Miserere mei, Deus

 

David Hurd's Psalm 51

If someone had told me twenty years ago that I would be smearing ashes on the forehead's of people tonight I would never have believed them.  Tonight was Ash Wednesday at the church I attend.  A night that signifies the start of forty days of self examination.  An examination of our fallibility, our mortality, our participation in oppression and injustice to others.  At this time we are particularly drawn to Jesus' call for justice: freedom for the oppressed, release of the captives, good news to the poor and recovery of sight to the blind.  It's about confronting the power of death in all it's forms, terror and tyranny, corruption and greed, disregard for creation and all the forces that prevent people from living life in it's fullest.

It's not about giving up chocolate, sweets, meat, dropping a dollar in the swear jar, or other things.  It's about being authentic to yourself and to God, while you get off your rear end and make a difference in the world around you.

Growing up in Armstrongism I listened to endless sermons by ministers and evangelists mocking and deriding those that kept this day as insincere and a total waste of time.  Meredith came up with some of the most absurd  and inaccurate comments that anyone could dream up.  Actually what he said was and still is, a blatant lie!


Seeing the wide eyes of little kids kneeling in front of you with tears in their eyes, or huge smiles as they experience something that only a child can through untarnished minds.  They look into your eyes with a look of awe.  And then they turn to their parents and look them in their eyes with a deep connection only a parent can ever see. Probably like the kind of the look we should be having with God.  Totally free with no baggage. Oh, to be a child again!

I saw a blind young man tonight who is wheelchair bound with a body that is wracked by cerebral palsy, rhythmically moving in slow motion due to the muscles in his body twisting and writhing about, sit there with tears streaming down his cheeks as he attempts  to stop his body from moving when the ashes are placed on his forehead, clearly and distinctly saying 'amen' afterwords.  He does the same thing when the Eucharist is brought  to him.  His body stops moving as he takes the wafer in his distorted hands and places it in his mouth.and sips the wine.  He understands something that I probably never will.  Something deeper and more meaningful than any HWA sermon, booklet or book ever did. Something deeper about the mystery that surrounds us, the mystery of the unknown yet knowable, the grain of the universe that calls to us into something we cannot fathom, something so foreign to us that we let it slip past us the minute we walk out the doors of the church into the real world.

I saw people in attendance tonight that I know are agnostic and a couple of atheists who have no idea what or who God is.  Yet, they admit something draws them back, week after week. Something they cannot understand but want to be a part of.  They are involved in feeding the homeless, knitting prayer shawls for the sick and dying, caring for those with AIDS, working in hospice or visiting the  sick and home bound. They too have the opportunity to delve into something deeper and more mysterious with new ways of looking and understanding thatI can never have.  It is a delight to be around them

I am grateful for my journey out of Armstrongism. I regret  many opportunities lost because of its aberrant, absurd and irrelevant teachings, yet there was a lot I treasure. How I came out halfway sane is a miracle!  :-) I am grateful for Gavin's web sites and blogs over the years and for Dennis's unwavering self examination and willingness to question without apology.  What a ride it has been and continues to be!

Gary

Relationships

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. 

Everyone Wears Masks - Your Pastor and Priest, Your Mom, Dad, Family, and YOU!

 

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...

DenniscDiehl@aol.com 

All Else Aside...I had to Be There

All Else Aside...I had to Be There

I'll make this short but straightforward.  I speak ONLY for myself and yes, I have many regrets.  

However....

...in my heart of hearts, I know that I had to be there. 

 I was 14 years old when I heard my first sermon.  It was in Idaho and it was about the universe and "God."  I had been reading the booklets all week having just been introduced to the Church my older sister and brother-in-law had become convinced was close to whatever the Bible was trying to tell us.  I was hooked.  No one EVER gave a sermon on the Universe in our Presbyterian background.  I can't remember one sermon from my youth in the Presbyterian Church.  But this one I never forgot.  

I devoured the Plain Truth Magazine and all the booklets I could get my hands on.  It was the 60's.  Hell, the whole world was going to hell in a handbasket.  JFK had just been killed.  MLK and Bobby were next.  There were about to be Two major Middle Eastern wars endeavoring to wipe Israel off the map.  (Update 2011...Go ahead, be my guest now.  Wipe it off the face of the earth).  I simply had to be where this church was. 

For the next four years through High School, I read all I could.  I talked to my girl friend who I was sure I'd marry someday.  Hmmm, not going over so well there.  Oh well, perhaps God was not calling her.  (Update 2011...Lucky girl)   I applied to two seminaries after High School.  One was Roberts Weslyan which was Methodist and the other was Ambassador College.  (Update 2011...I honestly thought it was a seminary according to what I saw in the perspectus).   I chose...well you know.

Loved AC.  Too stupid to know I was not getting the whole story.  I used to go down to Fuller Seminary in Pasadena to study.  They had a much better library.  Never crossed my mind to transfer there because, well...they just weren't called like I was.   Made lots of friends at AC.  Most are now players in "Days of our Lives...The Wildworld Church of God and It's Many Faces."  (Update 2011...Thank you God for not letting me keep following your true Church all over creation the last 20 years.)   

