A Review: WHY I AM AN ATHEIST WHO BELIEVES IN GOD: HOW TO GIVE LOVE, CREATE BEAUTY AND FIND PEACE by Frank Schaeffer

Frank Schaeffer's latest book, Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to Give Love, Create Beauty, and Find Peace, is a celebration of paradox. Through his masterful storytelling and insightful expository writing, Frank demonstrates how he has learned (and continues learning) to give love, create beauty, and find peace by embracing the paradoxical nature of reality.

I sense a far greater peace in Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God than I do in Frank's earlier books: Crazy for God; Patience with God; and Sex, Mom, and God. This present book seems to be the culmination of the intriguing exploration that I sense going on in the earlier books.

To receive the full impact of Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God, it is helpful to understand that Frank Schaeffer was not raised to embrace paradox. Frank was born into a Christian evangelical missionary family, where he was taught certainty about God and an either/or view of eternal salvation. Frank's earlier books describe his growing discomfort with this worldview and his movement toward a worldview where God is seen as mystery and salvation is seen as a process - a worldview that Frank now finds in the Greek Orthodox Church.

One important paradox described by Frank in Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God is an amazing paradox at the heart of his own parents' faith. While expressing belief in the direct inspiration of all parts of the Bible, Frank's parents actually practiced a far more loving faith than some parts  of the Bible advocate. For example, Frank tells how his parents welcomed and loved gay and lesbian couples who came to their mission, despite the Bible's curse upon those who practice homosexuality. Frank says that "no matter what she claimed the Bible taught about homosexuality, Mom acted as if being born gay was just another way to be human." (The italics are Frank's.)

This paradoxical story about his parents is just one of many wonderful life stories with which Frank fills the pages of Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God. Many are stories of love: stories of the lifelong love of Frank's wife Genie, the forgiving love of Frank's daughter Jessica, the trusting love of Frank's grandchildren Lucy and Jack, the barbed love of Frank's film director friend "Sam," the creatively expressed love of the late artist Holly Meade, the sacrificial love of Mother Maria of Paris. There are stories, too, of sorrow: stories of a friend's sudden death, of a friend's struggle with Parkinson's disease, of a relative's diminished life due to a brain tumor, and most poignantly of Frank's deep regret for his own failures to love. And there are stories of awesome beauty: the breath-taking beauty of the stars, the austere beauty of mathematics, the glorious beauty of the Angel's aria in Handel's Le Resurrezione sung by lyric soprano Camilla Tilling, the life-like beauty of John Singer Sargent's painting The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, the delicious beauty of a warm ripe tomato from Frank's home garden.

These and many more compelling stories provide the context for Frank's wonderfully clear exposition of what he believes (hopes) lies at the heart of the universe. Here is the nutshell version: "My hope is that a trillionth of a second before the Big Bang, the energy animating the mystery of matter being created out of nothing was love." I love this succinct sentence, and I love even more the beautiful way that Frank unwinds his reasoning, particularly in Chapters XXI, XXII, and XXVI.

So, what does Frank Schaeffer mean when he says that he is "an atheist who believes in God"? Here is Frank's explanation: "These days I hold two ideas about God simultaneously: he, she or it exists and he, she or it doesn't exist. I don't seesaw between these opposites; I embrace them." (The italics are Frank's.) What I myself understand after twice reading Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God is that Frank recognizes that there is evidence for God's existence and evidence against God's existence - and that he chooses to place his hope (not his certainty) on the side of God's existence, recognizing that God may not exist while living as though God does.

A precious gift that I receive from Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God is a wonderful opening within myself to embrace BOTH/AND in more and more areas of my life. I can almost feel Frank putting his hands on my sometimes tense shoulders and saying, "Relax. It's not a question of right and wrong, of either/or. Let it be BOTH/AND."

A Final Gem of Truth from Frank Schaeffer's 2013 Novel: AND GOD SAID, "BILLY!"

SPOILER ALERT

This post will explore a fifth and final gem of truth from Frank Schaeffer's 2013 novel: And God Said, "Billy!" Please note the SPOILER ALERT before proceeding.

GEM #5: THE DEEPER MESSAGE OF THE BIBLE OVER-RIDES ITS UNLOVING PARTS.

On page 288 of And God Said, "Billy!" Father Tryphon asks, "Do we follow what the  bible says or what it means?" and then explains:

The underlying logic of the teaching of Jesus is that no matter what else is "in" the Bible, freedom, dignity and emancipation is the final message of faith and prophetic destiny of the human primate's evolution. . . . I acknowledge the racist teachings in the Bible implicit in the biblical endorsement of slavery and yet I override these timebound "directives" in favor of the deeper eternal and ever-evolving, ever-expanding truth that - by implication - demands that Nelson Mandela be released from prison and that I - a black man - am a full human being and that many homosexuals seeking refuge here in our community be healed of their guilt-feelings not of their sexuality and be told that they are normal, equal and welcome members of God's family.

This makes so much sense to me! The Bible contains a deep message of love at the heart of the universe, at the heart of God. That message, however, is delivered by human instruments, the writers of the Bible, so that the message comes filtered through the highly patriarchal worldview of those writers. Because the writers of the Bible saw the world through the lens of the culture in which they lived, we find that the Bible portrays God as exclusively male, envisions a hierarchical society with women subordinated to men, endorses slavery, condemns same-sex intimacy, demonizes adherents of pagan religions, and glorifies war. Some of what God is made to say and do in the Bible contradicts the core message of love. I believe that we are to use our minds and our hearts to distinguish what in the Bible conforms to the deep universal message of love and what is culture-bound.

We have abolished slavery, recognizing that its supposed endorsement by God in the Bible does not conform to the Bible's deeper message of love. I long for the day when we come to see that the condemnation of same-sex unions and any restrictions placed upon women are also contradictory to the love at the heart of the Bible. I long for the day when we evaluate any particular directive that the Bible gives by the deeper meaning that the Bible as a whole proclaims.

Two More Gems of Truth from Frank Schaeffer's 2013 Novel: AND GOD SAID, "BILLY!"

SPOILER ALERT

This post continues my reflections on Frank Schaeffer's 2013 novel: And God Said, "Billy!" The misadventures of ultra-fundamentalist Christian film-maker Billy Graham (named after the famous evangelist) culminate in four chapters containing exquisite gems of truth. I explored two such gems in my previous post, and here I will explore two more, saving a fifth and final gem for a post of its own. I reviewed the novel two posts ago.

Note the SPOILER ALERT for this post: this post could spoil the ending of the novel for someone who hasn't yet read it.

GEM #3: ATHEISM HAS A PLACE ON THE CONTINUUM OF BELIEF.

Atheism has a place on the continuum of belief. Frank Schaeffer makes this point in And God Said, "Billy!" and I believe it is true. It can make perfect sense for a person not to believe in God. It certainly makes sense for Billy to turn away from the judgmental, wrathful, rules-bound God to whom he has devoted so much of his life. Belief in this God has been extremely harmful to Billy. Father Tryphon recognizes this, and even performs an unbaptism, freeing Billy from this tyrannical God. Billy's unbaptism is described on page 298:

I guess I first really woke up the moment that you (very unexpectedly!) poured a stream of dry silvery sand over my head that you'd just scooped from the cave floor. It was so dry and powdery that it flowed like water over my head and shoulders. You said, "I unbaptize you in the name of truth, love and beauty! You are free!" and Miss Honeychurch swooped over us and you laughed and said, "A dove for Jesus and a crow for you, Billy! Perfect!"

