Paying It Forward

The other day, I "miraculously" came across some old writing of mine, a novel and some articles I wrote 18-20 years ago. I'd been looking for it all for a couple of years now, but hadn't found it and had actually given up the search. Then one night, to my husband's chagrin, the children went down to his "den" in the basement and started dragging out boxes of stuff, tossing old toys, decorations, dried out wreathes, lonely socks partner-less since the 80's--tossing around the likes of these until they uncovered a pouch that had the binder of my writing in it. Now I'd prayed before I gave up the search for that stuff that if God ever wanted me to do anything with that writing, he'd have to bring it back to me. I had it in my mind that if I'm to move into a more sedentary career, then maybe I could rework the novel I wrote in my early 20's and actually seek to get it published. But I didn't find my writing, and I gave up the idea until now suddenly, there in the middle of the room, was the pouch with the binder of my writing in it. Even as my husband lectured the boys about not touching things that weren't theirs, I fought the urge to kiss them for bringing the binder back to me for it was a sign from God.



But then I began to read what I wrote, and saw what awful pompous drivel it really was and I was appalled. In those days, I had just barely extricated myself from a deep affiliation with a very proud and self-righteous religious organization, and the after-shocks were still all over my writing. Now I am painstakingly going through that book, because the premise isn't so bad. Still, a premise alone does not make a book good. Like in great works of music, too, a great theme in theory can nonetheless be killed by a bad performance. A beautiful landscape ruined by a poor brushstroke...I could go on ad infinitum. In essence, my writing style killed this premise.

On a personal note, it is difficult to revisit one's past this way. It is difficult seeing who I really was without doing the revisionist work that my present self would like to espouse regarding my past wisdom and grace as I reflect on that former self. The bottom line is, I really despise who I was then, how haughty and self-serving. I was blind to my own faults and surprised when others saw things to avoid in me. Now, I agree with those who distanced themselves from me and in fact, wonder how anyone could have chosen to give that Me the time of day--that's how little I see to recommend my former self. So I am learning, through this reading, to accept and forgive the full measure of who I was, unadulterated by the softening of time and distance along life's thread. But that is only a side-eddy to what is on my heart to blog.



What I'm really writing about is surely nothing new to journalling. I write about the loss of my best friend. It is an old story; she went into what I consider a cult some 25 years ago. But she was dear to me, and I felt somewhat responsible for not being able to "save" her from that group. Even to the present, that ache still bubbles to the surface from time to time.



The reason the subject rises again now is two-fold. On the one hand is the novel. I had crammed a copy of a letter she wrote me into the back of that binder that held my novel, along with a letter I wrote back to her. Our friendship was a close enough one that I can still close my eyes and picture her handwriting, so when I thumbed through it and saw her script, my heart skipped a beat. Here was the last interchange between us documented as one more thing for me to read in that packet of old writings. I didn't have the original letter I sent that caused the breach between us but I did have her return letter and my final one back to her thereafter.In the initial letter, I told her basically that the group she was joining would not, in my estimation, secure her eternal home; I told her their worship and teaching practices caused deep unrest about them in my soul. This letter was missing. What I did have was the letter she sent back in response and the final one I sent back to her...and now I wonder if she ever even read the last letter, or if she did, she surely read it while being supervised that she might see the "devil spirits" were speaking through me in it. For these last several years, I'd wondered whether my own religious posturing drove the last nail home in the coffin of our friendship, but as I read again the words and tone in the letters I began to be a little less hard on myself. Even as I saw my own pomposity in that other context, I saw loving concern in this letter. How ironic that the place where I presumed I'd failed by way of pride was the one area I "got it right" and the area where I felt more certain of my platform was where I really lifted my skirts and showed my &$#%@.



Then, just today I came across yet another reference to this group that "absorbed" my friend. One of the Christian forums I visit posted the following link. It was considered either amusing or frightening by pretty much everyone who watched the link, but it made me sad. I know the Stepford-Christian smiles I see on those singers faces well. I saw the same smiles on the faces of the people who were in the ministry that almost sucked me down the vortex of love-bombing, money-making, cultic Christianity.



http://www.vimeo.com/1768758?pg=embed&sec=1768758



So after seeing this video, I googled the Way International again. Here I found more concrete evidence of what was just a vague feeling of "wrongness" I felt in the days of our breach, the days when life as a thing shared by me and my friend ended abruptly. As I read about this organization, I become more understanding of why she has never responded to my overtures to renew a friendship. While on the one hand, many find the video link "laughable" and I certainly understand the sentiment in that the thread showing the link on the forum was named: "yet another reason we deserve the mockery we receive" still, I am struck by sobering grief as I read articles that tell me things like these:



Anyone who closely views the lives of Way members is amazed and shocked by how every aspect of their followers’ lives is controlled. Leadership tells followers whom to date, whom to marry (and not marry), when to separate or divorce, how to spend their time and money, when to sell their house, where to live, when to change jobs, how to discipline their children, the list goes on. In recent years, leaders have told Way members to vacate certain towns and move close to leaders (sometimes hundreds of miles away, as when Way members in Saint Louis were all told to move to Columbia, Mo., in 1998) to be under their “protection.”
Leaders control their followers mainly through fear. Leadership convinces followers that if they do not obey on every point, the followers will:
1) be “confronted,” which amounts to severe and sustained verbal attack and abuse;
2) terrible things will happen to them, such as accidents, illness or death;
3) Way leaders will convince all other Way followers to “mark and avoid” them — that is, to avoid all contacts with them, even if they are spouses or immediate family. Because children are especially vulnerable, non-Way parents are concerned that their children will be dominated and controlled by uncaring Way leadership (which will be reinforced by the parent who remains in The Way), and have little or no personal freedom.
This problem is even worse when the woman is the ex-Way parent. Way members are taught that wives must obey their husbands in all things, and many husbands use this as a reason to severely subjugate them (this autocratic and pejorative attitude intensifies when the woman leaves The Way). This is partly due to The Way’s teaching that the very first sin on Earth was Eve’s lesbian relationship with the devil.
For these reasons, many believe that children are in a psychologically and emotionally unsound environment when they are in the custody of a parent devoted to The Way. Furthermore, children are at an increasing degree of risk the more they are exposed to The Way through parents who are Way members. Therefore, in order to protect children and maintain family relationships, it is very important to consider involvement with The Way when making child custody and visitation arrangements.

Oh, F., how I miss you and long for the joys that were ours in the days of our youth. So many happy memories we shared, so many dreams, back when life was but candy still brightly spinning itself to a satin gleam in a sunny candy shop window.

What now for you, my friend? When you are sick, does your Lord bring you flowers as mine does me? (How could I keep from being discouraged if You held me to blame for every problem and pain I endure, O Lord?)

Are you sitting somewhere tonight feeling alone in your "loving twig group" because you can't be real with your questions to the people in your world? (How could I have ever known what it is to be breathless at the loveliness of You if You were never allowed creative-license in the deepest parts of my life, O Lord?)

Oh, F., are you feeling trapped? Are you staying in something so wrong with full knowledge of its fallacies all so that you might protect your children somehow? How much has this insanity shackled you? (How could I have endured ever becoming Your companion in suffering, O Savior, if I so willingly diminished Your perfection under a mantle of rhetoric as these people are deceived into doing?)

O, God of heaven, You who have become more precious to me with every passing year, You who have shown Your arm strong to save for me until I tremble at the experience of it in my spirit. I am enraged for my friend's sake. She has been fed a lie well-crafted to seduce into her deepest past and to entrap her heart where its deepest aches can be made to burn.

Someone surely once prayed these things for me, now I pay it forward: You, O Lord who is unafraid to risk to the last farthing for the sake of redeeming the lost, send the same aid to my friend that you sent to me some time ago. In the name of my Father, Son and Holy Ghost and in Your honor...Amen