So ya, the story. I left christianity, as most did, through a series of events that, as a whole, caused me to question my definition of god. I was “saved� for about ten years. Seven of those years in music ministry. I was a devout fundamentalist christian and the bible was the inerrant word of god.
From very early on I was aware of a spiritual belief systems and their ramifications on daily life. I was born and raised in Florida outside a sleepy little town of spiritualists called Cassadaga. My family weren’t overly religious people. My father was a stout deist and kept the middle of the road approach, my mother was a non-practicing southern pentecostal. We never went to church on any regular basis, except for holidays and what-not. I would hang out in Cassadaga frequently even though it was forbidden by my mother. They were evil people in her eyes, an opinion inherited by her mother who was a minister in the pentecostal church. Being around them wasn’t a huge deal. They were normal people just like me. They were just a tad weird. It was normal stuff and a part of my childhood.
My mother though would always be afraid of their impact on my spiritual life. Minaw (my mother's mother, the pentecostal minister I spoke of previously) took it upon herself to bring us to church on a fairly regular basis. She would speak to me about the sermons that the preacher was going over to make sure that I was paying attention. I was involved in the youth group where I learned about dumbed down concepts of hell and death at around the age of five. I was also enrolled in a christian private school and taught the tenants of christianity.
The kicker is that I valued both viewpoints, the pagan and the sanctified. There was always some spiritual quarrel with the two mentalities. At a very young age I found myself constantly at odds with what was going through my mind. Its this right/wrong, evil/good. I spoke to some people and it was dark, I spoke to others and it was light. I could never get a straight answer. So I wandered around in a confused state for a large portion of my childhood, always weighing my decisions on the scales of black and white. Being a Libra, I was pretty good at it
But that's all for now. I have to go to the bank and do grown up stuff...phooey!
