#second of all can you BELIEVE he thought that a sound argument for why yeshua the christened Must have truly been The Savior was

[unproduciblesmackdown]

on wednesday nights we get gnostic

[penderworth]

The (first of more, probably) religious trauma entry

For a very, very long time, I’ve been putting off writing or talking about this, let alone remembering it. Because as much as I love nostalgia, I hate remembering things. Why should I? They’re gone. Remembering them sounds like an unproductive way to spend time. No wonder I have such a hard time with therapy: There’s a lot of remembering things in therapy, and my dad’s voice is what said that last sentence, not mine. But we’ll get to that.

My struggle to find belonging the past few years makes complete sense in the context of my church experience. It’s a very common one, in fact, for anyone who leaves church. I hear about it often, like earlier today on The Sunday Thing. I mostly left the church when I turned 21, but all this started way before that, when I was 14 or so and Church on the Mountain split. Friends and all the other younger people started going to Lighthouse, where they had night services and it was edgy. Charismatic! They had flags! Fuck flags, man.

Originally though, when the church split, I stayed at COTM because it was tough to get up to Mammoth. Then the youth group moved up there as well, so I started getting rides from friends. And slowly, unconsciously, to their disappointment, I drifted away from the religion of my parents. But it’s okay, the new church had flags! Only for a little bit, though, then the old church got some again too. The ouroboros of church trends.

The new church also had dancing, louder music, and all the other things one finds when they Google for “charismatic church”. We just lacked Benny Hinn, Sith supreme. Fascinatingly, though, in the past few years, I find myself drawn to many of the things I spoke against in the church. But was it ever me speaking? No. It was the judgement of my parents, carried on habitually, as all family opinions are. The genes of one’s ancestors must not just make up our bodies; why not encode some opinions, traumas, and other chaos in there as well, triggering it at just the right moments? But worry not: You can avoid all this by continuing to play the game of your parents’ child.

Back to the dancing. The only relationship I’d ever had to it was that one time I asked Kristen out at a wedding, hosted at our second house in Mammoth. But wait, let’s deconstruct that real quick. Why did I ask her to dance? Someone told me to. Either my parents or my peers, probably the former. Someone said that asking a woman to dance is the key to her heart. And my adolescent mind immediately said “Yes, please, the key to those boobs! I mean, oh wait, heart. Yes. We must get married first, then the boobs shall be available.” And even the very young me sought much success in the world, so pursued what he wanted.

Then other ideas floated into my relationship with dancing. “Men only do that at weddings.” “Well, see, that makes you gay...” “Oh that’s just something they did in the 60s.” “I don’t know man, I think you might suck at it. I mean, do you even have hips?” So when Lighthouse introduced this new physical experience of church, I repeated what I’d heard my parents say, in the way one does when they’re afraid of the other: “This is getting a little weird.” To which a child for whom the world is entirely made up of wonder and mystery should reply, “Yeah! And let’s try it out.” But that child was dying. His parents and culture had killed him with their occupations, marriages, gods, and ideas. So many ideas.

Of course at this point, dancing wasn’t enough, so they added extensions to their appendages by gathering sticks with thin, colorful fabric attached, that flowed weightlessly as they spun them around, praising God. For some reason, though, if gay people wanted to celebrate a part of themselves in the same manner, that was different. And if we asked why, it was complicated.

I grew disillusioned and judgmental with all of this. Part of me – the one who was becoming someone – wanted to belong here, to be a crucial part of this community. That’s why I would plant roots, serve on their teams, play on the worship team. I wanted them to see that I wanted to be there, that I was dedicated, that I wouldn’t leave. I was seldom returned this effort. Church seems to attract many wounded souls who also don’t know how to love, hence the desire for an unconditionally loving God. I mean it’s in the marketing, right? Makes sense.

So part of me wanted to belong there. But the parental voices within said something different: This scares me, this is weird, make it go away, I don’t want to talk about how I feel. Because that last one is really it, isn’t it? You don’t want to talk about your feelings. Even you, mother. You, who feel so deeply in moments I can’t, yet freeze in many of the ones that matter to me. And that is how behavior and habits pass down to one’s children. I like to imagine we do that to our children because there are many problems in our lives that we just won’t get the chance to solve before we die, and they demand to be worked out. So we procreate to create new chances for these issues to be resolved. We’re dedicated coders staying on top of our repo.

Of course at this point, I do wonder where we are going if this is indeed the course of the universe. What would become of us if all our issues were to be resolved? A question for another time.

I remember the first time I went to Lighthouse, at their older location. I felt cool. There was such potential in this new place. It was NEW. Sparkly. They had a cool sound system, lots of drums, and a hip worship leader. This seemed like progress. I’d learn new songs, meet bandmates, find myself playing the House of Blues one day. The dream! Also there were new girls I hadn’t met before. The girl who’d rejected me previously was behind me – this was a new slate, the first of many in my life where I could recreate who Jacob was, until I eventually lost him entirely.

For someone who was homeschooled, all this was exactly what I needed. I got to meet other people my age twice a week now: Youth group on Thursday and church on Sunday. I’m sure none of my passion was driven by the sexual urges of an adolescent. No, I would never have such thoughts during my special singing and praying time with God; who, by the way, I did not understand, but was told C.S. Lewis would explain to me one day when I’m older. And all this time, they thought I wouldn’t come back one day to bite them with a joke, like the serpent who didn’t get to taste that juicy apple.

There was one other time I saw other people my age: Swim team. But I never wanted to be there. Not like I wanted to be at a mini rock concert, singing loudly and pretending to have spiritual experiences, sometimes playing on the stage myself. I was also pumped up on all the Dr. Pepper and Mambas I could buy with my allowance. If the church and educational systems focused more on embodiment, I may have made better choices. Or maybe I would have rebelled and eaten even more sugar – who’s to say.

What’s unfortunate is I never truly felt at home at Lighthouse, because there was a war going on inside me the whole time. My family was telling me it was bad, sinful, even evil and “demonic” at times. They believed more in the God than the Holy Spirit part of the trinity, and rarely talked of the Son, Yeshua. But another part of me was just happy to be among peers; my parents’ church was mostly old people who never seemed to be listening to me when we had conversations. Eventually I left Lighthouse because I moved. The first of many moves.

In examining my experiences finding community since then, they’ve slowly declined into what is currently an absence of it. My most recent sustained experience of community was in Isla Vista. Everything fell into place for me to move there. It felt like where I was supposed to be – I took it as a sign from God, because it happened so seamlessly, unlike other life transitions I'd forced.

I had incredible housemates that first year in 2014, each of whom challenged me in more ways than any of my classes ever could – I’ve always been more fascinated with relationship and the human condition than I was with any subjects. One of the most memorable things of that first year was the beginning of a more substantial deconstruction for me. Getting into deep, circular, and unreasonable arguments with my housemate Tarra would leave me cursing God, quietly and ashamedly, for how he had failed to show her what love truly looks like within the heart. Love isn't trying to convert someone to your beliefs, which felt more like someone trying to prove to themselves that what they believed was good for them by marketing it to other people as such.

At this point, I still listened to my heart. I still felt it often. When I passed a homeless person on the street, I felt the pangs of their hunger, loneliness, and disconnection from the rest of us. But I was told that’s not what we do when we see a homeless person, so I had to block that feeling to prevent myself from becoming overwhelmed, especially after moving to a larger city. This became a habit for me: Assimilating the emotional and behavioral patterns of the people around me, often without a second thought. I still had a critic within me who challenged things, but most of its energy was spent at AppStorm, finding flaws in the creations of others. Because that’s the role of a critic, I was told: To be an asshole.

Toward the second half of 2014, my faith in this God began to shake until it shattered. Breakups with another person are terrible, but try breaking up with the morals, community, and afterlife package you were given upon your arrival in this world. That fucking sucks. No one likes it. Which is why it took me years, from ages 20 to 24 to finally file for divorce with my church, my God, and my afterlife insurance plan, as Pete Holmes would say. And after all the sex I’d had while traveling, it felt freeing for a bit – maybe I hadn't greatly sinned after all, maybe I could listen to my body. But breaking up with someone usually guarantees their voice will return to haunt you for a while. And this was a 24-year relationship, so there’s a bit of history.

The wonder of that child I mentioned earlier has, at this point, really begun to disappear. I see glimpses of it some days. If he were a roaring fire at the start, he’s now a barely glowing ember. The optimism of even the 22-year-old self has been replaced with a stagnant disinterest in what life could possibly have that won't lead to more unnecessary suffering. And without people to win over, he’s unsure that he’ll ever be able to procreate, to pass at least a few of his problems on to the next great programmer who starts a branch on this vast repo. Plus the fear of all the things above, as well as those of his ancestors, and the shame of being white, having a job, and living what most would call a really great life, haunt him daily. Without the balancing optimism of others in his life, he feels as if he’ll collapse under the weight of all this. It truly is too much for one person to bear, yet in the words of Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone;

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,

But has trouble enough of its own.

So he’ll run off now, to find some alternate realities in his dreams, where things are different. Perhaps those dreams are a future of this very timeline.