Love, Hate, Pain, and Hope - my relationship with the Christian Tradition

I have recently become acquainted with a number of people who have suffered from what euphemistically called “Post Traumatic Church Syndrome.” Since I have become acquainted with this group of people I have come to see a number of trends (of belief, experience, and ideas). Several of these trends have caused my own pain and tension to arise (the whole thing... sweaty palms, difficulty breathing, stomach pain, pain in the chest... on and on...). When I first started having these reactions to religious people I did not recognize it for what it was. But I have spent more than a decade working hard to recover from the trauma of being raised in a fundamentalist, evangelical church, and I have come to recognize the symptoms and have developed several ways to deal with them. Writing is one of those ways.

That is the reason for this blog.

I have made a personal commitment to these hurting and wounded people to be as transparent as I can be... so... as much as it scars me, I am going to share my own story as to how I was damaged by the church, why I left, and how I eventually returned. I am doing this for my-self, as an act of healing... but also for the group. To share my own burden with them, in trust... but in giving my own story to offer to share their burdens as well

I was two weeks old the first time I was taken to the church where I would spend much of my first 19 years. I learn many things at this church. I learned how to pray, how to cry out to GOD, how surrender to the “Holy Spirit,” how to use the tool of glossolalia, etc. But I also learned that anyone who was not us or just like us was evil, anti-Christ, filled with the devil, led by the devil, and on and on. I also learned that GOD’s love may be eternal, but his approval (and thus, my place in heaven) was as fragile as a cuss word or wearing a hat in church.

This church preached love as defined by the letters of Paul, but lived condemnation. Everyone and everything that was different than whatever vitriol was spewed from the pulpit deserved to be condemned. This was truly problematic when the various preachers in the church, and the many evangelists who stopped to “revivalize” us taught different and even opposing doctrinal ideas from the pulpit. This was confusing to say the least... depending on what was taught the night before (yeah, I was often there five out of seven days of the week) you were worthless for whole new and interesting reasons and going to hell for something were completely ignorant of the previous day.

This was particular problematic for me because I was different. I was Comanche, and my father was proud of his heritage and the ways of our people. My father was also a Freemason, and a seeker who would often share his searches, experiences, and discoveries with me. So, I was going to weekly Sweat ceremony while listening to how those savages called on the devil in those Sweat Lodges. I was going to powwows, which limited our church attendance, which of-course meant our salvation was in question.

I was also different for another reason. I began studying Marital Arts when I was five. It was a passion of my father’s that quickly became a passion of mine. I learned a number of different arts, and trained with a number of different teachers, but was most entranced with the arts based on Daoism or Zen. I learn the relationship of Yin and Yang in Wing Chun. I learned the flow of the Five Elements and their cycles in Xingyiquan. I learned the subtleties of the complex relationship of Yin and Yang in the I Ching through Baguazhang. I learned single pointed concentration in Karate, and the ethics of Zen in Shorinji Kempo. I trained with Buddhists, Daoists, Muslims, Atheists, agnostics, priests, and monks... and I found people who were much more Christ-like (or Christian) than ANY Christian I had ever known.

I didn’t know it then, but the plain mysticism of Pentecostalism was marrying the Natural spirituality of my Native heritage with the speculative spirituality of Daoism and the focused acceptance and surrender of Zen. I clung to all of this, learning the flow of energy through Daoist martial arts (Chigung and more), learning to see through the distractions in zazen, learning to surrender completely to GOD in Pentecostalism, and learning to see GOD and experience GOD in everything through Native perspective.

Of course, I dared not tell anyone in Church. What I could tell them was something that began happening to me somewhere around the age of 7 or 8. I began seeing visions of angels, demons, ghosts, auras, and other things. I began having dreams that would come true, or seeing secrets about people I knew... but most of all I began to have dreams of sitting at the feet of Jesus, learning.

This went on for many years, and as I grew older my visions became tinted with the angst of my teenage confusion, and the fact that I lived with a fundamental cognitive dissonance.

I cam into my own with a vision I had when I was sixteen. This vision focused my attention on several specific goals that demanded that I begin to move beyond the closed walls of this church. This shift in my personality was met with further condemnation directed at me personally and my family. It didn’t help that we were poor. Sure we had always been poor. But we were homeless once again, and once again this was seen as alternately a weakness on our part and an attack from the devil that we must endure.