I can imagine an unbaptism being very freeing and healing for someone like Billy, whose life has been so cramped by belief in a confining God. An unbaptism forces you to make your own conscious decisions about how you really and deeply want your life to be. You no longer simply obey God's orders without thought. Since you no longer rely on God, you are free to look deep into your own soul to decide how you will live. I think that most people will find a well of goodness there, deep within themselves.

GEM #4: LITURGY PROVIDES CONTINUITY FOR A CHANGING FAITH.

I really like Father Tryphon's views on liturgy. Liturgy provides continuity for our faith, connecting us through time across the ages and through space across the globe. Father Tryphon, on page 289, speaks of "our wonderful liturgies and traditions which bind our communities together with blessedly familiar and comfortable predictability." I agree. I do believe, though, that changes need to be made in those places of the liturgy where we have come to a different understanding of our faith. For example, I believe that the language of liturgy should not suggest that God is exclusively male, nor should it curse people who practice certain behaviors (such as same-sex intimacy) or hold certain beliefs (such as paganism).

My next post will explore a fifth and final gem of truth in Frank Schaeffer's And God Said, "Billy!"

Two Gems of Truth from Frank Schaeffer's 2013 Novel: AND GOD SAID, "BILLY!"

SPOILER ALERT

In my previous post, I reviewed Frank Schaeffer's latest novel: And God Said, "Billy!" In this post, I will reflect further on And God Said, "Billy!" -- possibly in ways that could spoil the novel's ending for anyone who hasn't read the book. My aim is to explore two gems of truth offered by the novel. Subsequent posts will explore additional gems of truth.

GEM #1: ONE CAN BE TEMPTED TO THINK THAT ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW

Billy's twisted logic shows how easy it can be to convince oneself that one is above the law. Billy truly seems to believe that he is an exception to moral laws. When he runs out of money and thinks of an easy way to steal what he needs, he believes that this idea is a directive from God and that his managing not to get caught is proof of God's blessing on his action. He seems to think, "Because I am showing extraordinary obedience to God by undertaking this special film-making mission, I stand outside the laws of basic morality, which are for less dedicated humans." With this way of thinking, one can justify a lot of wrong behavior.

GEM #2: LOVE POINTS US TOWARD GOD

Doctrine does not point us toward God, or if it does, it does so only faintly. Facts that we learn about God just don't take root in our souls. Some doctrinal systems can even create a harmful image of God, as is the case with Billy. Billy's God requires him to endure a years-long separation from his wife and daughter, preventing him from being the husband and father he longs to be. Billy's God also requires him to direct a film with no artistic merit as a "stepping stone" to his real film mission, to tell lies in order to keep up appearances, to judge harshly any person whose behavior puts him or her into the classification of "sinner," to see an eternity in the fires of hell as a real possibility, to squash his ability to think so that he can embrace a narrow view of biblical inerrancy. What Billy believes about God diminishes him and causes him much pain and suffering.

Later, Billy begins to experience God more authentically through his experience as a giver and as a receiver of love. As a giver, Billy deeply loves his daughter, Rebecca. He is truly pained by the years-long separation from her, necessitated by his film-making mission. As the Russian Orthodox Father Tryphon (Billy's rescuer) points out, surely God (if God exists) has far greater love than do we. If we want to know what God is like, we need only look at the best within ourselves. If Billy can love Rebecca with such pure aching longing, how much more does God love us. Billy also experiences love as a receiver when he is rescued from an extremely dangerous situation by Father Tryphon and the other Russian Orthodox monks of the Monastery of Saint John of Kronstadt, who put thenselves in danger to help Billy. Billy has done nothing to deserve the love freely offered to him by Father Tryphon and the monks.

The love Billy feels for Rebecca and the love Billy receives from Father Tryphon and the Russian Orthodox monks point him toward God far more clearly and strongly than any facts about God could ever do. Our souls respond to love, not to facts. I should add, though, that our minds respond to facts. Facts that provide mental support for what our soul knows through experience can be very enriching.

In this post, I have explored two gems of truth from Frank Schaeffer's novel And God Said, "Billy!" In my next post, I will explore two additional gems.

A Review of Frank Schaeffer's 2013 Novel: AND GOD SAID, "BILLY!"

I have just read Frank Schaeffer's latest book: a novel titled And God Said, "Billy!" This post will present a review of the novel.

First, a summary. The main character of And God Said, “Billy!” is an ultra-fundamentalist Christian who believes that God has instructed him to leave his wife, Ruth, and their three-year-old daughter, Rebecca, in New Hampshire and move alone to California to make a film about the end of the world, when Christians will be raptured into heaven. His name is Billy Graham—his parents named him after the famous evangelist. As the novel opens, Billy has been away from home for three years without seeing Ruth and Rebecca, who is now six. Although he misses his wife and daughter terribly, Billy believes that obedience to God requires him to concentrate fully on his film-making mission. However, no one in Hollywood has expressed any interest in his apocalyptic film script. Eventually, Billy is persuaded that he must first make a more crowd-pleasing film as a “stepping stone” into the Hollywood film world—and he finally finds someone who engages him to direct a “sexy thriller” in South Africa. This turns out to be a very shady business deal and multiple problems ensue. Billy finds himself trapped in an extremely dangerous situation, from which he is rescued in an amazing way that I won’t reveal in this post. The rescue is not only physical but also spiritual—for Billy’s narrow fundamentalist views have been sucking the very life out of his soul.

And God Said, “Billy!” is Frank Schaeffer’s answer to the question “Who is God?” through a novel-length story. While acknowledging that no definitive answer can be given to this question, Frank Schaeffer has nonetheless found a satisfying answer that embraces the mystery, love, and paradox at the heart of the universe.

Frank Schaeffer dealt extensively with the question “Who is God?” in his 2009 non-fiction book Patience With God: Faith for People Who Don’t Like Religion (or Atheism). In Patience With God, Frank Schaeffer very effectively inter-weaves stories and explanations to show that it is through giving and receiving love, rather than through any system of doctrine, that we experience God. And God Said, “Billy!” makes this point in another way—through fiction. Here, we have a whole novel in which to engage with the main character, so that what the main character learns, we also learn at a deep level because of that long-term, novel-length engagement.

And God Said, “Billy!” is extraordinary in showing the machinations of the human mind in justifying wrong behavior. Sometimes we hear of Christian pastors who have sex with prostitutes or who embezzle church funds, and we wonder how someone who purports to follow Jesus and to lead others in the ways of Jesus could do such wrong things. And God Said, “Billy!” shows precisely how. Frank Schaeffer takes us inside Billy’s mind, where we listen to Billy’s thoughts as he justifies lying, stealing, attending a night club featuring nude women, and directing a film full of sex and violence with no artistic merit whatsoever. Frank Schaeffer takes us through the twists and turns of Billy’s “logic” as Billy convinces himself that these actions are actually God’s directives. Some of this is quite funny, and I found myself laughing aloud at some of Billy’s mental gymnastics.

And God Said, “Bllly!” is also extraordinary in showing how our view of God will result in suffering or in freedom. The novel illustrates the intense suffering inherent in seeing God as a judge who sends people to hell for wrong beliefs and wrong actions. We really “get” that suffering because we see it up close as we walk through the novel with Billy. And God Said, “Billy!” also opens the freeing possibility of seeing God as a mystery of love. We “get” this, too, as we walk with Billy through the aching love he gives to his daughter, Rebecca, and the gratuitous love he receives from his rescuers. Could it be that the love we experience—both as giver and as receiver—is a stronger and clearer indicator of who God is than the body of doctrine put forth by any religious institution?

