Imagine

It has been a while, but I wrote this today as an example for my students. Thought it was worth posting.

I don't remember the first time I heard John Lennon's ImagingI , but I know that when I did hear it it gave me chills. I was too young then to fully understand the depth of what Lennon was saying, but I have become much more in tune to the words of this song with the wisdom of age. When I first heard the song, I connected with the line "you may say I am a dreamer." I have always been a dreamer and hopeless romantic. Over the years I have learned a some about the Buddhist philosophy and I can connect to Lennon on a much deeper scale.

As a young girl growing up in the backwoods of East Texas, the ideas of puritanical Christianity were indoctrinated into every fiber of my spirit. I fully believed in Heaven and Hell. I feared the Devil and loved Jesus with all of my soul. Interestingly enough, when I was presented with the idea of imagining there is no Heaven, I didn't freak out. I simply thought - well, John Lennon is wrong, there is a Heaven, but he is right about the war thing. We could certainly do without that.

Some years later as a young women focused on education and immersed in philosophy and literature classes, I began to entertain the idea that Heaven and Hell might be different than the portrait that had been painted for me in my youth. I still believed absolutely that Heaven and Hell existed, but I was more open to Lennon's proposition that "there is no heaven." And I was still unconditionally drawn to the conception of "nothing to kill or die for" was worth imagining.

Around the age of 40, I bottomed out. I became an orphan, divorcee, single mother and unemployed in the span of about six months. If not for the simple yet profound wisdom of one Dinty Moore in his book The Accidental Buddhist I am not sure I would have even begun to rebound from the deep depression into which these events spiraled me. I learned a new way to think about religion, a new way to imagine being. I had to because my soul had been irreversibly altered. I begin truly to imagine that there was no Hell, that living on this earth is hell. Even though I cannot give up on the notion of Heaven, I do believe that I have a deeper understanding of what John Lennon was talking about.

At this point in my life I am still a dreamer, just like John Lennon. Reflection over the years has lead me to the idea that Heaven and Hell are complex ideologies and that no two people will understand them in the same way. Still I wish for the world that my children and grandchildren to be one in which there is nothing to kill or die for. I don't think they will be bored because they will have plenty to hope for and a lot to love.

Bad Blogger (six word memoir)

I am such a bad blogger ;-)

My New Year's Resolution in December. Become a better blogger

six words (they even rhyme ;-)

i am back on the prozac

Another Six Word Memoir.

Thank you for waiting until now.

Annie on Faith

This post was written on April 28th, 2007 and edited on June 20, 2009.


I am half way through reading Ann Lamott's book Traveling Mercies. I was skeptical at first. I knew the book was going to be about Christianity. This is a topic I have avoided delving too far into because I just get too confused by it all. Then again, my confusion on this particular subject coupled with my desire to restore my faith to some minute level of where it once was is the exact reason I chose to read this specific book. I am in the 'get right with God' frame of mind. I fear I have been focused on the wrong things for so long.

Oh well, I was talking about Annie's book wasn't I? She is a hoot. I have learned a lot about being a Christian from this woman. She is helping me to reinvent myself as a Christian, to rethink what being a Christian means.

There are things that Annie and I disagree on. I don't always agree with her mothering philosophies or domestic organizational skills, but we are bound by a fairly solid link when it comes to our spirits.

She can't believe in a God who doesnt' dance, nor can I.

She says "I really wanted to be Cyd Charisse onstage, but as usual, if I'd gotten what I wanted, I would have shortchanged myself. What I wanted was acclaim, and what I got was Grace..." Me too!

Annie mentioned the book Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis . In this book, Lewis says of forgiveness, "If we really want to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo." This means to me that it is probably easier to forgive some idiot who cut you off in traffic than it is to forgive the man who misused your ten-year-old body . Baby steps! Makes sense to me.

Annie begins her book by telling a story of how a fellow airline passenger asked about her faith mid- flight. She was unsure about how to approach the subject and perhaps a bit uncomfortable discussing such things. Annie thought about lying. Instead she compromised and described her Christian faith thusly to her eager in-flight companion:

"My friends like to tell each other that I am not really a born-again Christian. They think of me more along the lines of that old Jonathan Miller routine, where he said, 'I'm not really a Jew -- I'm Jew - ish.' They think I am Christian - ish. But I'm not. I'm just a bad Christian. A bad born-again Christian. And certainly, like the apostle Peter, I am capable of denying it, of presenting myself as a sort of leftist liberation-theology enthusiast and maybe sort of a vaguely Jesusy bon vivant. But it's not true. And I believe that when you get on a plane, if you start lying you are totally doomed.

So I told the truth: that I am a believer, a convert. I'm probably about three months away from slapping an aluminum Jesus-fish on the back of my car, although I first want to see if the application or stickum in any way interferes with my lease agreement..."

I like her description of herself as a “bad Christian”. We liberals do get enough press for our Christian views. We are touted as mistaken and surely, bless our souls, going to hell. I consider myself more Christian-ish because I had it pounded into my psyche that there is only one way to be a good Christian. When I could live up to the absolute dogma presented anymore, I just quit being a Christian altogether.

Annie helped me to see that there is more than one way to be a Christian. She has helped me embrace the idea that it is acceptable to be Christian-ish or even a “bad Christian” This sentiment is meaningful to me because being a Christian is so very important to me. I do not want to abandon my faith altogether.

Six word memoir

I ate too many frozen blueberries.