"Wine Was Different Back Then"

This quote was the last straw that broke the perverbial camel's back, but let us start at the beginning.

Mine is sad long tale.... (Wait that is from Alice in Wonderland. But my story is just as strange). I was raised in what I found out to be much later a cult. Mind you, this wasn't the Jim Jones, or Anton LeVay type of cult. The premiss is that since Jesus was a Jew and celebrated the Hebrew feasts that we, as followers of him should do the same.... It sounds very simple and was all very natural..... There was speaking in tongues and fits of ecstasy, but being young it was all very normal.

I was born and raised in Southern California, but each summer we drove to eastern Iowa where the church was based, and where my mother is from. The 'compound' was in a cruciform shape (noted to be the largest wooden building in Iowa!)Ironic since no crucifix sacred "build this in my name" tabernacle etc. was allowed as being idolatry.

It was all so magical back then........ Well, except that demons and monsters were real, The devil could and would possess your soul. In fact we didn't celebrate christmas OR Halloween (both were pagan holidays any anyone knows that jesus was born in spring) I can remember when Halloween would come around, my mother would pick me up from school before the halloween parade and carnival at school....

This is ironic in itself, cause there are baby pictures of my sister and I in front of a flocked tree (OK it was the 70's quit laughing), and in holloween costumes...... There must have been a change in doctrine, 'cause after 1975 we didn't do 'it' anymore.

Holloween night was torture. We would drive to church and see all the houses in our street with kids running up and down with bags bulging with candy. We would end up at church until midnight, fortunately, I was young and had to sit quietly on the floor by my mom's feet while they wailed and prayed for god to keep the door to Hell shut for just one more Halloween.

While we didn't celebrate Christmas, we would celebrate Chaunakha...... They didn't quite get it right though, cause we would have five or six presents a night for eight days rather than one package of socks one night and toothpaste the next etc.

There were some hippy elements in the church so there was a lot of the "La-la-la, Jesus loves me so I'm OK! WHEEEE!" So with the polar opposites of;

A) The devil is behind every door so you are never safe,

B) Jesus saved you so 'trah-la-la-la-la'

I LOVE YOU JESUS-DEAREST

Then in 1980 we move back to Iowa, because...Get this; God said so. Okay I like Iowa so I was thinking a new adventure..... That's when I first stepped into the real world.

Things were fine at first, but I didn't do well at the main church's school. OK, I was an obnoxious brat, I admit it. They way they saw it, my hyperactivity was an influence of the devil, so they tried by medieavel ways, 'to beat out the evil spirit'. (Good-god! some Ritalin and less sugar in my diet sure would have saved my butt!)

Finally my parents sent me to public school.

But in Iowa as opposed to Los Angeles, you live in a small town, or on a farm as we did. Everybody knows where you go to church. I, being from Shiloh, as it is known locally is where they stockpile the guns on the third floor.....

My reaction was (!?!?!?) So when I said it was a lie and that in fact (and true) we played hide and seek in the dorm type rooms on the third floor. Of course in 'old west fashion' (this was Iowa people), 'You callin' my daddy a liar?'.... You can guess what happened next.

Not an isolated incident, that part of Iowa has the largest community of Amish west of the Mississippi, so any-one "durrfint" was target.

Fast forward three years.

Iowa didn't do well for my folks, in fact my dad was asked to be one of the main pastors, but in the process of the move to Iowa the 'leader', whom my mother still refers to as a prophet died of cancer......If he was a prophet didn't he know so, say before it was fatal?

So like any cult, or papal power vacuum, there was a power struggle and my dad believeing in the the cause and not lusting for power lost out. He and my mother left the church in dispair. I and my younger brother continued to go with my grandparents that lived with us at 'the farm'.

Because my dad was a stock-broker in LA he had made more money than the govenor of Iowa did. in Iowa he couldn't work at a Dairy Queen because he was too over qualified.... Even for the govenor of Iowa. So he moved back to LA and shortly my mother and brother along with me followed... My sister was enrolled at the UofI nearby so she stayed with relatives.

We ended up in West LA, actually Culver City. This was amazing! I'm not in the suburbs anymore! (Iowa had no suburbs back then).

This is where it gets very sad..... I did not fit in at all. Each month got worse and worse and I withdrew into myself so much that I took to music and reading locked away in my room, when I wasn't at school. my grades took a nose dive, and with mother working she wouldn't know if I didn't go to school..... The school would call her and she'd call me...."Mom, I don't feel so well..."

In Juniour High (middle school) I only got away with it a few times, but after I got into high school, as long as you were there for home room that is all that mattered.... Back then at that school there were no locks on the gates, and were ways to quietly 'escape'. Which I did at every chance....

Then they lowered the boom; I ended up in another private school.

BAPTIST TEMPLE CHRISTIAN ACADEMY

We had to wear these horrible polyester navy blue pants with the razor-sharp crease, white button up (LONG SLEEVE) shirt (in LA), with a nasty tie with an American eagle on top of a bible.... The piece de resitance? A bright red blazer! My god! We were walking talking flags!

You think I didn't fit in normal situations, well, this was my worst nightmare!

I tried to make the best of it, but even though I can act & fake my way through uncomfortable situations, I failed. I would have won an academy award though for best acting!

What I was brought up with at Shiloh was the polar opposite of this mad house. Every body was evil. I was evil. You were evil..... If they could have gotten away with it they would have called Adam & Eve evil for not being baptists!

If loosing faith made you skinny, this place would have made millions! It kept getting worse and worse, literally, daily. I was so depressed, guess what? I discovered cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, gay sex, and Gothic rock all within three months!

Then came the last straw; I saw a communion platter left over from sunday, you know the kind with the carafe and thimble sized cups. But instead of a crafe of wine was a bottle of Welche's grape juice...... Hold on! Wait just one minute! Was the first miricale of Jesus to make water into wine at a wedding?

"No-no-no-no-no-no-no," I was talked down to by my teacher," Back then there was no alcohol in wine...."

That was it, I had had it, but there were still a few months before the end of the year..... So like anyone else who had lost thier whole sense of being and of the world, I smoke cigarettes and got suspended several times, because the illegal gardeners for the church caught me, (why hadn't I called the INS). Drank myself stupid smoked pot 'til I was numb and let men my father's age take advantage of me.

We moved to the suburbs that summer, but I was never the same. I got somewhat better in San Gabriel Valley, but was a very angry goth.

Then things got bad for my brother in the new neighbourhood, so at last my folks said, "One or both will end up dead if we don't get out of this stink hole." So we moved back to, 'the farm'.

Quickly I found my way to Iowa City, called the 'Berkley (CA) of the midwest'. There I found not gay fiends, but white-trash drug using no-bodies.

I got into every drug you can get your hands on in Iowa, (which means I had no access to mescalin).

I spiraled down until I was a meth addict and wound up in the psych unit after trying to kill myself..... When I woke up, I thought to myself, "I must have survived for some reason."

I then spent the next four years looking for that 'thing' that had the right 'feel'.

The closest to Christianity I got was Russian Orthodox. (I still believe the three bar cross is the true cross).

I finally found Pure Land (Jodo Shinshu) Buddhism.

In 2001, the Gomonshu (head priest) of the main temple in Kyoto Japan came to Chicago, IL and I was confirmed as a member of the sangha. Normally you have to go to Japan to get your confirmation, but I was just there at the right time, and knew then that I had found peace with myself and the world......

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