It was also at this time that I was introduced to the Kabbalah (although I did not know that was what it was at the time) and the writings and theories of C.G. Jung. I begin to learn how the different elements of my own spirituality and my own life might work together, and I began to understand that most of what I believed was high spirituality was, in fact, the psyche.

I learned Jung’s ideas right along with the Kabbalah, and I began to grow.

You have to understand why this shift was so easy for me. GOD was my best friend, and Jesus was not only me teacher, he was my everything. My relationship with them had NOTHING to do with what I was taught in Church. In fact, as I learned about GOD and mind, and the soul through the eyes of Jung and Western Kabbalists, I began to see how what I had been taught at Church was artificially limiting and hindering my growing relationship with GOD.

I began to see religion as “soul training,” and at the time I began to see how the training I had undergone was not only wrong, but also unhealthy. So, I sucked it up and left the Church of my raising. The backlash was enormous. It was worse because I started attending our primary rival church in another part of town. At the same time, I asked my father if I could not work for a while because I felt the need to study the Bible for my self. He was glad to agree and I began to prayerfully study.

One of the wonderful things that I learned in the Church of my raising was how to prayerfully read the Bible. We were taught that sure, the Bible said what it said, but finding the meaning of what that said for you... from GOD... was something only you and the Holy Spirit could discover together. So, that is how I spent that summer. Praying and reading and changing.

I had all my fathers study tools. He bought me my first leather bound study bible, and I dove in. And I discovered that almost everything I had been taught was right and Christian and GOD’s will was contrary to what I found in the Bible itself. I had already begun to learn that the only place to begin to truly understand the Bible was in context. So, I began the process of learning the context of scripture. From Hebrew and Greek to history. Given my resources were extremely limited then, but what I had opened up my world.

Then my life fell apart. My parents separated and divorced. My mother moved to Texas, and took my siblings with her. I stayed in California with my Father because he has simply lost his hold on reality. I know now that he was emotionally and psychologically crippled at the time. PTSD was not something that was fully embraced yet (it would be another decade before he was given 100% disability by the VA). So, I was 19 and trying to hang onto my own sanity as I tried to nurse my broken father back to something that resembled a rational human being.

It worked, though. The fact that I had to be the parent destroyed our relationship for a very long time, but he came back. I was a different person by that time. As he degenerated I clung to the only thing I had, Church. It was my refuge. I studied and prayed and prayed and studied for months until I reached a point where I thought I would burst. I began to pray, “live me...” over and over and over... it was my mantra... Live me, Lord... Live me, Holy Spirit... This continued for at least another month until I reached another point where it felt like I would explode... and I stopped and whispered a prayer that scared the shit out of when I prayed it.... “I want to know you. I want to know you like the prophets and apostles knew you. I want that depth of you.” I prayed that for another month until I felt an answer... “Okay. You asked for it.”

This would begin a decade of such pain that I can barely even begin to share it.

My mother had another baby. He was two month old, and I realized that I had gone as far as I could with my father and in my life in that environment. I wanted my mother. I moved to Lamesa, Texas, population 19, 000, from the San Francisco Bay Area.

The culture shock was debilitating, but what I found there would begin to tear apart everything I thought I was. My family was going to a small Church that met all the criteria of a cult. The pastor was gently manipulative, extremely controlling, and seemed to thrive on other people’s shame.

I was trapped, and I had been trained to submit to ecclesial authority. I submitted to him. He drove my family apart (and we have always been unusually close). Through condemnation and manipulation he brought my sister to the point of suicide, my mother to a nervous breakdown, and me... he destroyed me.

We eventually came to our senses and moved to the larger city of Lubbock, Texas, but the damage had been done. We embraced a massive “non-denominational Church” which was really just a big Pentecostal church, where I was ushered into ministry, and this ministry is one of the great regrets and true shames of my life... I led a “support group” for college age, Christian men dealing with the problem of homosexuality.

Oh, the damage I did.

I also got married for the first time during this time.

It is important to note that it was here, at this Church that I first encountered the “prosperity gospel.”

