TRUE BELIEVERS

by compound complex 12 Replies latest jw friends

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  compound complex

  Those who seek escape from the intolerable cruelties of life have not dealt with the intractable will of our soft-spoken leaders of kindly mien. They soothed our withered soul and parched spirit with the promise that they could - that they would - lead us into an era of uncommon prosperity and peace. I, for one, looked upon these princes among men and felt deep within me that, at long last, a direct line of communication had been established betwixt me, the merest of mortals, and the Divine.

  The so-called soft-spoken leaders of kindly mien, I have discovered to my regret, are not whom I believed them to be. In the unplumbed depths of my heart of hearts I once safeguarded them; they were second only to Messiah. Accordingly, it was they who warned me against the smooth, convincing talk of Light's Angels. How, then, could I have known? They assured me that I was poor. That I was lonely. That I was loved. My desire to climb the highest mountain (or go yet beyond and ascend into the heavens) to find truth was acknowledged as entirely unnecessary. Youth assures himself that the grass beneath his feet is not green at all. Surely, then, the pastures are increasingly verdant, as well as luxuriant, the greater the distance the young man goes. It is merely illustrative of wanting more than home - literal and figurative - could ever supply. Youthful folly is reined in, not by one's natural parents, but by those seekers of candidates for the Kingdom. It is they who become surrogate fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters to the initiate of the Spiritual Family. Long-time associates - I now realize that they were my genuine friends - grabbed hold of my authentic self and begged me not to abandon my life and them. It was too late. Reality declared that I was not poor. That I was not lonely. That I was loved. These princes among men and their recruiters had promised me a glimpse of the divine, and now it was they who held sway. Resistance became futile long before it had ever hit the silver screen. The alteration had commenced ...
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  compound complex

  I believe in love but so, too, say followers of The Way.

  My prim and proper family suspect that there is a change in my spirit; they say that the brightening of my eyes and the upturn of the corners of my mouth are becoming all too frequent. They are perplexed that my former solemn, taciturn ways have blossomed most prodigiously into a riot of springtime colour and cheer. The protracted winter of my spiritual discontent has vaporized and can afflict no more. How I long for your return to my side, that I might gaze endlessly upon your cherubic smile. It has been too long that I have languished over love's dream unfulfilled, for my raging love has become pent-up waters behind a crumbling dam of dust and bone....

  Notwithstanding all efforts to control Nature's true course in my regard, my family's puritanical mores are so deeply and long entrenched that my breaking free from such tyrannical bondage of body and soul seems a revolutionary act. Well, I say fie on the whole lot of them! You, sweet and delectable Eros, are no villain, no embodiment of mere carnal pleasure. You are a releaser, a liberator, a sweet saviour of this despairing mortal whose shriveled spirit you have revivified by your glance, your touch, your kiss ...
  
  I know you are true, that I am your only one. Please hasten into my presence and cherish my society as none other. My window shall, as ever, remain open as upon wings of desire you alight once more upon my chamber floor. Do not be too late. True believers will soon be swarming....
  
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  compound complex

  I pray God will forgive me. I hate my husband.

  Once I was crazy about Nathan. We vowed to serve the Lord together, wherever that should take us. "Wherever" became a little town in the Midwest called Montrose, population 496. Some of the old folk we met had never been more than ten miles from where, on their front porch, we had first become acquainted. I sensed - call it a woman's intuition - that we needed to sit a spell and let these dear, humble people warm up to us strangers.

  Nathan, so zealous for the Word and the salvation of all we met, would charge headlong into the day's sermon, no real thought given to the listeners' inability to grasp the heady message of the Kingdom. When I could tactfully slip in a softening word or two about Jesus' love and compassion, I endeavored to do so. Well, that so-called wrath of God, I imagine, would be a mere tempest compared to the squall that invariably came down on my head after our departure. My husband merely glowered during the course of my tiny intercessions; I was still in the safe embrace of our householders' company. It was the volley of harsh rebukes that scorched my ears once we returned to our car. I tried to reason with Nathan, attempting to explain my understanding of the Scriptures. Berated and beaten down, I learned to keep my place. Eventually. The submissive wife ...

  When we were courting my beau was so sweet and considerate. He listened respectfully to my opinions (not that I really had many) and offered his point of view on this or that matter. It seemed, most importantly, that we both loved God and wanted to serve our fellowman. It seemed so simple. It was not.

  Nathan is - how can I put this? - righteous overmuch. Unyielding. He cannot fathom another's reluctance to accept immediately the obvious benefits of the Good News now and for the future. It's so clear to me that a rural populace cut off from the world at large are unable to comprehend that the world is soon to end in a fiery cataclysm. I've learned to keep my own counsel though it grieves me. Likewise, it troubles my conscience to remain silent, whether alone with Nathan or together teaching others the Bible. Nathan, thumping the Good Book vigorously, holds sway and I let him.

