Slouching Towards Bethelehem 1.0

It's been a strange week.

Since I was snowed part of last week I haven't been to the campus for ten whole days and my spring break isn't over until Monday next. Meaning two weeks at home! S is gone more than usual this semester and I'm trying to pick up my contribution on the housework end. I haven't felt motivated with my job or with, for some sad reason, my church work either. I've felt like vegging. I've been doing some of that, vegging, and I think it's not good for me emotionally. It feels like it will be: oh, just kick back and do nothing today, but it's leading to some anxiety and a bit of depression. Mostly, anxiety.

I've been doing more exposure work for my primary obsession (this means focusing on the object of the obsession while breathing and relaxing and, frankly, tolerating). Every time I do this it's powerful. I did this consistently for a few months two years ago and then took a 'break.' I was very impressed with how much it helped. I knew I needed to go back in and do more; I wasn't done. When Lent began this year I started again and though it was very, very hard the first time, unbelievably hard, it got easier quickly. Now I'm doing about one session a week. Once again, it's making a difference.

What I've found in its wake, though, is disturbing. OCD is all about shifting an internal state to an external object. Anxiety really is the key emotional state OCD attempts to manage/control (while creating lots of its own anxiety in its destructive process) but also anger, fear, insecurity, grief and pain, the entire spectrum of negative feeling. In my case at least, they all get swallowed up by obsession, as do, incidentally, positive feelings. OCD, for me, is like a huge control-filter that modulates feeling. Pretty shitty.

Now that I'm getting a little head clarity over my obsession (and I don't share its content here) I'm finding the tension which lies below it. Anxiety, really. The hard feelings and fears and rigid tensions which lie below the thought disorder are surfacing in its absence. Also, older obsessions are cropping up. As I read in one book about OCD: the disease has a mind of its own and fights for its survival.

This is very discouraging. I've tried the SSRI's and had a bad reaction to the entire class. Xanax, frankly, works great but deadens the entire soul and I haven't taken it for this in almost twenty years. No chemical cure works for me at this time. I am still in therapy, and I'm in the odd place of feeling like on the one hand I'm identifying core needs (self nurture, for one; I'm getting a pedicure today no matter what; guys, if you laugh, you haven't tried it). On the other hand I'm slipping back a bit, away from engaging my life and into a deeper awareness of the plain fact that I will have to work on relaxation my entire life.

That's not a bad thing. Breathing, meditation, spirituality, prayer, exercise, nurture, whisky (well, take that last one off) these things all help and they're good things. Blogging also helps, and that's why I'm here now. I had a pretty strong anxiety attack yesterday, something I don't normally experience, and while I'm better this morning I know writing is part of my cure.

Breaks are often harder because I have no structure, and now that S and I don't share spring breaks, instead of being in so. cal. visiting family, or like last year, doing the huge family-drive-vacation through Sedona, Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Las Vegas, a trip I truly enjoyed (except for Vegas, what a cheez whiz town) I'm sitting here by myself (my son is in Santa Cruz with a friend) and writing to you all. My ear is ringing and I can't see my doctor until tomorrow (he'll give me rhinocort and it will clear up in a couple weeks). S won't be home until 10 tonight. I do pick up Mikey at 7:00 and tonight is Maundy Thursday and I intend to go (Tenebrae, my first, was very moving Tues. night).

And the last thing in my share: being with Mikey is different. He's still a great kid, but he's almost 14 and our male souls clash as he jostles for independence. I think, instead of being the coolest stepdad that he looked up to and could do no wrong, it's like he now sees me as another junior-higher who is, most certainly, not cool. On my end, I'm working on not being overly rigid. I tend to react to his need for space and expansion with boundaries; this is a good thing, but it can be overdone. Rigidity is one of my personality issues.

Thanks for letting me share. I needed it.

(This first part was written last week and, for the record, I'm doing better on most points the last few days).