To fully appreciate And God Said, “Billy!” I think we need to see it as a satire, perhaps even a lampoon, of ultra-fundamentalist Christianity. Frank Schaeffer stretches the exaggeration inherent in this type of writing almost to, but not beyond, the breaking point. As a result, I found certain sections of the novel a bit tedious, though the novel as a whole offered more than enough intrigue for me to continue through the rough patches. I’m very glad that I did, because the last four chapters of the novel contain exquisite gems of truth that ring all the truer for me because I stuck with Billy through all that he endured in order to learn them.

Frank Schaeffer is in a unique position to write And God Said, “Billy!” As a young adult, he himself earned his living as a Christian fundamentalist speaker and writer, but eventually he became deeply dissatisfied with this worldview and converted to Greek Orthodoxy, where the mystery of God (rather than facts about God) is emphasized. Frank Schaeffer has also directed several films, at least one of them in South Africa. And God Said, “Billy!” is enriched by Frank Schaeffer’s own inside experience as a film director, as a former committed Christian fundamentalist, and as one who has adopted a deeper but less defined view of God.

Frank Schaeffer's Sex, Mom, & God: The Blessing in the Shadow Part II

In this post, I will try to show something of how Frank Schaeffer moves from revealing the shadow side of L'Abri in Crazy for God to revealing the blessing within that shadow in Sex, Mom, & God. First, I will zero in on the way Frank tells the story of his mother's almost love affair with a sensitive young poet in the two books. Then, I will compare the shadow within Edith, the blessing withing Edith, and the blessing for Frank.

I will begin with Edith's almost love affair. After reading the two accounts of this in Crazy for God and in Sex, Mom, & God, I would describe what actually happened like this. A sensitive young poet, twenty years younger than the very youthful-looking Edith, showed up at L'Abri and began to pay Edith special attention. Edith and this young man spent time in the woods together and prayed together. The young man collected ferns and flowers for Edith's artistic table arrangements. He understood Edith on a soul level in a way that Edith's husband, Fran, simply could not. He also asked Edith to marry him, but he and Edith never went so far as to have sexual intercourse. In the end, though, he went away, and Edith remained married to Fran.

In Crazy for God, Frank tells us the story of this almost love affair in a way that emphasizes Edith's failing. Here is what Frank says on pages 216-217:

On some days, Mom was hiding bruises on her arms; on other days, she was flirting shamelessly with Roger, a handsome "sensitive poet" from San Francisco, twenty years younger than her. This was the source of my parents' biggest fights.

Mom would take Roger to pray with her in the woods, to her prayer trees--a great and unique honor!--where he would collect moss, twigs, and flowers and make lovely Japanese-style arrangements. Dad was reduced to glaring fury by these activities. He never so much as picked a bunch of flowers, and now here comes this Roger, writing poems, empathizing with Mom's "if-only" wistful remembrances of opportunities lost, and endlessly seeking her spiritual advice.

In Sex, Mom, & God, Frank tells this story at greater length and with far greater sensitivity to his mother. Here, Frank emphasizes Edith's longing for someone who understood her deeply and Edith's brave and selfless ultimate choice of her husband, her family, and continuity. On page 91, Frank speaks of his mother's need with sensitivity and understanding:

I think she also ached for someone in her bed who understood her flower arrangements soul to soul.

For Edith to contemplate a relationship with this young man--something so out of keeping with her professed beliefs--shows how deep her inner ache and longing must have been. For Edith to choose her family in the end shows how deep her sense of what is right must have been. Edith's ache and longing and her commitment to what is right--not Edith's failing--is what comes across in Sex, Mom, & God, where Frank recognizes not only the shadow but also the blessing within the shadow.

In Sex, Mom, & God, Frank describes the paradox that was his mother--a woman deeply committed to a narrow Christian fundamentalist worldview and to what she understood as God's restrictive call on her life yet also deeply committed to beauty and creativity. Within this paradox are shadow and blessing. The shadow is emphasized in Crazy for God, the blessing in Sex, Mom, & God.

THE SHADOW IN EDITH. The shadow predominates in Crazy for God. Edith drives her family crazy with the way she practices her faith. She prays long prayers before meals. She turns every conversation into an opportunity to witness for the Lord. She invades her children's privacy by sharing their private moments with others as illustrations of how God works. She overloads her children with sex information. She neglects Frank's education because she is so busy with the L'Abri ministry. She subtly criticizes her husband and his working-class background. She flirts with a sensitive young poet who visits L'Abri.

THE BLESSING IN EDITH. The blessing predominates in Sex, Mom, & God. Edith welcomes marginalized people to L'Abri; in Edith's mind, there should be no such thing as a marginalized person. Young pregnant women, for example, are welcomed and guided through their pregnancies. Edith loves literature and reads nightly to her children from the great literature of the world. Edith loves music and takes her children to concerts and operas. Edith loves art and nature and prepares beautiful artistic flower arrangements for the home. Edith is a wonderful and beloved grandmother to Frank's children. Edith gives up her opportunity for a soul-mate life-partner in favor of faithfulness to her husband and family and of providing continuity for them. Edith has the soul of a dancer and an artist. I should mention that the blessing of Edith also comes through in Crazy for God, but the shadow predominates in that book, while the blessing predominates in Sex, Mom, & God.

THE BLESSING FOR FRANK. In Sex, Mom, & God, Frank shows that his mother has been a great blessing to him. On page 91, Frank says, "I simply chose to follow the 'other' Edith Schaeffer, the one whose heart was elsewhere than in the lifeless theories she paid lip-service to." In following the "other" Edith Schaeffer, Frank has been greatly blessed. Here are some blessings that I see in Frank's life, stemming from his mother's legacy:

• AN ARTIST'S LIFE. First, Frank loves art and derives great pleasure from art--visual art, music, film, writing. Second, Frank practices art and enjoys the flowering of his own creativity. He does this in writing, painting, cooking, and gardening, to name a few fields of his creative endeavors.
• PARADOX. Although Edith espoused a one-right-way-only view of Christianity, she herself was a paradox in that she professed belief in a narrow version of "truth" yet practiced a wide love of people, the world, and art. Frank picked up on this paradox in his mother. The fact that Edith herself embodied paradox may have helped to pave the way for Frank to embrace a different version of Christianity, one that emphasizes life as paradox and God as Mystery. It is worth noting that Frank was able to see paradox within Christianity itself--he did not feel that he had to reject Christianity and move into some other belief system. While it is certainly fine to move into a different belief system, it is also good to recognize the many possibilities within one's own. Frank moved from the evangelical fundamentalist version of Christianity to the Greek Orthodox version. Christianity itself embraces the paradox of those who hold to a rigid and literal interpretation of the Bible with very exact and certain ideas about God as well as those who interpret the Bible more selectively and welcome the Mystery of God.
  
• FRANK'S WIFE, GENIE. Frank married a wonderful wife, Genie, whom he loves deeply. Frank seems to have found in his marriage the depth of love that his mother craved. An important factor is that Frank chose Genie with his heart, not his head. Ideas of God and God's will or God's call were not part of Frank's choice of Genie, as I think they were in Edith's choice of Fran. When Edith chose Fran, she was (I believe) coming from the Christian fundamentalist side of herself, causing her to see Fran as a man with a firm dedication to God that matched her own and a strong intellect to support his beliefs. Edith's passionate artistic side would have chosen Fran as a friend but not as a husband. Frank, in contrast, chose Genie because his heart leaped toward her from the moment he first saw her. Clearly, this was a strong physical attraction, yet Frank's descriptions of his now forty-year marriage and his ever-deepening love for Genie indicate that the attraction went beyond the physical to the soul level. Frank shares with Genie the type of love that Edith craved to share with her husband. In choosing Genie, Frank was following the "other" Edith Schaeffer.
  