  I said I used to be crazy about Nathan. Now I'm just crazy.
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  AK - Jeff

  Applause my friend. Your gift is pleasant and I thank you for allowing us this perusal therof.

  Jeff
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  compound complex

  Thanks, Jeff! I appreciate your words very much ...

  CoCo
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  compound complex

  It hasn't passed my notice what you think of me. After all, we've known each other for years.

  Contempt has never been so clearly etched into the furrows lining the face of self-righteousness. You are strong, and I weak. You are active about God's work, I not so much. If you had offered me some support during my struggles caring for a sick husband or shown the smallest understanding when my disabled son fought me, then I could readily overlook the glaring inconsistencies between your walk and your talk. I realize that these measured but barely contained angry words of mine will garner little more than clicking tongues and accusatory glances thrown my way when you and yours "discuss" my condition. So be it. I do know one thing about you, however, that you should be concerned about - your inordinate fear of God's judgment. My Christianity has me praying for my detractors, you see. You are religious, but are you spiritual?

  Religion is for those afraid of Hell. Spirituality is the possession of those who've been there - and back.

  Where, then, are you?
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  compound complex

  Backsliders are often treated with thinly veiled contempt by church elders.

  Typically giving even the harshest and least sympathetic characters in this human tragicomedy called life the benefit of the doubt (a major doubt), I, with characteristic naivete, believed that the church leaders were simply doing their duty in protecting the flock by ousting those renegade members of the church. Scripture is rather clear on the care and protection of the flock. Our leaders are like the faithful men of old - morally pure and resolute in their promotion of The Way. The Way or the highway.
  
  So I truly believed. Then my eyes were opened to the reality of church politics. How and when this realization came about I cannot recall with certainty. Gradually, perhaps. For too long a season - a very stormy season - I was "one of them," a shepherd over the flock. I fulfilled my pastoral duties with the utmost seriousness. My church-related responsibilities became my life's work, to the exclusion of all else ...
  
  Some of these backsliders left the so-called Highway of Holiness and treaded their way back to a worldly lifestyle, the comfortable but insidious ways of the flesh. This super highway to eternal damnation - the Biblical broad and spacious road - was relentless yet strangely patient when beckoning the unsteady, weaker church members: come, return, take your ease. They received soothing and convincing reassurance from some unseen, evil force that their returning to the old, sinful ways could be effectively reconciled with their ambivalence toward the loudly-proclaimed spiritual agenda of the fellowship. The self-righteous true believer, however, would never admit that these forbidden practices and pleasures were ever truly forgotten, expunged from heart and mind.
  
  Whatever one's footing in the church, Temptation is not a respecter of persons; she merely uses greater persuasion to cajole her more religious, long-lost children into returning home.
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  compound complex

  I believe in myself.

  It's about time ...
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  compound complex

  It's not that I had never heard the word serenity before. In any day's volley of spoken English, hundreds of words glance off the exterior of the cranium and fly off into space, lost forever. A few might just wheedle their way into the ears and take up lodging in an awake but otherwise unaware person. Likewise, a multiplicity of written words enter the brain via one's eyes and a precious few settle in ... Resting. Waiting. Retrieved and utilized:

  "You know, Jack, I haven't a clue what's come over me, but I have this sense of ... sense of serenity. Yes, that's it, I'm serene."

  "That's so not you, Steve."

  At this point in my life, I sure hope the pain and turmoil is over. Subsiding, it is hoped, at the very least. No more placating impossible people, no more role playing and no more drama - mine or that of others. There are a lot more "no mores" that I could rattle off, but my point is made.

  I believe in serenity, even if I hadn't, till now, consciously thought or spoken the word ...

  Serenity.

  I never before realized what I'd been missing out on.
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  compound complex

  An artist peers into the rubble of death and decay and glimpses what one less inured to such travesty cannot. He sees form, even intricate structure of great complexity, and ultimately, a singular, transcending beauty. This believer in what is not easily read by most senses that, in the swirl of visual chaos and stench of life's loss, renewed life will assuredly come to birth.

  With or without the mere mortal's attendance upon life's reemergence from the grave, this process is an unending cycle: life, death, renewal. The destruction of the painter's canvas, the writer's essay, or the composer's manuscript is not an untenable blow to the creator's genius. Whether the ensuing conflagration is by literal fire or that of a public's outrage over a body of work ahead of its time, the perceptive artist knows that the phoenix will arise resplendent from the ashes. Her song shall be heard.

  The hidden masterwork moldering away in a cemetery of a cellar long forgotten will be rediscovered, recopied and premiered before a humbled and contrite audience. The artist, now freed from earthly care and turmoil, observes among a once disbelieving public what he never ceased believing:

  Beauty shines forth where the eyes of others have yet to fall. Beauty sings forth what their ears have yet to hear.