Being Lost by Kenny Durkin, Jr. (Guest Blogger)

I’ve been feeling lost lately.

That’s not to say that I’m running through the woods in the dark and screaming my head off. It’s not a panicked kind of lost, but more of a calm and collected attempt to find true North and get back on track.

To be honest, I’m glad for it.

For the longest time, I was grounded in religion. Christianity was what I thought defined me, which was technically true, but probably not in the way I had hoped.

I grew up believing much of the typical right-wing evangelical garbage that gets thrown around today. Even the stuff I didn’t fully believe had enough of a hold on me that I assumed I was being weak in my faith for questioning it. When I failed or screwed up, a small screw-up was enough to make me feel worthless, and a big one was enough to break me down almost completely.

I was the kind of Christian who held onto beliefs such as, “being gay is a choice and super sinful,” and “abortion is wrong no matter the reason.” I can imagine myself now saying “hate the sin, not the sinner”. Looking back, it’s all so cringe worthy.

My opinions started to slowly shift as I met different people and through my own humbling experiences, but the biggest changes came in the past couple years and was caused by one big, fat, amazingly beautiful occurrence.

Donald Trump’s run for and winning of the Presidency with a large evangelical endorsement.

Did I say beautiful? Sorry, I meant to say it was like getting hit by a freight train filled with shock and disgust.

If it had just been him rattling off horrible crap on TV, that would have been one thing, but seeing so many Christians I had respected and looked up to jump on the Trump bandwagon was a hard-enough jolt to knock me out of my complacency and leave me questioning everything I had ever thought I knew about myself, the world, and God.

Before Trump, I was more than willing to be the ignorant guy in the background, never making a splash and keeping my mouth shut.

After Trump, I found myself jumping into conversations I would have gladly kept out of before. I would argue for a change instead of bowing out to keep the peace, and found that I was having fun doing so.

I wound up in a place where I realized it wouldn’t be enough anymore to trust anything anyone else had told me. I was going to have to find out what I really believed on my own and through my own effort.

Luckily there were a precious few people who were greatly encouraging, who gave me a starting point, and let me run from there.

I’ve read more books in the last year of my life than I did the whole previous decade. I’ve branched out into subjects and authors that I would have completely disregarded before and enjoyed almost every one of them. I’ve read books of prominent atheists and religious outcasts, and even a right-wing book or two, though they left a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve found that some of the thoughts I had discarded as foolish while surrounded by religion weren’t all that unheard of outside of that setting.

I haven’t yet managed to find the right path, but I’ve been able to mark off many that I now know for sure are not for me. Even some of the paths that haven’t been for me have been filled with enjoyment and learning. They were like stumbling upon a quiet oasis, even if just for a few hours.

I feel that I can confidently say that even if I remain lost for the rest of my life, that at least the searching has been worthwhile.

It’s not so bad being lost... it was far worse wrongly believing I knew where I was.

------------

This blog post was curated and/or edited by The Ardent Reader, Esther Hofknecht Curtis, BSOL, MSM-HCA. The views expressed in this blog post are those of the guest blogger. Visit www.parrotcontent.com for more information.

Horror: My First True Literary Love and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I was raised in Philadelphia in a conservative Christian family. We had a lot of rules, most of which I didn't like. Tuck in your shirt, don't curse, wear a belt, go to three different churches twelve times a week, iron your church clothes even if they are jeans and a t-shirt, do morning devotions, read your Bible, do nightly devotions, pray over every meal and before you go to bed, go to the bathroom before we leave, eat what's on your plate even if it's gross and/or might be freeze dried survival food, do what your father says, do what your mother says, and do what your grandmother says. (Those last three rules had an entire litany of sub-rules which could be created and implemented at whatever juncture seemed appropriate.) 

Some rules were created arbitrarily based on whether my grandmother considered something evil. For example, Santa Claus was evil because his existence (real or imagined) took the focus off of Jesus during Christmas. (This claim was further evidenced by the fact that the letters in his name could be rearranged to spell "Satan.") Wishing was evil, as was any form of alcohol, Madonna, evolution, daytime soap operas, Labrynth, the Rolling Stones, Fantasia, Max Headroom, Native American dream catchers, and inexplicably, E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial. (I do know the biblical reason for this, but it's way too complicated for this blog.) And finally, at the top of the heap of evil things was THE MOST EVIL THING OF ALL: HALLOWEEN. 

