"So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out
of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it,
and stick your head out, and yell:
I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO
TAKE THIS ANYMORE!
I want you to get up right now. Sit up. Go to your
windows. Open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and
I'm not gonna take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've
gotta get mad!...You've got to say,
I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO
TAKE THIS ANYMORE!
Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and
the inflation and the oil crisis. But first, get up out of your chairs, open the
window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:
I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND
I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE! "
Howard Beale--Network
I grew up in a home that , while very stable and calm. With a handicapped brother, my parents had a full plate and I knew it.
I have never seen my dad angry until this past year in his 97th year when he got confused and his grief over mom's passing erupted. He threw a bucket at a window in the home , breaking the window. Dad has kept a lifetime of anger inside as was our custom.
Expressing anger or emotion was pretty much out. "We don't say that...." was a
common response when I'd let something loose and over time, I didn't say it
anymore. I packed it in. (Yikes maybe the word "Pack" causes me to react!) I kept it to myself and the only way you could ever
tell I was angry was when I get stone cold quiet and say, "it's ok...don't
worry about it." Ok, let me rephrase that.
The only way you can tell I AM
angry is when.....
When I got some counseling for depression towards the end
of my WCG experience, the counselor told me that my humor "tended" to be passive
aggressive. LOL. I said, "well excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me! Ya think?"
No...I didn't say that, but I thought it. He also told me after taking some
test of sorts, "Dennis, you tend to break the rules you disagree with." That
was about all I could take. I asked him what he did and my first thought as an
example to myself at that time was how I treated the "To be played in all the
Churches" tapes. Alas, I could not argue with him on that one. It's probably
why I held (passive aggressively) my "Ask and you shall not have. Do not ask
and all things are possible" approach to some of the snow flakes from heaven
that came down to me as minister from on high. "No more YOU dances because two
kids fornicated in New Jersey" was one that I rejected in Kentucky as we had the
best Proms in the universe for the kids and even if some of them fornicated, I'm
not doing away with it! Next it would be no more pot lucks because someone
farted in Missouri.
Anyway, depression was a part of the mix as minister as
the mental habit of "we don't speak up or get angry" was ever a part of my
program. What I was angry with in WCG I ignored, to my harm. Depression, in my
experience, was my tendency to not express myself. Any anger felt was either
felt to be something I had no right to express or the price of doing so would be
just too darn high. In the ministry that was always the case. I ONCE called
Joe Tkach to ask if it was so that Ramona was divorcing HWA as I had heard. He
had to call me back. I was gone when he did, so he just yelled at my then wife
to "tell Dennis to put a lid on it!!!!" Of course, it was a valid question and
she did divorce him. I learned from that one. The Tkaches taught me that when they told me "No" it meant "Yes" and "Yes" meant "No" 100% of the time.
Denial of what I was experiencing in WCG was also a close
ally to the repressed anger. I recall knowing that 60 Minutes was going to do
it's hit on the WCG and it was not a little hard to take since I had not come
into ministry for this bullshit. I went visiting all day Sunday and made it so
I was not home when it aired. However, once home, the phone rang and rang. I
thought a lot about Dennis the Paleontologist that never was and not minister I
seemed stuck with in an organization that seemed so right when I discovered it
and was to be nothing but drama and a life lesson for me at Earth School as I
now call it.
I started to come out of the never say what you are
actually thinking stage when I even surprised myself confronting Gerald
Waterhouse, whose visits made me nuts as he caused more problems than he solved,
with "what are you going to say when HWA dies?"
I have mentioned this before of course, but when he said,
"I'll believe it after three days and three nights," and felt my brain click off
channel just a bit more on the whole WCG thing, I knew I had crossed a line in
expressing myself. I also got kicked under the table.
All this to say, it is not healthy, and was not for me to
repress what I felt, or saw or thought all the times I found myself at odds
mentally, emotionally and spiritually with those who had my ministry in their
hands. I also learned that when you repress anger and feel your own views are
somehow invalid or not important to the powers that be, you can turn to things
for comfort that don't actually help. Hindsight is great. It is also painful.
If you wish to push my last button, and there have been times where it has
occurred here on Banned with the generic condemnations of "those ministurds", as
if all men in ministry were shit, well...just say that. LOL. I got a bit
irritated at being called a "made man" a few days ago as if I was mafioso, but I
took it in context and calmed down. Judgments like that simply remind me of
what I already consider big life decision mistakes that I will pay for to the
end. I already am aware of it and crass reminders are like sticking pins in my
eyes. I may have passive aggressive but I probably have found active aggressive
at this stage too.
In my heart and soul, I'd be happy just to be a quiet,
meditative Buddhist type in the Western mode. I'd like to be able to simply
accept all that is and say "Is that so..." to all that is yet to come in life
without drama or caring about it. I don't read the Bible for encouragement near
as much as I watch the cosmology videos on youtube. That gives me perspective
and fits the science done well lover in me. Once when by myself in the museum
in Jerusalem where all the Biblical artifacts I had ever seen on TV, in Biblical
Archaeology Magazine or in National Geographic were on display, I made a turn
down a small hall of glass cases with the original Neanderthal skulls from Mt
Carmel I had also seen all my life in books. The Bible artifacts were
interesting. But I stood alone inches away from whoever they were and had tears
streaming down my cheeks in emotion. It was a revelation to me as well. I
simply was overwhelmed, not with Bible stuff, but with human origins for real.
It's why when I read of some COG type harkening back to what Adam and Eve did or
didn't do I get a bit passive aggressive.
To the point. I KNOW there have to be PCG and RCG members
and ministers who have to be going through the same thing. You can't possibly
agree with all your great yet theologically ignorant and self centered leaders
believe about themselves, their work and your place in it. Yet I know you won't
speak up. You feel you don't have a right to or the price will be too high.
Only the second reason is true if you work for the man or don't want to get
thrown out of the one true church on earth, which of course, it is not but you
don't know that yet. Add to this the need not to let you "good friends" down,
none of whom you would have met had it not been for church, and you are stuck
until it becomes so evident that you simply can't put up with it
anymore.
The time when you won't put up with it anymore is coming.
For Dave Pack and his Restored Church, it is even at the
doors.
So give yourself permission "if you know what I know and
feel what I feel" as spoken so well in by the Guy Fawkes character in "V", to speak
up when you know in your soul that what you are hearing from your poorly trained
and undisciplined in their theological thinking and ego centric in their title
taking ministry comes up with for you to swallow. No more sitting on the outside but standing up on the inside. Make the inside match the outside before it gets much more painful.
The mental, emotional and spiritual life you save
may be your own and your kids will praise you in the gates.
