My dear, dear Shalom, what a place of quiet this is, even though it is just a screen on my monitor. It doesn't make sense.
My last strange outbursts of needing a thread and the world coming to and end, and such, of last week--please forgive me. This place is unlike anything I've ever seen, and of course there are problems with it, as I am finding out. No wonder you were so guarded with me when I first came on, probably wondering hummmmmmm...........
anyway, we must all be guarded for the rest of our lives against everything but opening a milk carton I guess. That seems to be without problems unforseen.
I mentioned a friend of mine to you when I first came on the thread, because the situation had been a little traumatic and I didn't handle it too well. So I was trying to discuss it with you, but it was all so in the open it seemed more like I was gossiping about people and that bothered me. Amanda is very, very Jewish. Extremely proud of the fact, and a very fun a extremely intelligent person. When I came back to Eureka, I sparked that let's get back to the old days, and run out in the streets and witness and have prayer meetings almost constantly, and do the "homeless thing" i.e., minister more things to drug addicts and drunks, actually, is what that boils down to, but we are told to do it, and what happened was athat suddenly there was a large crowd of us doing just that and she started having Sabbath things and Shabbots on Saturday, and we had the homeless ministry fired up at the church, and we were in general running around like Christian chickens with our heads cut off, and the next thing I hear is that she--this person behind so much of it--has rejected Christ and decided that to be a true Jew you have to be simply Jewish. Period. So I didn't handle it well, and rather treated her like she was nuts. So I felt guilty, I suppose. That was the A.
thing of which I spoke. I thought if she would just come here and talk to you, that perchance if you too were really Jewish and not just taking the name--which is what G-hunk was trying to find out, I'm sure, if you are in fact Jewish, or just like the name.
Well, that was one loose end of many where I came from before I finally got to this place of great sanity, which I love. There was a totally bent-out-of-shape guy whose brains were totally scrambled on the Urantia thing, and he kept popping up at the heaviest
Christian things he could find, where of course I was anyway well ahead of him, and the result was I brought him to my church, and he stood by me one Wednesday and sang like a Christian angel of God, with the heavenly melodies, but he asked a kind of "Urantian
cosmic babble question to my very fervent, yet very young and impatient to grow a big happy church pastor, himself very saint-like and I love him dearly, and well, it is too insane to consider, but within a week, and this happened, we had l) locked him out of the fellowship room 2) told him not to come in church 3) called the cops on him as he distributed pamphlets saying that all he had tried to do was discuss godly matters with a man of God, 4) the cops came and arrested him, or ran him off 5) "we" got a restraining order against him 6) I was wandering around ;like someone after a spiritual bombing, begging everyone to ask the Lord if He wasn't a little displeased with the activities, and I believe it got worse, but I was so shunned for not going along with the program I started going to a Russian Orthodox Church where I finally regained my sanity.
I ended up in a computer lab with this man, Thomas, who was always polite, and walked very strangely, sort of bent over, but head straight ahead, and I couldn't figure out his walk, until I found out he was both a graduate of the University of Virginia, and had been a Navy Seal in the service, and I'm sure I know where he was during that time, and probably that was the reason his life was rather at odds with itself, and he was on SSI and about to lose it. I think he was just trying to keep his head up.
But because of his psychobabble about Urantia, which is so nutty I can't believe it, because its so good and sounds like its real, you just don't know unless you have the Holy Spirit to straighten out your brain, I just continued to joke around with him and put him off and tell him I JUST WASN'T GOING TO GET INTO IT WITH HIM, PERIOD.
During e.mail practice I wrote him a last communication before I left for where I am, a very, very funny message about the "l00,000 Jesuses" that he believed in. He believed something about l00,000 Jesus alive now, or some bizarre stuff, I just didn't have the time or inclination to listen, and it was funny stuff, and
basically it was just Mad Magazine stuff suggesting that he get rid of the 99,999 and get in touch with the real one before the l00,000
Jesuses drove him completely nuts. Something that actually was funny, and he did laugh at it. Then he answered it and kept asking me if I had read his answer. I didn't, never found it on e.mail, forgot about it, told him goodby and I'd drop everyone a card.
I asked him if he was going be alright and if things were going to turn around and he just smiled and looked very straight at me and said, "I hope so." But it was the look in his eyes, and it bothered me and I told him the best thing was to get out of Eureka because it was the most depressed economy in the country.
Thursday last I called my pastor, who is also my dear friend, and a devoted family man with a full time business and he doesn't even draw a salary, in fact he takes from his wallet to keep the church going sometimes, and I laughingly said, "How about Thomas, did you two ever work things out? Has he been around bothering you any more?" (although I meant that to rather convict him of the poor way Thomas had been treated , when I don't think he did anything wrong except want to argue that we should all be Urantian type Christians)
Well, apparently Thomas wrote a little note not too much longer after that time which simply said, "things aren't working out." And shot himself in the head.
So this matter has been bothering me, and maybe I just need to talk about it with someone.
I feel a deep sadness, it just seems like a complete failure in my life and I didn't see it coming, even now I know I did, and he was trying to hint with that look. But that was what was making me post all the hysterical things.
I really didn't know this person well at all, and very very surface.
But I believe it was Mission: Failure. I never once asked to pray with him, and I 'm not sure I ever prayed for him myself. None of us did.
So, there certainly is a lesson here. Can you see it? I still can't make any sense of it whatsoever. Not a bit of it. |