***

For some reason or reasons I want to tell my religious autobiography in brief. It's amazing to me how many Christian groups I've been a part of since childhood: foursquare pentecostal and assemblies of God, campus crusade and evangelical baptist, five point 'calvinist', more baptist, disillusioned and stranded with unanswered questions (7 years out of the church), reluctant searcher, (re)converted Episcopalian, or rather, now, a Christian who enjoys the Episcopal church and whose current under-construction theology would have to be called mainstream liberal. That's a lot of various world-views.


My parents met through Christian friends in the early 60's. They both hated their families even if my father wasn't openly angry. My mother eloped with my father (as did all four of her sisters) to escape her stepfather, and my father's parents were dead: his dad, my grandtather, was a man born in 1884 who lived a violent, wild-west life and who completed the cycle of violence by shooting himself in the head on or near the anniversary of his wife's death; this was not long before my dad met my mother. My mother had been raised in church, one of them a sierra foothill church in fact, not far at all from the parish I now attend. They were old-time pentecostal holiness: to me this means superstition, very bad theology, and perfectionism.

My grandmother, who really did love me and nurtured me more than both my parents put together, told me as a very little boy that if I died during my sleep with an unconfessed sin my soul was going straight to hell; or, if the rapture came and I had some unconfessed sin, I'd be left behind without my family to be tortured by the anti-christ and the beast. I may have said it before on this blog, but I kept my aunt carole's phone number where I could find it when I was six and seven just in case everyone else got raptured: she cussed and smoked and I figured she'd get left too and I could take my baby brother and live with her. When I was a budding teenager and my mother told me with her very special intensely 'don't you ever, ever get a girl pregnant' she told me that when a girl got pregnant before marriage in the mountain towns and 'had to get married' they dressed her all in black and hustled her off the to the justice in another county and then carted her away to live with distant relatives, to begin her new life as a shame-bride.

My father was raised on and around farms in rural Washington state. I don't actually know what kind of churches he attended, but I know they went. His father, at least, quoted that glorious verse from proverbs (actually there's a couple which apply I believe) 'spare the rod and spoil the child,' while he beat the hell out of my dad.

So when my parents got together, they both had religion.

My mother, in fact, wanted to go to bible college and be a missionary. My dad agreed with whatever she said and after knowing each other just a few months (weeks?) they eloped to Reno and were married in the same chapel as my mom's younger sister. I used to have the post card they sent home. I found it once at my grandmother's and took it. I don't know where it is now. I know my mother never went back to bible school and was never a missionary. She did data entry all her life.

My parents, or my mother at least, was unhappy with my father before they ever got to Reno, but they got married and stayed married for 14 years in an essentially sexless union (I say essentially becaue they did have me). During most of that time we went to church. Three times a week. Though in the last few years my mother was home she quit going with my father, I still went.

As a very little boy, first and second grade, I took to it. I got to wear beautiful clothes, and as this was a true pentecostal church it was mostly singing, raised-hands praising and tongues-talking, and then more singing and some praising. I realized when I raised my hands and prayed out loud like a grown up, and I was verbally quick as a boy, that I got lots of attention. I actually remember a little white three piece suit and I must have looked just like a TBN evangelist (we watched that channel often later) up there in front, hands raised, eyes closed, fervently praying out loud. Did I know God? How could I at that age? Did I know Jesus loved me? I did not. I may have been told that in a Sunday school song or two, but it was mixed in with all the rest and the rest was much more heavy. I thought God was most likely to fry me dead for making a mistake as anything else.

My mother also taught Sunday school. This was in the days of the green felt board lesson where one could trot to the bible book store and get an entire graphic representation of any parable or bible story one wanted (well, the famous ones; most of the military history would have to be out). When I was seven or eight I remember my mom doing a lesson placed in current times where a little boy found four tracks. Four. Four. Four. That number suddenly intrigued me. I was home alone as I usually was, well, one parent asleep and one at work, and I felt like four was a good number, but I should add one more to make it extra clean and good (this was a Sunday school story, and at that time religion made me feel both dirty and then anxiously clean). That became five, a prime number, and I began counting. I trace my first OCD symptoms to that afternoon. The balance of the primes…two on each side and one in the middle to make it all even. I was anxious, alone, terrified and guilty. It helped.

