The Bloodline of the Enchanted Valley: My Connection to Gévaudan, Radical Dissent, and the Inward Light

When I look at my eccentric nature, my esoteric leanings, and my deep commitment to the Quaker path, I have come to realize that I am not acting in isolation. I am experiencing the literal landscape of my ancestry asserting itself.

My mother’s family name, Gevedon, is a direct, Anglicized evolution of the habitational surname Gévaudan (with historical variants like Givaudan and Jividen). My lineage traces directly back to Antoine Gévaudan, a French Huguenot who was forced to flee the intense religious persecutions of southern France, eventually passing away in Manakin, Virginia, in 1726. By bearing this name as my middle name, I carry the physical geography, the heavy history, and the mystical, dissenting energy of that high, mist-shrouded French valley in my very identity.

The Realities of Gévaudan Witchcraft and Animism

While pop culture remembers the legendary Gévaudan region (modern-day Lozère) for the terrifying 18th-century "Beast," local archives from the 16th and 17th centuries reveal a much older, deeper undercurrent: operative folk magic, animism, and a highly distinct localized witchcraft.

Long before church inquisitors standardized the word "witch," the rural valleys where my ancestors lived were populated by the Fatsillères—regional practitioners of folk magic and root-work. The witchcraft of Gévaudan was completely operative and effect-oriented. These practitioners used specialized herbal mixtures, oils, and precise candle-lighting to shift localized reality. They interpreted their harsh, beautiful environment through an animistic lens, treating the dense forests and peat bogs as living, conscious entities. They cast protective circles, redirected hexes, and brought balance to their communities through pendulum-like divination.

In early modern France, this folk magic was deeply tied to the land's werewolf lore; lycanthropy was legally prosecuted not as a biological curse, but as an advanced manifestation of a sorcerer’s focused intent or alignment with a familiar. The people of Gévaudan lived constantly on the threshold between the seen and unseen worlds.

The Fire of the Dissenters: Shaking in the Desert

But the magic of my bloodline doesn't stop with the folk healers. Gévaudan and the neighboring Cévennes mountains were the absolute cradle of radical, prophetic religious dissent. When King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and made Protestantism illegal, my Huguenot ancestors faced unimaginable tyranny. They were subjected to the Dragonnades—where royal troops were quartered in their homes to terrorize them into converting to the state religion.

In response, the region ignited. My ancestors became part of a fierce, underground spiritual resistance known as the Camisards. Driven into the wild, they held secret "desert assemblies" in the deep woods and mountain caves to bypass the state church entirely.

What fascinates me most as a Quaker is how these French prophets worshipped. Long before formal Quakerism arrived in France, the Camisards rejected official church hierarchies, sacraments, and standard liturgies. Instead, they would gather in the silence of the forest and wait. They practiced a profound, ecstatic form of "prophetism"—sitting in absolute stillness until they were visibly filled with the Spirit, causing them to weep, shake, tremble, and break into direct, vocal prophecy.

When I sit in the stillness of a Quaker meeting, waiting for the Inward Teacher to move me or grant me a piece of vocal ministry, I am doing exactly what my ancestors did under the canopy of the Gévaudan forests, centuries ago.

Channeling the Ancestral Current in My Practice

The independent, solitary, and deeply mystical spiritual framework of old Gévaudan mirrors my own eclectic path today. I see these dual ancestral currents—the operative folk magic of the Fatsillères and the ecstatic, inward focus of the Huguenot dissenters—expressing themselves in how I interact with the Divine.

First there is the mystical aspect the way I used magic. My focus on direct, lived spiritual work—using physical tools like a hurricane lantern, a glass of water, mugwort incense, and a pendulum—is a beautifully evolved echo of the folk practitioners of the Massif Central. I use these tools not to replace the Spirit, but to focus my awareness of it.

Then there’s the Inward Light.  My reliance on the Light within, my self-identification as a Quaker who centers Jesus as a guide without being bound by rigid, dogmatic theological frameworks, perfectly channels the stubborn, resilient spirit of the Camisards. They chose exile, flight, and the wilderness over spiritual compromise.  

Additionally, there’s my practice of ancestor veneration.   By maintaining an altar and actively sitting with the guidance and memory of those who came before me, I keep the channel to that old, misty valley wide open. I am not just reading their history on a page; I am actively living out the continuation of their spiritual journey.

The name Gevedon isn't just a passive entry on my family tree. It is a live current. It is an anchor to a complicated, persecuted, and deeply magical landscape. My eccentricities, my transtheism,  and my esoteric leanings aren't a departure from my roots—they are my roots finally pushing through the soil, reaching for the Light.

