The contrasts in life are incredible and their depths unimaginable, the reach between them are so they do not touch nor do they brush up against each other, two drastically different worlds, yet on the same planet living and breathing in the same time frame.
I had a short Artist Date followed by a conversation reporting more abuse in the FALC’s congregation; more horror of insidious acts perpetrated against children by highly regarded church members. Tales whose reflection echoes my parents…and a friend’s suicide explained 25 years after it happened. Swinging from Art to Horror within minutes.
The Artist within me, just moments before had feasted upon colors and fabulously soft textures, from the curly silken softness of alpaca wool to real silk spun by a worm and then dyed by Artist’s hands…my spirit was alive and alert to new things dreaming of how they can be used in an upcoming project…visions of color and me. I then was plunged into the harsh stark reality of abuse and its long term affects, my Artist disappears and my abused self arises, listening to the details of evil.
The contrast of embracing and working with my Artist self while healing from sexual abuse as well as unhinging myself from a brainwashed mind is equally on the far ends of the spectrum, yet closely related.
It almost seems like my artist self was hijacked by abuse and that religion; so in order to become my most artful self, I have to fully understand from whence I came.
The horror stories of childhood abuse, and how it affected the life afterwards is horrific, but equally is the ‘normal’ presentation of the perpetrators and their warm reception by the folks of the church, it seems more profound.
I told my brother I had more respect for the Klu Klux Klan folks for their agenda was front and center.
Whereas the hierarchy of the church sells an agenda of high morals and values, setting limits on the evils of the world and how their congregations are made to adhere to rules forbidding pretty harmless sins.
Watching of Television, to watching a movie, to nail polish, hair coloring, yet while the circles of abuse grow ever widening, while more and more children are born into the centers of crime, this seems violently insane.
Sexual predators sit on the board and behind the pulpit, and false evils are handed out, while behind the scenes, children face the repressed darkness, alone.
The singing in the pews can never be loud enough or sweet enough to heal the children who have been raped repeatedly, whose brainwashed state leaves them helpless for alternatives, who some find release in suicide or drugs and alcohol.
The face of the church that is presented to the public is like the white sheet the Klu Klux Klan hid behind… We are all fooled that the sheet is the man/woman instead of what lies behind.
What lies behind is the pile of sins, the unhealed wounds of their own childhood, the eroded brain from too much washing, the unreality of life…who needs the trappings of the church in order to hide.
I have often wondered of the deep-rooted fear that many struggle with about leaving the church, and I may have figured it out. It isn’t the fear of going to Hell that keeps them there, but the covering of the sheet.
They are too afraid to stand alone outside of the pews of the church.
They need the covering of religion offers.
They need the pretty faces of singing voices.
They need it all to cover up what lies beneath.
And what lies beneath un-addressed is the monster that continues to rape children and do extremely horrific deeds. And this sheet, they believe, has the magic to bless it all away, that they can literally hid behind its whiteness.
Sadly, it is true.
For no one speaks of the filth underneath, nor do they address it, and haul it into the court of the land. There are a few lonely voices trying to speak of above the hymns they sing so loudly as to not hear the cries…
I do not know what it will take before their sheets fall once and for all, when the children unite and yank them off, when this vicious insanity will stop.
I get so incensed with the idea that this is called a ‘church’.
It is the devils playground where children’s lives are sacrificed, where pedophiles reign supreme, and the brainwashed walk their narrow path, unquestioning, unchallenging, and unseeing to their final destination Heaven, to afraid of Hell to stop. Yet no one tells them they are in Hell.
The swing from Art to the harsh reality of sexual abuse hidden behind the white church…shows the distance I traveled, the valley of death that I traversed to be able to stand and ponder, Art.
Art is the complete opposite of that Hell.
The soul recognizes its worth in the wonder of Art.