This was a whole new level of condemnation. I had grown up poor, was still poor, and now I was being told that the reason I was poor was because of some defect. I was told that I didn’t have enough faith, wasn’t close enough with GOD, or there was something wrong with my lifestyle. I was already too damaged to defend myself from this utter perversion of the Gospel, but something in me began to pull away.

As I worked with the miracle healers, I began to see not only tricks that (I am convinced) most of them had no idea they were pulling; basic manipulation of biological energy (called Chi in some parts of the world), couple with a highly emotional and psychologically suggestive state, and (in more than one case) slight of hand, producing “miracles.”

It was the same kind of thing that most religious charlatans and cult leaders embrace, and often convince themselves that it is legitimate, real... from GOD.

Yes, I have seen true faith healing and things that most charismatic Christians cling to as miracle proof of their own godliness. I have also seen Daoist teachers, and Peruvian holy men, and Santaria priestesses do the same, and in many cases do it more effectively. On a side note: it was at that point that I began to understand Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity as a kind of Shamanistic Christianity – not a completely accurate use of the term, but it fits.

So, I started to pull away. My marriage disintegrated soon after, and I was offered a job in Dallas with the promise that my employer would pay me enough to pay my child support and regular trips to North Texas where my, soon-to-be ex-wife and my daughter lived.

That quickly fell apart and I ended up homeless once more.

I found a job baking at a bagel shop, and the assistant manager took me in. I lived with him and his wife for five months. They were kind, loving, were not offended by my moods or my need to be alone or spend hours in meditation and study. They didn’t think my evolving ideas were strange or weird. This was my first exposure to modern paganism. They were witches, and were the kindest people I had met since moving to Texas.

They helped me get on my feet.

Then my father contacted me to apologize for the way he had left our relationship years before. He wanted to make amends. He wanted me to come live with him where he was then living, on the reservation in New Mexico.

I moved and started going to my father’s Church. It was another Pentecostal Church. My divorce became final and I was notified that my ordination was now invalid because any man who could not control his spouse enough to keep her from leaving him was not suited to spiritual leadership. Or so I was informed. It didn’t matter that did not want the divorce. It didn’t matter that I fought tooth and nail. None of the circumstances of the divorce mattered. The fact of the divorce was all they could see. I was, once again, condemned.

While I was living with my father he was regularly attending sessions at the VA. They finally convinced him to enter a treatment program for PTSD in Colorado. I drove him up there and dropped him off. I returned to the reservation where I learned that my father’s girlfriend had emptied his bank account and would not let me back into the house.

I had enough money to pay to drive back to Lubbock. Where I stayed. I got a job and tried to begin building my life. I was able to start seeing my daughter again and moved in with my roommate... I could not, however, bring myself to go back to church. I tried but it made me sick to my stomach. Whatever church I entered... just being there was so stressful I would poor sweat, shake, and eventually leave. Of course, on one occasion when I was caught leaving in that state; I was told that I must be demon possessed and needed to be exorcised. Believe it or not... that did not help.

I started to create a life, and then I met the person who would become my second wife. I will only say a couple of things about this marriage. On the positive... my boys... my stepson who asked me to be his “dad” and I am to this day, my beautiful Patrick who died too young, and my youngest son who is the light of my life. On the negative... I left that relationship more damaged that ever in my life. I lost my daughter. I could not afford to pay child support, and I did not want her in the environment that was my second marriage. I let her go. Her stepfather was a good man, and I knew she would be taken care of. I was just trying to survive and keep my boys intact. I let her go.

During that time I lost my first-born (my daughter) and I buried my first-born son. And once again, the only thing that the Christians in my life could offer was condemnation and empty, condescending platitudes.

I eventually gained the courage to leave my second marriage, but I wanted to play an integral part in the raising of my remaining boys. I moved two blocks away and began working a low wage part time job. My apartment was a hovel, but it was cheap. I was able to be my youngest son’s childcare, and I began to heal.

While still in my second marriage I began to feel strongly the pull towards the contemplative life. I realized that I had lived that life for most of my young life and I wanted to embrace it again. I also determined to find out for my-self what the Bible actually said and what the history of the Church and the history of Christian dogma and doctrine was.

I refused to call myself a Christian. I was in Texas, and Christianity and right-wing-greedy-capitalist politics was the same thing in Texas. I called myself a Daoist and started my journey to fully understand Christianity.

