Limbo No More

The last few months I have been trying to reassess what spirituality and religion and God all mean to me. When I joined the church it was easy- everything was placed in front of me and I just had to do what everyone else was doing. God was like this, the Holy Ghost felt like this; it was a matter of jumping into the rut and trenching in. Since I’ve climbed out, it has been refreshing to finally breathe new air and see things that I was not seeing before, but I confess I’ve felt a little lost now and then. It can be difficult to embrace a nearly blank slate. But I think in the end it will be so much more spiritually rewarding than anything the rut had to offer. I foresee a much more personal connection with heaven because I will be searching for what is right for me instead of following a brown formula. I do that- I think of things in colors. The church and the rut and the formula are all brown in my mind. And not like a rich library brown or a Hershey brown- more like a decaying grayish brown- think cold oatmeal. Now the world outside the rut- I feel bright green and blue, silver, white, and violet. I guess I have to think of this new world as more of an open horizon and wonderment of colors than a strange wilderness of intimidating hues. It’s time to fill up my new space- I finally have room to run!

My house, my role
My friends, my man
My devotion to God
All amorphous, indefinite

Nothing's been clear
Nothing's been in
Nothing's felt true
And I've never had both feet in
Nothing's belonged
Nothing's been yes
Nowhere's been home
And I'm ready to be limbo no more

My taste, my peers
My identity, my affiliation
All amorphous, indefinite

Nothing's been clear
Nothing's been in
Nothing's felt true
And I've never had both feet in
Nothing's belonged
Nothing's been yes
Nowhere's been home
And I'm ready to be limbo no more

I sit with filled frames
And my books and my dogs at my feet
My friends by my side
My past in a heap
Thrown out most of my things
Only kept what I need to carve
Something consistent and notably me

Tattoo on my skin
My teacher's in heart
My house is a home
Something at last I can feel a part of
Sense of myself
My purpose is clear
My roots in the ground
Something at last I can feel a part of
Something aligned
To finally commit
Somewhere I belong
Cause I'm ready to be limbo no more
My wisdom applied
A firm foundation
A vow to myself
'Cause I'm ready to be limbo no more

Happy is what Happens

It’s been a little more than a month since I started blogging and re-coming out to people. These last few weeks have been some of the most exciting, turbulent, joyful, painful and peaceful times that I can remember- a definite circus of emotions; I couldn’t have hoped for a better welcome into moholandia! Admittedly I’ve made a cannonball dive into the moho pool (some might think of it more as a belly-flop) and my splashing has gotten some people pretty wet as they’ve tried to keep me from drowning, and for this I sincerely apologize. I want to thank Brady, Therapevo Ydata, Calvin, Pan, Kengo, Romulus, and Peter for helping me learn to begin to swim and for enduring my waterworks.

So where do I stand now? Well, I feel really peaceful about where I’m at. I think I’m starting to come to terms with who I am and what life may have in store for me. I’m still not clear on every issue, but at least I don’t feel stagnate anymore.

And where do I stand regarding the Church? If it isn’t obvious yet, I’ve been wavering for a long time. I still find peace in prayer, scripture study, and even attending church- I can’t stop being a spiritual person- that’s just not an option. I still have a firm faith in the Atonement and in Heavenly Father’s perfect love. But I am struggling to believe other things that I thought I knew. But as I said, despite my testimony troubles, I feel happier and more alive and at peace than I have ever felt before.

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” - Galatians 5:22-23

“Wickedness never was happiness.” - Alma 41:10

Healing Waters

After all these apostate, speculative, and maybe even blasphemous-sounding posts, I think it might be appropriate to share my spiritual side. Yes, I do consider myself to be a spiritual person. I sincerely appreciate all the feedback that I’ve received thus far concerning my unorthodox propositions. If I ever post something that you think is completely ridiculous, feel free to voice yourself. :)

I deeply feel that there exists a divine reality outside the realms of natural human understanding and reasoning. I know that I have had multiple experiences in which I have felt that I have connected with this divine reality. I’ve not only felt peace and reassurance, but a soul-moving anticipation of the glorious existence that waits for us beyond mortality. Paul calls it the “earnest of the spirit” –a sort of foretaste of the superior and infinite joy of Heavenly Father’s kingdom. I really can’t express very well in words the nature of these feelings, so I’ve collected a few scriptures and quotes that best convey how I feel the Spirit:

“Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.” -Alma 32:28

Oh My Father
For a wise and glorious purpose

Thou hast placed me here on earth,

And withheld the recollection

Of my former friends and birth.

Yet ofttimes a secret something

Whispered, "You're a stranger here."

And I felt that I had wandered

From a more exalted sphere.

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world" -C.S. Lewis

And here’s me reprimanding myself:
“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes…” –Proverbs 3:5-7

So now you've seen both sides. It really is an inner battle that I'm going through right now and there's no easy way out. The Lord says that he speaks to us through our mind and heart, but my thoughts and feelings are so muddled lately that I'm not sure what to trust anymore. I thought I knew myself, but some days I feel like a stranger in my own skin. Who the heck am I? Every time I think I know, life seems to throw me another loop- it's just one big vicious cycle of identity confusion. Les Mis keeps popping into my head-

"Who am I? Can I conceal myself for evermore?

