I am really appreciating the insight into Linzy and Pro Streets religious journeys and thought I might share my own. I realize this is long, but I'm not sure how to shorten it to where it would still make sense. I hope I don't bore you if you decide to ...
07-31-2007, 02:35 PM
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| Never, never, never give up  Independent High Point, NC 
| How I came to believe in “God” I am really appreciating the insight into Linzy and Pro Streets religious journeys and thought I might share my own. I realize this is long, but I'm not sure how to shorten it to where it would still make sense. I hope I don't bore you if you decide to read it all the way through. _______________________________________________ As a child I never once stepped foot into a Church with my parents. I had no religious teachings. None of my friends were overly religious. My only experience was going to Catholic mass with my best friend who went to a Catholic school. His parents didn’t go but I think it was required for him for school. He was a few years older then I and I think I went with him a few dozen times between the ages of 9-11. My mom would give me a dime to put into the collection plate but we always snuck up into the balcony where no one usually sat. We would put our dimes in a collection box as we left if someone didn’t come by. We stood/kneeled/sat when we were supposed to and I think we even picked up the hymnal and sang when it was time to sing. I remember it being boring but we were both well behaved kids and did what we thought we had to do with only a few giggles every now and then. Every Christmas Eve my Mom, Dad and I would go to my Grandparents about 50 miles away from our home. I always had a great time with my cousins and our family was a joy to be around. My only childhood prayers that I remember were said in the back of our car on the way home. It involved me thanking God for my family and asking Him to let our drive home be safe. It was always late on our Christmas Eve drives home so I was doing this laying down across the back seat of the car as I went to sleep. It's a nice memory I have. I guess there was a span from 11 to 16 that I never stepped into a church. I finally went to a Christmas Eve service with a girl I was dating through most of high school. I went with her family and had a really nice time. I have always loved Christmas songs and it was great being with all those people in church as they belted them out. One song they sang was “In Excelsis Gloria”. As we left the Church that night I proved my ignorance of religion by asking her parents “Who is the Gloria person we were singing about?” They died laughing and told me what it meant. Woops! I always remember believing in a God but not really knowing who He was. That all changed when I was in my early 20’s. The whole PTL and Jim Bakker scandal was all over the news. I never paid much attention to religion but this made me cynical. The more I thought about it the more upset I got that people could be fooled and the more I thought that people who believed in this stuff were ignorant. I think around that time another preacher (Swaggart?) was crying on TV saying if people didn’t send him so many millions of dollars God was going to kill him. It made me sick, and I blamed religion. I did what any other young person would do that is pissed off with religion and became an agnostic. I still believed in “something” but I didn’t know what. That didn’t last long though because the more I thought about it the more I believed that nothing exists besides us. The world and the universe exist, there is life on our planet that we can’t explain, but just because we can’t explain it doesn’t mean someone created it. I figured when you die, you rot. That is all. No afterlife, no soul, no nothing. Fast forward a few years to my wife’s father dying of Lupus. He was a great man. He was incredibly funny, a really hard worker and an excellent musician. Everyone that met him fell in love with him. He wasn’t perfect, he had his faults, but the good in him just shined through. He and my wife were very close. He was Hawaiian and taught my wife about the culture, even though they were living in IL. He taught her the music and the dance and when my wife was 11 she started dancing with the Polynesian group that my wife’s dad played music for. They usually had 2-3 shows a week and them being in the car together for so many trips all over Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin a bond really developed. So to say my wife’s heart was broken the day he died would be an understatement. At the wake in Illinois a few days after he died hundreds of people showed up. A lot of people stood in front at the microphone and talked about their lives with Lyman. And every story was heartwarming and hilarious. These people told so many funny stories you would have thought it was a Fryers Roast instead of a Wake. It really helped us heal. The point of my talking about this is coming now. A year to the day after Lyman died my wife was having a grand opening for an Art Gallery she was running for a friend. It was all hers. She decided on inventory, advertising, what the grand opening would be like and what artists would be invited. She planned it for anniversary of her fathers death so it would take her mind off of it. Everything went brilliantly. She had tons of traffic. The artists were thrilled as their artwork flew off the walls and the owner was ecstatic. As my wife was walking to the back room her mind went to her dad and all the sudden the lights went out in the whole place. Her first thought was “Hi dad! You’re here!” But then she quickly thought better of it and looked to see if someone had accidentally hit the switches or if a circuit tripped, but no one was near them and the lights all came back on by themselves after several seconds. She told me about what happened and her dad maybe being there that night. I thought it was a nice thought and was glad it happened. But I figured it was coincidence. A few months later my wife and I went to DC so she could take some dance lessons with a Kuma Hula (master Hula instructor). One of her dads close friends had moved to NC and we would visit him often and it ended up some of his friends were going to be playing music for the lessons and he came with us. I stuck around for a while and watched as 30-40 girls learned new dances and our friend Ben played music with the band. They then were going to be learning a chant dance where only an Epu (hollowed out gourd) was going to be used so the band was no longer needed. Ben’s friend wanted to go to his room to pick up a different guitar and get something to eat and they invited me to go with them. They ended up playing some music in the room. Ben on his 8 string Ukulele and his friend on his guitar. They were coming to the end of this song and they started playing faster. They were each RACING to get to the end of the song to see who could play the fastest. It was awesome to watch and when they finished we all busted out laughing. I said to them “Man, Lyman would have loved this.” And all the sudden the lights went out. They stayed off for about 1-2 seconds and them came right back on. Ben looked at me all wide eyed (many Hawaiians are VERY superstitious) and said “What the hell was that!” His friend said “I don’t know, but let’s go back downstairs!”  I thought it was the coolest coincidence ever. Later that night when my wife, Ben and I were eating dinner I told my wife about what happened. She just stared at me and finally said “You’re kidding, right?” I figured she would think it was cool and all that but she really seemed stunned. Then she told me what happened to her. While we were upstairs all the girls were learning this chant. They would learn a piece of the dance, then another piece and so on. Finally they put it all together. She said every girl in there did it perfectly. 30+ girls all dancing with a man doing the chant and banging on the Epu to keep time and when it ended the girls all cheered. My wife was exhausted and thrilled with how well they all did. And she thought to herself “Why can’t dad be here?”. As soon as she finished her thought the lights went out. All the sudden my certainty of no life after death was starting to crack. I couldn’t explain these things and it was actually making me feel “good” to have these doubts. And all doubts left me the following summer. Now let me rewind a little bit. The year Lyman died we had a Luau in NC. It was something we had planned over a year for. Lyman was helping my wife figure out what was needed, what we should plan on doing, serving etc. He was as excited as my wife to do this. We had planned on something small but all the sudden we were expecting almost 200 people to show up. It was going to be huge. We were making Kalua Pig, Flying my wife’s old dance group out with the band from IL. We had a giant stage built, lights were rented etc. And Lyman was getting sicker. The last few weeks of planning Lyman was in the hospital talking to my wife on the phone every day to find out what was going on and what was needed. Two days before the show he checked himself out of the hospital against Doctors wishes and flew to NC. He was so weak he needed to be in a wheel chair. We had to carry him to the bathroom and put a chair in the shower so he could wash. The day of the Luau he sat in his wheel chair and directed everyone in what needed to be done. We had lots of people helping and it was great to have a single point of contact with someone who had done this before. The night of the show we put up a big wicker chair and he MC’d and sang through the whole show. And as the show progressed into the night he didn’t get weaker, he got stronger and stronger. By they end of the show you would have not thought he was a sick man. He seemed to have the energy and voice of a very healthy person and was in his glory. Everyone who was there fell in love with him and his energy. He died later that year. Two years after his death we decided to have another luau and dedicate it to him. It was even larger then the first because everyone who was at the original luau wanted to invite their friends and family. By the end we had over 350 people. It seemed everyone who was there stopped me to say how much they loved the first luau and how sad they were that Lyman had died. My wife choreographed a dance to a song called Hawaiian Soul to dedicate to her dad. Our friend Jorge played the keyboard and sang it for her. The opening verse is this: I can recall the way, Your voice would fill the room And we would all be stilled By your melody. And now your voice is gone And to the sea belongs All of the gentle songs That you harbored. It’s a beautiful song and my wife created a beautiful dance for it. About half way through the show she came out and dedicated it to her dad. Jorge was singing, Tonja was dancing, and I could see people crying. Then stage lights went out. Now, the lights had gone out before the show started because we had overloaded a circuit. The light panel that controls the lights and the lights themselves died. We found an unused circuit and plugged them into there and that seemed to have resolved our issue. So I figured we had blown that circuit now. I ran to the light panel and guess what? It was lit. This board was on the same circuit as the lights so if the circuit died it should be off as well. The lights stayed off for about 10 seconds and then came back on by themselves. I lost it. I walked behind the stage and cried like I hadn’t cried in a long time. I KNEW he was there. I could feel it. Then Tonja’s brother ran to me. He was also crying. He asked me “Did you feel him? Dad is here!” We hugged. Lots of people saw us crying and they knew why and they hugged us, most of them with tears in their eyes. It was quite a moment. Life changing. I “believed” completely for the first time in a long time. And I still do. Last edited by Stylerod; 08-01-2007 at 08:18 AM.. | ||||
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07-31-2007, 02:39 PM
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| Mission Accomplished NOT!  Independent MN
| That was a good read. thanks for sharing. | ||||
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07-31-2007, 04:44 PM
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| no es mi culpa  Independent Beantown
| that's very interesting and i can only imagine how powerful it was to experience it, but it just says why you believe in life after death, not necessarily god. i believe in life after death as well, so i was just wondering how you came to believe in "god".
