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In a message dated 12/21/01 6:16:29 PM, anderclan@... writes:

<< A special 'hello' to Sandra.. I'm a big fan of yours.. reading your site..
listening to you on the unschoolers forum..and also your articles in Home
Education magazine.>>

Oooh thanks!
It's nice to get feedback (other than the occasional "you're mean and you
suck" stuff I get sometimes).

<<I'm curious about your spiritual journey..raised
Southern Baptist..but now?? What changed for you? >>

Gradually in a way and swiftly in a way, I examined everything I could get
near enough to look at, asked everyone who would talk what they believed and
why, and so gradually in that there was a smooth curve, but swiftly in that
there were few breaks on my part, my beliefs evolved.

And I really do see it as an evolution.
I've seen others go through the more or less the same series of thoughts and
'tests' and settlings, in more or less the same order, and come to the same
basic conclusions.

My parents were variably Baptist and Nazarene. My dad's parents were more
stable (Baptist) and my mom's family was moving around a lot but she
identified with Pentacostals and Baptists in the generic sort of
independent-church West-Texas-in-the-30's and 40's way.

When my parents were first together they weren't going to church. My dad's
parents did; my mom's had quit when their kids were grown, I think.

They/we tried church again when they thought I was old enough to need it, but
they didn't agree on which church, and how to act, and why it was important,
so I went with neighbors because I really liked to go.

We moved, I wasn't in church for a while, and when I was nine started going
again, on my own (making parents drive me, and often--for years I went five
times a week, as Baptists are wont to do when they're in the choir, and
girl's auxiliary and training union and prayer meeting). I was going to be a
missionary. I studied hard. I studied too hard. I read everything they had
to read, spent my own allowance on stuff from the home office in Tennessee, an
d about the time I had topped out on available reading material, started
doing guitar mass (folk mass, in a group of four musicians, of whom I was the
lead when they all looked at me and shrugged because I had more experience
and knew more songs). So I would go to 9:30 at the Catholic church, and down
the road for 11:00 Baptist service.

At school we had an English teacher who was interested in eastern religion.
She had us read philosophical stuff--Ayn Rand (gagged me philosophically, but
I liked Atlas Shrugged as a novel, and I liked Anthem), and Siddhartha. She
taught us meditation, and stuff about Hinduism and Buddhism. I had already
bought a series on comparative religion with my own money (crummy series--I
wish we had had some of the kids' books that are out now!!), and I was THERE.


Did some church-hopping with two Catholic friends who were just curious.
We'd make a list, and go to services in town on Sundays. Jerry Lopez and
Rudy Roybal. Someone asked me about their whereabouts last month; I had not
a clue. They were a year older than I was. We never even used to go to
lunch afterward. Couldn't afford it, I guess, but we'd take turns driving
each other to some other church, like a team of archeologists.

I did some more of that in college. Just curious to the bone about what the
differences and similarities were.

It was the early 70's and there were constant meetings of new (to us)
groups--Moonies, Baha'i, 3H0 (American Sikhs)--I went to lots of those kinds
of intro sessions and series of lectures and got their literature. I
listened to on-campus evangelists.

Still I identified myself as Baptist, and felt saved and all. Gradually, as
I read more and prodded people to see what their point of false-smile was and
where they really were intolerant, I came to be embarrassed to be Baptist.
Too much willful ignorance.

Knowing the stats on members and attendance were important at my hometown
church, I tried to get them to undo my membership. They had no way to do
that. They could transfer it to another church, but they had never had
anyone just ask them to remove them from the rolls.

Went to college. Went to Catholic mass at the Neumann center fairly often
because it was walking distance. Went to Lutheran and really like
Presbyterian.

"Went with" (3.5 year relationship) a Hindu, Devender Singh, from India (by
way of New Jersey, where he went to high school) through college. He, too,
was interested in all religious matters, and was into church-hopping
sometimes. He could answer all kinds of questions about Hinduism, and told
me about Jains, and Sikhs, and used to go with me to intro meetings of
various groups.


Still and always I was curious about other people's lives, and in the idea of
"religious experiences" themselves. Studied psychology (minored in school)
and folklore (second minor in anthropology), always with an eye to learning
and religion--how fairy tales were used to tap into the subconscious and what
characters people identified with, and what was scary or soothing or instruct
ional in mythology.

While I was teaching and in my first marriage, I didn't go to church at all.
Spent most weekends reading students' writings (teaching composition.) Got
involved in the SCA which took lots of weekend time.

Got involved in Adult Children of Alcoholics, which was the most
religious/spiritual thing I had done for a long time. (And it's not, but
compared to what I had been doing it was.)

La Leche League was the most physical of any "study" I had done to that
point, as it involved not ideas and feelings so much as attending to another
person's physical needs. And the definition of physical needs
formed/overlapped a range of things that tied in with learning and
spirituality.

So where I had always been, there I still was--surrounded with questions and
ideas about which parts of us are "for learning" or "for spirituality" or
"natural" or "common to all humans."

And where I was, here I am.

Ask me more if you want. I don't mind.

Sandra