Frank Schaeffer's Sex, Mom, & God: Bible Interpretation

In Sex, Mom, & God, Frank Schaeffer writes a great deal about how we interpret the Bible. Frank himself grew up in a home where the Bible was interpreted literally: God created the world in six actual days (Genesis 1:1-2:3); Adam and Eve were actual people who ate an actual piece of fruit in disobedience to God's command and were thereafter banished from an actual Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:4-3:24); the sun actually stood still for an extra twenty-four hours so that Joshua could finish his battle against the Amorites (Joshua 10:12-14); Jonah was swallowed by an actual big fish and lived three days in its belly before being vomited back up (Jonah 1:17-2:10); and so on. Frank grew up with the idea that it was important to believe, literally, everything that the Bible says because the Bible is directly inspired by God, and God does not make mistakes.

Unfortunately, as Frank points out, the God of the Bible says and does a great many terrible things--things that would be considered seriously wrong if anyone else said or did them. The God of the Bible sanctions sexual slavery of virgin women captured in war (Deuteronomy 21:10-14), commands the slaughter of conquered men and women and children (I Samuel 15:3), orders the stoning to death of Israelites who gather sticks on the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32-36), and personally kills Uzzah for reaching up to steady the Arc of the Covenant when God had said that no one but the Levites must touch it (II Samuel 6:6-7).

Trying to believe that God is all-good and all-loving while also believing that God condones sexual slavery, deliberate war-time killing of civilians including children and infants, and the death penalty for disobedience of minor commands requires some mind-twisting mental gymnastics. We wind up denying what our hearts tell us about good and evil so that we can affirm that otherwise evil actions are good simply because God is the one who does them. After all, if God does something, it has to be good, right? So, somehow, all this God-endorsed sexual slavery and civilian killing must be good simply because it is endorsed, or even committed, by God. When I was trying to so believe, I found this a terrible mental and emotional strain (as did Frank).

But then one day I actually found myself thinking something like this: Wait a minute. We are constantly told that we have to accept God's actions as good simply because God does them and that we must measure our own thoughts and words and actions by what the Bible says. But suppose we turn this around. Suppose we measure the words and actions of the God of the Bible by what our own hearts tell us. How about that, for a change?

Frank says something similar. First, Frank makes a distinction between the God of the Bible and the actual God who really created the universe. On page 83, Frank makes this wonderful statement, which I love: "[M]aybe the best thing a believer in God can do is to declare that a lot of the Bible is hate-filled blasphemy--against God." Wow! Those parts of the Bible where God is depicted as condoning such atrocities as sexual slavery and civilian killing are actually evil lies against God! How terrible to feel trapped into believing that one must honor and defend these despair-producing lies!

And these lies are despairing-producing. I remember my mother expressing to me how trapped she felt within the Catholic Church. She told me that she was afraid to leave the Catholic Church because it might actually all be true and she would find herself condemned to hell for eternity for rejecting the One True Church. On the other hand, my mother was also concerned that, when she died, she would find herself before the Real God, who would say to her, "I condemn you to hell for being a Catholic." How awful to believe that maybe the Real God condemns the Catholic Church and the Bible and the people who adhere to them, but then maybe the Catholic Church and the Bible are all true and people who reject them are the ones who will be condemned. How awful to believe that, whoever God may be, God is caught up with condemning.

The idea expressed above, that God is in the business of condemning, is despair-producing. I think that it is very important to realize that, when an idea is despair-producing, it is wrong. This should be a rule of thumb: When an idea leads to despair, let us reject that idea. If we think about God and feel despair, we can be sure that there is something seriously wrong with our ideas of God. This doesn't mean that we reject painful facts; it does mean that we refuse to interpret those facts in a despairing way. If it is clear, for example, that I am facing an imminent and inevitable death, I can accept that fact in a peaceful rather than in a despairing way. If it is clear, for example, that we are destroying our earth with pollution (and this should be clear to us), we can accept this fact and work to change our direction rather than succumb to despair.

Well, back to what Frank says about interpreting the Bible and God's words and actions therein. After stating that the Real God may not approve of the God of the Bible, Frank says that the sane way to interpret the Bible is with our hearts. On page 87, Frank says:

To reject portions of the Bible is not necessarily to reject God or even the essence of Christianity. A great deal of the Bible is contradicted by the Love that predates it and, more importantly, survives in you and me. And that Love edits the Bible for us. Call that editing the Holy Spirit, or call it a more evolved sense of ethics and human rights, but most people know what to follow and what to reject when it comes to how they live. Sacrifice for others, not sacrifice of others, is the message of the "better angels" of spiritual faith.

To boil this down to its essence, Frank says that "Love edits the Bible for us." Yes! Yes! Yes! You are so right, Frank. LOVE EDITS THE BIBLE FOR US! Our hearts shout out: No! Sexual slavery is wrong! Slavery itself is wrong! Deliberate war-time killing of civilians is wrong! Our hearts know what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil.

Our hearts, informed by love, know how to edit the Bible. Here is an example. When we read, "Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters" (Colossians 3:22a), our hearts say, No! Slavery itself is wrong! When we read, "I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent" (I Timothy 2:12), our hearts say, No! Women are not inferior to men! But when we read, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28), our hearts say, Yes! Yes! Yes!

Frank points out that there is much good in the Bible. Our hearts know how to zero in on the good and reject the bad. Frank also says that the Bible can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how it is interpreted. On page 99, Frank says, "Sometimes belief in the Bible leads to building a hospital. Sometimes it leads to justifying perpetual war and empire building. Same book--different interpretation."

I will end this post with a final thought: It is an act of maturity to move away from swallowing, whole and literally, whatever the Bible says and to move into interpreting the Bible with one's own heart informed by love. Frank shares this idea on pages 86-87 of Sex, Mom, & God by quoting from page 168 of Thom Stark's The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (and Why Inerrancy Tries to Hide It). So here is what Thom Stark (as quoted by Frank) has to say:

An infallible Jesus, just like a set of infallible scriptures, is ultimately just a shortcut through our moral and spiritual development. To have a book or a messenger dropped from heaven, the likes of which is beyond the reach of all human criticism, is a dangerous shortcut. It is no wonder humans have always attempted to create these kinds of foundations. And it is a revelation of God's character, from my perspective, that cracks have been found in each and every one of those foundations.

To expect the Bible to give us all the answers in a literal and wholesale way is a mark of immaturity. For God to provide such ready-made answers, says Thom Stark, would be to cut short our spiritual development. In fact, says Thom Stark, God shows God's character by refusing to provide us with ready-made answers even when we clamor for them (just as a good parent shows his or her character by refusing to give in to a child's clamoring to gorge on unhealthy sweets). No, God insists on supporting our maturity. The Bible will not work as a wholesale revelation dropped directly into our laps from God. The Bible will only work when we interpret it with our hearts informed by love.

Frank Schaeffer, thank you so much for this beautiful truth: We interpret the Bible through the love in our hearts!

Frank Schaeffer's Sex, Mom, & God: Appreciation for My Own Sex Education

One result of reading Frank Schaeffer's latest book, Sex, Mom, & God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics--and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway, is that I have come away with a greater appreciation for the way my own parents taught me about sex. In fact, they did a very good job of providing me with appropriate information.