__________________ There is small disproportion betwixt a fool who useth not wit because he hath it not and him that useth it not when it should avail him. | ||||
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07-31-2007, 05:20 PM
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| Never, never, never give up Independent High Point, NC
| Originally Posted by Linzyhop 
That is kind of why I put "God" in quotes. This is just my beliefs I "feel" in my heart and even my head. If my wifes dad came to visit us in these fun and important times then there is an after life. And to me an after life involves a soul. And to me, a soul involves God. When my wife was pregnant with our first son we wanted to find a good church that we could attend and have him baptized in. We went to a lot of Churches. Catholic. Mormon (my wife was raised Mormon), Baptist, quite a few non-denomination places. We finally found one that felt good and right. It was the Methodist church right down the street from our house. It was the last we tried (strangely enough) and we both felt a connection immediately. I'm not going to say it was their teaching methods or the way they prayed. But (like Pro Streets) it was the sense of community we felt when we were there. It also had a large part to do with the minister, John . He is young and very funny. He uses the strangest things in his sermons to compare real life to the bible. I've heard him use everything from the Marx Brothers to the Carolina Panthers in his sermons. And I could understand where he was coming from when he spoke. When we decided to become members he came to our house and he talked to us. I told him the whole truth and he understood what I was saying. His father was a minister and he said in his youth he stopped believing as well. I told him I enjoy the lessons of the bible. But I have a hard time taking it all as fact. And he also sometimes wonders what is truth and what is a story in the bible. It was really liberating to hear that from someone in his position. I know there is a lot of fact in the bible, but I also think of it as a book of lessons more then something that should be taken as absolute. My dad does that. He is one of those that really believes that people lived to be 1000 years old and the earth is only 5000 (or whatever) years old. He believes it like it is a history book. And that is fine with me. It works for him so why not? I don't know if I answered your question or not. I believe in God because I believe there has to be a God if there are souls. I am a Christian because I feel at home in our Church. I don't know if I'm right. But it feels good and it makes sense to me. | ||||
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07-31-2007, 05:28 PM
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| no es mi culpa Independent Beantown
| Originally Posted by Stylerod so it's more like God is a guiding force in your life than an absolute... i think i know what you mean.
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08-01-2007, 08:41 AM
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| Never, never, never give up Independent High Point, NC
| Originally Posted by Linzyhop Yes, that is correct. I went towards Christianity because that is what my wife and I are most familiar with. We picked our church because that was where we felt the most comfortable. I'd like to think Jesus is really the son of God brought to earth, but who can be sure? He might have just been an incredibly wise and gifted man and if he was that is ok to. He came and taught love and forgiveness. What better role model could there be?
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07-22-2008, 07:52 PM
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| Noob libertarian
| thanks for sharing! | ||||
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09-06-2008, 06:05 AM
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| Lurker Moderate
| Very true, Doesn't really matter where he came from or what he was. I just like the whole forgiveness part, otherwise we'd all be blind | ||||
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10-31-2008, 03:15 PM
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| *insert uninteresting nomenclature here*  Independent Unfortunately, Michigan
| Yes, very good read, thanks again.  I really do want to believe in God, but I'm not so sure about the life after death part. My feeling is more along the lines of that last moment of nirvana (or ultimate fear and pain of death) stretching on into infinity. Originally Posted by Sir John I'm quoting this one for truth. I wonder whatever happened to Sir John anyway.
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11-03-2008, 07:48 PM
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| Technocrat  Idealist Adelaide, Australia
| It certainly sounds like a very strong experience. | ||||
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