Day by Day

I believe the Bible is a collection of metaphors.  People just have this colorful way of speaking.  It’s how we communicate.  A lot of symbolism in religion is intuition.

It’s about energy.  Very scientific, really.  Call it what you want.  But I believe when people congregate in a place of worship we create energy that connects us to people.

A friend wanted to go to church, so I went with her yesterday.

However, I like distance from organized religion because ministers are just vehicles for the spirit, but they are flawed humans.

I love Jesus — the symbol Jesus.  He carries our sins because we’re weak – it’s the way we’re made.  That’s why spiritual leaders have spiritual leaders.  They need someone to advise them so they don’t form cults, and tell people God told them to have sex with them, or to drink Kool-Aid with cyanide in it.

I do need a spiritual leader, some authority.  I have to appreciate that the spiritual leader is human, to have compassion for that.

Religions and spiritual texts have exercises where at the end of the day you assess your behavior – it’s necessary to function in a healthy way.

There are people who take the message too literally, tainting the idea of religion.

There is no cosmic Santa Claus, as the minister of my family church has said. God’s not going to save me from disease, death, debt – maybe to an extent.  I don’t think it makes sense for me to think that I made it through something death-defying because God loves me.  I’m sure there are people involved in some of the myriad tragedies who believed and who were worthy of this “salvation”, but didn’t “make it”.  We’re so self-centered.  I do believe it’s okay to thank God that you did come through.

God is my higher consciousness.  When I’m aligned with it, I get the answers to problems, because I open my energy up by being willing.

My spirit life is about radiating positive energy within challenges I face with people day to day.  It’s also about facing death, my own death, the death of loved ones.

I think the way we look at death encourages gluttony, greed, and hatred.  We believe it’s so final, that we cling to temporal things, including other lives.  That energy is transformed and not final.  I don’t know what happens when we die, but I should be okay with it because it’s natural.  So why is death bad?

You see it on refrigerator magnets, but really, we only have today.  That’s where my joy and so-called blessings are – not in the future after I’ve obtained my goals.

My spiritual quest is about learning how to stay in the present and being alive where I am now.   This makes my life more manageable and I can start new each day.

The minister who preached at my family church was intellectual, but he would build up a fervor, after he captured you with reason.

Reason is what keeps me faithful, despite outward appearance.  I say vile things, and contemplate evil, but in the end my spirit strives for moderation.  Mostly I walk in a certain direction, despite what I say.  But sometimes I am mischievous.  Sometimes I don’t want anything to do with God.

I don’t want to preach.  Maybe I have here – fuck it.  This is just my experience.  I believe that the universe is vast, and that the possibilities are just as vast.  And there’s so much I don’t know.  Why shouldn’t I embrace the idea of God? There, I said it.

The Life

My father and I went to a funeral where the minister berated us.  He told us all that we only came to church for funerals and holidays.  He shouted bible passages at us and said little about the dearly departed.  My father sat two rows behind me.  I had floated around saying hello to people and was sitting next to a long-lost cousin when the service started.  Did the…minister just say that we were going to…hell?  I had to look back to see dad’s reaction.  He raised a brow in suppressed glee with a hint of a smile.  I looked back again and saw him gleaming.

I didn’t cry at my father’s funeral. At my father’s funeral there was just a headshot of him that my step mother blew up.  Dad had been cremated.  The life behind his eyes leapt out at us from the photo.

People got up to pay tribute to dad — one advertised his business between the tribute.  Why not pitch a sale to all of the grieving potential customers?  I looked at dad’s gleaming eyes in the photo and stifled laughter.  What would dad say to this?  Dad had a sly sense of humor but would also have compassion for the absurd need of this poor soul.

I also don’t know how he would have liked the song that a lady from the church had sung.  For my taste it was too sweet and generic.  But as you know I’m a weirdo.   I looked at dad’s picture during the song.  While he would have appreciated it, he gleamed impishly at me from the photo.   I would have chosen “Spill the Wine” by Eric Burdon and War.  The fantastical lyrics remind me of him.  The group also had a grimy sensibility like my dad.  My sister cried during this lady’s sentimental song.  My sister and I were the first ones out of the church after the funeral.  “I can’t be-lieve you cried during that song,” I said.  She looked at me with her tear-streaked face and we burst out laughing, standing at the top of the church steps.

While dad was in a coma I cried walking down the street – in the middle of talking to people.  I always thought that if my father died, I would just drop dead.  How would I live?  No one would ever love me like this again.  I used to hear him in my inner-ear while he was still alive, just calling “Sandee.  Sandee.”  There was a black hole now.

I had prayed while he was in a coma.  I guess it worked because after the initial mourning, I felt spiritually revitalized.  They say people born under the sign of Scorpio experience renewal upon death.  Interesting, because it happened to me.  Aside from that, one day the thought came to me, If dad died, it can’t be a bad thing.