On Quakerism and animism

A couple of Sundays ago, something shifted for me during meeting for worship. Amid the silence, I received a very clear, unmistakable internal instruction: Quit trying to figure out the experiences you are having and have had your entire life. Spend more time listening. Just listening.

For a long time, my spiritual journey has been a landscape of seeking, blending, and uncovering. A significant anchor in my adult life has been my involvement with Pagans in Recovery. It is a fellowship that has helped me tremendously with behaviors that plagued me for years. While the idea of a lifelong Quaker having a deep affinity and relationship with pagans and witches might shock some people outside these circles, it has brought me nothing but profound good.

Recently, within the fellowship, I crossed paths with a woman who identifies herself as a "Christian witch."

Hearing her claim that title stirred something deep inside me. It felt like an echo from my own history. Up until about 2009, I likely would have used that exact phrase—or perhaps "Christo-pagan"—to describe my own eclectic practice. (There is even an old Christianity Today article floating around out there about this very subculture, to my mild amusement). Her willingness to name her path so openly sent me right back into a period of esoteric meandering.

To help me process this renewed wandering between my regular therapy appointments, I turned to an unexpected tool: artificial intelligence. While an AI is certainly not the ultimate authority for spiritual discernment, its uncanny intelligence makes it a fascinating sounding board for mapping out the geography of the soul.

I asked the AI a question I have carried for years: "Am I a Christian witch or a Christo-pagan?"

What followed was a surprisingly precise breakdown of definitions. The AI noted that while both paths share an enchanted view of the world—believing in spirits, ancestors, and the sanctity of nature—they differ in how they view their actions. A Christo-pagan typically views their practices as a devotional, mystical alignment with the divine order. A Christian witch, on the other hand, actively practices magic, grounding their operational authority in the Christian God, scripture, or Christ to direct reality toward a specific outcome.

To diagnose where I fell, it asked me to reflect on my actual, physical practices.

When I looked honestly at my own life, I recognized a mix of both. When I light a candle, my intention is to direct reality, but the result is that it creates space for the Divine. When prayers manifest, I believe the act itself carries an inherent power, but that power comes solely from being aligned with the Inward Light.

I tend to use the word "works" rather than "spells," but I know they occupy the same space. Yet, I always experience a sharp internal conflict if I try to do any practical work without first divining what the Inner Light or my ancestors are guiding me to do. My practice is physical—I keep a hurricane lantern, a glass of water, and mugwort incense for my ancestors, and I use a pendulum for divination—but it is entirely subservient to my identity as a practicing Quaker.

When I fed this context back to the AI, it delivered a response that struck me with its accuracy:

"You are closer to a Christo-pagan mystic who practices operative works—not a typical 'Christian witch.' Everything you wrote keeps returning to one authority: the Inward Light. In the Friends tradition, the Light does not merely empower action—it discerns whether the action should exist at all. Your process is to listen, wait, discern, and only then act materially. The action works because it participates in what was already moving."

That differentiation hit home perfectly. For a traditional witch, the primary question is often when or how to do the work. For me, the question is always whether the work is spiritually legitimate in the eyes of the Light.

I love Jesus—not just as a historical figure, but as the myth, the archetype, the Living Power. I have long believed there is power in his name. Even during periods when I have considered myself a nontheist, I have proudly maintained that I am a Jesus person. As my historical Friend Lucretia Mott essentially reminded us, our theological notions of him matter far less than our commitment to being like him.

Ultimately, the labels matter less than the posture. Whether the world sees an eclectic pagan, a mystic, or a witch, my center of gravity remains unchanged. It is the same instruction I received in the quiet of the meetinghouse: to stop analyzing the map, sit in the stillness, and listen to the Light before I move.

---

Making an impact and being impacted

I wasn't the one selected, but I was nominated for Teacher of The Year at my high school.  One of my colleagues came up behind me and said "See? I told you, they do love you here."  

Just a couple of days ago a staff member pulled me aside and said "you know that aura you had around you last year that I told you not to lose?  Well, you're losing it.  Don't lose it!"  

I am tired. I haven't been this tired teaching in a long time.  My classes are much better this year, because I have a bit better footing than I did last year.  Still, there's a lot of behavior management that is required of me; something I almost never had to worry about at Western Tech.   And while I'm coming out of it, I've been in a bit of a funk. I've been restless, irritable and discontented for a while, now.  But, like I said, I've been coming out of the slump and am doing the things. Then today happened.