I also started a practice that is extremely difficult. I realized that I had no idea what I actually believed. I knew what I had been trying to convince myself of for most of my life, but what did I actually believe? I wanted to find out. So, I started deconstructing.... me...

Everything... I ruthlessly tore apart everything I thought I believed. I subjected it to the strictest research and testing I knew how to, and with every step I felt the shackles of imposed belief fall away. I started to feel free. Then I started in on GOD.

Now, keep in mind that at every step I talked to GOD about this. GOD was still my best friend, Jesus was still my closest companion, but I challenged everything... even their existence. At every turn I would test myself to see if my life would dramatically change if the results of this deconstruction were true. At every turn I pruned elements of my life... everything that was extraneous... and all I was left with was me. Naked, pure, broken, wounded, me.

Then I had an experience that continues to this day, an experience that has never stopped. I was sitting at Hastings entertainment, reading a collection of the notes of Bruce Lee on Martial Arts and life, when I felt like I expanded... continuously... spread faster and faster throughout the universe... and I began to understand.... then something clicked and I became aware of a kind of rushing energy flowing beneath the visible universe... and I floated and dissipated and reconstituted within it... it’s depth was greater than my imagination...

When I came back to myself, tears were flowing down my face and I was a different person. I understood that when I removed all of the distracting beliefs I was open to swim in GOD. When I tore apart the doctrinal walls that imprisoned my relationship with GOD, I was able to melt in GOD... GOD was now in whom I lived, and breathed, and had my being.

But I wasn’t finished.

I thought the visions would stop. I thought I was done. I thought I had reached where I needed to go. But I wasn’t finished. The process needed to be completed. So I continued to challenge the very existence of GOD. Embracing the idea that what I had just experienced could very well have been “all-in-my-head.” I learned to come to terms with that idea. I learned that if that were true, it did not make that transformative experience any less valuable. It would change nothing.

I still called my self a Daoist. In Texas everyone needs a religious label, and since no one really understood what I meant when I said Daoist it was a safe label.

But then...

A couple who were very good friends of mine asked me to officiate their wedding. This opened the floodgates of my sense of calling. Something that I had beaten into submission during my second marriage. But... how could I be a minister if I wasn’t sure that GOD even existed? I didn’t know.

I looked into the Daoist priesthood, but one of the things that the deconstruction process taught me was that the pattern of my soul was Christian... Western Christian. The archetypal language of my psyche used Christian forms. My visions were continuing, and the symbolism was still Christian but more... beyond what I was taught were Christian symbols.

I realized why we have religion... the purest purpose of a religious tradition is to provide a language for our soul... whether the experience of the numinous comes from within or from an external source, we need an adequate processing system that will allow us not only to process the numinous but to intellectualize it, and to allow it to come to fruition in the mind and in action.

(Side note: it was during this time that I met the woman who is my wife. Who has been the balm for the damage caused by my marriages, which is something beyond the scope of this story)

In conversation with my then girlfriend (the above) I remembered that when I was young my father had called me a “Gnostic born.” I knew the orthodox rhetoric against Gnosticism, but I was tired of limiting my self to politically motivated doctrine (and yes... virtually ALL doctrine, from the Irenaeus in the second century to now is politically motivated – it is about controlling the masses... and even if they had the best of intentions... meaning they wanted to control them for their own benefit... well... that is still control... limit... placing the idea above the individual... the form above the relationship – it is control... politics)... So, I searched until I found a Gnostic Contemplative Order and joined.

This was when I began studying the Nag Hamadi and other extra-canonical works. I found an echo of my own visionary experiences in the Secret Gospel of John, in Allogenes, and Zostrianos and mostly in Marsanes. I dove in completely.

One day, one of my brothers in the Order approached me and asked if I wanted to become part of the Sethian Congregationalist Church. I still felt the call to ministry but I had no idea how to embrace it without chaining myself to what was for me a corpse. This was an opportunity.

I said yes, and he set up a meeting and training with Bishop Lee Peterson who was not a Gnostic, but who was a Franciscan Friar and Bishop without an ounce of condemnation. I went through a process of formation with Bishop Lee and was eventually ordained an independent Priest of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. As I was leaving Bishop Lee’s house, he stopped me and told me that I would be back within the year to be consecrated Bishop. I laughed and said that I did not want that kind of responsibility, but thanks for the thought.

