…like God & Spirituality!

After all, this blog is about my spiritual journey as well!

I started out as any good WASP, going to Sunday school at the First Presbyterian Church of Wheatland (aka Scottsville Union Presbyterian Church) . My mother’s family went to the church as did my cousins that still lived in the area. When I think about church — THIS is the one I know the most. Between weddings and funerals and great Christmas Eves, I fondly remember this church.

There were really only 2 negative memories. (I did get yelled at for shooting a scene for my Dracula movie in college without permission on the grounds there, but that hardly counts! Oh, yeah… I also looked up the minister’s robe to see what he had on under there.) Once, when I had to be baptized when I was 7 because my Catholic father would not allow my mom to baptize me as a baby. When she was divorced she had it done. I just felt really stupid standing there being baptized with all these babies! The other time was when I was elementary school age, maybe 1st or 2nd grade, I couldn’t understand why we had to read these parts of the service where we say how we’re sorry we’ve sinned and done bad things in unison. I remember thinking, “What have I done? I’m just a kid? I haven’t committed any great sin! Why am I saying this stuff?” I felt I was a pretty good girl for the kind of life I had lived through already.

When my mom remarried we moved. We eventually attended the Arcade United Methodist Church. There were no Presbyterian churches around there. Mom said this was a lot like our other church and that when Grandma went there, it was a Methodist church. Honestly, I really don’t know what the difference is even today. The believed in Jesus and doing the right thing for others. At the time we started, the minister was Native American. He had great stories to tell before the kids went off to Sunday school. By the time I was in adolescence, I REALLY didn’t want to go to church anymore. Mom & I would fight about this. Finally she conceded. (I found out later in life that she wished she’d pushed for it more and that she felt that she somehow failed me.)

My close girlfriends in the neighborhood had tried practicing magik for a short time. We were able to do some minor things, but it freaked us out so much that we didn’t do it anymore!

So then, Senior year in High School comes. Some friends of mine were leaving the school when another classmate crashes into them – right in front of the school. I remember I was staying over at a friend’s house when we heard the news. Someone died. It was a boy I had been friends with for many years and had a HUGE crush on. I was shocked. He promised he would take me to the prom. My friends were all crying and upset. I didn’t cry. I consoled them. Until, of course, after the wake.

I know that my friends were trying to be helpful. I did not want to see his dead body in the casket wearing that red sweater that he looked so handsome in. I wanted to remember him alive. After they dragged me to the casket and I saw him lying there like a big doll and saw the 3 roses my mom gave to him in our names (Chris, Tami & Joy), I just couldn’t take it. We went to the car to head over to the funeral at the Catholic church, and I wept. Deep serious weeping. I cried all the way there and through the entire service. How shameful that such an amazing person – who was a year younger than us all –  was dead, taken so quickly. I listened to that service and thought “No. No way is there a God. There is no possible reason that this sweet boy had to die.”

I rejected the priest’s eulogy. And that day, I also rejected the notion of God.