I remember mommy (I called her this until she left when I was fourteen years old) also did puppet shows for Sunday school. I began writing little skits and also performing a monkey puppet I modeled after chim-chim in speed racer. Again, I was a hit. She'd go behind the curtain, I'd get up from the rest of the kids and follow her (how they all stared in honor and amazement); then my monkey would pop up and do a very funny monkey laugh and, I imagine, talk about Jesus. I don't actually remember the content. I knew my mother was very happy to have me helping her. It was about the only thing she noticed and was a brief respite from talking about what a pathetic weakling my father was.

My father was laying low in these days. Sure we all went to church. He sat there and muttered to himself, spaced, nervous, not integrated socially though I still remember his working-class suits and ties (everyone dressed up at these churches). Years later he also taught Sunday school after my mom quit going and we were at another foursquare church in another town. Then he had a nautical theme, wore a Captain's hat, had starfish and netting on the walls. We sang the Marine Corps anthem every week off the big song cards, along with songs like "I wish we'd all been ready" (more rapture love for the children). I will say that I saw my father get very affected by one or two of the sadder children's stories, those about a boy who died and went to heaven, and I think even once I saw him reach out with great feeling to a boy in the group though I don't remember. I think a boy I barely knew in the group died and I saw him show deep feeling. Still, I mention these as atypitcal. My dad can't stand criticism. I think working with the kid was a big responsibility for him, detached as he was.

I became gradually resistant to religion when I hit puberty. My mommy had quit going and soon after left her family, my brother and I, and divorced my father, though this story is not that story. My dad was still doing the nautical kids'-church thing but the main services were very, very long, three times a week, and the theolology was still bad. I spoke in tongues at a sixth grade retreat and was baptized in water soon after. I was ten. Do I believe my tongues experience was genuine? Depends on the meaning of genuine. Did it bring me closer to God? The baptism might have. I was looking for a display of God's reality. I don't think I had any idea what God was about. When we came back from the camp those of us who spoke in tongues had a special meeting with the minister and his wife and he told us a great thing had happened; also, and this was the main point of the meeting, the pastor told us that if we later denied the reality of what happened or the reality of the 'gifts of the spirit' we would commit the unforgiveable sin and would go to hell without recourse. He told us a few sad examples of people he knew who had done just that.

As I began above, puberty came and with it I lost interest in sitting in church for hours a week bored out of my head, drawing the names of hard rock bands on index cards or staring at the rock designs on the church walls. There was a youth group for older kids but the guy who ran it was so convinced I was a genius who walked on water he couldn't hear me when I told him I was trying drugs, had drank a bunch of cough syrup (I didn't know cough syrup was no longer narcotic) to get a buzz. I told him that and he just looked at me like I was kidding. I wasn't getting help there either.

And so I quit all church. From around fourteen until college. I got a girlfriend just before I turned 15 and she was Catholic and I went with her to mass once or twice. I probably still considered myself a Christian, but I had no concern for anything spiritual, for God, or any church in any form. My little Catholic girl kept going to church all the years we dated I believe, but I didn't go with her.

Then came college.

I went to a city college and met a very insecure girl three years older than me. When S, my three year Catholic girlfriend, broke up with me because our teacher was hitting on her hard and heavy (he was 38) I hooked up immediately with J, the city college girl. I was impressed she had so many shoes, fashionable shoes all lined up on her closet floor. It was a mistake to not get back with S, but again, this isn't that story. J went to a Baptist church and I started going with her. Though I was 18, I had never heard of eternal security. I couldn't believe the concept. When I told my mom and aunt I was going to a Baptist church they both mockingly said, 'Oh, Baptist, once saved always saved.' It took a while for the concept to sink in.

