I am an XCharismatic and XFundie and, finally, an XChristian.  I came out of the Charismatic Movement in 1979 and out of Christianity altogether in 1989.  I have scars in places most people don't even realize they have places.

I call myself Wiccan, if pressed for an affiliation.  But I'm solitary and eclectic...meaning I don't do groups of any kind any more and I have trouble even with one on one relationships. 

I worship Goddess, specifically in her Magdalene incarnation, but I am familar with many of her different aspects.

I am in love with her.  Strange to speak of being in love with your deity.  But there it is.  The heart wants what the heart wants and will not be delayed or denied.

I know things that other people do not know, I have been places that other people have not been and have seen things that other people have not seen. 

I know what you're thinking, you're thinking "Anybody can say that."

But you're wrong about that.  Most people not only are born men and die grocery clerks, but most people want it that way, wouldn't change even if they thought they could...would be afraid to change.  They come up to the edge of reason and, instead of making a leap of faith, step backwards from the edge and deny the chasm they looked into because whenever we look into the abyss the abyss looks into us as well.

Pardon me if I don't always put quotes around quotations.  That would mean I'd have to be sure of the wording and I just don't want to bother.  I gave up on book, chapter and verse a long time ago, as well.  I deal in concepts...just like Steve and Eddie dealt in lead.

I was once a Fundie.  They stand back a hundred yards from the edge and jump up and down pretending that they are making a leap of faith.  It isn't a leap of faith if you end up landing where you started from.  It's spiritual masturbation.

And I was once a Charismatic and can tell you confidentally that it isn't a leap of faith if someone is on the other side of the chasm calling you to jump to them and promising they'll catch you.  They do, of course, and when they do they make you twice the child of hell that they are.  It's spiritual rape.

Christianity is a religion that exists in denial of the teachings of it's namesake.  It's as false as putting Karl Marx's name on the cover of Atlas Shrugged.  The proper way to read the letters of Paul...the only portion of the Christian Scripture that has any valid connection to an actual, historical individual...is as a negative template.  Paul was not the founder of Christianity.  He started out with a desire to destroy this pernicious myth and ended up doing just that only from within.

But his writings, when read as revisionistic reformation of an existing group of believers, can show us, by what Paul chose to change, what existed before him and, therefore, what is the most probable teachings of the historical person we know as Jesus.

Faith distorts reality and, the greater, the more abolute the faith, the greater the distortion.

Faith is an attempt to control the uncontrollable.  To impose order where there is none.  It is a pretense that ignores the need for justification like a society matron ignoring the poor manners and rude odors of the eyes downcast shuffling souls as she strains a frozen smile and ladles out the gravy at the annual Thanksgiving for the homeless.

Faith is a hoop skirt that hides the spindly, cellulite studded legs of the Church.

Faith is the Patriotism of the spiritual world.  Everyone assumes it's a good thing...like Mom and apple pie...but that good thing only seems to work if you happened to have been born into the right family in the right country.  If you have the misfortune to be born Islamic and in Baghdad, then your faith is, like your patriotism, just not the "right stuff."

I believe a lot of things.  But I know the difference between belief and wishful thinking and I know the difference between fact and fiction....and I know the difference between faith and knowledge.

And I know that we all can live in a world built on knowledge, but a world that rests on faith will most certainly burn itself out in an Armageddon from which there will be no Rapture. 

I've joined this community on a lark.  Because I wanted to have some place to just sit and talk to myself.  I'm not hoping to meet anyone.  Most people on the Net scare the crap out of me.

But I'm friendly enough, up to a point.  As long as you understand that you writing something to me doesn't obligate me to respond and that I reserve the right to disappear at any moment and never return.

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