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Dare The DevilChapter 28 - New LifeThis is the chapter in the book where, according to formula, Jesus takes over and the newly redeemed finds life a joy and relief and never has another problem and everyone lives happily ever after. Sorry. But I’ve warned you not to look for heroes and happy endings here. Sorry. Wrong book. Wrong story. Wrong author. Part of me, a very tiny part, has come to hate Easter Sunday services. Oh, don’t get me wrong, Easter and Resurrection are the absolute cornerstones of my personal and religious life. They are not something I believe, but something I have done, something I am. But the trumpets and choirs and cherubic children running around hunting for colored eggs…oh, it is all so wrong, so commercial, so Hollywood…Drama and pageantry, all show and adornment, the Disneyland of genuine life-transforming experience. If you have ever been through your own symbolic death and resurrection you know how fake and shallow and misleading the whole thing is. Resurrection, real resurrection, the changes that come from the resolve and effort to substantially change one’s life, simply doesn’t happen like that. There is no fanfare. No dramatic soundtrack. And certainly it doesn’t happen overnight. And working on my new life as a normal mortal was hard. Very challenging. No more voices or communion or the sparkle from secret liaisons with powers from beyond. Just life. Work. Getting ready for a college life I struggled to find personal motivation for. And there were unexpected casualties along the way. Attending Calvary Chapel, for example, was a nasty affair. The promises and doing what I was told were all too intertwined with the AntiChrist delusion and the end of the world. Listening to the endless sermons and Bible studies about the impending rapture proved torturous. So I started attending a local Methodist church. Not much to say, except it was one of the many changes. And I was glad when we moved, still in Irvine, just down the road a few miles, but now everyone had their own bedroom, and most importantly I would not have to look at that streetlight ever again. Grateful, oddly grateful. I started eating meat again. I had become a vegetarian for none of the “normal” reasons people do so; I wasn’t concerned with animal rights, or diet, or health factors, or the effect of animal husbandry on the earth’s starving poor. No, for Sam vegetarianism was a way of lightening the psychic centers. So, along with a resolve to change my religion came a new diet. And decorations. The silver Buddha statue had survived my initial purging, but on closer inspection I realized I had heard too many voices tell me too many things, and several of them seemed to come from that shiny statue as it danced to the lights that flickered in time with the music. Gone. Bye, Buddha. I certainly was reinventing myself, an experience that I can honestly say remained as a part of my daily consciousness for about 2 years. Like surviving abuse or a disease, I was daily a “reformed witch.” Not that I would say that or express myself in that way to anyone. Oh no. Alcoholics can find their support groups, so too survivors of child abuse and cancer and many, many other evils in this life. But not so for me. Cut to circle of chairs. Weekly meeting. Stand. “My name is Sam, and I am a recovering warlock.” “Hello, Sam” all say in unison. Uh, yeah. Right. It is a remarkable milestone in the life of the reformed addict when they no longer identify themselves in terms of what they no longer do. It would take poor Sam years to get to that point. Years. And the outside changes were easy, really. The hard part was realizing, and confessing to myself, that the world now looked dull and gray. I looked dull and gray. The AnteChrist and the Greatest Paddleball Player and the million-mile pyramid of light and oh, so many other delights, illicit and dangerous and wrong as they were, the Communions and Voices which had been my constant companions….Gone…all gone…And that was ok…What was not ok was how bad I felt about myself in recognizing how badly I missed them. The new world, the new me, sobriety, my future, all of it one endlessly gray hollowness, stretching as far as I could imagine, where once such….Stop. Please stop. New Church, clothes (the old tie-dyed shirts seeming just a little too drug-induced), new music (Christian radio only, nothing else), decorations, school, new room in a new house, diet… The only significant element that remained from the previous me, Sam the wannabe AntiChrist, was my relationship with Lori. And, of course, that could not survive either. |
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