Before reading Sex, Mom, & God, I had always compared my parents with parents who never breathed a word to their children about sex--and I was grateful that my parents had talked to me about these matters. After reading Sex, Mom, & God, I now realize that it is possible to give one's children too much information about sex or inappropriate information. Frank Schaeffer's mother, for example, revealed to Frank that his father required her to have sex every single night, she showed Frank (when he was eight years old) the diaphragm she used to space her children, and she talked to Frank so much about sex and the importance of doing it only with one's spouse after one's wedding that Frank could think of nothing but when and how he might have sex!

Here are some of the points my parents followed when talking with me about sex.

LET THE CHILD GUIDE THE KIND AND AMOUNT OF INFORMATION. My parents simply answered my questions about sex or where babies come from. If I asked a question, they simply answered it and let it go at that. If I asked more follow-up questions or wanted to have a discussion, then they went along. They didn't push information at me. In contrast, when Frank asked a question, this seemed to open an unstoppable fountain of information from his mother on the topic of sex.

USE CORRECT TERMS. My parents used correct terms, such as menstruation, intercourse, vagina, uterus, and penis, when talking to me about reproduction. Frank's mother used euphemisms, such as falling off the roof for menstruation and little thing for penis.

DO NOT SHARE YOUR PERSONAL SEX LIFE WITH YOUR CHILDREN. My parents never used themselves as examples or talked about what they themselves did in their sex life together. They talked about the man and the woman or the husband and the wife.

DO NOT SURROUND SEX WITH WARNINGS. My parents did not go on and on about the importance of being a virgin on one's wedding night or saving oneself for one's spouse or the danger that boys and men might pose. They did always put sex within the context of marriage when they talked about it, but they did so in a natural way, as though it were a given that sex would be performed within marriage. They said things like this: "When a man and a woman get married, they show their love for each other in a very special way." Or: "Husbands and wives show their love for each other in a special way."

Now, here are some other interesting things about my sex education from my parents.

SILENT PARENTS OF THEIR OWN. My parents had parents of their own who never breathed a word about sex to them as they were growing up. This is true of my father's parents and of my mother's parents. Sex was a taboo subject in their households. My parents decided to do things differently with their own children. They decided to answer their children's questions as those questions arose, and to give clear information using correct terms. Both my father and my mother would answer questions about sex.

OTHER SOURCES. My parents also provided other sources of information. My mother gave me a booklet about menstruation and arranged for me to attend optional talks about menstruation given for fifth and sixth grade girls at my school. She explained that it would be good for me to have these other explanations as well as her own, and I did like having the booklet and attending the talks with other girls in my class. I might mention that I attended a Catholic girls school, and the talks were given by the father of a girl in the class two years ahead of me. He was a gynecologist, and his talks were interesting and informative. For some girls in my class, these talks were all the information they got about menstruation because they had parents who would not breathe a word about these subjects.

CURIOSITY ABOUT HOW IT'S ACTUALLY DONE. While Frank's sex education caused him to want to have sex as soon as possible, mine did not have the same effect. Having a boy or a man put his penis into my vagina just didn't sound like something I'd want to participate in. Frank was curious to try it, but I was curious to see it done. I just couldn't imagine even how it was initiated. Or, if I did try to imagine it, I imagined something like this. One spouse says to the other, "Well, shall we have intercourse now?" The other spouse says, "Okay." So they both pull down their pants and the husband puts his penis into the wife's vagina, sends the sperm up into her uterus, and takes out his penis. Then they pull up their pants and go about their business.

From this, you can gather that my parents didn't provide much information about what leads up to the actual act of intercourse.

Anyway, so curious was I about how intercourse was actually negotiated that I once asked my mother, "Mommy, the next time you and Daddy do this, can you let me watch to see how it's done?" My mother very nicely explained that, no, I couldn't watch because this was a very special way that married people showed love for each other and it was private.

SEX OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE. My parents always assumed a marriage context when they talked about sex. They didn't push this overtly, but they always talked about the husband and the wife. This eventually caused me to wonder what would happen if a man and a woman had intercourse but weren't married. Did this ever happen, I wondered. And it it did, would it work. That is, could intercourse lead to a baby if the two people weren't married. I vaguely remember asking about this and being told that, yes, two unmarried people could have intercourse, but it was very wrong. I can't remember if I asked about the baby.

OMISSIONS. There were some omissions in my sex education. My parents never said much about foreplay, and they didn't mention homosexual sex. But this was in the 1950s and 1960s, so homosexual sex wasn't much talked about anyway.

UNFORTUNATE RESTRICTION. My parents did put an unfortunate restriction on the topic of sex. They often told me that this was a special topic that should be discussed only with Mommy or Daddy, not with other people. Their idea was that they didn't want me to receive misinformation from unreliable sources, such as other kids. But this meant that I couldn't talk with friends about our bodies without disobeying, so I missed out on conversations that I think it would have been good to have with my friends. (I wish I hadn't obeyed this injunction from my parents as long as I did.)

MORE UNFORTUNATE FACTS. Another unfortunate fact was that my father could be quite frightening with his rages, so I thought it best to avoid men as much as possible. As a child, I remember thinking that the world was set up to be painful in so many ways. One of those ways was the institution of marriage, where a woman would have to share her life with one of those frightening men. I wondered why it wasn't possible for two women to share their lives together. (I didn't realize that it was possible because I had never heard of it.) I wasn't thinking of this in a sexual way--as far as I knew, there was no way for two women to have sex, and I didn't experience sexual attraction to women. I was thinking of it in a friendly way--two women living together and sharing their lives and maybe even raising children. How safe and comfortable that would be. I wondered why no one had considered it.

Another unfortunate fact is that I was being raised in the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church. Probably because I had a rageful father, I tended to zero in on the rageful aspects of God the Father as presented by the Catholicism of the time. I zeroed in, for example, on how a person could be sent to hell for just one unconfessed mortal sin, such as impure thoughts. We learned things like this at my Catholic girls school, and I don't think my parents were aware of how this aspect of my Catholic education was affecting me internally. I was learning that sex was bad, some parts of my body were off-limits even to me, touching those parts of my body was bad, and thinking about those parts of my body or those parts of others' bodies was bad. When one is going through puberty, it is not easy to avoid thinking about what is happening within one's body! And yet this was a sin (or so I thought)!

My parents would never have agreed with this heavy sex/sin connection. They were a voice of reason on the few occasions when I did ask them a question that seemed to relate sex (or just bodies) and sin. For example, I remember once dreaming about running around naked with other girls in my class. I think I was about eight at the time of this dream. I was worried that this dream might have been a mortal sin since it obviously involved thinking about naked bodies. After all, dreaming takes place in one's mind, so dreaming about naked bodies would be the same as thinking about naked bodies, which would be indulging in impure thoughts. Fortunately, I asked my mother about this, and she explained that we did not have control over our dreams, so a dream could not be a sin. (I can't remember if she commented on my underlying belief that thinking about naked bodies was a sin--perhaps she did--but I know that she would not have subscribed to such a belief.)

Well, to get back to my original thought, I am grateful that both my mother and my father in his better moods gave me good information about sex. Some people get no information from their parents, and others (like Frank) get an overload!

Frank Schaeffer's Sex, Mom, & God

One of my favorite authors, Frank Schaeffer, has just come out with a new book: Sex, Mom, & God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics--and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway.

