A decade.
So....
It's been ten years this 31st since we left the church that I was born into.
Ten years. A whole decade. That's a long time.
It was a fucked-up place, and I'm not going to go into detail, mostly because I don't know a lot of specifics. My parents won't tell me some stuff, and they tell me a lot.
I was seven when we left, and I didn't know anything. I thought it was all ducky. A lot of what they taught in the church is still in my head, because I hadn't quite started to figure out what I thought when we left. So I know the screwy stuff as intrinsically as I know my ABCs, and it's so damn hard to pick out what was right and what was wrong. My head's a mess in places, especially concerning religion and God and church authority, and I don't even know why because I can't remember actually sitting in the service and hearing people say the stuff; I only remember knowing it. We've always been at war with Oceania.
It's been ten years, and this milestone comes at a very good time. I've almost got some stuff sorted, I think. Whatever else I may say about it, moving to Tennessee poked me into rethinking a lot of things that needed to be rethought. And I've just found the Episcopalians, the most wonderful church since ever. The priest of the local church invited us over for coffee, and was all genuinely interested in us and what we wanted from the church and stuff, and we had this brilliant conversation with him about how we've spent most of our church lives on the defensive, but St Christophers is a place where we can stop, and breathe, and rest for a while. And he mentioned that the Episcopalian denomination tends to, for one reason or another, catch all the weirdos and the freaks and the ones marching to a different drummer. Which is true. And...tangent. (Cosine! Hypotenuse! Pythagorean theorem!)
I think I've made peace with a lot of what I need to make peace with. Not all of it, but enough. The Episcopalians are helping. :) Go them.
Ten years. That place has defined a lot of what my family is for a long time, but I think that's changing.
One can only hope....
It's been ten years this 31st since we left the church that I was born into.
Ten years. A whole decade. That's a long time.
It was a fucked-up place, and I'm not going to go into detail, mostly because I don't know a lot of specifics. My parents won't tell me some stuff, and they tell me a lot.
I was seven when we left, and I didn't know anything. I thought it was all ducky. A lot of what they taught in the church is still in my head, because I hadn't quite started to figure out what I thought when we left. So I know the screwy stuff as intrinsically as I know my ABCs, and it's so damn hard to pick out what was right and what was wrong. My head's a mess in places, especially concerning religion and God and church authority, and I don't even know why because I can't remember actually sitting in the service and hearing people say the stuff; I only remember knowing it. We've always been at war with Oceania.
It's been ten years, and this milestone comes at a very good time. I've almost got some stuff sorted, I think. Whatever else I may say about it, moving to Tennessee poked me into rethinking a lot of things that needed to be rethought. And I've just found the Episcopalians, the most wonderful church since ever. The priest of the local church invited us over for coffee, and was all genuinely interested in us and what we wanted from the church and stuff, and we had this brilliant conversation with him about how we've spent most of our church lives on the defensive, but St Christophers is a place where we can stop, and breathe, and rest for a while. And he mentioned that the Episcopalian denomination tends to, for one reason or another, catch all the weirdos and the freaks and the ones marching to a different drummer. Which is true. And...tangent. (Cosine! Hypotenuse! Pythagorean theorem!)
I think I've made peace with a lot of what I need to make peace with. Not all of it, but enough. The Episcopalians are helping. :) Go them.
Ten years. That place has defined a lot of what my family is for a long time, but I think that's changing.
One can only hope....