Fellow Texan,
Here are some notes about me to start the dialogue:
My first 21 years were immersed deeply in Roman Catholic faith and practice. I was an altar boy at Guadalupe Church and went to St. Joseph's Academy. I was in a Catholic school from the third grade until I completed my first degree. I lived in constant guilt, self-abuse and spiritual pain. Leaving the practice preceded losing the faith by about 10 years. The habits were so deeply ingrained that even after I was consciously, decidedly and clearly a non-believer, I could still be brought to tears with the viewing of a mass on TV celebrating the feast of the Virgen of Guadalupe. There are cultural, family and social memories woven in that cause old feelings to come up. My disconnection with religion is difficult because so many early memories of family and growing up are so immersed in faith, and going to church and the family celebrations connected to religous feasts. But, since all my closest relatives are dead, and I don't have to face any family reactions and arguments, I have much freedom to explore the thinking, the literature, and the dialogues as on this site...all reinforcing my view of the world. I wish I had a fire in the gut and the energy to balance out what burns on the side of the crazy believers.
Please add as friend.
Just came on board and would like to connect directly with as many active members as possible. The 50 limit is just too slow for me.
This website is very exciting to me, eXRC who started my recovery 40 years ago
I love my school :D I acknowledge that I'm good at the oboe, but also acknowledge that I am almost a junior and not as good as others in my studio. But I have a lot of talent (or so all of my teachers have told me). :) Someday, I do want to play professionally in a symphony, and/or teach.
Yeah, this weekend, Andrew seemed fine. Guess he was just being pissy about nothing, like one of my friends said. =P
"I hope you find something useful on the link that I sent you. Let me know what you think of it, if you do get a chance to peruse it."
I'm only a couple of pages into some of the stuff on the webiste, but a lot of it contains very helpful information, and I feel that it's worth my time reading. Great link =D
So, my mom is getting here tomorrow, and staying until Sunday. she wants to visit my old church, and she's taking me along. That should be interesting.
It makes me sad that she still thinks that I'm her good, Christian daughter, when, while I'm still good in my opinion, I'm most certainly not her "godly Christian" daughter. I want to tell her that I'm not a Christian anymore, but I'm afraid of what she will say/try to say. I don't think she'd be really harsh or anything, but I'm not sure.
I enjoy spending my summers learning AND having fun! =P =D
Thanks for the link! I'll check it out this weekend. :)
I had juries on Thursday (summarized by someone else as a 'final exam for a musician' where I play an accompanied solo piece for a jury of the woodwind faculty, and they write comments/suggestions for me to read later; it doesn't actually count toward my grade, though), which went really well! For some reason, I kept looking at my 'audience', and I'm not sure why (it's not really a good thing; it's almost like you're trying to get their attention)...and two of the teachers left a comment about that, but otherwise it was almost all compliments. :D Another comment I received a couple of times had to do with expression/etc. which I knew I needed to work on anyway - especially since my side has been hurting since last Friday (I think I pulled a muscle in P.E.), so breathing while playing has been a little strange (so I couldn't be as expressive as I'd like; I was more worried about my breathing).
Today, my teacher took us to dinner at the really good restaurant down the road (which I can't afford, but he pays for us to eat dinner/brunch twice per school year), and we had a lot of fun there. Just one thing: one of my friends, let's say his name is Andrew, has been acting really bitchy to me for the past few days, and I have no idea why. At dinner, we were looking at people's pics/videos on their phones and such, and I wanted to show them a really funny video that I recorded of Andrew (with his knowledge) from a week or so ago. Just when I was watching it (not showing it yet, just had the volume on the lowest setting) and about to show it, my teacher wanted to see it (in a friendly, joking way), and Andrew suddenly decides to get annoyed at me, walk around the entire table to me, and tell me to not show the video and to put my phone away. what the hell?!?! It made me really upset, because he did something else in band rehearsal this morning: In a part of one of the pieces the band is playing, Andrew and the English horn player play a duet of sorts. So Andrew decided to switch seats with me so they could sit next to each other. But...instead of just telling/asking me to move, he puts his music on my stand, gets up, and pushes me to get up, then tells me to switch seats. I hated the way he made me feel both times, like he was somehow superior to me. I don't know if he intended that, but both times he almost made me cry (I don't take being ordered around by my peers very well at this time, since my dad did it all the time and made me feel like shit). I don't think I should be stressing over this so much, but it did really upset me. :(
yep! 3 more days of class. I don't know if I'm really happy/excited about summer or sad that I have to do 3 months without Interlochen.