As kids, we lived half a block from a store that sold penny candy. We weren't rich, but damn, did we feel like it when we used our allowance to buy fifty cents of Swedish Fish. Candy was life, and that meant Halloween was impossible to ignore. Our parents tried to make us ignore it anyway, and every Oct. 31, we went into our house and our parents locked the doors and turned off the lights at the front of the house. All through dinner and our glum nightly devotional, we were interrupted by what seemed like hundreds of happy-go-lucky assholes whose parents not only encouraged them to dress up for Halloween but even went along with them. My dad would pause and wait silently until they gave up and went away. It was torture. One year, both parents were working on Halloween (but the rules still applied), so my brothers and I handed out potatoes and onions to those who appeared at our door. It was our own special "screw you" to kids who had it better than we did. 

Incidentally, the benefit to growing up in a family like ours was that you could always argue that something hadn't been explicitly identified as evil, so technically, it wasn't off limits when you decided to do it. It only became evil once you were caught and punished. The drawback to living like this is we grew up not knowing how to make decisions for ourselves, so when we got free, we went ape shit crazy. (Thankfully, only one of us ended up in jail, and it wasn't me.)

The one thing that wasn't evil, wasn't off limits, and had indescribable possibilities was the Free Library of Philadelphia. We could walk the 14 blocks there by ourselves, and my mom would even give us bus tokens if she had them. After age 12, I triumphantly explored the adult section, and I chose the most evil section: Horror. I went for the gusto, and chose Stephen King, known far and wide as the most evil writer of them all. Hell, he was so bad they even talked about him in church.

Sure, I borrowed mystery and history books (I loved Michael Crichton and anything about medical oddities) but I always checked out a Stephen King novel along with them. I'd sneak them into my room and read them under the covers, freaking myself out and staying up all night with the lights on to make sure I wasn't attacked by the undead creature that most certainly inhabited the five inches of space underneath my bed. 

The first King book I read was Pet Sematary, which scared the living beejeezus out of me. Then I read Misery. Then I read The Dead Zone. Then I read 'Salem's Lot. Then The Shining. Then Cujo. Then IT. I worked my way through the branch's King collection, then requested the rest through our librarian. I then discovered that King also wrote under the pen name of Richard Bachman, and read as many of those as I could get my hands on. I read many of the books he co-wrote with Peter Straub. I've read IT at least eight times, and I can never get through the month of June without at least thinking of reading it just one last time. And sometimes I give in. 

So, dear readers, this is how a good little church girl grew up to love the horror genre, the author Stephen King, and the monsters, demons, ax-wielding nurses, dead pets, possessed caretakers, ghouls, re-animated corpses, fantasy creatures, rabid dogs, and irreparably damaged child heroes King and his fellow writers brought to life. To this day, I can't walk past the fiction section without checking for a new King novel. It's just as impossible to ignore your first true literary love as it is to ignore Halloween.

Now, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I dress my two children in their costumes and take them out to trick-or-treat. We go to the scariest houses and face gruesome, horrifying ghouls. Sometimes we go to the American Legion's haunted house, which is so good and scary that we scream all the way through. Our fear overtakes us at the very end when we run from the place, chased by a chainsaw-wielding madman. We catch our breath in the parking lot, then pile into the car, our hearts still pounding. Then we laugh. And there's the tiniest possibility that I might have had more fun than my kids.

Happy Halloween! 

👻👻👻👻👻👻👻

P.S. My parents have lightened up quite a bit since then, and hopefully my mother won't disown me for this post. 

Book 161: Conversations with the Faithful: Seeking Enlightenment over Lunch by Kerry Parry

Those of you that know me personally know I am a deeply spiritual person, but I am not religious in the traditional sense of the word. I believe that we all have our own spiritual journeys to complete, and that limiting ourselves to one dogma or another just limits the scope of our own personal enlightenment. This is why Kerry Parry's book, Conversations with the Faithful: Seeking Enlightenment over Lunch hooked me from the very first page. I also like her name: Kerry Parry, the vowels of which I transposed at least twice during this blog post.

Parry's spiritual journey began with a desire to learn more about others' faith, especially those who seemed to have all their questions answered. Although Parry's family had Mormon roots, she and her family did not adhere to any formal religious practice. Through interviews and research, Parry found her own faith was not lacking; it was simply something she had to unearth, identify, and embrace.

In a thousand different ways, I identified with Parry's journey. I related to her sense of humor, sarcasm, cynicism, and desire for a better understanding of herself. As kids she and I were both exposed to some of the same weirdness of Christianity and came to the same conclusions. Like her, I learned the basic beliefs of the Mormons from a South Park episode (thank you, Trey Parker and Matt Stone.) I felt the same unease with which she approached people who seemed so sure of their beliefs, because I believe rigidity is a weakness, not a strength.

I found this book hilarious and introspective. Definitely worth the read.