Frank is the son of Francis and Edith Schaeffer, evangelical fundamentalist Christian missionaries to Switzerland, who founded the L'Abri ministry, where Francis Schaeffer provided thoughtful biblical answers to visitors' life questions and Edith Schaeffer served lovely dinners and teas and ministered to the more personal needs of the guests. Francis and Edith Schaeffer espoused a literal view of the Bible, a view that Frank has since rejected in favor of a spirituality that honors the Mystery of God rather than certainty about God. Frank has written about the shadow side of L'Abri in his memoir Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back.

In Sex, Mom, & God, Frank illuminates each word in the three-part title:

• SEX: his unusually explicit and early sex education
  
• MOM: his unusually creative and energetic mother, Edith Schaeffer
  
• GOD: his conflicted relationship with the God of the (very literally interpreted) Bible
  

One of Frank's key messages in Sex, Mom, & God is that our thoughts are tethered to our feelings; that is, the carefully constructed intellectual framework of our worldview is often undergirded by strong emotions and psychological currents. In fact, Frank shows how, in his own life, Sex and Mom and God all generated feelings that led to the extreme Christian fundamentalist stance of his young adulthood during which he worked diligently (and angrily) to convert the United States to a Bible-believing nation, as well as to his later embrace of a God of Mystery, his growing comfort with not knowing the exact nature of Ultimate Reality, and his own life of creativity.

Now, here are some wonderful points about Sex, Mom, & God.

STORY: Frank is a gifted storyteller. Frank's stories are charming, outrageous, and often hilarious. Two of them particularly stand out. In one, Frank describes how he sculpted an ice woman and then tried to have sex with it as a child. In the other, Frank recounts how his childhood bath-time was supervised by a kind-hearted babysitter who was obsessed with the Queen of England.

THOUGHT/FEELING CONNECTION: In Sex, Mom, & God, Frank juxtaposes stories and essays to illustrate his points. The essay-type parts of the book are fascinating. As a former extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalist, Frank understands that mindset from the inside. From his own experience, Frank knows that the intellectual gloss of fundamentalist thought is undergirded by strong emotions and psychological needs. Frank excels at making these thought/feeling connnections clear and vivid.

Having read Sex, Mom, & God, I now have a far better understanding of why it is so very difficult for fundamentalists to recognize the paradoxes of life and the possibility that there may be other equally valid ways to truth besides their own, of why the second generation of Christian fundamentalist preachers like Franklin Graham tend to become more extreme and strident than their fathers, and of why the pro-life and pro-choice factions have become so terribly polarized on the issue of abortion.

THE BLESSING IN THE SHADOW: This is the most wonderful thing about Sex, Mom, & God. Sex, Mom, & God is a gentler book than Crazy for God, where Frank, who is an inveterate truth-teller, reveals the shadow side of his parents and their ministry. In Crazy for God, we learn that Francis and Edith Schaeffer had some serious weaknesses that were kept hidden so as not to tarnish their Christian ministry. Now, in Sex, Mom, & God, we see the blessing in the shadow.

In Sex, Mom, & God, Frank presents us with some of the stories about Edith Schaeffer from Crazy for God, but in a very different light. A case in point is Edith's almost love affair with a sensitive young artist. It is fascinating to compare the way Frank tells this story in the two books. In Crazy for God, we see Edith's failing; in Sex, Mom, & God, we see Edith's courage and love for her family.

HONORING OF EDITH SCHAEFFER: In Sex, Mom, & God, Frank honors his mother, Edith Schaeffer. Edith was a tremendously creative, life-loving, and energetic woman who was not able to fulfill her deepest longings because of her dedication to what she believed to be God's call on her life. On page 91, Frank describes his mother like this: "Edith Schaeffer herself was the greatest illustration of the Divine beauty of Paradox I've encountered. She was a fundamentalist living a double life as a lover of beauty who broke all her own judgmental rules in favor of creativity."

I especially love this sentence on page 91: "Mom was just so un-Edith-Schaeffer-like in person!" And I absolutely love Frank's response to his experience with his mother, also on page 91: "I simply chose to follow the 'other' Edith Schaeffer, the one whose heart was elsewhere than in the lifeless theories she paid lip-service to."

I, too, am very thankful that Frank chose to follow the "other" Edith Schaeffer!

Soul Work - Deeper Moons

My previous two posts have been about going for the Moon - going after and living one's dreams. I have explored my Moons, or those things that give me joy, and I have examined factors that influence whether I choose the easier path of playing it safe or the more satisfying path of going for the Moon.

My Moons include the following:

• ART: Having and playing a piano in my home again, exhibiting a series of my art work, publishing small books based on writing I've done
• EXPLORATION: Driving the Ring Road in Iceland and visiting the Trapp Family Lodge in Vermont
• HOME-MAKING: Giving theme parties
• GOD: Studying the Bardic materials of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids

Although I recognize Moons that give me joy, I often choose instead to take the easier path of playing it safe because of these fears:

• Being exposed as shamefully incompetent
• Feeling others' disapproval for promoting myself and showing off
• Being selfish
• Feeling the anxiety and discomfort of change
• Being injured, especially in a painful or incapacitating way
• Losing all my money
• Losing my solitude, whereby - as an introvert - I replenish myself
• Losing my free time and plans by being called upon unexpectedly

I determined that I might choose to follow and live into a Moon because the Moon has the following characteristics:

• Fills me with joy
• Promotes health and healing for my soul
• Connects me with God
• Encourages others in some way

In this post, I will go deeper. I will examine what soul work I may be called upon to do in this life. I will consider not just my individual soul but also my family soul. The family soul is a concept I explored in a previous post of August 24, 2009, titled "Frank Schaeffer's Memoir: Insight - The Family Soul." In that post, I showed how Frank Schaeffer carried further some of the soul work that his father had done and how Frank's son carried this soul work further still. I explored the idea that we may be able to advance soul work that our parents and ancestors have carried to a certain level and that we may be able help heal family soul wounds.

In observing the family in which I was raised, I can identify these areas of family soul work:

• Goal of getting from here to the grave as safely and painlessly as possible - Live fully and joyfully
• Hostile worldview - See the world as gracious
• Scarcity mentality, leading to hoarding - Develop an abundance mentality, leading to generosity
• Judgmental attitude - Develop compassion
• Avoidance of service - Serve in appropriate ways
• Secretiveness - Be honest in appropriate ways, especially in taking responsibility for one's actions and feelings
• Excessive busyness - Spend time being rather than constantly doing
• Anger - Act from a place of calm centeredness

It seems that there is a word for each of the above points: Enjoy, Thank, Give, Love, Serve, Show, Be, Relax.

That's still a lot to grasp - eight words, eight concepts. Well, I think I can group them into three categories:

• GOD: Enjoy, Thank
• OTHERS: Give, Love, Serve
• SELF: Show, Be, Relax

These are the deeper Moons for me to live into. The specific actions I take are far less important than the deeper attitudes that my actions are expressing. In other words, it is not so important that I get and play a piano or drive the Ring Road in Iceland or give a theme party as it is that I deeply enjoy my life with a spirit of thankfulness.

It is clear that my Moons in my "What are My Moons?" post of July 23, 2010 focus on things that I enjoy doing. In light of my deeper Moons, I think it is important for me to choose a few of those enjoyable Moons - particularly ones that do not involve large expenses in light of the current economic crisis, ones that truly enrich my life, and ones that encourage others in some way. It is also important for me to take delight in living into Moons that involve giving, loving, and serving.

My next three posts will explore the three Moon areas I have identified: God, others, self.

Hospital Experience #19: Riches of Writing

This is the nineteenth in a series of posts on a recent experience at Ochsner Hospital - having a cardiac catheter ablation procedure to correct a heart arrhythmia. These posts describe and reflect on various aspects of the hospital experience. This nineteenth post will reflect on the riches I have received through writing about this hospital experience.

