Quotations and Experience

[Papa Bear]

I have loved the following lines from Thoreau from the moment I first read them. I realize now they sum up a large portion of my experience with the IFB:

Quote:"The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?"

[Lady Julian]

Your quote reminds me of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets:

Quote:There is no end, but addition: the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours,
While emotion takes to itself the emotionless
Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable-
And therefore the fittest for renunciation.

Eliot is confusing (he's just being Eliot!), but he emphasizes throughout his poetry that what we "believe" is "the most reliable" is usually not reliable at all, and we have to "renounce" it to move forward in our spiritual life.

Later in the Four Quartets he feels

Quote:the shame
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.

So applicable. I can think of so many things that I "once . . . took for exercise of virtue" that I am now ashamed of.

This is why I like reading (and talking about) poetry: I like finding that other people have experienced what I have experienced, and have put that experience into words.

P.S. I do not apologize for the geeky reference to T.S. Eliot. This just comes with having my M.A. in English literature.

[Mommy2Kids]

Papa Bear - Thank you for correctly using the word "quotations". Using "quote" instead of "quotation" is one of my pet peeves.

[Recovering]

Mmm. Eliot's Four Quartets is simply a beautiful piece of literature, especially when taken as a whole with his earlier work. People like Eliot are the reason I didn't give up on Christianity, so thank you for not apologizing for his inclusion, Lady Julian. :-)

PapaBear: I agree with your sentiment. Now that I'm married and a mother, I often wish I'd sowed a few more wild oats in college and cared a little less about what people thought. Oh, well. :-)

[Papa Bear]

(02-26-2012 07:48 PM)Recovering Wrote:  PapaBear: I agree with your sentiment. Now that I'm married and a mother, I often wish I'd sowed a few more wild oats in college and cared a little less about what people thought. Oh, well. :-)

There's that, too, but I was thinking more along the lines of those times in Fundieland when I saw something wrong and wanted to speak out against it, but people around me persuaded me to keep quiet.

[Recovering]

(02-26-2012 08:36 PM)Papa Bear Wrote:  There's that, too, but I was thinking more along the lines of those times in Fundieland when I saw something wrong and wanted to speak out against it, but people around me persuaded me to keep quiet.

Yeah. I still don't know how to handle this with my parents. I think they treat my siblings so poorly, but I'm not sure how to say anything. I guess I don't really believe anything I could say would help, and I'm also so glad to be finally on speaking terms with my parents that I don't want to jeopardize that relationship. Have you figured out a way to handle this with relationships you don't want to lose (obviously, a lot of old fundy relationships have to be simply walked away from, but you all seem to have managed to keep some of them)

[NotUnderLaw]

(02-26-2012 07:48 PM)Recovering Wrote:  Mmm. Eliot's Four Quartets is simply a beautiful piece of literature, especially when taken as a whole with his earlier work. People like Eliot are the reason I didn't give up on Christianity, so thank you for not apologizing for his inclusion, Lady Julian. :-)

PapaBear: I agree with your sentiment. Now that I'm married and a mother, I often wish I'd sowed a few more wild oats in college and cared a little less about what people thought. Oh, well. :-)

What kind of woman sows wild oats? I always thought that the wild oats was a euphemism for seed, which is obviously a reference to...

[Recovering]

(02-26-2012 11:21 PM)NotUnderLaw Wrote:  What kind of woman sows wild oats? I always thought that the wild oats was a euphemism for seed, which is obviously a reference to...

Pssht. Or maybe I didn't get that because of my sheltered fundy background. Who knows. ;-) I do wish I'd taken more advantage of my chance to go crazy, though.

[Lady Julian]

(02-26-2012 07:48 PM)Recovering Wrote:  Mmm. Eliot's Four Quartets is simply a beautiful piece of literature, especially when taken as a whole with his earlier work. People like Eliot are the reason I didn't give up on Christianity, so thank you for not apologizing for his inclusion, Lady Julian. :-)

Let me interrupt the serious nature of this thread to say that I'm glad you like Eliot, too.

I appreciate that Eliot, even after his conversion, never pretends to know everything; he still struggles with doubt. In fact, the Four Quartets are really about knowing the spiritual world. So, I take comfort from this that I don't have to know everything, and I don't have to pretend to be certain and rock-solid and unshakable in every belief either.

[Papa Bear]

(02-26-2012 10:47 PM)Recovering Wrote:  

(02-26-2012 08:36 PM)Papa Bear Wrote:  There's that, too, but I was thinking more along the lines of those times in Fundieland when I saw something wrong and wanted to speak out against it, but people around me persuaded me to keep quiet.

Yeah. I still don't know how to handle this with my parents. I think they treat my siblings so poorly, but I'm not sure how to say anything. I guess I don't really believe anything I could say would help, and I'm also so glad to be finally on speaking terms with my parents that I don't want to jeopardize that relationship. Have you figured out a way to handle this with relationships you don't want to lose (obviously, a lot of old fundy relationships have to be simply walked away from, but you all seem to have managed to keep some of them)

I grew up GARBC, which some people don't consider Fundy, but I found quite a bit of variation within the GARBC, with churches ranging from evangelical Baptist similar to say, the BGC, to Fundy-lite, to crazy IFBx.
From age 4 to 16, I was in a GARB church I would consider Fundy-lite. Our pastor was a BJU grad, but no one pushed our kids toward a particular college. We had the usual Fundy cultural quirks, but HAC was ten minutes down the road, and we tried very hard not to be like them. (Of course, that kept us from recognizing our own brand of legalism.)

My junior year of high school, we moved to another state, and ended up at another GARBC church, one where the IFBx crazies were clearly in charge. It was the worst two years of my life. My parents left that church right after I graduated and found a church that is about as relaxed as you can get and still be GARBC. I left for college, and have never been GARBC since.

I was the first of six kids. Two of them still attend the same church as my parents, one is married to a student at Grace Seminary in Winona Lake, IN, one is non-denominational, one is Lutheran, and I'm Anglican. My parents still believe that their church is the right one for everybody, but they're in a more relaxed church, they can now look back and admit some things were wrong at the IFBx church, and they're coming to terms with the idea that we make our own decisions now. Since I've been out of the GARBC for over twenty years, I really don't have any contact with them except family, and we've gradually come to the point where we mostly agree to disagree on certain subjects.