Dennis on: "Surrendering to the Mystery"

Surrendering to the Mystery

"How do you know the experience you are having is the experience you are suppose to be having?...  Because you are having it."

Eckhart Tolle

I don't think anyone would argue with the reality that the Worldwide Church of God experience was a life changer in many ways.  I can't speak for others, but I know that had I not had the WCG experience, I would have had the same experience in some other form, with others I never met and friends I never made because I had the WCG experience.  I know that whatever theology, and I had been accepted to a Wesleyan Seminary before being accepted to Ambassador College, I adopted, I know that I personally would have had a crisis of faith and gone through the same learning that I feel I have now learned about the Bible and religion.  Somewhere in my 40's no matter what church I had thought I needed to pastor and minister in, I would have generally the same experience and come to the same conclusions though perhaps under different circumstances.

When I was 18, I had to follow the WCG.  You could not have stopped me.  I tucked my application under my shirt and secretly mailed it so my parents would not know what I had done.  I was surprised when the local pastor in Buffalo called me to interview me and my parents invited him over just fine.  They actually became good friends as my parents are like that. 

When push came to shove and I had not heard from AC and the Wesleyan Seminary had already accepted me, I called Pasadena and said I needed a decision now.  The lady on the phone said, "just a minute."  She then came back and said you are accepted.  How hilarious is that.  What a turn of the wheel of fate that was to prove to be and all the associated lessons to come.

I eventually got on a plane and somewhere over the Western US knowing it would be my last, ate a ham sandwich on the approach to Los Angeles.  I had already had my last Xmas and my last Easter.  I was one naive yet sincerely seeking kid at 18.  Oh..and it was the height of the Vietnam draft as well and at 18, my draft number was 14 if I remember and I ain't no soldier.

To keep it short, the whole WCG experience played out over 40 years.  College, 14 congregations, 5 states, a scandal every five years along with a nagging tension that things should not be this difficult in a religious organization.  The older I got, the more I regretted the choice I know you could not have talked me out of originally.  My mind found all sorts of ways to cope.
 "Well this is like the New Testament Church.  They had problems too."  "Well, every organization has its cranks."  "Oh that's not true and even if is, people are just people."  "After HWA dies it will be better."  "I'm not giving sermons on that topic anymore."  "I wish I had never heard of WCG."  "I wish I had gone to the University of Penn and become a paleontologist......"   

Kids grew up, relationships were strained, anger became a suppressed friend,  painbodies erupted, marriage fails,  relationships fail,  I want to now know what I should have known to begin with and the rest is history.

Sometimes I sit here with Chewie the Wookie like Shih Tzu talking to her and asking, "what the hell happened Chewie?"  I get the Buddhist look of "life happened....what's your point?"
 

 

What happened was a story.  We all have one.  Had I gone to Roberts Wesleyan Seminary instead of AC, it would have been a different story.  Had I not delayed a plane trip at age 21 for a day, I'd be dead as it was hit by a fighter jet over Duarte, California June 6, 1971.   So many ways a story can change.

But I had the WCG experience.  Was it a good experience or a bad one?   I don't have to judge it or define it I suppose, but I do have to live with it and the only choice I have is , not did I have it, but what do I do with it?  Crying over spilled milk and all.

I can't speak for anyone but myself.  But I do know that each of us has to answer the question, "Has this experience made me a better person or a worse one?"  Can one accept what is unchangeable now and chalk it up to just being a story which at anytime could have changed courses and been another one?   Can you change one thing about the experience that is already past?  Can I undo it?  Can I fix it?   Can I wish it away?  etc...Nope...It is what it is and the years go on and eventually we run out of time any way.  I'm not going to be an paleontologist specializing in Neanderthal's in Europe.  My Kodak dad always said he wanted to be a State Trooper so I guess this trait runs in the family.  

The stages of going through the crash of WCG and the faith and perceptions of tens of thousands contains all the stages and traits of what one goes through when something or someone dies.  It is a perceived loss.  At the time I wondered why a couple hundred folk could not have run the Tkaches out of town on a rail and kept it all together, but now I realize that, for me, that would have only been a temporary fix.  I was bound to outgrow it in any form.

So, when it's all said and done, are we better or worse for it all?   Only each can answer for themselves.  Some are more vocal than others.  For the thousands that read this site, it is interesting to me that there is just a core group of those who jump in.  I assume all others just read and think about it all.  Because if we perceive we are worse for it all and intend to spend the rest of our time bitter, angry and manifesting all the things painbodies love to feed on, how does that serve us?  How does that serve you?   What does that make of the rest of our lives?

"What eats you...eats you.."  comes to mind.   Emotions can make the heart and the body quite ill.  How does that serve me?

So, for my own sake, and I can't speak for others, I surrender.  I had this experience that was full of both joy and sorrow, good times and bad, great gains and losses, friends and not friends,  success and failure and just about every dichotomy there is in life.  There was much to be thankful for and some to be sorry for in hind site.

"How do you know the experience you are having is the experience you are suppose to be having?...  Because you are having it."

I don't see anyway it could have been different than it was and is.  The only choice left is what to learn from and do with it in what I now consider to be just one more way of attending Earth School.

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