Pretend I'm not the man I was before?

And must my name until I die

Be no more than an alibi? Must I lie?

How can I ever face my fellow men?

How can I ever face myself again?

My soul belongs to God, I know

I made that bargain long ago

He gave me hope when hope was gone

He gave me strength to journey on.

Who am I? Who am I?"

"I had a dream my life would be... so different now from what it seemed!

Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."

Playing with Fire

I told you that the Dragon would be back. Here he is making his stand against spiritual experience:

The Dragon: “How can you claim to know that what you believe is true?”
Draco: “The primary way (or at least the method most emphasized in the church) to know between good and bad or truth and falsehood is through a feeling/thought of reassurance or peace.”
The Dragon: “And how can you rely on these thoughts and feelings?”
Draco: “I can rely on them because they come from God through the Holy Ghost and because Satan cannot falsify these feelings.”
The Dragon: “But how can you be sure that this peace comes from God and that some evil source is unable to imitate them?”
Draco: “Well, the scriptures teach us this principle in several places: Moroni 7 and 10, Ephesians 5:22, and D&C 50 to name a few.
The Dragon: “That’s all very well, but how can we be sure that what the scriptures are teaching is true?”
Draco: pauses to think “We can know that the scriptures are true by praying about them and receiving a confirmation from the Holy Ghost.”
The Dragon: “But look- you’ve already fallen into circular reasoning. Your argument is invalid; you say that you know but in reality you only believe and call it knowing. Your sense of knowledge of religious truths is an illusion.”

In case you missed The Dragon’s criticism, here’s another example:
Some one gets up in sacrament meeting and says (like so many of us members say), “I know by the power of the Holy Ghost that the church is true.” When he says “by the power of the Holy Ghost” he of course means that he has felt some spiritual feeling or divine assurance. So we could ask this person how he can trust that what the “power of the spirit” supposedly reveals to him is true. Here, some people will get confused and say something banal like, “I just know” and feel appeased in their minds that this is a sufficient answer. With some prodding, however, most will eventually say “because the scriptures [or some other authority] says so” or “because that’s the way God speaks to us.” Then we can ask him how he knows that the scriptures or the prophet is telling the truth or how he knows that this is God’s manner of communication. He is forced to, unless he can provide outward empirical evidence (which, according to church doctrine, has a lesser value that inward spiritual evidence), use his first premise as his conclusion- “by the power of the Holy Ghost.” If a testimony is based on personal spiritual experiences, one can never arrive at knowing with surety- he can only claim a firm belief. The Dragon would also say that people want to know the truth so badly, that they find ways to assign truth to any set of beliefs. They contrive and interpret their feelings to mean that they have found truth so that they can find reassurance in knowing- in being right. After all, who likes to live in doubt? But let’s get back to the dialogue:

The Dragon: “You said that Satan cannot falsify feelings of the Holy Ghost, correct?”
Draco: “There are certain feelings that Satan cannot imitate- they come only from God.”
The Dragon: “Then what is ‘carnal security’ and what is ‘false hope’? Are not these falsifications of the peace and assurance to which you cling? If a force in opposition to God can provide imitations of feelings, then how can we trust our feelings alone to confirm truth? I might feel peaceful about pursuing a homosexual lifestyle and have hope in my future with that pursuit. How can God expect me to recognize the difference?”
Draco: “Well, the scriptures and the leaders of the church teach us how to distinguish between the two.”
The Dragon: “Ah, but how can you trust these authorities? Once more you have wrapped yourself in a circle. All that you have done is to choose to believe what you want to believe and put faith in those beliefs. It is comforting to say- empowering for you to say- that you have reasons to believe, that is, your feelings and your authoritative sources. But these reasons are only parts of circular reasoning which can never prove any truths. The only reason you favor one religion over another- or over atheism for that matter- is because you want to believe it. You have faith, but you cannot obtain knowledge in the manner which you have explained. There is no escaping your circle. Your “testimony” is simply a list of things that you have chosen to believe, but you do not know them.
Draco: “If that’s true, then why do so many people say that they know just as I do?”
The Dragon: “There is safety in numbers. It is much easier to convince yourself that some religious principle is truth if many others ascribe to it. But they only know from their own personal spiritual experiences which I have already shown to be inadequate for proving truths. Their knowledge is also illusory. A tomato will never be a vegetable no matter how many times people call it a vegetable.”

Perhaps people will say that I shouldn’t meddle into these kinds of questions- that I’m setting myself up for apostasy and reasoning my way out of truth, or maybe placing my reason above God’s wisdom. So then am I supposed to be satisfied with doubt? Or what if what we call “God’s wisdom” only consists of the ideas that we assign to him based on what we think we know, while his real wisdom lies outside our orthodox sphere of ideas. Based on the Dragon’s argument, all I can do is to choose to have faith or not to have faith (or at least to have faith in other doctrines) depending on what I want to believe. I can contrive or interpret my spiritual experiences to point me either way.

I realize that thus far I have been fairly one-sided in my blogging, so maybe next time I’ll flip things around so that I’m looking at all these issues objectively. After all, objective reasoning was part of what led me to baptism in the first place (the other part was obviously faith).

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” -Thomas Aquinas