I wish that I didn't have the experience of Christians mistreating me, but I guess that if they never had (and if I had never ended up at Interlochen) I would still be a mindless right-wing Baptist like my relatives.
"She was showing me some vampire program on cable tv that's set in Louisiana. " Do you know what it's called? I might know what it is, since my oboe teacher is now into vampire stuff (because of me lol!) and he mentioned something like that.
A lot of people don't like the violence/etc. in most vampire novels, which is cool, I just think that most of it is awesome. :) lol
"As you get older, I think you'll find that most people mellow and reject the malevolent for the benevolent because it's in their long term best interest. Did any of that make sense to you?"
I think I'm starting to notice some of that now, even in people that I knew from several years ago that I still talk with occasionally. I still have a hard time trusting most of them, though, because of how they treated me previously.
I think that made sense, and I never expect anyone to be perfect, since we all make mistakes; part of being human. :)
So, today, while walking to Health Services (to meet my studio outside there), I had a moment where I just remembered that the jacket I was wearing had been bought exactly a year ago today. And my audition for this school was a year ago today. It's amazing how much my life has changed in the past year.....
Sick computers are no fun! I <3 my computers (I have 2).
I love the oboe :D I'm glad that I have something that I really enjoy/am reasonably good at (I've been told that I have a lot of talent for it, and that is probably what I'm going to study in college). :)
I'm glad that I can avoid going to church until the end of the year (I'm still not sure about the summer), since Mom doesn't always ask if I went to church (or I have the excuse of "I needed sleep"/etc.). I hope that she doesn't make me go in the summer...
Today, on the phone, we were talking about how I was raised in a Christian school. I feel that I was utterly f*cked over by my Christian schooling, but Mom thinks that it gives a good solid foundation for your beliefs - ha! More like, didn't teach me how to think. I was treated well at those schools, right up until the 5th grade; when I started playing oboe. The almost 2 years after that I spent at the one school really affected me (though I'm trying to move past it, lots of my problems with answering questions/being afraid to be wrong/expressing my own opinions stemmed from that time), since people pretty much ignored me/talked behind my back about me. It was sooo Christian *rolls eyes*. The conservative baptist school was a whole 'nother story..Anyway, Mom took that and said, "we're not supposed to look at the people, because man will always disappoint. We're supposed to look at God" and blah blah blah. I had a hard time not saying anything...it was driving me nuts.
It makes no sense to me how people can believe that one book is completely inerrant just because that book says it's inerrant, as well as believing that that book is sooo moral, when it's not.
What books? I'm curious. :)
"Know what you're going to read this summer? If you're wanting to get into some writings on religious skepticism, there's a link on this website to a blog that takes one through the logical process as one leaves religion behind."
I want to read a lot of stuff, some random vampire fiction (like Anne Rice's writings), but I do want to read some stuff on religious skepticism. What book(s) are you speaking of?
The liberal church in Michigan is nice, and the people are great for the most part, but I just can't agree with their beliefs anymore.
My last day of school is May 19th, then festival on the 21-23rd. Then I go back to GA...lol
Sorry it's taken me so long to respond. I've been busy with school, and I've been sick for the past 4 days (I feel much better now, but I still feel really tired and don't know why).
This summer, I don't really have much planned. :P I'm going to an oboe camp in the beginning of July, which will be fun. :) I want to read a lot this summer, though, and go hang out with my 3 or 4 friends in GA. And try to enjoy the 3 month period of too-hot weather.
