road and set the two blocks in place.
I had also purchased steel rods, angle iron and rebar at various sales and soon had those blocks and another row set in the opposite direction securely anchored. Then, with the help of liquid nails adhesive, I securely installed three more rows.
Next a platform for the mailbox from some two by sixes I'd been saving, securely screwed together and ligid nailed in place along with the mailboox. Less than four hours work, and the mail lady left a thank you note. Today, I painted it white.
Having that innate ability really saves us a lot of money. I spent a total of $5.45 for glue. It was fun.
"And the truth is, relationships in the WCG were mythical crap."
ReplyDeletePerhaps it would be better to say,
"In my experience, and the truth is...."
I had wonderful friends in WCG. The friendships were as real as any could be. They were not "mythical crap."
For you maybe, but that is not a fair assessment of everyone else's experience...IMHO
And where are those "friends" today?
ReplyDeleteKept in touch, have they?
"And where are those "friends" today?
ReplyDeleteKept in touch, have they?"
The real friends have. They are few in number, I have to admit. I'm certain some few others would still be in touch if we mutually knew the whereabouts of each other. The vast majority wouldn't. That's not a problem to me.