But...I had to be there right up until the moment I realized I no longer could. 

I made my choices over the years of turmoil and scandal.  Ok, people are weak but so was David and of course....DAVID WAS A MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART, so see, it all works out.  While embarrassing and that niggly little voice was telling me get out during the receivership era, well...Satan really hated God's Church so of course stuff like this is going to happen.  Besides, it is cleansing and we will be better than ever.  I called once a week to hear recordings by "God's leading evangelist updates on the situation, and we were winning!!!  (Update 2011...you know, like Charlie Sheen is "winning...duh! )

So I had to be there and NOTHING you could have done would have talked me out of it, until I talked myself out of it and even then, had to be pushed.  I hated letting the local church down but when push came to shove, they all disappeared like I had the plague anyway.  Big wake up there!

Somewhere along the way, I'd say around '94 or '95, I started to crack.  I read outside the WCG box and devoured John Shelby Spong's book, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism.  

 

Hmmmm....this guy just answered almost every question I had about what never made sense about the Gospels.  I loved his books and his honesty.  I wrote JSS and told him how much I appreciate his perspectives and how helpful they were to me and in answering questions I had wondered about over the years that my Church never addressed.  Actually they didn't know there were questions to ask.  JSS wrote back personally...

 

"Thank you very much Dennis for your kind words and I am pleased I have been able to help.  I'm glad you appreciate my work...however...

...you won't survive.

Warm regards

John Shelby Spong"

Wow...the man was not only a Bishop, but also a Prophet.   I continued on reading JSS's works on the Birth and Death stories of Jesus.  Craaaacccck.....I wove wonderful things in to my sermons for a time. I read all of Raymond Brown's books on the Birth and Death of the Messiah.  Big books, long books, deeply thought out books....and I wove them into my sermons for a time.  I was asked to teach at the local Catholic Church Bible studies on the topic of Jesus Birth Narratives.  Raymond Brown was a great RCC scholar and well respected.  The Priest and I had become friends having met at the Annual AIDS something or other and it was there I actually was able to make a contact for my local WCG to meet that was much nicer.  It was an actual church building and very nice.  Of course, I was teaching in the RCC study what I dare not ever teach to my own congregation.  They even paid me!!!  

The Priest and I got along so well with our biblical interests that he asked me to do the marriages the RCC would not do.  I was kinda like a bastard well hidden priest doing for the congregation what the real Priest could not do for them.  Ccccrrrrraaaackkkk.  I was learning there was so much more in the world of theology than what I had been told.  Of course, I prayed my own congregation did not ask me much about it although a few did come and loved the studies on the Birth Narratives of Jesus.  

I still had to be there.  I think WCG was falling apart out in Pasadena, but my denial was keeping me in and hoping the church would just grow up. Maybe I could help it do so.

But it got bad.  In 1996 I did win that's years essay contest in Biblical Archaeology Magazine on "we have the money to send you to any dig in Israel...why should we send you?"  Long story short, out of all the people in the world that year, I won.  I spent over three weeks at BAR's expense digging in Har Megiddo  (The Valley of Megiddo)  I was in ho..., cow heaven.   I came home and shortly after that I was terminated.  

I wonder at what point I would have made my own decision to leave.  Everything was coming unglued.  Transitions are messy and I was no exception to that truth.  Everything suffers.  New perspectives replace old ones and those who used to inspire no longer can or do.  

But up to that point.  I had to be there until I didn't.  No one made me stay and once the damn broke in my mind, then and only then could I leave.  

My last Festival Sermon was on "The Politics of the New Testament."  You know, the who was the Apostle Paul really?  Why does he call Peter James and John "reputed pillars" and then add, "I learned nothing from them..." etc.  What was going on?  Who was on whose side and did they all really speak the same thing?  I loved giving that sermon. I had a ball. We laughed (passive aggressive humor is my style and yes I was serious even if it was funny) and when it was all said and done, 8000 kind folk applauded on and on when it was FORBIDDEN  :)   It was worse than running with scissors.

That Spring, it was over.  Lots of things were over.  

But I had to be there, until I no longer could be.  I made my choices. No one made me stay too long.  I had a wonderful mix of denial and hope for a time and denial bit me in the ass finally.  Denial still does that to me at times even now.  

But for all that time, I had to be there until I no longer could be.  I accept responsibility for my choices, staying longer than some or even most and not wanting to "take our local church Dennis and let's just be our own selves."  Uh..no.  I told those guys that they'd have me for lunch within six months and I had a life to get back in order.  Still working on that...

But I had to be there until I no longer could and I accept responsibility for all my choices that have brought me to where I am today.  

Where am I?  :)  I have no idea, but I am NOT stuck in the never ending story of WCG/UCG/PCG/RCG/ and all the other COG's and men who have never yet read Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism and to this day, have no idea they do not yet understand the Book well enough to teach the truth about it. 

DenniscDiehl@aol.com