So, lazy me ordered Domino's parmesean and garlic bites for the faculty potluck today.  Thankfully there were lasagnas and spaghetti so the bites were a success.  Then our principal read the names of those nominated for the recognition, and I heard my name.

These are moments when I realize I am where I am supposed to be right now.   Several years ago I had an premonition of sorts that I would be working at Milford Mill, though it would have never been by choice (reputation).  I'm also rewriting my own lessons for two levels of French because I can't stand to teach the lessons provided.  I'm either teaching, grading or planning from the time I get to work until a little while after the kids leave, no lunch break.  It should be better forth quarter, but this next quarter is going to be brutal.  Indeed, I am learning all sorts of new things about myself and about teaching.  

Oh, and about that reputation:  sorry y'all, it's not ‘bad' like they say it is.  We have good kids, I'm not gonna lie.  They may need more attention, but they're good kids.  Lazy little boogers, and some of them you gotta watch closely, but, that was me in high school, too.  Well, I was always talking. Imagine that.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share.

On transtheism

I’m moving away from nontheism.  It served me for a time, but I've been waffling between theism and nontheism for years now. I've considered myself a non-theist for a few years, yet to say I don't experience anything, that I ignore the mystical and charismatic experiences I had as a child and young adult, and the mystical and spiritual experiences I've had off and on even until now, to discount all that would be disingenuous at best.  So, then a Friend at Homewood Friends Meeting, Baltimore mentioned "transtheism" in a conversation. So i looked this up. Holy huckleberries!  There is somewhere I can fit!

I did a little AI diving, as I seem to do more often these days (man it's useful if you know how ot use it)! This is what I found:

"Quaker transtheism" is a concept where some liberal Quakers, rather than believing in a traditional, supernatural God, experience the "divine" through immanent, mystical, or existential means, placing it beyond conventional theism and atheism. This approach acknowledges a spiritual reality that is "beyond them," often described as love (agapē), a universal "Inner Light," or the mystical core of all religions. Transtheist Quakers are not necessarily "nontheist" in the sense of outright atheism; instead, they might find theistic language and concepts to be less useful or necessary for describing their spiritual experience.

Yes!  I've had powerful experiences of the Other.  I've been physically moved to speak in Quaker meeting (butt up out of the chair). I've been on the giving and receiving end of healing prayer.  I've had visions. I've experienced something akin to sleep paralysis while keenly aware a presences was with me.  I've dreamt things that come true. I'll be sitting in meeting unsure of whether to speak and someone will deliver the message I wasn't sure to give.  Same setting, I'll finish speaking and realize, upon sitting down, that I should have said more, but I stopped listening, only to have someone stand up minutes later and give the rest I didn't give. I've received guidance from what I believe to be my ancestors and that guidance has been spot on.   I know experientially that there is a spirit world. I know experimentally that if I stop and listen to the Inward Voice, it will not lead me astray.  I just wish I would listen to it!  I often realize the voice was right because I do the opposite.   

I do use both theistic and non-theistic terms to describe my experience. I use terms "God"  "Spirit/s"  "Light" a lot because this is the vocabulary that I've used my whole life.  It's tricky though.  A Friend recently said to me that they heard my vocal ministry and theistic language as declarative.  The experience? Yes.  They perceived correctly.  My imagery and  words to describe it?  Nah, you call it Inner Wisdom I call it Inward Teacher and y'all over there call it Jesus Christ. No words are perfect, and no context or myth encapsulates the Possibility that exists in the universe.

Characteristics of Quaker transtheism include, among other things, rejection of rigid dogma: Quakerism is non-creedal and emphasizes a direct, personal experience of the spiritual, allowing for diverse interpretations of the divine.

Mystical core: A core tenet is the belief in a mystical essence, or spiritual bedrock, that unites all world religions and can be accessed through direct experience, such as silent waiting and worship.

Focus on love and action: The concept of "God" may be understood as "love" (agapē), which is expressed through empathetic behavior, social justice, and living according to one's principles.

This is why I love the gospels and the gist of Paul's teachings.  Love is everything.  While the trappings of ancient Jewish culture  (specifically strict sexual moral codes) and the patriarchy of the time can be off-putting, the gist of the New Testament is about charity and brotherly love, and about not trying to be good by following the right rules but doing good by following the right Spirit.