Well... the SCC asked me to take over the role of Bishop six months later. I did not want to, but I prayed and meditate and came to the conclusion that it was the right thing for me to do. I called Bishop Lee (who laughed hysterically) and was consecrated Bishop.

This one was different though.

As I was driving home I felt something... heavy come to rest in my soul. I never gave the idea of Apostolic Succession much thought. Hell, I was fine using the term Gnostic or Sethian, but I would not use the term Christian to label my self or anything I did. I grew up Pentecostal, where we were taught that Catholics of all types were instruments of the anti-Christ, and I was told once to avoid apostolic churches at all costs... but here I was with this weight... this new thing happening to me.

Almost immediately I began to change. I started to feel responsible for the Christian tradition. In Buddhist terms, I was now the lineage holder for the traditions of the Apostles of Christ, and this is the way I approached it. I saw the whole thing archetypically (I had researched the topic of AS while a priest and came to the conclusion that the historicity is problematic, but it does go back at least 1500 years – that is quit a lineage to be responsible for).

I began to see the Christian tradition in new light. I searched and searched. I remembered snippets of things I uncovered during pervious research. I learned that there is almost no limit to the variations in Christianity. In many ways the Christianity of America, especially the evangelical branches, were a product of the modern eras. What I had been taught was traditional Christianity was not only not traditional it was virtually unrecognizable from anything that had gone before. I was taught that the Protestant Evangelical movement was a reflection of the original church. I learned that this was BS so deep you could drown in it. The branch of the Jesus movement that was closest to what the original followers of Jesus practiced was labeled a heresy and suppressed to the point of extinction. Most of the original followers of Jesus were killed during the fall of Jerusalem even before the Gospel of Mark (the earliest of the Gospels) was most likely written.

I learned that most of what we see as the Christian tradition is the product of different people throughout Christian history using the tools of Christianity to come to terms with the world. Yes, there were those who used these same tools to dominate what they knew of the world... and yes, once Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire the idea of Imperialist Ideal came to quickly saturate the tradition. But I also found the beauty of the tradition. I found the ethics of Jesus to call us to the best of human capability. I found profound spiritual and psychological insights in the letters of the Apostle Paul. I also found an evolution of thought that begins with Torah, and through both canonical and extra-canonical sources this thought evolves and resonated with almost every human experience imaginable. I found everything I love about Daoism in Christianity. I found everything I love about Zen in Christianity.

I began to see that the Christian tradition always has evolved, and this idea that it needed to stay static was a modern idea. I saw that it was an idea that would die as all static things do. I began to call myself a Christian once again.

I also began to see things in the Sethian scripture that I could not use. I began to see the beauty of the orthodox imagery, the orthodox Christian mythology – especially as it has evolved over the centuries.

The Sethian Congregationalist Church also evolved into an Inter-religious Organization that is most concerned with supporting people called to the ministry but who find themselves part of smaller, less-respected traditions, or simply do not want to adopt a religious label. This organization is called the Universalist Fellowship of the Sacred Path.

About two years ago I was attending a study group that were studying the Daodejing. While there someone I thought was a friend claimed that the only reason I was there was to get members in my “Fake Church.” Even though I understood that she was coming from place of pain, this hurt me so deeply that it tore open all of my religious wounds. In essence, she accused me of being exactly the thing that had caused my trauma, and she did it based on her knowledge that I was a Bishop who did not conform to the Roman Catholic ideal of being a Bishop.

After many tears and sleepless nights, I contacted Bishop Lee for advice. He put me in contact with the Progressive Episcopal Conference, which is an organization designed to encourage and support independent Bishops who hold valid Apostolic Succession.

They eventually asked me to become the Bishop of the Diocese of the West. I agreed on the condition that it would not threaten or interfere with my work with the UFSP. Since then I have truly found a home in the Anglican tradition, which all Episcopalians is a part of. I found an organization that allows people to grow, as they must, using the tools of the Christian tradition, supporting healing and growth at every stage.

I love what I do. I find it amazing where I have come.

Praise be to GOD... what ever that is... Ha!