A non revelation- maybe

First of all, I have been slow to post and thin of content lately due to an influx of visitors trying to catch up with us before we move and a smattering of those helping us with the process. Add to that the fact I cannot use my left hand, even for the shift key, coupled with a herky jerky right hand, and my posting endurance suffers. I find myself physically sagging these days, mostly toward my left side. Soon I will become a puddle of flesh in my chair,  a worn out Stretch Armstrong, arms oozed to the floor, flaccid, my emaciated skull, -features drug by gravity- lolling upon my keyboard, my stubbly chin permanently at rest upon the ""B" key, electronically clacking row after row of my single letter epitaph.

Yesterday I was made the center of attraction in a faith healing. Before I go on, I must remind that throughout the life of this blog I have purposely avoided religious conversation other than an occasional brush fire, easily extinguished, avoiding any blaze of  controversy. My views on religion, well known within my close family, are both unorthodox and simplistic. I tend to observe religious views from space. I look at the globe and ask myself what truth works for every soul on Earth, then I study specifics and eliminate rules that would deny the  rights of any individual. There is no all inclusive faith, yet I believe faith is, and should be, all encompassing. All inclusive. Universal. Whether God exists in a form identifiable to us, whether He influences our lives or watches human existence play out as an experiment, -whether He exists at all- is inconsequential. The concept of God is enough upon which to base faith. Everything else, dogma, ritual, sin and judgment, guilt and repentance are merely man made boundaries to hold the sheep within the walls of specific religions.

I don't appreciate being judged yet I'm the first person to pass judgment on others. This is a bad trait. I tend to size people up based upon my assessments as if they stood out as the industry standard for behavior and opinion. My tendencies make me as obdurate as they come. It  is very difficult for me to open my mind to concepts that in the past were useless to me. I need to get on board with those concepts and see how I can help myself to the fruits of their bounties. My way of thinking isn't working. I need to smash the barriers to my survival. I need to take a crowbar to the rusty clasps on my skull and open my mind, not only to let new concepts in but to force out the presuppositions that have hampered me for years. Simply, I need a brain wash. Boraxo. A mule team with scrub brushes. A power washer. Tide and Glade. Then I must replace the clasps with a stainless steel zipper; accessibility with no rust. Maybe a Yin/Yang tattoo before my hair grows back.

So Amy took me to a church in Morton. I have no idea what compelled me to agree to the visit. I can guess that I was looking for a crow bar for my skull but that would be a stretch. More likely I thought I was going to hear somebody preach. My Jazzy rides too high in the van to read signs so the church shall remain unknown to me. I don't think Amy caught the name either. Every Saturday morning, I'm  guessing, the church opens a food pantry. We entered a side door opening on a large room full of tables, 40 or so people milling about, scattered conversations. Most folks wore name tags. Several people had been forewarned of our visit and two minutes through the door I met the leader of the pack, Tom, a nice guy with a cross around his neck.   I soon realized that everyone I met had a variation of the same. 

This will be rapid fire non-prose:

Tom took both my hand in his. A crowd gathered. A guy, Doug, sidled up beside Tom. He might have been the deputy healer. Tom spoke to me exactly as you'd expect. Suffice it to say this was some denomination of a Christian faith healing. I plan to experience, if I can, a Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist healing since I see myself as an equal opportunity searcher of truth. During Tom's efforts to cleanse me, to have Jesus heal me, others spoke prayer around me and occasionally Doug would boom his voice in an affirmation or in repetition in case God or Jesus were far away or hard of hearing. Often Tom would command me to repeat his words in the assumption that I was on board with the specifics of his statements, (much of which I was not), and I did as I was told because what I did not believe, exposed, would have altered the event drastically, destroying the greater good that I could glean from their process.

There is no need to write about the specifics of the healing since I have no use for them. What I got out of the whole ordeal was that faith, collectively, has power, has energy. Whether the source of that is Jesus, Mohamed or Buddha or whether it is placebo matters not to me. I need to better understand this energy in order to integrate it into my life.

Amy has read this post and would like to note that I first ghoulishly describe dying at my keyboard then refer to smashing and crow bars when I should use love and tenderness to crack my skull. I promised her I'd consider the options.