Church

Maybe I’ll go to church.  I’ll have Sundays free again because my job ends in December. My family church is a Baptist church in Harlem.  We didn’t go often but when one of us died this is where the funeral would be.  My parents were married there.  It’s where I was christened and baptized.  I went once as a kid with my mom and a woman started hollering, “Yes Jee-susah!  Oh Jeeesus yessuh!”  She ran into the aisle, rolled on the floor and foamed at the mouth.  The church nurses grabbed her and calmed her down from the Holy Ghost.  This scared the shit out of me.  I started hyperventilating.  The service wasn’t full of people like this — thank God!

Nowadays the church discourages this.  Although at one recent service a woman got ‘happy’ and ran laps around the pews.  I laughed my ass off as did others.  But generally the services are more subdued.  The people wear jeans and the minister is intellectual and has a Ph.D.

My dad’s funeral was there and the minister back then appealed to reason.  He spoke in a conversational voice then built up slowly to a fervor.  This minister was why I wanted go again.  But then he died.

I volunteered there feeding the homeless for Thanksgiving once and had heard that the next minister was just as good.  I checked out a service and it was true so I started going regularly.  I was still drinking so a couple of times I was drunk from the night before, crying with my mascara all smeared.  Then I stopped drinking.

Sometimes I felt that the spiritual energy there could levitate the building.  Although ministers are human, I believe that some are vehicles for God and that it’s their job to transmit messages, even while they are flawed the way everyone else is.

At first I thought I’d use church as a placebo.  But basically, I felt that the collective energy all directed likewise would be an effective healing mechanism.  For me having a spiritual advisor works, otherwise I might hear God tell me to do things the way that a cult leader does because I’m demented.

While I appreciate that there are different ways people get in touch with their spirituality, this worked for me.  And I know organized religion has its ‘issues’.  Recently I talked to a man who had a personal spiritual advisor.

Church and praying doesn’t always have the immediate effect on me the way that liquor did.  It seeps slowly into my consciousness and informs some of my actions without me thinking about it.  I’ve even left church feeling fear and negativity. Sometimes having a spiritual session or praying just unearths some of the ugliness, which is later dispersed.  But it comes back.  I’m just glad to have a spiritual advisor as a counter-balance.  I may not go to church every Sunday, but it will be nice to be able to go back now and then when I want to.

My favorite parts of the movie The Devil’s Advocate

I thought I’d write about The Devil’s Advocate after watching it yesterday then changed my mind.  “Nobody’ll give a shit,” I thought.  But then Brigitte mentioned the movie in her post, which is a sign from God.  So, here are my highlights from the movie:

[sing along everyone]

Romans 16:19 says!
Romans 16:19 says!

Be excellent in what is good
Be innocent of e-veel
Be excellent in what is good
Be innocent of e-veel

[still singin’?]

And the God of Peace will soon crush Sa-tan
God will crush him underneath your feet!
And the God of Peace will soon crush Sa-tan
God will crush him underneath your feeeeeeet!

In this scene, the church folk sing this little ditty.  A pudgy black woman dolled up in her Sunday best, looks so adorable.  She’s singing, clapping moving side to side.  She wears a white bow in her hair.  She reminds me of a little girl telling the devil, “You’re gonna get it good!”

I always sing along when I watch this movie.  I like the God of peace will soon crush Satan part best – that’s when I shake my finger at the Devil.  For the next few days after watching, I sing the song, to myself, out loud, while walking up the hill to the bus on my way home from work, letting out the farts that I had to hold in all day.  Coworkers pass in their cars, “Sandee, want a ride up the hill?”  “No, that’s okay.  I’ve got to, decompress,” I say – hehehe.

This next part I like in the movie is the Devil’s speech which gets to me because it’s so darned true if you really think about it.  Tell me if you don’t feel the same way after watching it!  The devil says he’s a humanist.  How about that?  This scene makes me want to stand up in the pews and testify – tell it Devil!

This next scene is a girl on the witness stand talking about a game she’s played with her friends called Special Places.  “Is this game sexual in nature?”  The defense lawyer (played by Keanu Reeves) asks.  The young girl whimpers, “Yes.”

I’m like “What?!”  Special Places!  That sounds haawwwt.  With roiling hot adolescents?  This game never made it to my playground.  When we were adolescents we played True Dare Consequences Promise or Repeat.  Special Places gets to the point if you know what I mean.  How many special places do you have?  True Dare was all over the gaddam place.  We kept it focused though.  Everyone always chose Dare.  It was I dare you to tongue kiss this one, or I dare you to put your hand down that one’s pants – eeeevery once in a blue moon it might be I dare you to f-u-c-k somebody – I neee-ver ever did that.  But I heard Judy Head-Blesser did!