Sadder than this, at the time, I believe I actually thought church was all about preppie clothes. I sure couldn't go back to the weight of the religion I knew from childhood. Perhaps clothes was an improvement. My girlfriend J took great solace in her clothes; she dressed the height of preppy in 1983, and poor as I was I followed suit. Clothes. I thought religion was about clothes. This strikes me as almost funny. I worked at a fabric store and raw-cut my own tartan wool scarves (and wore them without the edges sewn); I had a black corduroy blazer J got me that I wore to church, a few cheap sweaters, the obligatory 501's and of course, mall-bought penny loafers with pennies and vaseline for shine.

There was a bright side to preppie: I remember J wearing bow ties and angora sweaters and new blue jeans on our long parking dates. Well, at least we had that going for us. Not for the first or last time, I handled beauty I could not understand.

I was 'discipled' by some other insecure preppy college guy. I don't even remember who. I go to the part in the booklet about making a decision for Jesus and I planned it all out in my head to make it dramatic (I knew I wasn't sure who Jesus was): I'd ride my bike to the beach, and when I left I wouldn't know who Jesus was and when I returned I'd be a Christian…like C.S. Lewis on the top of the bus (I was a reader as a teenager). I went for that bike ride. Did I commit my life to Christ? Looking back, no; I didn't know who Christ was. I thought he was about dressing nice and being 'clean' and being good and fitting in. The stark Galilean of the gospels I did not know.

J encouraged me, as I was transferring to State, to pledge a Christian fraternity (and if my mother hadn't pushed me, didn't actually go to the college, stand in line and enroll me and get me financial aid, I would never have had the courage to go) . And when I was in line at State to register I was approached by a Campus Crusade guy. He seemed cool. We met later and I said, 'God has done so much for me I'm willing to do anything for him.' I was unaware of anything God had done for me, but I sounded good. I began a full-tilt career with Crusade, pledged the Christian fraternity, promptly met Estella and in awe of her beauty, money, and cold physical inaccessibility broke up with poor J in a very bad way (I told her I'd call her in a couple weeks…weeks became years). Again, that's another story. But now I believed I was on a true spiritual path: in Crusade, in a Christian fraternity; maybe I was on a path. I prayed alone from time to time, though usually when desperate. I went to Palm Springs with Crusade and led people to Christ (though, frankly, a good part of me wanted to be partying with the drunk and half-naked college girls). I began emceeing the weekly Crusade meeting. Before I dropped out of college I was President. I believed God existed. The Bible was God's word. I learned how to proof-text. Above all, no messy sex play to make me feel even more of the crushing guilt and fear. All clean.

This lasted less than two years before my anxiety/ocd came back with such crushing force that I dropped out of college. What set me off? Estella was going on a summer project to Japan and I couldn’t be without her. Even months ahead, when I found out she was going the next year, I lost it completely. I was out of Crusade, out of school, barely hanging on at my mother's house and not able to work. Again, another story. But when xanax got my head together a bit I needed a job and I knew a guy from the fraternity who knew the owner of a Christian book store. I took the bus down there (at 21, I had no running car) and interviewed. I was hired. The store was like a seminary library in some sense; certainly not your typical Christian bookstore. And the guys who worked there, all young, were theology-boys one and all. They were also reformed. Reformed. I had little or no idea what this meant, but I was soon to learn.

***

This is enough for one sitting. I'm writing sparsely, quickly, and with little attention to diction or style. So be it. Also, on rereading this I know I can't say to what degree my college experiences were or were not genuine. There were good people in Crusade, for example, but I was hurting so deeply, and I was unaware of it; the fact is I wasn't able to be genuine or have much genuine relationship of any kind. And always, I was running, running from the religion of my childhood.