I have already written about the ways that writing enriches my life in my post of December 23, 2009, titled "Frank Schaeffer's Patience With God: More Thoughts on Writing and Words." After reading Frank Schaeffer's book Patience With God, particularly what Frank says therein about writing and words, I felt inspired me to make my own list of the many ways that writing enriches me, and I did so in that earlier post. In this current post, I will use that list to examine how the same riches of writing apply to my blogging about my recent hospital experience.

KEEPING MEMORIES. These blog posts hold my memories about the hospital experience. I can return to these posts time and time again to remember.

Writing often also helps me access memories. In other words, if I start writing about something I remember vaguely, I often find that the act of writing brings up more and more detail. Writing also brings to mind entire memories that I had forgotten. I did not experience this in blogging about my hospital experience, probably because the memories are still so fresh, but I want to mention it.

LIVING MY LIFE TWICE. This is a wonderful benefit of writing. I can live my life twice. I live it first as lived experience. Then I live it again by writing about it. The writing causes me to delve deeply into my experience, to mine its richness, to live my life more fully.

This is certainly true of my hospital experience. I lived through it as the events unfolded in the hospital. Then I lived it a second time, far more deeply, through my writing.

CLARIFYING MY THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS. If I want to know what I think or feel about something, a sure way to find out is to write about it. The very act of writing freely about a subject pulls up my thoughts and feelings and spills them onto the page or screen.

With my hospital experience, I took the time to articulate my thoughts and feelings and to organize them into a coherent piece of writing. Working with this inner material clarifies it.

In addition, my thoughts and feelings are no long roiling about vaguely and namelessly inside me. I have named them and placed them outside myself - on a page or screen - where I can stand back and look at them. This also makes my thoughts and feelings clearer to me.

I am aware, too, that any piece of writing is a snapshot of my thoughts and feelings at a particular moment in time, so I need to hold them loosely, realizing that my thoughts and feelings may evolve and that I can clarify that evolution with additional writing. If I look back on my hospital experience a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now, I may be writing about different thoughts and feelings.

PUTTING MY EXPERIENCE OUTSIDE MYSELF. Writing takes my experience outside of myself and puts it onto the page or screen, where I can look at it more objectively. I can "see" my experience more clearly on the page or screen than I can when it remains locked within me.

This allows me to be calmer about troubling aspects of my experience. Just the fact that I can look at the experience in written form, outside myself, makes any inner turmoil far less intense, including how I now view my panic in the procedure room, my encounter with Nurse Dreadful, and the post-procedure bleeding incident.

MAKING MY EXPERIENCE REAL TO ME. To name and articulate something, to put it into words, makes it real. Unnamed experience is often vague.

For example, as a result of writing, my panic in the procedure room is much more real to me. It is not some vague and nameless terror. I see the physiological manifestations of the panic and the inner feeling state that went with them. I have named all this, making the experience real and concrete. As a result, I am better prepared to speak about my panic potential with my doctor and to let my doctor know what I'll need in any future such situations.

Likewise, having written about my clash with Nurse Dreadful, the dynamics of the clash are real to me. What happened is not some vague unpleasantness but a specific interaction with distinct moves of words, facial expression, and body language. Here, too, as a result, I am better prepared to handle such potential clashes very differently in the future.

The many ways I was supported by my friends are more real to me through my writing. I haven't just vaguely received lots of great support, but the specific gifts of each friend are distinct and real to me.

ENTERING MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES. Writing opens a kaleidoscope of perspectives. I can explore how a situation appears to someone very different from myself by putting myself into his or her mind, so to speak, and writing from that place.

Among these blog posts are two where I look at the encounter with Nurse Dreadful from Nurse Dreadful's point of view, giving me a far broader perspective on what happened. This nurse came across to me as Nurse Dreadful - but is it not possible that I came across to her as Patient Dreadful? Writing from someone else's point of view is a wonderful way to stand in someone else's shoes and to build compassion.

PULLING UP INSIGHTS. Writing is a way to access my unconscious, to know consciously things that I didn't know I knew. As I write, I sometimes find myself pouring insights onto the page or screen, insights that I would not have accessed otherwise.

This is most evident in my two posts on Yvonne's gift of healing music, particularly the first of the two. I reached an amazing insight at the end of that post - an insight that came through writing. When I began writing that post, I had no idea that my writing would take me to this insight. The insight was present within me all along - but I was not conscious of it. The act of writing pulled that insight up into my awareness.

FINDING SOLUTIONS. If I write about a problem, I often find myself writing through to possible solutions. Those solutions come to me through the act of writing. In other words, I start writing without knowing how to solve the problem, and the writing itself pulls possible solutions up into my awareness.

With my hospital experience, I would say that writing has given me solutions to similar future situations. I now see better ways to be authentic, especially in stating my needs to my doctor concerning potential panic and in relating to a person who comes across unpleasantly.

HEALING. Writing heals. Because writing clarifies my thoughts and feelings, puts my experience outside of myself, makes my experience real to me, allows me to view an experience from multiple perspectives, pulls up insights, and finds solutions - because writing accomplishes all these things - writing heals.

Here are four specific ways that I have experienced healing through writing about my hospital experience:

• Taking baby steps in compassion
• Opening myself to receive love from others
• Glimpsing that life is worth it
• Becoming more authentic by telling the truth

BONDING WITH OTHERS. Naming and articulating my experience connects me with others. When a writer shares his or her writing, readers connect with the writer's experience and even connect more deeply with their own experience. Frank Schaeffer, the catalyst for my earlier post on the ways that writing enriches my life, is one of many writers who connect me to my own experience and help me to understand myself more deeply.

In blogging about my hospital experience, I have made my writing available to anyone who wants to read it on the Internet. I connect with people who read about my hospital experience - people I know and people I don't know - who will never tell me that they have read my posts. The connection is nonetheless made, even though I don't know about it. I also connect with people who read about my hospital experience and let me know that they have done so. In these cases, I am aware that a connection has been made. Most wonderful are those people who read about my hospital experience and respond with their own thoughts and feelings about my experience and/or with experiences of their own. They do this through the blog's comment function, through some other online channel such as email or a Facebook comment or message, by phone, or in person. I find this incredibly enriching.

These connections also help me to tell the truth. In blogging about my hospital experience, I tell the truth to myself, to those who read my blog posts anonymously, and to those who read my blog posts and respond. By connecting with others through blogging, my truth is told, heard, and even valued.

CREATING. In writing, I create. I produce a piece of written work. Creating is deeply satisfying and increases my joy.

Indeed, I do take joy in these hospital experience blog posts.

ENERGIZING. Writing energizes me. Sometimes when I write, I feel actual currents of energy flowing through my body.

I have often felt this excitement and energy upon sitting down to write these hospital experience blog posts.

FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE WORLD. The act of writing causes me to study my subject closely. I look deeply into the person, place, object, experience, or idea that I am writing about. This close study opens my subject to me in greater fullness and glory and increases my appreciation for my subject. The more subjects I write about, the more I fall in love with my world.

In writing these hospital experience blog posts, I have fallen in love with the whole hospital experience, with my friends, with life's ability to absorb pain into joy, and even with the physiological and emotional state of panic and with Nurse Dreadful. I didn't enjoy the panic, but I have enjoyed analyzing it through writing and gaining an understanding of its different components. I didn't enjoy the encounter with Nurse Dreadful, but I have enjoyed examining the encounter from her perspective and analyzing the dynamics of our interaction through writing.

