Perspective--Use it or Lose it!

     In 1973, I was four years old. It was a hugely significant year in my life, or at least had one of the events with the most effect on my life. 1969, 1971 and 1972 did as well, but this particular day in 1973 had an effect on my life second only to July 20th, 1969.

     I don't remember the exact date. I was four. The calendar was a meaningless chart as far as I was concerned. Sure, I knew how to read, and I knew my numbers, but I had no attachment to the significance of that particular set of words and numbers. And they're no particularly significant to the event in question, except that I suspect that it was sometime during the summer.

     I remember distinctly that I was looking out of the window of my bedroom at the back yard, and contemplating the concept of Omnipresence. While my parents never talked about such things (unless I asked), my grandmother talked a great deal about such things to me and my cousins. On that particular day, I was looking at the mass of green that was my panoramic view--the magnolia tree, the giant maple tree with six trunks, the camellia bushes 15-20 feet high, the hydrangea bushes, the grass liberally invaded by clover, violets and other weeds, the honeysuckle that had taken over the fence between us and the neighbors, the forsythia bush, the calla lilies, the massive wall of privet hedge...a world of myriad shades of cool green--and trying to reconcile what I saw with the words of my grandmother. I was trying to reconcile a grand, amorphous being inhabiting the trees, the grass, the weeds, the bushes....and the whole thing seemed terribly silly to me. I may have been extremely precocious, but I was also 4 and deep in the throes of the Concrete Operational Phase of my life, and this had no logic to it.

     As I sat and contemplated, I also thought about those other concepts that I heard from my grandmother: omniscience, and omnipotence. So I was expected to believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing male being who was everywhere. And yet, when I would make the effort to "say my prayers" (which my parents did not mention, but my grandmother certainly did), there was no palpable response. I got more "response" from my imaginary friends (and yes, that is how I referred to them, unless my parents started getting pushy about asking about them, and then I said they were invisible).

     Here is where the irony occurs. I was contemplating these things, and kind of laughing to myself about them, trying to decide whether these were things worthy of taking seriously, when I was "visited". I'll stick with that name for it now. You see, a...something appeared in my room. It was probably about 4-5 feet tall (I guess; once again, I was 4) dressed like Uncle Sam, only all in green sequins. He claimed he was God. Or a god. That part gets a little hazy, as does what he actually said to me.

     So I decided I could not possibly believe in a god that would come and have a personal conversation with a four year old girl. At that moment, back in the warm months of 1973, I became an atheist.

     This was to be one of the most significant decisions I could have made. It affected my personal thought processes, my perspective, my social life, my intellectual development, my socialization processes, my schooling....and yet, I still think that, despite everything, it was the right thing for me at that time. For one thing, it divorced me from the dogmatic pressure of the churches to which I was invariably dragged when visiting my parents' families in South Georgia. It gave me the freedom to analyze what was being said, rather than taking it in whole cloth as a necessary truth. It allowed me the freedom of reason. It was intellectually liberating.

     Perspective, though, is a funny thing. It changes as circumstances change. I was a firm atheist for 15 years.

     1988 was a much more significant year than even 1973 for me.

     Part of the reason it was so easy for me to chose atheism was because of the environment at home--especially my father's attitudes. He was the ultimate skeptic. In fact, he was a skeptic of skeptics and, like many (though not all) skeptics, he was so skeptical that he blinded himself to the possibility that anything other, paranormal, supernatural, spiritual, mystical (or however else you would like to characterize it) could possibly exist. Since this was the attitude on which I was raised, it was first nature to me.

      But then the world started to open up to me.

      Or maybe just crack a little. Anyway, the result, or the beginning, was that I started seeing that the "real world" had levels to it beyond what was immediately obvious. Of course, there have been many studies that showed aspects of the human brain that indicate a presence of what might be called "psychic phenomena". I started to become aware that there was more to the world than met the eyes. And it all started to fall into place after a "dream", though the dream took place in April of 1989.

      Julian's fiancée committed suicide on April 13, 1988. She was his soul mate; she made him feel complete, whole. Her death shattered him, and I, not having any clue what to do for him, how I could possibly make him feel better, stayed with him in the months that followed and let him cry on my shoulder, let him talk about her....which I guess is what he really needed, because I was the ONLY one that did these things.

     Well, a little after the first anniversary of her death, we were all asleep in his girlfriend's tiny studio apartment, when his fiancée...came to visit me. I was asleep next to the wall shared with the building's hallway. She walked through it, grabbed me and...pulled me out of my body (a singular experience--the only time I ever experienced anything like it), and told me to get Julian. Well, I tried. I pulled on him; he sat up out of his body (wearing a shirt I had never seen before, which turned out to be his favorite shirt--my son wears it now), complained that he was tired, and sort of fell back into his body. She dragged me through the wall to talk to me in the hall.

     She apparently did this because I had been suicidal the night before, and Julian had had to wrestle me and hold on to me to keep me from running off (severe depression combined with severe anxiety attacks is an ugly combination), and she was upset enough at the pain he had already experienced because of her death. She absolutely did not want to see him hurt that way again. Then she told me some things about her family, and her father, that I had not known. Then she disappeared, and I had a dream about her parents. When we all woke up in the morning, I confirmed with Julian the facts she had given me that I had never known before.

     That was a mind-opening experience. Hell, that was a freaky experience that had me stunned and contemplative for weeks. It seriously shook my skeptical atheist world view that had been slightly dented over the past year.

     So I read books, and I experienced the world, and, a few years later, I told Julian the entire story of the visitation when I was 4.

     He pointed out that my description fit very well a certain ancient Celtic god, and that the sequins were probably emeralds or something similar. Of course, I, at the tender age of 4, had never even heard of Lugh, much less considered him, but there you have it.

     Obviously, I am not an atheist at this time. I still sympathize with the lack of belief; it took me a long time to be able to conceive of real, functional belief in a deity. It took me even longer to stop resenting christians for the way they tortured me and attacked me (both literally and socially) because of my atheism and my honesty. I eventually came to realize that being christian did not make a person evil; being evil made a person evil, and some of the people that act in ways that I could justly refer to as evil just happen to claim to be christian.

     So what am I? Well, I call myself Druid, though I don't know how accurate it is. Etymologically, it does fit my last name. And it feels right. I don't practice well, or effectively (as far as I can tell; I may have figured out the Druid thing 13 or so years ago, but I was an atheist longer), but I do feel it.

     It's amazing how the view changes throughout the years.

      Perspective makes all the difference.