Recently I experienced the loss of my father. He died peacefully in a nursing home a week ago Monday, and I was able to spend many hours at his side as he went through the final stages of the death process over the course of three days. I held his hand, spoke with him, shed tears of love and gratitude towards him. It was a sad as well as deeply beautiful experience to watch the end come to his full and rich life filled with his love to others.
The day before he died I sat in his room talking with the hospice person for just over an hour who had come to care for his and the family's need. I talked about my father's spiritual life, as well as my thoughts on death and dying. It was a peaceful and beautiful time talking about these things with my father lying on his bed between us. It was deeply spiritual, speaking of how I drove into the rising sun as I was coming to be with him, seeing the beauty of the day over the farm fields beginning anew. Peace came over me with the thought that it was a good day to die. How the passing of life comes in the rising of the new, that the world continues as we pass from it in return to it as the Source of our own being. It was a beautiful shared experience speaking of life, death and dying with her while I sat at my father's side.
Then at the door a minister came whom one of the residents had sent thinking he should come pray for my father. My father did not relate to the divine, or the Infinite in the typical traditional Christian ways. He was a deeply spiritual man, but did not get much out of the religious approach of the "man upstairs" way of envisioning it. He was much deeper than that, even though he lacked a vocabulary to really speak of how he related to it, "The sea of Goodness", is one way he would speak of it, being a man in his 80's. When I would speak with him previously of my views, we were very much on the same pages.
And so I politely spoke with the minister about my father's view, about my own, and how that though we appreciated the gesture it wasn't how he or myself exactly relate to God, though I respect that approach for others who find it meaningful. He shook my hand and left the room, and I continue my discussion about "God", life, and death with the hospice person with my father between us. I was very respectful to the minister, very truthful, and very clear.
So what did I learn happened the next day, a mere two hours before my father's final breaths? The minister apparently was "offended" by me, and that resident and him went back into my father's room after the hospice person and myself were gone, and they prayed for him and sang their little songs for him, as he lay there unconscious, in his finals hours/days of death. How did I find out? I was sitting with my mother at a table in the cafeteria and the woman whom she knew came wheeled herself up to the table with us and started acting hostilely towards me, then finally turned to me and said, "I have to ask you, what are your beliefs?". I was taken aback, not really grasping what was going on, unaware of her little violation of sacred trust and respect with her minister friend. I answered respectfully and as simply as I could, even though it would take a full book's explanation to begin to convey how I believe. She wrinkled her nose up at me, took my mother's hand and explained how I had offended the minster and how she and him went into his room and prayed for my father, as she tried to console my mother.
I got up and told her I did not want to talk with her, and how offended I was by people like her who were incapable of seeing past their own beliefs to others enough to respect their wishes. I left as I felt a rage coming on, passed by the nursing station where my father was, and with my hands shaking I told them point blank that that woman and that minster were absolutely not allowed in my father's room or anywhere near him. I went outside, and sadly, as my mother came out to join me, I lost it. I began screaming and sobbing uncontrollably at the top of my lungs, and for some reason I just started running full speed as a screamed and cried. I have never had anything like that happen to me in my life! I couldn't stop it.
I finally was able to settle after about 20 minutes, and told myself I needed to spend time with my father at his side, as I cannot afford to let this dominate this final hours with him. I settled and went back to his room, crying with the hospice nurse telling he what had just happened, then sat quietly with my dad at his side on his final day. Two hours later he was gone. His face had the look of deep meditation. Peace filled his room as he left his body of 89 years.
Truly, these particular brand of "Christians" are the very predators whom Jesus spoke about, calling them wolves in sheep's clothing. A wolf is a predator. But what a better word even still is vampires. The live by sucking the life energy from others. They are not capable of love. They are incapable of compassion. They are self-feeding off of others, even the family of a dying man. I have no words to truly convey the vileness, the non-Christian, non-loving self-righteous, self-justifying, self-vindicating religiousness of these predators, these vampires. I came to the conclusion a few months ago that fundamentalism was a disease, a pathology, not just another version of religious beliefs. It is a sickness. And the sickness I saw was horrible. Even at deaths bed, they are incapable of empathy or compassion.
Why did I post this in the debate section? Because anyone who thinks this brand of religion serves God or humanity in any positive way shape or form, think again! This is the fruit! I cannot say enough of my utter lack of respect for it, and I am dedicating the rest of my life to help educate and free those who have sold their souls to it for the illusion they are saved. They are not. This is the fruit it bears, in full broad daylight for the world to see. Use the name Jesus all you want. By their fruit you shall know them.