I would say that my blogging about my hospital experience has caused me to fall in love more deeply with more of my world.

Hospital Experience #17: Telling the Truth

This is the seventeenth in a series of posts on a recent experience at Ochsner Hospital - having a cardiac catheter ablation procedure to correct a heart arrhythmia. These posts describe and reflect on various aspects of the hospital experience. This seventeenth post will reflect on a special gift I have received from blogging about this hospital experience: the joy of telling the truth.

This post also connects with my posts on Frank Schaeffer, an author whom I would characterize as a courageous truth-teller. This post connects particularly with my post of August 27, 2009, titled "Frank Schaeffer's Memoir: Self-Disclosure," and with my post of December 26, 2009, titled "Frank Schaeffer's Patience With God: Problems of Integrity with Fundamentalism," especially the final paragraph. In these earlier posts, I marvel at some of the unflattering things Frank discloses about himself in his books and reflect on what might have motivated him to make these self-disclosures.

In this present post, I will examine my own self-disclosures in my hospital experience posts and reflect on how these self-disclosures have benefited me. I will use my above-mentioned earlier posts about Frank Schaeffer for deeper understanding about self-disclosure and truth-telling. It is not necessary to have read my earlier posts on Frank Schaeffer to understand this one.

FRANK SCHAEFFER'S TRUTH TELLING

Here is what I understand about Frank Schaeffer and his passion for truth telling. Frank grew up in a family who ran a fundamentalist Christian mission in Switzerland. Because his parents (Francis and Edith Schaeffer) were esteemed Christian teachers, anything that did not fit with their image as upright Christians had to be kept as a strict family secret, including Francis Schaeffer's depressions and rages and his verbal and physical abuse of Edith. The truth could not be told - it would harm the ministry.

As a young adult, Frank continued in his parents' footsteps and made a good living writing Christian fundamentalist books and speaking on the Christian fundamentalist circuit. As time went on, Frank became more and more uncomfortable with the message he was preaching - it just didn't mesh with reality. Yet Frank was unwilling to give up his comfortable living, and he feared that he didn't know how to support his family in any other way. This inner conflict made him irritable, and he took out his irritation on his wife and children. Eventually, Frank did leave Christian fundamentalism, joined the Greek Orthodox Church, and now makes his living as a secular writer. He has published eleven books (three of them co-authored), and a twelfth book is scheduled to come out in the spring of 2011.

In his memoir, Crazy For God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back, Frank makes some very unflattering self-disclosures. Specifically, he speaks of how he stayed on the Christian fundamentalist circuit for so long simply because of the good money, and he reveals details of his unloving behavior to his family, especially how he sometimes hit his daughter, Jessica, and pulled her hair in anger. At first, it was hard for me to understand how Frank could reveal such things about himself, things that now cause him shame and that he deeply regrets.

I began to understand Frank's self-disclosures better when I read his next book, Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism), where Frank specifically describes his spiritual evolution. In Patience With God, Frank describes the great inner tension produced by feeling trapped into having to proclaim publicly what his heart no longer believed - and his HUGE RELIEF when at last he stepped away from Christian fundamentalism and could finally TELL THE TRUTH. What a sheer, sheer relief it was - after so many years of keeping secrets - to simply tell the truth.

MY SECRETS

Like Frank, I grew up in a family with secrets. The biggest secret was that my mother was an alcoholic. Apparently, the sky would fall if anyone ever found out about this. It was a very strict secret. So secret was it, in fact, that my two youngest sisters, Maria and Janet, never did know about our mother's drinking problem until our other sister, Sandra, decided that she should tell them - when we were all well into adulthood. (Our mother had stopped drinking when I was sixteen, Sandra was twelve, Maria was eight, and Janet was seven. Our brothers, Michael and Danny, were fourteen and ten, respectively. Only the four eldest - myself, Michael, Sandra, and Danny - were old enough to understand what had been going on, although Danny later forgot that he had known this. After our mother stopped drinking, we never talked about it again - until many years later, as adults.)

So - secrets were the norm in my family. My father didn't even like us to have friends to spend the night. We did sometimes have friends to spend the night, but my father didn't much care for this. He didn't want anyone to know our family business. He once told me that he felt he couldn't run his home the way he wanted to when we had guests over. (My father wanted to run the home with tight control - we were all scared of him, including my mother. I am convinced that this is why she drank.)

One characteristic of adult children of alcoholics is that they have trouble telling the truth. While I don't think of myself as a liar, I do see situations where I find telling the truth difficult, situations where I feel tempted to beat around the bush or to project a better image of myself than is true - even though telling the truth would actually simplify things in many of these situations.

MY TRUTH TELLING

One area where I have had trouble telling the truth has been my over-indulgence in fatty and sugary foods over the last several years. I have tried to hide this, eating healthy foods and moderate amounts when with other people, but eating fatty and sugary foods and large amounts when alone. As a result, I gained a lot of weight, and I now have high blood pressure. The first step in confronting the problem has been to tell the truth - I have chosen to eat poorly and not to exercise, and this has led to weight gain and high blood pressure. Now I need to choose new eating and exercise behavior.

Somehow, it is a great relief to actually say this - to tell the truth. I have felt the joy of this relief in writing my hospital experience posts, especially "Hospital Experience #8: Personal Responsibility and Honesty." It feels good to spell out the truth about what has been going on with my eating and lack of exercise.

I think that tension is produced in our bodies when we don't tell the truth. We may not be conscious of this tension, but it is there, affecting our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. When we tell the truth, we release the tension and experience the joy of being able to relax more deeply than perhaps we ever have. I believe that this is what happened to Frank Schaeffer, and it is one reason that, as he says, he began to treat his family far better when he started to tell the truth. Telling the truth allowed Frank to relax, and a relaxed husband and father is a kinder husband and father.

Also, we expend energy to hide the truth, and this is tiring - even though we may not be conscious of the toll this is taking on us. When we tell the truth at last, all that energy is freed for creative purposes. Frank Schaeffer experienced a great burst of creativity when he began to tell the truth. He took up again the painting that he had loved but abandoned as a young man, and he started writing novels.

Writing these blog posts on my hospital experience and delving into the truth has given me an inkling of the relaxation, energy release, and joy of truth telling. This blog allows me to tell the truth to myself as well as to anyone who reads the blog - the blog is, after all, available to everyone on the Internet! I especially thank those who have read the blog, particularly those who have told me that they have read it. This lets me know that my truth-telling has been heard. Thank you! Some have even responded with comments through the blog's comment function, by email, by phone, or in person - sometimes sharing experiences of their own. This lets me know that my truth-telling has been heard and valued. Thank you!

I want to end with a word of caution, mostly to myself. I do know that truth-telling can be over-done. The truth-telling in this blog gives me joy, which indicates to me that I am ready to make these particular self-disclosures. There are other self-disclosures that I am not ready to make - these should stay in my personal journal, not for sharing. I may never be ready to make certain self-disclosures to anyone but myself. Even Frank Schaeffer, courageous truth-teller that he is, says that there are some things about himself that he chooses not to disclose. This is as it should be.

I also feel quite sure that there are some self-disclosures that I am not ready to make even to myself. Of course, I don't know what these are, since I haven't yet disclosed them to myself.

What I want to do is to continue telling the truth to myself and, as appropriate, to others. (Certainly, truth telling should never be used as a club to hurt someone else - most of the time, we don't need to tell others the truth about themselves but the truth about our own selves.) I also want to encourage others in their own truth telling through supportive listening, as others have done for me. Truth telling can be a great joy. It is even more joyful to share that joy!