"Why would they lie?"

Note: Since publishing this piece, I've edited it like a thousand times (figure of speech), trying to pinpoint what it is I think I want to convey and to do so accurately. Maybe I've succeeded, slightly. It's a complex subject, and can be exhausting. I find myself slipping into the need-to-explain-my-why-behind-my-every-statement mindset. I don't like that mindset. It can really take the joy out of writing, not to mention life and relationships.

*~*

I recently finished rereading James Comey's book, A Higher Loyalty. I, for one, believe Comey and most others who have shared their Trump gaslighting stories.

All that said, I have questioned my self. What of Comey's story? What of others' stories? Are all these people just lying? Why would they lie?

Comey's Trump experiences brought to mind certain people's experiences who had once been in The Way. Memoirs and accounts like Kristen's and Charlene's and Karl's. An abundance of stories online that aren't published in books on paper. The many unpublished stories shared with me in private. Accounts of Wierwille's and Martindale's and others' abuses -- sexual, financial, verbal, emotional, spiritual. I was a lay-leader when in The Way and am not without blame from the verbal/emotional/spiritual abuse that I doled out -- not a lot, but some, following my mentors' examples who followed their mentors' examples ... all backed up by scripture. I'm not absolving myself (or anyone) of personal responsibility, just pointing out that I was doing as I'd been taught alongside the creeping normalization of doctrine over personhood.

When I was loyal to The Way (beginning in 1977), and first heard stories (around 1989/90) of Wierwille's sexual abuses and possible cover-ups...what did I think at the time? How did I rationalize what I heard? How did I keep my cognitive dissonance in check, in the bubble?

Well, some of my rationalization went something like this...

• Dr. Wierwille was human. Humans make mistakes. He shared with us openly that he was only human, that love covers a multitude of sins, that we live in the age of grace, that God is a forgiving Father and He looks on the heart, that people are to be loved and things are to be used. The Bible is full of examples, especially in the Old Testament, of men of God who sinned. The flesh is weak, but God always looks on the heart and has cast our sins as far as the east is from the west.
• Why weren't these accusations brought while Dr. Wierwille was alive? Why wait until he's dead when he can't defend himself? Are the leaders who have split off making these accusations known just because they are jealous and wanted to be president and weren't chosen?
• Some of these accusations are outright looney. How many are based on innuendo? How many are outright lies? If ANY are true, did those women seduce Dr. Wierwille? The devil is the "accuser of the brethren" and the "father of lies." He and his devil spirit realm have access to anything that happens in the senses realm. He will twist and distort and lie, especially about believers who are standing with the Household.
• If ANY accusations have some truth to them ... still, Doctor taught the Word, the Word, and nothing but the Word. The good he's done outweighs any of the bad. And my personal and group experiences with him were always uplifting, always good.
• The devil's ultimate goal is to distort and vanquish the accuracy of th Word, especially the "great mystery" and the "Household." To do that, he attacks the Ministry and its leadership. The Apostle Paul was accused by the brethren. Dr. Wierwille was an apostle bringing old light as new light to our generation.
• My immediate, local leadership has looked into this; they are continuing with The Way. And I trust them. What is the profit in bringing all this dirt up, other than to destroy? The Adversary is always out "to steal, kill, and destroy."

Skip. forward. A WHOLE lot happened between 1989 and the early 2000s. But I and my husband continued with The Way, our children in tow.

In 2002, or thereabouts, I was hanging at my favorite hang-out spot, Borders Bookstore in Winston-Salem, journaling. I ended up witnessing to a dude, a black man in his 30s maybe, who had been trying to understand the holy spirit field. He was quite excited about what I was showing him from the scriptures. I was too.

When I gave him my phone number, in case he wanted to check out a fellowship, he responded, still excited, "I'll check it out online and give you a call." I responded, having never searched The Way online and being instructed by leadership to not search online and that the evil things posted online about The Way were inspired by devil spirits and only served to destroy the accuracy of the Word and the Ministry, "Well, you might find some controversial information that isn't accurate. The Ministry has had its problems and been through some changes. If you want to know from the horse's mouth, give me a call." After all, I'd been around for decades; I knew The Ministry, or so I thought.

