LETTERS FROM A SISTER WHO IS LOSING HER FAITH (PARTS 3 & 4)

Contributed by Sister Dawn     

   




friends

forgive me for naming you "uninterested" in my previous two letters of re-resignation.  it's not totally true - a few of you have been interested in me down the years and kept in touch - but it was just my little play on words you know?  (Poets do that sometimes.  Even God does it in Hebrew in the Bible - I know He does, because I learnt about it in one of your meetings once and made a note about it in the margin of my big bible – it’s in one of the prophets, about baskets and fruit J  ).

when i was an "interested friend" I was very welcome at your meetings.  yes, i was welcome.  i was nurtured and you were interested me reciprocally.  that was nice, i remember that and i thank you.  i am still welcome, and so is my husband.  but we are unwelcome at your “Table of the Lord”.  which is fine.  i am just stating a fact.


it still strikes me how much like a marriage a person’s relationship is with their ecclesia.  it’s incredible how one moment there is such intimacy and closeness – especially round “the Table of the Lord” – but at the flutter of butterfly’s wing there can be such a Very Great Chasm.  Have you heard of the butterfly effect?  chaos theory they call it.  hmmm - chaos and chasms – very descriptive words for ecclesial life at times don’t you think?

it is hard with the written word such as letters – these might come across in the voice of your head as angry and hard, but i can assure you as i type every word it is in a soft and calm voice with no malice – or regret -  at all.  i am just being honest and trying to express thoughts and feelings after all these years. and i am exploring things with you, to resolve, dissolve and annul the pain between us – because really, i am sure the Lord would not want a pyrrhic victory now would He/he?

      dawn 

     friends

when John asked me to write something for his blog i said no, i wasn’t interested.  but then i thought it might be good for me to write you some letters.  i am not interested in my own story with you any more  – and i have told some of it elsewhere anyhow - but in letters you can express things in a more personal manner with a more reflective voice from within.

i need to confess something to you.   i lied to your rec. bro. and asst. rec. bro. about 20 years when they interviewed me about my engagement to an alien (forgive me for using the word alien, but you know what i mean as it is in your DTBRs.  or it used to be).  yes – i lied.  they asked me if i had broken bread with my alien fiance.  i said "no", but i meant "yes" - but i was too scared to tell the truth.  i don't know why.  they wouldn't have done anything.  silly old me.  i mean, what would they have done?  really, it was silly.  however, i am sorry that i lied - that lie weighed on  my conscience heavily for many years.  but i have let it go now, and i even managed to pass on an sort of apology to the asst. rec. bro. via facebook – his mum passed on my heavy message, and when it came back that he didn’t recall anything in particular, i felt relieved and i felt better.

      dawn

Editor's Note: Parts 1 & 2 of this series can be viewed at:

http://www.ex-christadelphians.com/2013/04/letters-from-sister-who-is-losing-her.html