Roads

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both And be one traveller, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth... ~Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken."

I held out as long as I could. I really did. And one day I ran out of will to push my way down the road that was blocked and tangled in undergrowth. Instead, I went down another. I lost my belief in a personal God, I lost the ability and desire to keep trying to believe in a heavenly Father who arranged my life according to his personal love and devotion to me.

I can still remember being a teenager following men around at church. I developed attachments to several older men - my Sunday school teacher, my 'church membership sponsor,' a couple of other men old enough to be my father. I was like a puppy wagging my tail hoping I'd get a biscuit. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't. For reasons I did not fully understand and still don't, I kept getting up and wagging my tail again even after being pushed aside by a callous foot. The perpetual craving of women to be seen, to be cherished by men. Her father. Her brother. Her lover. Anyone will do. I've seen it time and time again, in myself and in others.

Supposedly, the answer to this lies in Christianity. The God who gave us this craving for a Father's and a Brother's love is found through Jesus leading us back to the Father. We once were lost and now we're found, Daddy loves you, yada yada. For some perverse reason God gave us fathers and brothers just to show us how badly we could be hurt when we naturally looked to them for love, affection, approval. So even though you still have that longing for love from these people God set up just to tease you with, learn not to fall for the tricks He's set up for you to fall for, and turn to Him instead.

Makes perfect sense.

I thought I was making progress a few years ago in freebelievers. I can still remember the time someone gave me a kiss on the forehead. I remember the time someone else gave me a hand squeeze and a light platonic kiss on the cheek, like a dearly loved father or uncle might. I remember ages ago as a teenager, sitting with another eating peanut butter crackers and drinking Coke in the moonlight. And once many years ago, my own earthly brother and I being friends. The time he held my hand helping me walk across a meadow in the dark. Those few treasured moments of a lifetime, just little glimpses of what it might have been like to be

loved...

cared for...protected...

someone's sister, beautiful, treasured, seen...

until they all turn away and walk away. It was just a temporary thing. Not a foundation, not a resting place. Just a dog biscuit. A little snack to make me want more... a lifetime of going back to eat, and be filled.

Again, the Christian solution is to turn to God. Because even though Jesus said something about how the world will know you are my disciples (loving one another) this apparently was just for aesthetics. Today's Christian motto is to be sure not to look to other people, but to turn to God himself. Even though supposedly God himself indwells man and we were to manifest His spirit by our love for one another. (just WHEN did this "don't look to others, look to God" shit get so widely accepted in Christiandom?! is God still in the sky somewhere looking down with a sad face or is he to be found in the human heart??)

So anyway. I finally realized that personally understanding and living the reality of being loved by a brother or father, either earthly or heavenly, is not going to happen for me and it's time to let it go and walk away.

What will such an unknown road hold? A road where I am no longer looking to other people to get my needs met, nor to a probably non-existent male deity who is supposedly all that a human male is, good and bad, just inflated to cosmic proportions? What will a new road hold... one where I consider that I am part of the Universe, and therefore have all the answers I need already downloaded somewhere inside of me? That I don't have to 'try' and connect with others or the Universe, but I already AM connected?