After that encounter, I felt I should search The Way online; in case the guy called me I could handle whatever questions he might have. That's when I found GreaseSpot Café, an online gathering place for former followers. I chuckled at the name because a follower couldn't forget Craig Martindale, The Way's second president chosen by the founder Victor Paul Wierwille, hollering that folks who left the Household would be a "grease spot by midnight!" Due to a "consensual affair," or so I thought, Craig had "stepped down" from being The Way's president in 2000. He had been out of sight for a year.

I perused the Café and read a bit. I laughed when I read an accusation that Rosalie, who became The Way's third president when Craig was forced to step down, was a lesbian -- the same kind of laughs I'd laughed for decades when folks accused The Way of being a cult, and when I'd heard accusations against Wierwille back around 1989. That's ridiculous. Rosalie a lesbian?! Lol. If this place is saying that, how can anything anyone says here be trusted? I read a little more. Murmurings from embittered former followers, was my impression.

But … I had had my own doubts about things in The Way, doubts that had been building for years; and now I had opened Pandora's box. Plus I'd disobeyed leadership by searching The Way online and reading the words of people who were designated "mark and avoid" for "causing divisions" and teaching doctrines "contrary" to the "accuracy of the Word" and who were either "possessed or influenced by devil spirits."

Still … I went back again and again and again.

As I read and read I thought, Are all these people just lying? Why would they lie?

The dude I witnessed to never did call.

Bullseye

8/01/19
Prompt or not: bullseye
~*~

Winning.
Trump consistently brags about winning.
He rarely mentions service.

In the summer of 2016, when I read Tony Schwartz's exposé, Donald Trump's Ghostwriter Tells All, in The New Yorker, I found myself drawing comparisons to how things turned out with my ex-mental health therapist and I.

I've been through some bizarre things in my life. Most people might think the trip with jimson weed would be the most bizarre.

And it was bizarre -- hellish hallucinations of witch doctors dancing circles around me; of being raped on a mattress with exposed springs that was on a platform in the middle of the local college football field; of living in a circular sanitorium for the insane located in an aquarium in a secret, altered world; of breaking my arm while riding a horse from a castle in medieval times; of being eaten by roaches; of dying and ascending to heaven where Crosby, Steels, Nash, and Young sang for me. My boyfriend and I each ate three pods of jimson seeds on a Tuesday afternoon. They took their effect within a half-hour or so. That evening we both ended up in two separate hospitals. I stayed wide awake hallucinating (having no idea my body was being held by a restraint around my abdomen to a hospital bed with each arm, one connected to an IV, belted to the bedrails in an Intensive Care Unit) until sometime Friday evening after I was injected with a solution to antidote the datura stramonium, the Hindi-Greek botanical name for Jimson weed. It felt like roller coaster coming back into the realm of realty. I was 15 years old.

Yet, even compared to that, my experience with John Knapp was bizarre.

In one of Knapp's thirteen 2011 online smear pieces, he made a statement, "Game on." But he was the only one playing a game. He lied. He threatened. He made himself out as a victim. He name-called. He assigned evil motives. He rallied his supporters, until he then turned on most of them.

Almost a year earlier Knapp's last words to me in an email, where he accused me (among other things) of "destroying our friendship" and for disloyalty, were, "Have a nice life." I was 51 years old.

Almost a year later Knapp threw those same last words publicly at one of his defenders whom he had turned on. Someone who, like me, had been one of his clients. Someone who, like me, Knapp chastised for their disloyalty.

As I read Schwartz's exposé, it was uncanny -- the similarities with Knapp. But the most uncanny words came at the end when Tony Schwartz writes Trump's last words to him, after Trump chastises Tony for not being loyal and for not remaining silent. Trump said, "Have a nice life."

For a moment, I stopped breathing.

Knowledge

7/31/19
Prompt or not: knowledge
~*~

I do not want to craft a piece of writing.
I do not want to polish it.
I do not want to make it understandable.
I do not write for you.
I guess that would make me a non-marketable author.
Or no author at all.