I'm not sure if Mom is going to make me go to church or not. I really hope she doesn't. I told her that I don't want to visit any of the churches around in GA, because even the 'non-denominational' ones are still too much like Baptist churches (at least they are there, the church that I went to up here in MI is a lot more liberal).
I have a few friends who don't believe in any one religion. :)
Mom doesn't take everything in the Bible as literal truth, just most of it (lol), so I guess she is a fundamentalist. Her friend (who we're living with) accepts everything in the Bible as literal truth, though (and he's a little more hardcore, just not completely batshit crazy). He (the friend) unknowingly made me think about something; he asked me if I believed the Bible was the inerrant word of God, and I immediately said yes, but soon after I really started thinking about what my true answer to that question would be.
You know it pays to edit. Let me clarify my statement:"Our families (my partner’s and mine) are very religious and we are ourselves but have not come out of the god closet. Not really a big deal at this moment. But I will not deny my rational understand if asked."
I meant our families are religious. We are not . We are ourselves around our family. But if asked we will not deny our rational understanding of the world we live in. But we chose our battles. I prefer to give them the crazy look and then giggle. Cheers!
Hello,
Didn’t get the chance to update my profile but thanks for stopping by. Ok, here are the answers to your questions:
Your background also fundamentalist christianity?
Well, my father became religious all of a sudden while in the military and was overseas. So began the crazy religion train of my once normal family, lol. Started with Jehovah Witness, then Pentecostal then even scarier...the holiness church. Fire and brimstone and other poltergeist things. That was weird. When I went to college I was still searching for this wonderful god because I thought I did every thing I was suppose to plus leading children choir, bible studies, singing in the choir and more bible study. I’ve even danced the “holy ghost” dance. The funny thing about that was I was VERY conscious of that particular act. Well hell, everything. I would psych myself up and wait for the perfect opportunity to “jump in” and get my workout on. It was a great release of energy and fun. I soon learned at college when I go the gay club I have just as much fun. Anyway, while in college I officially came out of the closet and increased my search for god because the bible said I will go to h. e. double hockey sticks. I even had one girl try to “save” me when I was trying to study for an exam. She was concerned about my sexuality. She got me too fired up from cursing her out I couldn’t study and flunked the exam. Lol. I tried going to a catholic church. That hurt my knees. I tried Buddhism. That hurt my knees to and because I was developing ADHD, lol chanting was a lost cause. When I finished my military term I found a church whose member’s were predominately gay. Nondenominational. Again I couldn’t figure out the excitement of this religion when you are gay. It was weird. After church we go the bar and live normal lives. Not speaking for all MCC churches. Just the one I went to. It was more like a pick up joint and a great place for gossip of who broke up with who and who is available (because where else are you going to find other gay people). So I said fuck it.
How long have you been an ex?
I’ve been an ex for about three years now but seriously I’ve been an ex god believer for about one month. And it’s been great.
Why Wiccan? Is that a belief system?
Wicca is so diverse. Some people actually use it with a belief system such as actually believing in gods and goddesses and fairies and other funky things. I do not consider Wicca (for me) as a religion. It is more of a way of life and something fun. I’m into herbs, crystals and oils for natural healing. Basically, just using their energy to complete a task. I don’t believe in actual gods and goddesses but I understand the duality of the planet and the nature within. And I understand that some apply names to that duality to make things more concrete for the purpose of doing something. Some also worship, some don’t.
Do you have non-religious contacts/friends in NC or are you in isolation?
Surprisingly in the freakish bible belt, there is a large group of atheist. I’ve joined a couple of their groups and have gone to presentations of Darwin during his 200th birthday. That was cool. And now this month we will be having a cookout and watching “Religious” and another movie about crazy Christians. Isolation? No. Our families (my partner’s and mine) are very religious and we are ourselves but have not come out of the god closet. Not really a big deal at this moment. But I will not deny my rational understand if asked.
