Purple & Green

What to write?

I draw a blank. ___________ (Now I typed a blank.)

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It rains tonight
Puddles form alongside the driveway
Where the gravel is

Sometimes the drops come fast
And furious
Making a small crick

That flows to the street
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As a youngster I often played outside. Our house was located on a hill and the rain would run down the sides of the street. There were and still are no sidewalks on that street. I used to go out after a rain, collect small rocks and sticks, and make miniature dams in the tiny streams that flowed down the paved roadside. I was an engineer. Sometimes I was a captain of a ship, the ship being made of a stick or piece of bark. The imagination with rain.

The smell of rain. The sound of rain. The feel of rain.

Behind our house was a pasture. That's where the ponies lived. Horses too. I'd climb the fence and walk across the grassy slope that leveled out as I got to the creek. This was a real creek. Even had a swimming hole. And crawdads. And good rocks for creek walking. And clay. I'd form bowls from the clay, let them dry in the sun, then paint them with the purple juice from polk berries.

I was told polk berries were poisonous but that one could eat the raw, young leaves in salads. But I never did eat any polk salad.

Jimson weed grew in that pasture. The spiky pods were topped with purple feathery locks. Purple is one of my favorite colors. Purple and green, I really like those colors together. Today at work, as I was unpacking art, I came across a painting of some Jimson plants. I bought the art piece for my miniature art collection.

Jimson, aka Datura, and I had a relationship in the distant past. She almost killed me, but we survived those hellish four days. One of our hallucinations was of water in an aquarium which housed a sanatorium that staffed witch doctors.

I wasn't told that Datura was poisonous, but rather that it was mind expanding. I did eat Datura seeds, but not in a salad.
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Cults and Such

I wrote a rendition of the following in an email to someone tonight.
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I'm gonna address your statement regarding "cults." My thoughts may come out ambivalent, because my thoughts and feelings regarding "cults" can be ambivalent. Similar to my thoughts about whether or not a creator exist or a theist god exist. I don't know what I believe currently about the god thing. Perhaps some day I will, and perhaps not.

Anyway "cults." I'm going to simply ramble here. This ain't no dissertation or nuttin'. Just thoughts interlaced with any weirdness that comes through my finger tips. I will endeavor to make it somewhat coherent.

I knew The Way was called a "cult" when I became a Way follower. The "cult" label didn't bother me...much. At the time The Way was kinder than the "church" believers that I was involved with. The Way could answer my questions. My experience at Way fellowships was good and rich, real and tangible. My heart's desire was to know God...to "know"...to "know"....to "know." I had convinced myself that Jesus Christ was THE way to the Father (god). When I found The Way, I began to convince myself that the Biblical scriptures were perfect when "originally" given. I delved deeper into "crucifying the old man." That is declaring my flesh dead and worthless and my life in Christ vibrant and righteous.

Eventually that led me to what I call a soul suicide or soul murder. Any desire that was outside the doctrine of God's Word (the "original" intent of the Bible as The Way claimed to teach) was not of God. I was to renew my mind to the Truth of the Word, to destroy my human logic from the position I had exalted it and put on the mind of the new man; ie: the mind of Christ. In so doing I would know the depth and length and breadth and height of the love of God which passes all understanding. The eyes of my understanding would be enlightened. I would be one of the telios, the initiated.

As time went on, I no longer knew who Carol was. Carol was what the Word said she was. (Interesting I don't state "who" but rather "what.")

For me, that is the essence of cultic influence and harmfulness (for some followers). When one's autonomy is stolen or allowed to be stolen. And when one's interdependence with humanity is replaced with exclusivism; that those not enlightened to the truth (that is taught within the group) are ruled by their natural senses at best, the seed of the 'devil' at worst. (I do think that a follower of any cultic group, **who ends up harmed, most(?) much(?) of the time, holds part of the responsibility in the situation in which they find themselves. **Yet stating that, I get a bit foggy and not quite sure.)

As I figure you might agree, any group can be cultic. And how much so is on a continuum. Us humans don't live in a vacuum. I like what I read from part of a book by psychiatrist, Dr. Arthur Deikman: "Some degree of cult behavior can be seen in all groups, so instead of asking 'Is this group a cult?,' a more useful inquiry is: "How much cult behavior is taking place here?' "

I've read similar in other books written by various psychologists and sociologists and such. I find it a fascinating field - group dynamics. How many of the authors I've read consider themselves part of the anti-cult movement? I don't know, but I don't think many do. Rather they study group dynamics. What is healthy? What is unhealthy? How can we determine such?

How many people join cults? Is it increasing or decreasing? I don't know if we can measure that. How many folks suffer emotional and psychological abuse in groups or in one-on-one relationships? Lots. Is either of those increasing or decreasing? I don't know.

