Sat, 10 Nov 2007
Strange Beginnings
So I haven't written on my weblog for a week. Nothing dire happened. I upgraded the operating system on my computer along with some software and that took some time. There were no real problems, I'm glad to say. So now I'm running Leopard.
So tonight I thought I would talk about something easy, myself, and reveal a little bit more about myself. My mother went crazy the sumer between my first and second grades. This was full blown schizophrenia. There's a history of insanity in my family. In homeopathic terms, I blame the cancer miasm. This sort of experience is pretty devastating. Everclear wrote a song about it and if you want to understand me better, you should listen to it. They called the song "Why I Don't Believe in God."
So my father moved back with his parents while my mother was being treated, so they could watch us while he worked. It was a big old frame house in a nice neighborhood, but there were no other kids to play with. So after school I spent most of my time reading. I didn't have much to read, so I read the same books over and over. I got my hands on the family Bible. It had some paintings of biblical scenes in the middle. One was of of Jezebel being thrown from the window, her body devoured by dogs. After seeing that, I thought the Bible must be a really cool book. So I started reading it, starting at Genesis. My grandmother saw it and told me, "You can't understand that." I insisted I did. So she pointed to one word and then another and asked, "What does that mean?" When I couldn't answer, she took the Bible away from me. Thus ended my career as a theologian.
But that Christmas I got a children's book with lives of the saints. Each page had a portrait of the saint on the left page and a short biography on the right. So I read about Saint Ursula, who was martyred along with her 5,000 virgin followers. The book helpfully explained what a virgin was, since I was unclear on the concept. (Someone who dedicates their life totally to Christ.) And there were many other saints. I think the book had a big effect on me, though I'm not completely sure what that was. Actually everything I read that year had a big effect on me including the Bible. That was an important year. I'll have more to say later.
