The experiences in all our lives is just a
story. With a little change here or there, a look, a wave a mistake or
an event outside of our control, every story changes.
When I was 14 I wanted to go see my sister in
Idaho. I was in NY. Shortly after getting the airline ticket, the
airlines went on strike. Guess that idea was on hold and school started
soon. Then I saw a train and wondered if I could take a train. So I
did. It was there at 14 I found them reading the Plain Truth. Being
weird and curious I devoured everything they had. I went to church with
them. I heard a good sermon for a change...and the rest is part of my
story in life. Had I not taken that train, the story would have been
different for years to come.
I postponed a flight once just for a day and didn't die on Big Bear Mountain in Duarte, California
I waved at somone once across a parking lot and the story swerved and changed.
I got several times where that story would play a part in more stories years later
I made a phone call or two in life that changed the whole story again.
While that story unfolded, the stories of
others unfolded around me and those stories began to affect my story.
Various people came and went in and out of my story and the story kept
turning into another one and not the original story I had envisioned for
myself. Finally the stories of others pretty much ruined my original
story and a dramatically new story, yet just another story, came into my
life to play out. That story changed too into yet another and another
and another.
Everyone has a story to tell and yet one of
the real skills in life is not to identify too much with the ever
changing story of one's life. If it was not one story, it would have
been another complete and replete with different characters,
experiences, offspring, relationships, drama and outcomes. Yet in it
all, it is still just a story.
Eventually, if we are lucky and live long
enough to accumulate stories, we begin to look back and remember,
repeat, react and resist the stories that were burned much more deeply
into our memories and self more than others. These are stories that
leave deep impressions on us, have hurt us deeply or put us in
situations where we had to come up with yet another story to fix or at
least learn to accept the consequences of the last story. Yet again, it
is all just another story.
I don't believe we here have to speak in
code. The WCG story, which for whatever reasons, we allowed into our
lives and become a major player in our own personal life story , has
left some pretty big scars, lessons and , if we are not present in the
moment of our current life story, can easily put us all back into the
ever looping cycle of remember, repeat, react and resist. What we
resist persists as far as I can tell.
In other words, we get stuck.
Personally, and in the context of my own
story, I am not confident of what may be really true and what is not.
Well meaning friends or readers sometimes will try to explain it to me
or sometimes we all endeavor to explain it to each other, but I don't
ever see myself or others finding much encouragement in the stories and
conclusions of others in their stories. I'm thinking we each have our
own unique story, experiences and such to learn our own life lessons.
It is why we find so little success in using our own stories to
influence the story of others. It's certainly why we see little
"success" in bringing one sitting in their own story to "their senses"
and filter their lives through the opinions, views, truths and
discoveries of our own stories. Simply put, it is why few change much
from their own story to ours, yours or mine.
I have noted that one of the reasons, if not
the main reason, people of all kinds of faiths and beliefs don't easily
give them up is that they/we adopt our beliefs to protect us from the
fear we have of death. All religion is born out of this fear and
conscious awareness that we only seem to have that we will go through
the cycle, no exceptions, of "Not here---Now here---No longer here"
whether we like it or not. The Apostle Paul, in his-story, for a time
thought that others would die in the faith, but of course, WE who will
be alive shall be changed. Bzzzzzzzzz..thanks for playing Paul, but you
got that wrong didn't you.
Ministers give sermons every week and tell
stories. Ministers are story tellers and because of our story, we get
to have access to some pretty amazing stories that are spun and woven
every week called sermons in the COGs. Ron Weinland spins a tale, as if
he really knew, and draws people into his story. Dave Pack has a story
to tell as does Gerald Flurry, Rod Meredith, Joe Tkach Jr and hundreds
of others, all competing to include others and even sometimes each
others audiences in their story. The real trick is to tell a story so
compelling or in such a way as to seem to be the "True Story of the True
Church," that others drop their current story, include them in yet
another story of their lives and give up their resources to perpetuate
the story. All this is designed to alleviate the fear of death and , of
course, to give meaning to all the previous stories no matter how crazy
they were.
Most of us here have dropped out of the
previous story and gone on to create new ones. In many ways, the old
story infects our new one. It keeps coming up and I imagine most of us
think about it in some form or another every day. And of course, doing
so, pushes our own new story this way and that affecting our present
lives. We remember, repeat, react and resist a bit and get a bit
screwed up, if just for a moment, in our present moments.
But no matter the story each human being finds
themselves acting out, all stories tend to teach us the same lessons.
It seems not to matter how we learn but that we learn the real truths of
life that will serve us well and give us peace. Because when it is all
said and done, all I ever wanted to have and teach was peace, kindness,
compassion and the kind of love which passes all understanding. I
can't say I have that kind of love and part of the reason is that , like
most humans, I get stuck in the story and it impedes the progress I
envision as being more meaningful than how I learned it.
So, I can't speak for anyone but me, but here
is a sample of what the story of my journey into, with and out of the
WCG has left me with. They are in no particular order nor will I
classify them as the bad things, the good things or the in between. Of
course I could make up a list of really negative ones like, "never trust
anyone," "everything is bullshit," or "everyone is a liar (except me)
and just out to screw you out of your mind, money and moments," but
those aren't so much lessons as results of a perceived bad experience
which was painful. I suppose when we use the words, "everyone,
everything, never and always," it is the pain speaking (painbody:) and
not our genuine self.
So here are the biggies I learned up to this
present time as a result of my personal story as connected and played
out as a minister in WCG.