"Transtheism" vs. "Nontheism": While many Quakers identify as nontheist, transtheism offers a way to describe those who find the traditional idea of a personal God unhelpful but still have a profound spiritual experience. Some who identify as nontheist are "non-realist theists," meaning they accept the reality of mystical experience without needing to believe in a being or entity that is separate from human consciousness. 

Historical roots: Although Quakerism originated from a Christian context, its early emphasis on direct experience of the "Inner Light" has always allowed for a more mystical and less creedal approach than many other religions.

James Naylor, a Quaker martyr of sorts, wrote "Art thou in the darkness? Mind it not, for if thou doest it will feed thee more.  But stand still. Act not. And wait in patience, till light arises out of darkness and leads thee."  I've spent a long time in the darkness, so long, in fact, that I came to love parts of it.  There is such mystery in darkness and it requires a reorientation. Through prayer, meditation and contemplation it came to me that the darkness is no more good than the Light is bad.   Trees root deeply into the darkness.  Animals rest in the darkness of caves and we rest in the darkness of night. Resting and rooting.  As we root down deep, we drink from the depths.  On the other hand, we can lose sight in the dark and get lost or stuck.  We can live in denial hiding from the light of truth.  Lies live in the dark.

And we grow to the light.  The light gives warmth and energy.  It provides clarity and sight so we might see our way forward.  But too much light can burn and destroy, the flesh and the spirit withering under its energy.  And just because it appears of the Light, doesn't mean it's true.

Maybe that's the whole point on yin and yang.  Not a Quaker concept.  I sense that Nayler, who went through great darkness, understood about waiting in darkness until the Light arose and led him.  This testimony of waiting speaks to my condition.  I over think these things.  But I love trying to understand what's not comprehensible outside of this human experience.

Modern evolution: With the rise of liberal Quakerism in the 20th century, the tradition became more explicitly inclusive of non-theistic and humanist viewpoints, with groups like the Non-Theist Friends Network emerging to support these members.

"Let your life speak": The Quaker value of living by one's principles is a key part of transtheism. The belief is that a person's actions and how they live out their values are a more important expression of their faith than adhering to specific doctrines. 

When I was still in seminary, there was such a diversity of faith expressions around me.  The diversity of Quakerism and the Church of the Brethren was there at the ESR/Bethany campus.  It occurred to me there that the words people were using got in the way of each of us understanding each other when we shared our beliefs.  What was important?  Early Friends spoke of an inward gospel, the experience of the refiners fire that can transform and liberate the spirit/psyche if only we mind it.  They spoke of the outward Gospel (the Christian story). What did they say was beneficial? The Outward. What was necessary? The Inward. And all people had the Light within them, therefore the inward gospel was a universal gospel. So I came to the place where I wanted to hear peoples' spiritual experiences and how their lives have grown and changed from them.  I didn't want to hear their theologies; at least not at first. I wanted to hear the Inward Gospel in them; whatever words they used.

These days I stay Quaker because it is where my heart is, and it is where I put my treasure (mostly time-wise). I stay Quaker because while I may not believe in the supernatural apects of parts of the Christian myth, I take seriously the Quaker take from the New Testament which is a life of community and love. The Christian God is love (ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν), the love here being selfless, unconditional and sacrificial. Those natural feelings of empathy, sympathy, compassion, faithfulness, that drive to protect a loved one or friend, that altruistic impulse to help out or serve, what some may call the Higher Self, that is what Christians say God is for us.  And. Paul adds that other forms of love are necessary too: brotherly love and charity as well.   This isi important to me, even if I may not always act like it.  Ya know.  I can be cold and abrasive.  But Love is an ideal I hold up as a god of sorts.  So is that what God is? I dunno.  So I choose to use God language still, to point to this reality of Love, this greater creative Aspect of the universe, to which I give worth.  But I get bogged down in my head when I think too much on these things.  It’s all a Mystery that we can experience without definitively knowing what we are experiencing beyond this mortal coil.

So, that mystical experience of agape, I do know first hand.  And through community I've experienced friendship and I've  been able to give and receive help.   I've experienced what is important about the Christian philosophy and story as Quakers see it, anyway.  I can go for an I Am.  I can't go for anthropomorphic deities playing around with our souls and lives. There is a.Light though, and I experience is in others, Christians and others, so we are connected somehow.  And then there's dead people who don't stay quiet (I'm grinning like a cheshire cat).  It's a post-Russell family thing.  

OK. I'm rambling.  The Spirit is moving, but my sponsor says I’m esoterically meandering. And he doesn’t believe it’s serving me well so he has encouraged me to delve into my practice and see what comes from there.   