Well, that's a few of my thoughts regarding "cults." (Hmmm...I may put those thoughts on a blog entry. :-D )
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**I struck part of my words above, because I got to thinking about them and realized I really don't agree with what I had stated. It is like blaming a person who has been abused; the victim is not responsible for the abuse. That said, when a person joins a group, depending on influences utilized in how they joined (and there are variables and degrees), I think in many(?) of the cases the person holds (at the least) some responsibility for their choice to join and continue with the group. That too is variable, because influences from the group and vulnerabilities of the person while in the group will often fluctuate. If a person is born into a group, they really have no choice until later as an adult, and then it is extremely diffi-cult to leave.

I have a lot more thoughts on the subject, and then some foggy-headedness with it.

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Foundations

non-subject: ridicule
aww ~ 11/10/10
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Mid 1990s. It had to have been either Thanksgiving or Christmas because those were typically the only times us siblings and our parents would get together. Or at funerals and weddings.

My mom was one of thirteen children, though two of the children died in childhood. One of her brothers named Craig died; it seems he lived into elementary school age. The other sibling died shortly after being born. I don't know if it was a boy or a girl. My mother referred to it as "the infant."

Mom was 2nd to the youngest in her family.

I am the youngest of three children, so that puts me near the bottom of the cousin rung as far as age. Most of my however-many cousins I have are older than I. I think there are four younger than I.

With all those cousins there have been lots of weddings. And through the years there have been some funerals. Mom was the last of her siblings to die. I wrote a poem in her honor entitled "The Final Drum." That was her maiden name, Drum.

Thanksgiving. Christmas. Weddings. Funerals. Those have been our main family gatherings in my adult years, like so many in our transient culture.

Mid 1990s. Either Thanksgiving or Christmas. My brother and I stood on the porch of our parent's home. The porch of the house where we had grown up. My husband was standing with us. My brother was smoking a cigarette.

The porch. It wasn't a large porch, but neither was it as small as a stoop. The porch floor was a brick red and was some sort of stone tile, but not square tiles. Rather a medley of shapes with off white grout outlining each contour. In one corner of the porch was a beige-painted brick column with a beige-painted pole on it connecting to the roof. A beige-painted gutter ran down the front of the pole and column.

A green wooden bench with a slat back, and big enough for two people, sat in front of the downstairs bedroom window against the beige-painted outside brick wall. An old-timey milk can painted black stood beside the bench. That's where mom hid the key, under the milk can. A ramp covered with green outdoor carpet made its way from the sidewalk, up the one-step porch and to the front door. Mom had the ramp installed after Dad's wreck.

My brother and I stood over by the brick column, the top of which we used for a table for our beverage glasses or cans or whatever we happened to be drinking.

My bother was a liberal. I considered myself a conservative, though I didn't keep up too much with politics. I usually just asked my husband who I should vote for. He too was conservative.

I don't know how the subject of homosexuality came up, probably because of some political conversation.

"Homosexuality is wrong," I confidently stated.

"So you think someone would choose that lifestyle knowing the prejudice they would face?" My brother responded.

"God didn't make a man's penis to go into another man's rectum. It's not natural. God made man for woman and woman for man. Queers choose to be queers. Sure there might be something in their upbringing that caused them to be that way. But it is a disorder. It is wrong. Bottom line is it is devil spirit possession."

My voice was forceful. I knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that I was right. My brother didn't have spiritual eyes to see. I didn't know if he was born again or not. We didn't discuss spiritual matters. Well, once we did, over a decade before, after he'd had enough to drink.

My husband made a gesture to try to calm me down. But I wasn't going to back down. I was going to stand for the truth whether or not my husband spoke up. Do I really believe the Word or don't I? If I do, then I speak. That's what Paul stated in Corinthians: "I believed, therefore have a spoken." I was typically bolder than my husband anyway, when it came to this kind of stuff.

"Can someone who is gay go to Heaven?" My brother asked, not so much for an answer, but to try to trap me in my words.

"Yes," I responded. "Works don't matter as far as getting into Heaven. A person can get born again and never walk the Word and they'll still get into Heaven. But if the queer doesn't confess Jesus as Lord and believe God raised him from the dead, he won't go to heaven."

"Can a murderer go to Heaven?" he asked.

"Yes." I answered. "The same way the queer can go. It's not based on works but on whether they accept Jesus Christ as Lord and believe God raised him from the dead."

"So," he responded. "A murderer can go to Heaven even if he tortures and murders, as long as he accepts Christ. And a person can live a good life and be benevolent, but because he has consensual sex with someone of the same sex, if he doesn't accept Christ, he will burn in Hell?"

"I didn't say they'd burn in Hell. I said they won't go to Heaven. There is no such thing as an eternal burning Hell. I don't know all the ends and outs of how God will judge good works but God is just and all love. He'll figure it out."

I was still heated, more so at my husband for not saying anything. Didn't my husband really believe this stuff!? Why didn't he speak up?!

"I rest my case," my brother responded.

We probably then went inside for fruit cake.

Or pecan pie.