Sorry I wrote a lot but really this subject can not be concised to a couple of sentences. Thanks for coming by. Of course there is a lot more to my fundamental life and travels but I’ll share later. How about you? Take care!
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Here are some notes about me to start the dialogue:
My first 21 years were immersed deeply in Roman Catholic faith and practice. I was an altar boy at Guadalupe Church and went to St. Joseph's Academy. I was in a Catholic school from the third grade until I completed my first degree. I lived in constant guilt, self-abuse and spiritual pain. Leaving the practice preceded losing the faith by about 10 years. The habits were so deeply ingrained that even after I was consciously, decidedly and clearly a non-believer, I could still be brought to tears with the viewing of a mass on TV celebrating the feast of the Virgen of Guadalupe. There are cultural, family and social memories woven in that cause old feelings to come up. My disconnection with religion is difficult because so many early memories of family and growing up are so immersed in faith, and going to church and the family celebrations connected to religous feasts. But, since all my closest relatives are dead, and I don't have to face any family reactions and arguments, I have much freedom to explore the thinking, the literature, and the dialogues as on this site...all reinforcing my view of the world. I wish I had a fire in the gut and the energy to balance out what burns on the side of the crazy believers.
Just came on board and would like to connect directly with as many active members as possible. The 50 limit is just too slow for me.
This website is very exciting to me, eXRC who started my recovery 40 years ago
Yeah, this weekend, Andrew seemed fine. Guess he was just being pissy about nothing, like one of my friends said. =P
"I hope you find something useful on the link that I sent you. Let me know what you think of it, if you do get a chance to peruse it."
I'm only a couple of pages into some of the stuff on the webiste, but a lot of it contains very helpful information, and I feel that it's worth my time reading. Great link =D
So, my mom is getting here tomorrow, and staying until Sunday. she wants to visit my old church, and she's taking me along. That should be interesting.
It makes me sad that she still thinks that I'm her good, Christian daughter, when, while I'm still good in my opinion, I'm most certainly not her "godly Christian" daughter. I want to tell her that I'm not a Christian anymore, but I'm afraid of what she will say/try to say. I don't think she'd be really harsh or anything, but I'm not sure.
I enjoy spending my summers learning AND having fun! =P =D
-Gabrielle
Thanks for the link! I'll check it out this weekend. :)
I had juries on Thursday (summarized by someone else as a 'final exam for a musician' where I play an accompanied solo piece for a jury of the woodwind faculty, and they write comments/suggestions for me to read later; it doesn't actually count toward my grade, though), which went really well! For some reason, I kept looking at my 'audience', and I'm not sure why (it's not really a good thing; it's almost like you're trying to get their attention)...and two of the teachers left a comment about that, but otherwise it was almost all compliments. :D Another comment I received a couple of times had to do with expression/etc. which I knew I needed to work on anyway - especially since my side has been hurting since last Friday (I think I pulled a muscle in P.E.), so breathing while playing has been a little strange (so I couldn't be as expressive as I'd like; I was more worried about my breathing).
Today, my teacher took us to dinner at the really good restaurant down the road (which I can't afford, but he pays for us to eat dinner/brunch twice per school year), and we had a lot of fun there. Just one thing: one of my friends, let's say his name is Andrew, has been acting really bitchy to me for the past few days, and I have no idea why. At dinner, we were looking at people's pics/videos on their phones and such, and I wanted to show them a really funny video that I recorded of Andrew (with his knowledge) from a week or so ago. Just when I was watching it (not showing it yet, just had the volume on the lowest setting) and about to show it, my teacher wanted to see it (in a friendly, joking way), and Andrew suddenly decides to get annoyed at me, walk around the entire table to me, and tell me to not show the video and to put my phone away. what the hell?!?! It made me really upset, because he did something else in band rehearsal this morning: In a part of one of the pieces the band is playing, Andrew and the English horn player play a duet of sorts. So Andrew decided to switch seats with me so they could sit next to each other. But...instead of just telling/asking me to move, he puts his music on my stand, gets up, and pushes me to get up, then tells me to switch seats. I hated the way he made me feel both times, like he was somehow superior to me. I don't know if he intended that, but both times he almost made me cry (I don't take being ordered around by my peers very well at this time, since my dad did it all the time and made me feel like shit). I don't think I should be stressing over this so much, but it did really upset me. :(
yep! 3 more days of class. I don't know if I'm really happy/excited about summer or sad that I have to do 3 months without Interlochen.