What do I desire when I write?
It varies.

Sometimes I dump my thoughts.
Plop. Boing. Richochet. Plop.
There is no bullseye.

But there are margins.
The edge of the page.
The edge of the computer screen.

Is there an edge to consciousness?

I tend to think not.
Consciousness expands to make room
for more thoughts,
for more feelings,
for more space from where ideas originate.

There is a difference between thinking a thought and expressing it.
If we all had our thoughts laid bare for others to see,
to examine, like under a glass dome in a museum...
Would we put ourselves on the critic's pedestal, seeing only "them" under the dome?
Or would we identify and realize those thoughts could, just as well, be "us?"

I'm going absolutely no where with this.

Wait Carol...come on back.
You don't have to know where you are going.
How often has serendipity been with you?

The answer is, "Often."

Do you plan serendipity?

Well no. Otherwise it would not be serendipity.

So back to this edge of consciousness-thing.
What do you envision?

I see something like the universe, or at least its accepted rendition.
An ever-expanding expanse, with no detectable beginning or end.

What if that rendition is wrong?

What if, like The Way taught, there is a border to the universe?
What if, like The Way taught, the gigantic bubble of outer space is surrounded by water?
What if, like The Way taught, the water is probably a saline solution, like embryonic fluid?
Embryonic water protects the fetus; the outer waters, called the Deep, protect our universe.
That wasn't always the case. It was those waters, from the Deep, that flooded the earth in Noah's time.
God said he would never allow that again and gave us a rainbow as proof.
In the Deep is where some of the fallen angels were casts and await judgement.
Others of these fallen angels move about on earth creating havoc.
After Jesus was raised from the dead, he visited the Deep to show himself to the imprisoned spirits.
He had conquered death.
Beyond the waters of the Deep is another expanse.
That expanse has no margins; it is eternal.
It is where Christ ascended to the right hand of God, if there really is such a physical place.

Or something like that.

At one time, I wholeheartedly believed that is how the universe was set up.
Some literal, some figurative.
I used to wonder if the vast expanse of the Universe is a distortion.
That in reality, what humans are really seeing via Hubble or other telescopes, are multiple reflections from the waters of the Deep reflecting back on themselves from all directions, creating an illusion of forever, like when a person is in a house of mirrors.

The Way had scripture to back up all their teachings.
Some of it was twisted.
I question though, was it anymore twisted than any other group's claim to the right interpretation?

The Way taught that we don't interpret the scriptures; we allow them to interpret themselves.
Twist on that for awhile.

Hiding and ...

7/24/19
Prompt or not: hiding
~*~

When I was child, us neighborhood kids played a hide-and-seek game called Sardines. One person would hide while the rest of the players closed their eyes. One designated close-eyed would count out loud to 100 giving the hider time to hide. Once the counter shouted, "100!" the seekers opened their eyes and started to hunt. When a seeker found the hider, the seeker would join the hider, hiding from the rest of the seekers. That's why it was called "Sardines," because the hiders packed into the hiding place like sardines in a can.

I don't recall what happened to any seekers who couldn't find the sardines. Looking back, I'm intrigued that any of us trusted that the seekers actually closed their eyes for the whole count of 100. I played Sardines in elementary school.

Werewolf was another favorite. This was a traditional hide-and-seek tag game, except that it was always played at night. That's why it was called Werewolf. One person was "It," the Werewolf, the seeker, who also protected a spot designated as home base. The rest of the players would hide and then try to run and tag home base before Werewolf could tag them. If Werewolf tagged the runner, then the runner became Werewolf, the seeker.

Sometimes we played Werewolf at Oakwood Cemetery. I didn't play Werewolf until my teen years, the same years I was learning how to French kiss and ....

Oakwood Cemetery is where I learned to drive a car at 14 years old. Mom used to take me there so I could practice for when I would legally learn how to drive. I don't think I told her about the Werewolf game. I definitely didn't tell her about French kissing and ….