The day before he died I sat in his room talking with the hospice person for just over an hour who had come to care for his and the family's need. I talked about my father's spiritual life, as well as my thoughts on death and dying. It was a peaceful and beautiful time talking about these things with my father lying on his bed between us. It was deeply spiritual, speaking of how I drove into the rising sun as I was coming to be with him, seeing the beauty of the day over the farm fields beginning anew. Peace came over me with the thought that it was a good day to die. How the passing of life comes in the rising of the new, that the world continues as we pass from it in return to it as the Source of our own being. It was a beautiful shared experience speaking of life, death and dying with her while I sat at my father's side.
Then at the door a minister came whom one of the residents had sent thinking he should come pray for my father. My father did not relate to the divine, or the Infinite in the typical traditional Christian ways. He was a deeply spiritual man, but did not get much out of the religious approach of the "man upstairs" way of envisioning it. He was much deeper than that, even though he lacked a vocabulary to really speak of how he related to it, "The sea of Goodness", is one way he would speak of it, being a man in his 80's. When I would speak with him previously of my views, we were very much on the same pages.
And so I politely spoke with the minister about my father's view, about my own, and how that though we appreciated the gesture it wasn't how he or myself exactly relate to God, though I respect that approach for others who find it meaningful. He shook my hand and left the room, and I continue my discussion about "God", life, and death with the hospice person with my father between us. I was very respectful to the minister, very truthful, and very clear.
So what did I learn happened the next day, a mere two hours before my father's final breaths? The minister apparently was "offended" by me, and that resident and him went back into my father's room after the hospice person and myself were gone, and they prayed for him and sang their little songs for him, as he lay there unconscious, in his finals hours/days of death. How did I find out? I was sitting with my mother at a table in the cafeteria and the woman whom she knew came wheeled herself up to the table with us and started acting hostilely towards me, then finally turned to me and said, "I have to ask you, what are your beliefs?". I was taken aback, not really grasping what was going on, unaware of her little violation of sacred trust and respect with her minister friend. I answered respectfully and as simply as I could, even though it would take a full book's explanation to begin to convey how I believe. She wrinkled her nose up at me, took my mother's hand and explained how I had offended the minster and how she and him went into his room and prayed for my father, as she tried to console my mother.
I got up and told her I did not want to talk with her, and how offended I was by people like her who were incapable of seeing past their own beliefs to others enough to respect their wishes. I left as I felt a rage coming on, passed by the nursing station where my father was, and with my hands shaking I told them point blank that that woman and that minster were absolutely not allowed in my father's room or anywhere near him. I went outside, and sadly, as my mother came out to join me, I lost it. I began screaming and sobbing uncontrollably at the top of my lungs, and for some reason I just started running full speed as a screamed and cried. I have never had anything like that happen to me in my life! I couldn't stop it.
I finally was able to settle after about 20 minutes, and told myself I needed to spend time with my father at his side, as I cannot afford to let this dominate this final hours with him. I settled and went back to his room, crying with the hospice nurse telling he what had just happened, then sat quietly with my dad at his side on his final day. Two hours later he was gone. His face had the look of deep meditation. Peace filled his room as he left his body of 89 years.
Truly, these particular brand of "Christians" are the very predators whom Jesus spoke about, calling them wolves in sheep's clothing. A wolf is a predator. But what a better word even still is vampires. The live by sucking the life energy from others. They are not capable of love. They are incapable of compassion. They are self-feeding off of others, even the family of a dying man. I have no words to truly convey the vileness, the non-Christian, non-loving self-righteous, self-justifying, self-vindicating religiousness of these predators, these vampires. I came to the conclusion a few months ago that fundamentalism was a disease, a pathology, not just another version of religious beliefs. It is a sickness. And the sickness I saw was horrible. Even at deaths bed, they are incapable of empathy or compassion.
Why did I post this in the debate section? Because anyone who thinks this brand of religion serves God or humanity in any positive way shape or form, think again! This is the fruit! I cannot say enough of my utter lack of respect for it, and I am dedicating the rest of my life to help educate and free those who have sold their souls to it for the illusion they are saved. They are not. This is the fruit it bears, in full broad daylight for the world to see. Use the name Jesus all you want. By their fruit you shall know them.