I wish that I didn't have the experience of Christians mistreating me, but I guess that if they never had (and if I had never ended up at Interlochen) I would still be a mindless right-wing Baptist like my relatives.
"She was showing me some vampire program on cable tv that's set in Louisiana. " Do you know what it's called? I might know what it is, since my oboe teacher is now into vampire stuff (because of me lol!) and he mentioned something like that.
A lot of people don't like the violence/etc. in most vampire novels, which is cool, I just think that most of it is awesome. :) lol
"As you get older, I think you'll find that most people mellow and reject the malevolent for the benevolent because it's in their long term best interest. Did any of that make sense to you?"
I think I'm starting to notice some of that now, even in people that I knew from several years ago that I still talk with occasionally. I still have a hard time trusting most of them, though, because of how they treated me previously.
I think that made sense, and I never expect anyone to be perfect, since we all make mistakes; part of being human. :)
So, today, while walking to Health Services (to meet my studio outside there), I had a moment where I just remembered that the jacket I was wearing had been bought exactly a year ago today. And my audition for this school was a year ago today. It's amazing how much my life has changed in the past year.....
-Gabrielle
Sick computers are no fun! I <3 my computers (I have 2).
I love the oboe :D I'm glad that I have something that I really enjoy/am reasonably good at (I've been told that I have a lot of talent for it, and that is probably what I'm going to study in college). :)
I'm glad that I can avoid going to church until the end of the year (I'm still not sure about the summer), since Mom doesn't always ask if I went to church (or I have the excuse of "I needed sleep"/etc.). I hope that she doesn't make me go in the summer...
Today, on the phone, we were talking about how I was raised in a Christian school. I feel that I was utterly f*cked over by my Christian schooling, but Mom thinks that it gives a good solid foundation for your beliefs - ha! More like, didn't teach me how to think. I was treated well at those schools, right up until the 5th grade; when I started playing oboe. The almost 2 years after that I spent at the one school really affected me (though I'm trying to move past it, lots of my problems with answering questions/being afraid to be wrong/expressing my own opinions stemmed from that time), since people pretty much ignored me/talked behind my back about me. It was sooo Christian *rolls eyes*. The conservative baptist school was a whole 'nother story..Anyway, Mom took that and said, "we're not supposed to look at the people, because man will always disappoint. We're supposed to look at God" and blah blah blah. I had a hard time not saying anything...it was driving me nuts.
It makes no sense to me how people can believe that one book is completely inerrant just because that book says it's inerrant, as well as believing that that book is sooo moral, when it's not.
What books? I'm curious. :)
"Know what you're going to read this summer? If you're wanting to get into some writings on religious skepticism, there's a link on this website to a blog that takes one through the logical process as one leaves religion behind."
I want to read a lot of stuff, some random vampire fiction (like Anne Rice's writings), but I do want to read some stuff on religious skepticism. What book(s) are you speaking of?
The liberal church in Michigan is nice, and the people are great for the most part, but I just can't agree with their beliefs anymore.
My last day of school is May 19th, then festival on the 21-23rd. Then I go back to GA...lol
-Gabrielle
Sorry it's taken me so long to respond. I've been busy with school, and I've been sick for the past 4 days (I feel much better now, but I still feel really tired and don't know why).
This summer, I don't really have much planned. :P I'm going to an oboe camp in the beginning of July, which will be fun. :) I want to read a lot this summer, though, and go hang out with my 3 or 4 friends in GA. And try to enjoy the 3 month period of too-hot weather.
