Sincerely

I want to share with you an experience I had many years ago when I was in my 20s. Now I may have gone over it on this blog before, but it made such an impact on me that I wish to talk about it some more.

Many years ago I lived in a Christian group home. You could say it was similar to a commune, but it was owned by a church, and everyone who lived there were people who aspired to live the Christian life. While living there, I went once in a while to a Christian Science Reading Room and learned of their theories and beliefs. Well, when I told them at the home I was living in that I found some of what the Christian Scientists believed interesting, they hit the ceiling! Basically they shouted CULT!!! At the time Christians were very paranoid and angry with any religious group that didn't adhere to the Fundamental Christian "Statement of Faith" and called them 'cults'. Now when this group of people in the Christian home began to argue and say it was dangerous to read about Christian Science, I got very disgusted. I thought "What haters!!!", as we say nowadays. All I could see was hate. And I got angry, so angry that I packed my bags and left. In a thunderstorm! Yes. It was coming down in buckets, and I sat at the bus stop, with nowhere to go. So I called all kinds of people who gave me their numbers at the end of my college years, but everybody told me "No", when I asked to spend the night. So I always carried a sleeping bag in those days, and I ended up sleeping under a bush.

The next day I went to a place called the "People's Emergency Center'. From there I called my Pastor, and he gave me some suggestions where I could go. Fortunately, some friends were kind enough to take me in. Now I tried very hard to be allowed to stay there. I straightened up the house for them while they were working, and tried my best to get along with them. Then, one of the leaders in their church began to come over in the evening and question me. Now every night, he asked me the same question, and I didn't want to answer: what was my reason for leaving the group home I'd been living in? I told him that the Bible said not to go around spreading rumors, and I didn't want to tell him. And he was a powerful man in the church those women attended. Which meant first of all it pissed him off real bad that I wouldn't tell him. And secondly, he decided I had a demon (can you imagine?) and could not stay, and whatever he decided was final.

The next day, me and the other women were in the sitting room, and I read some scriptures to them from the Bible in an effort to persuade them to let me stay. While I was reading, one of them cut me off and said to me, looking me straight in the eye "Raya where do you want us to take you?" The boldness with which they sat there, all of them knowing that they worshipped God together, and yet so readily treated me in a way that they knew was contradictory to His teachings!

Well now in the process of writing all this I realize I probably sound like I was a real weirdo. But all I was was a person trying to love God in a pure way, yet surrounded by a land of greed and selfishness, that was never about half the things it claimed to be.

♬   The Animals: Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood