not once has the word spirit or spirituality been mentioned here. what good is faith without it?

i believe evilness and the potential for it lives in all of us. its up to us to choose which path we take regardless of what has happened to us in the past. how wonderful it is that some can react with such anger toward that evil done to them in the name of religion or positions of authority. but what then? stay stuck in anger or rage?

I would close with these words but i don't know all the words to it..................

can someone (hint hint mo_healing or the other poets among us here) please post the words to the song "the rose" as sung by bette midler in the movie of the same name?

jer

Jer

I agree, we have to move on from our anger somehow, either dispell it, conquer it, give it back to those who gave it to us - whatever we do with it we have to move away from it.

The anger that RJD felt right at the start of this post about a TV show, and the attitudes expressed there, will always come back and bite us. And rightly so.
But if we're not overloaded with the 'baggage' of our old anger then we'll deal with new angers as they come.

Forgive me for quoting again - but I like this by the French guy Jean Paul Sartre.

"If you are not already dead, forgive. Rancour is heavy, it is worldly; leave it on earth. Die lightly."

Dave

The Rose
Artist: Bette Midler
Words & Lyrics by: Amanda McBroom


Some say love, it is a river that drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower, and You its only seed.

It's the heart, afraid of breaking, that never learns to dance.
It's the dream, afraid of waking, that never takes a chance.
It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give.
And the soul, afraid of dyin', that never learns to live.

When the night has been too lonely,and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes
The Rose.

Not the type of song I usually like, but I'm starting to understand why I always liked that song...

Victor

As a 36 year old married white male, I don't think I'm in Better Midler's "target demographic". But the words are telling, and who knows, she probably went through the same stuff we did Jer. I just down load lyrics online, though, I don't have any talent for hearing them. When I was a kid I thought that '70's song "Still the one" was "Steal the worm".

Mo Healing

Les_angry thanks for your support.

also thank you andrew-almost 52

Thank you Bob”the Dean,” In the same spirit I want to say FU Sally Jesse Raphael who
aparently believes from birth on, men are always culpable for all that happens in to us
and the lives we come in contact with.

Thanks back at you too Victor, I’ve also been saying. Whew!

Bless you too guy43.

Life is more complicated than what I initially posted. What was not in my opening post
was even good people do bad things. There is a place for anger in the raw and a
place for focused anger that has been reasoned out.. I lnow that everyone is doing
their best and life is overwhelming ...period. The church is more complex than my
knee jerk reaction speading one color over all churches and participants. There are
nuns that really are all about love, even the ones who have expressed their personal
hurt violently onto others. We are all capable of hurting others. Words can hurt too, as we all know.

What I fight are the images of perfection, I guess. Don’t look now, but maybe what I fight are images of infallable authority? I resent the power of doctors and nurses as infallableimages. I resent the image of priests and nuns as infallable. I resent the
images of cops as infallable. I resent the images of “pillars of society” as infallable. I
am especially resentful of the image of the “cult of the Madonna” otherwise known as
MOTHERHOOD(surprise, surprise). Its always my word against a brick wall of so
called “sainthood” or doers of good deeds who are unimpeachable. I’m also
uncomfortable even wearing a cloak of authority. Do you think I might have unfinished
issues from my adolescent period? Enough sarcasm about myself.

michaelb your anger is righteous, laden with care, support and hope. Because of that
it is filled with love. Thank you for bringing it here. I too have left services where in one sentence it was about God's love for all
and the next sentence was about who the "all" included

Bless you back Mark S

Hope is what I see all through this thread.

mattandrew your final words on one post was:
________________________________________________

For me i think my religion is going to be none right now,
until i can really hammer out this issue.
________________________________________________

My heart skipped a beat and filled with tears of joy.

Your statement said to me that you believe there might be a time in the future when
you might even entertain the idea that some father’s can be loving. Now is not the time
but you have hope. Does this fit with what you were saying mattandrew?

The visual immage you provided for me is one of determination and hope. I’m
hammering out issues myself. A piece of this image I share with you is in my choice of
the word “tempering” in expressing my gratitude to “Lloydy” at the very beginning.
These are terms used when working with steel. Each of us is recreating ourselves by
rearranging the powerful raw materials, in us, to forge this steel. This healing process
is much like that to me. I feel like I first have to go through the fire.

My struggle is with mother love. Brother love is also contaminated for me and is
related to your experience as I see it mattandrew. My own kind, that was supposed to
show me what being a man was all about, painted a poisoned image. If being a man
is about what he did to me, I didn’t want to grow up to be that man.

Determination, hope and love is every where on this thread.

I hesitated to post this anger piece. It was pretty raw in reaction to what I saw on
television, but I knew you guys could relate to it. When I sat down at the computer my
modem for access to the internet was dead and I thought the cosmos were saying
don’t do it Bob, but the passion was there. The next day the passion was still there, but
still no modem. I typed it anyway as a way to get rid of the anger and stop carrying
it around. Later my wife found the loose wire. I still held on to this piece and after a
while in the wee hours I released it by posting.

Well what if someone is hurt by it? what if they don’t understand? What if it elicits
hate. What if they never let me back here? Then I said to myself, it’s just the way I feel.
If they can’t deal with it, so be it , and I will mourn that loss too. I’m not arguing
theology. I’m hurting and anger is protecting that hurt.

As I look back, what seems to have happened is that the anger that was expressed, as
in “gotten rid of,” opened other possibilities. All the responses are dazzling to me.
There is so much heart here. A part of me expected a lot of; how wrong I was, I don’t
know what I’m are saying, I shouldn’t be like that, and when are you going to get over
this. What I really got was a ton of real love shared with one another. WOW!!!!

From a discussion between my wife and myself:
Doubt, and belief that is encased in doctrine, are intellectual concepts or in the
language of the brain. They are more finite in their scope. They are about
being up in the head which is often about defenses.

Hope , faith and charity, confusion, pain and love are the language of the
heart, rather than language of the brain . They keep you educable, or open to
possibilities.

Bless all of you, and I hope this keeps going.

RJD

Well.......
we've had all of that here, and more.
I for one started with 'confusion' when I saw the origional post, I moved on to 'hope' - read the first few replies and had a sudden rush of 'faith'
The 'charity' is everyone accepting each others point of view, no matter how much 'pain' it might cause.
That just leaves 'love' - and there's been a load of that as well !

Dave

Mo I'm not sure if Bette did in fact suffer CSA; I'll check into it.

Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk, gee that's funny, Moe! :p Maybe on the Music Forum it would be fun to share some of the lyrics we heard wrong in funny ways.

Thanks for the inspiration, Mo!

Victor

RJD:

Little brother;), this thread is so much of what MS & surviving & recovery & support are all about!

We can't mention every aspect of every thing we bring up every time we post. Forget the lack of time, energy & necessity to do so; we probably haven't even thot of & can't comprehend certain aspects until we start with something & just post!

I could see how your ideas, feelings, etc seemed to change each time you posted as the thread progressed and more & more people responded to you and to others. It's great when this happens, and it was great to see it happening with you.

It was my privilege to follow with you in your struggles, your "growing pains," in this thread; especially with "images of perfection," and particularly "the cult of the Madonna" aka motherhood--those, I really relate to!

Thanks for having the courage to start a thread so powerful & so real, a thread that has really shown some of the best of MS!

Blessings my brother

Victor

Amen to Victor's words!