I'm not sure if Mom is going to make me go to church or not. I really hope she doesn't. I told her that I don't want to visit any of the churches around in GA, because even the 'non-denominational' ones are still too much like Baptist churches (at least they are there, the church that I went to up here in MI is a lot more liberal).
I have a few friends who don't believe in any one religion. :)
Mom doesn't take everything in the Bible as literal truth, just most of it (lol), so I guess she is a fundamentalist. Her friend (who we're living with) accepts everything in the Bible as literal truth, though (and he's a little more hardcore, just not completely batshit crazy). He (the friend) unknowingly made me think about something; he asked me if I believed the Bible was the inerrant word of God, and I immediately said yes, but soon after I really started thinking about what my true answer to that question would be.
Look forward to hearing from you.
-Gabrielle
I meant our families are religious. We are not . We are ourselves around our family. But if asked we will not deny our rational understanding of the world we live in. But we chose our battles. I prefer to give them the crazy look and then giggle. Cheers!
Didn’t get the chance to update my profile but thanks for stopping by. Ok, here are the answers to your questions:
Your background also fundamentalist christianity?
Well, my father became religious all of a sudden while in the military and was overseas. So began the crazy religion train of my once normal family, lol. Started with Jehovah Witness, then Pentecostal then even scarier...the holiness church. Fire and brimstone and other poltergeist things. That was weird. When I went to college I was still searching for this wonderful god because I thought I did every thing I was suppose to plus leading children choir, bible studies, singing in the choir and more bible study. I’ve even danced the “holy ghost” dance. The funny thing about that was I was VERY conscious of that particular act. Well hell, everything. I would psych myself up and wait for the perfect opportunity to “jump in” and get my workout on. It was a great release of energy and fun. I soon learned at college when I go the gay club I have just as much fun. Anyway, while in college I officially came out of the closet and increased my search for god because the bible said I will go to h. e. double hockey sticks. I even had one girl try to “save” me when I was trying to study for an exam. She was concerned about my sexuality. She got me too fired up from cursing her out I couldn’t study and flunked the exam. Lol. I tried going to a catholic church. That hurt my knees. I tried Buddhism. That hurt my knees to and because I was developing ADHD, lol chanting was a lost cause. When I finished my military term I found a church whose member’s were predominately gay. Nondenominational. Again I couldn’t figure out the excitement of this religion when you are gay. It was weird. After church we go the bar and live normal lives. Not speaking for all MCC churches. Just the one I went to. It was more like a pick up joint and a great place for gossip of who broke up with who and who is available (because where else are you going to find other gay people). So I said fuck it.
How long have you been an ex?
I’ve been an ex for about three years now but seriously I’ve been an ex god believer for about one month. And it’s been great.
Why Wiccan? Is that a belief system?
Wicca is so diverse. Some people actually use it with a belief system such as actually believing in gods and goddesses and fairies and other funky things. I do not consider Wicca (for me) as a religion. It is more of a way of life and something fun. I’m into herbs, crystals and oils for natural healing. Basically, just using their energy to complete a task. I don’t believe in actual gods and goddesses but I understand the duality of the planet and the nature within. And I understand that some apply names to that duality to make things more concrete for the purpose of doing something. Some also worship, some don’t.
Do you have non-religious contacts/friends in NC or are you in isolation?
Surprisingly in the freakish bible belt, there is a large group of atheist. I’ve joined a couple of their groups and have gone to presentations of Darwin during his 200th birthday. That was cool. And now this month we will be having a cookout and watching “Religious” and another movie about crazy Christians. Isolation? No. Our families (my partner’s and mine) are very religious and we are ourselves but have not come out of the god closet. Not really a big deal at this moment. But I will not deny my rational understand if asked.
Sorry I wrote a lot but really this subject can not be concised to a couple of sentences. Thanks for coming by. Of course there is a lot more to my fundamental life and travels but I’ll share later. How about you? Take care!
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