In this last part the Devil says that on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most depraved act of sexual theater known to man, he got it on with Mary Ann at about seven — whooooa!  But this is the Devil.  He should’ve been able to get up to ten — at least.

The Morals of a Rabid Squirrel

I hate gossip – okay so let me not be holier than thou – I don’t quite like gossip and talking bad about people for sport.  It appears that gossip and such is all some people can come up with to discuss.  This is the only conversation that they can muster.  Maybe they think it makes their lives seem interesting — being a receptacle of “juicy” hearsay dresses up their own dull lives.  They imagine people saying, “Look at all the fancy things she knows!  She’s soooo interesting!”

At work I received some gossip this morning.  I got off my high horse and listened attentively, reminding myself that I’m not perfect – why, there were moments when I’ve uttered something only realizing later that it was actually gossip!  So I listened and listened, said bye, bye and had a remembrance.

I worked with a woman once whom I loved loved loved.  Turns out some people there thought she was a hag shrew.  “I don’t want to hear what you’re saying to me about her, bad office gossiper you! – After all, I like the hag shrew,” I told them.  More came to tell me about the sins of the hag shrew – “Okay, whatever.  I love her, fuck off!”  I said.  Another came and said, “I want you to displace her – I think she’s a know-it-all and a big fat hag shrew!”  “Oh that’s so awful and mean,” I replied.  Finally, another came and said to me, “She waits for you to be surrounded by people then makes her attack to make you look bad!”  “Shoo, shoo,” I said.  “Oh but just you wait and see, she’ll do it to you!” Said this shatterer of my illusions.

The shatterer of my illusions was right.  The hag shrew turned on me like a rabid squirrel.  She did every goddamned thing they said she’d do and more!  This was a church where I worked and this hag shrew used to be a fucking nun!  If you need anything more to shatter your vision of organized religion I give you permission to use this as an example.  The church was nothing more than a corporation and the senior minister was a CEO.

Ah well, the moral of the story is, well there are a few morals to this story.  Number A, never trust a rabid squirrel; number B, never ever befriend a hag shrew nun – and number C, never get your morals from a goddamned church!

Thirteen Fun Facts about Sandee:

1. Actually read “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” to learn how to win friends and influence people.
2. Tried to have sex with someone she hated.
3. When she was 11, her esophagus closed up because of a disease called acalasia.  She has the dubious distinction of having had this rare disease! (But never the distinction of having rare genius, or of being a rare beauty, or of having a rare talent that people pay lots of money for, BUT a RARE DISEASE she surely did have indeed.)
4. Has been to 30 of the states in the United States of America.
5. For an hour DJayed at a party with two turntables and a microphone (in which she didn’t speak).
6. In 1977 she made out for an hour on her parent’s sofa to the eight track tape of Richard Pryor’s “That Nigger’s Crazy.”
7. She passed out on a bench in Central Park and came to at 3AM with no body parts missing (the only thing missing was her beloved pink earring).
8. Usually does not enjoy singing.
9. Talked on the phone for two hours with the late Peter Steele of Type-O-Negative (who said, by the way, that “[she had] a very sexy voice”); he promised to visit the next day but it didn’t happen.
10. When she fell on financial hardship, received $1500 from her church for rent.
11. Can mouth the script along with the 1968 movie “Night of the Living Dead.”
12. Kissed a rapper — in the mouth.
13. Sang Tom Jones’ “What’s New Pussy Cat” karaoke with a black boa, as a weekly feature at Keenan’s Piano Bar.  Well, maybe not as an actual feature, but as an expected drunken feature rolling on the floor.

Remember in the Exorcist They Thought it Was Rats in the Attic and It Was the Devil?

 

Well what the hell is that scratching, scraping and skittering I’m hearing in my walls?  Listen, I know I’m a Halloween enthusiast (I only just took my Halloween decorations down a couple weeks ago, and I’m already planning this year’s Halloween festivities.) and I’m attracted to dark things — let’s just say, euphemistically, that I’m a fan of “life’s mysterious aspects.”  But I don’t think this warrants a visit from you-know-who. I went to church two years ago, and I’ve been known to say a few prayers.  I told management for my building that I think it’s squirrels in the walls and on the roof – I live in the penthouse, that is, the top floor.  I stopped myself from making a joke about you-know-who being in the walls, because I didn’t want to flesh that idea out too much if you know what I mean.  But hell if I didn’t see hide nor hair of any small furry animal on the roof when I went up there.  SO, WHERE THE FUCK’S THAT NOISE COMING FROM!!!!  Just so you know, other neighbors have heard it too – so it wouldn’t be just me who’s targeted to be his personal minion.  Hey look, like in the movie when they’re throwing holy water on Linda Blair, the power of Christ compels me, and my daddy bought me a bonafide crucifix from Italy, and I WILL use it if I have to!