So, it has been almost two months since my last blog. And that was my last blog - truly. I have not blogged at any of the few blogs I maintain, and the last blog you see here, was not posted anywhere else but here.
How am I doing? Better. It turns out that Ambien (a prescription sleep aid) was destroying my emotions, and towards the end, my mental state. It's hard to explain, but if you're really interested, do a Google sometime on the side-effects of Ambien CR. Make sure to include the "CR," which is for "Controlled Release." That is some evil stuff. At least for me it is. Understand that drugs affect different people differently. Ambien CR jacked me up something fierce. I could not understand why I was so emotional. I couldn't keep from crying whenever I thought of my youngest son going off to the Army, and my oldest one moving out and getting married. Anyhow, there really is MUCH more to this story than I'm going to bother with here. You're already bored anyway. Just trust me when I say that Ambien and Johnny D. do not mix. I am, apparently, one of about 3% of the population that has a terrible reaction to that stuff. Oh well, "Live & learn," as they say.
One thing that I will speak to that came out of this story (as noted above in the "there really is MUCH more to this story") is how I began, again, to take the idea of God with some seriousness. Some of you may have read past blogs here and noted my thinly veiled (and sometimes outright) hostility toward God, or Gods, or supreme beings in general. Well, when one is so far down in the dumps that suicide actually begins to look like a bright idea, one can actually seriously begin to ponder the idea of a supreme being - at least that is how it went for me. Please understand that I never actually pulled a pistol out, loaded it and pointed it at my head. I did not. There were a couple of times while trying to get off the Ambien that I felt like a bullet would certainly make the withdrawals more acceptable and the hallucinations a bit more palatable. There were also times (and there still are) that I wish the sun would begin to burn out and swell into a super-giant and burn the earth to a cinder. Such a fate is, if one believes current scientific thought about the matter, our planet's supposed destiny in a few billions years.
To cut to the chase, I picked up my Bible - a book I used to be intimately familiar with, but had not opened in some ten years, and began to read Acts. Then I read Luke. And then Ephesians. Then Galatians. Then I read huge sections of John's gospel. Then I read Acts again. Then I read some chapters in Acts again, and again - and then some more - and I'm still reading Acts. I've always loved history, and I love the history found in Acts. I love the genuine feel of the early church, and I could read Acts chapter 2 (especially the last half) a million times and not get enough. Same goes with the later chapters where Paul's three missionary journies are chronicled.
And I really have no idea what this means for me. One thing I do know is that I can never go back to being a regular church-goer. I can't do that, and I do not think I can be persuaded to. What I read in Acts in no way resembles what we now call church. If I were to go to any church, it would be a house church, and it would be very practical. Anyhow, I'm getting side-tracked here, and do not really wish to go into church or any of the other subjects one could get off into.
I just want to say that in my reading, I find Jesus of Nazareth to be a very compelling figure. How else can one look at or explain a man that was born dirt-poor and never wandered more than a hundred miles or so from his place of birth - yet had such an effect upon the planet? Has anyone ever had such an effect? I don't think so. Muhammad might be giving Jesus a run for his money, but in thinking about it, he still has a long way to go.
Anyway, in my reading of Jesus' words, there is just something there that rings true to me. Could it be my western sensibilities and prejudices? I suppose. Still, there is just something there in those words that strikes me straight in the solar-plexus. What is it about the man? How could an itinerant preacher with no money and no prospects totally change the world? FOR 2000 years? Lots of folks met their end on a Roman gibbet, but none of them changed an entire world - except Jesus. How is that?
Like many things, this is so hard for me. My rational mind wants to reject religion, but there is that nagging feeling that rejecting religion and rejecting Jesus are two different things. Jesus said somewhere in my reading of the gospels something like, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can tell this tree to be uprooted and throw itself into the sea." I don't have that much faith - not even as much as a mustard seed's worth. I have maybe a hundreth of a mustard seed's worth. There's an almost imperceptible flame burning in my heart. It's not even right to call it a flame. It's more like the glow of the wick as you blow the candle out. It may relight, and it may die off and turn cold. But it is there, and I think someone or something is fanning the glow and trying to make a flame.
I don't feel as if I have to hurry and make any decision about any of this. I need to figure out who I truly am before I do anything. You'd think that at my age, I'd have that figured out, but I really do not, and this has become clear to me over the past few months. I tend to jump into things "whole-hog," as I did with Christianity in the past. There's no middle-ground for me, apparently. I could go on and chronicle the things I've gone off into, but I will not. I'll look for your thoughts and comments and we'll go from there. Thanks for reading.