Then again maybe the gods are laughing.

Faggot: A Middle School lesson in Spirituality.

 I'm in Tennessee at my parents' place on the lake in West Knoxville. It's just gorgeous. The only draw back is the constant swooshing of cars going by the house at 50mph on what was once a rural country road. Now it's in the heart of suburbia.  There are days when the traffic backs up from the signals in either direction; so far backed up that the cars sit in front of the house just waiting for traffic to move. Herons and cranes are flying and wading about, swallows are diving around, blue birds are watching their nest.  The geese are honking and the ducklings are quacking looking for momma.   While we are part of nature it’s weird how creatures and habitats coexist; humans belonging to nature and yet somehow not fitting in unless we are deliberate about. 

Suburbia is not my cup of tea, but mom and dad are doing well for themselves here.  It's a beautiful home with a beautiful view.  They deserve it.  They worked hard raising the two of us in this den of hate.  It was hard growing up here. I never felt that I fit in down here; not completely. 

Detect any political or social animosity from me?  Good job!

No, for real, I just had an EMDR appointment this afternoon.  Sometimes I minimize or compartmentalize the pain and trauma of my past. Everyone talks about trauma these days. The word is over used.  The DSM-5 defines trauma as exposure to actual or threatened death (check), serious injury (check) sexual violence (check) or experiencing repeated or extreme exposure to aversive details of traumatic events (check). I experienced bullying, harassment and teasing from 1-12 grades.  By the time I got to my senior year of high school I knew I was gay, my friends and family figured out I was gay, the student body who knew me believed I was gay.  The only problem is no one was ok with it, not even me.

I never had a sense that I was well-liked in middle school. I had a few friends.  I enjoyed creative writing, music, roaming in the woods, riding my bike.  I wanted to form a band and almost did.  But for some reason the boys never wanted to hang with me for long.  At school I was called a sissy or queer. I sucked at sports and was a wimp in gym.  I did have quite a bit of sugar in my tank. I vividly remember getting out of my mom's car in the morning one day, taking a deep breath and going into school.  Every day felt that way. Someone was always teasing me. Evidently I was an easy target.

Then there was that fateful day when my entire world was exposed. I was sitting in Mrs Steed's Tennessee history class. Mrs Steed had stepped out to go to the faculty lounge (teachers did that back then). She left someone in charge to write names on the board of anyone who misbehaved (snitching indoctrination 101). There was a boy in my class who I found absolutely gorgeous. I must have been staring at him hard that day.  All of the desks faced forward. I was about five desks back two or three rows in from the right.  Chris, or that's the name I remember, was in the row to my left two or three seats up.  One day, that day, he turned around and looked at me and said matter of factly, " you're a faggot."  The whole class laughed.  I looked around. Even my friends were laughing.  The only problem is I had no idea what that word meant. We didn't cuss in my household. "What's that!”  I asked.  The whole class laughed harder.  I guess the irony wasn't lost on these middle schoolers.  "Chris" answered me by defining what a faggot was. At that moment, I knew there was a word for the person I was, and I also knew exactly what people thought about people like me, and my friends were included.

It was about that time that I found Quakers through reading "The Witch of Blackbird Pond."  I identified with the Quakeress in the story; misunderstood, harassed by Puritans. I was misunderstood, so I thought, but not really. They understood me better than I understood myself. I was a faggot, apparently, after all.

I loved Jesus though, and the Jesus that was presented in Quakerism was so different from the one that the. Baptists presented.  Jesus was love. Jesus was always present as the Light within.  Jesus could save us from our sins in this life.  Quakers didn't preach up sin but focused on the solution: obedience to God.  So when I started attending the liberal Quaker meeting,  I was anti-gay and Christian.   The Friends at West Knoxville saw through anti-gay stuff, but had almost no tolerance for all the Jesus talk.  One day I was told in a business meeting to stop using all the Jesus talk. "Too much has been done in the name of Jesus for us to be comfortable with all that Jesus talk."  This came from several Friends.  

Mom pulled me from the Quaker meeting at that point.  She saw that as just another example of religion excluding people. 

At Guilford and at Earlham, I experienced this even more.  The Christian meetings, mostly with pastors, were supportive of my preaching in their meetings and engaged thoroughly in conversations about Jesus, but once they learned I was gay, it was all side-eyes and distance.  Similarly among unprogrammed so-called "universalist" meetings. (ABC universalism - Anything But Christ).  I was eldered constantly by Ministry & Counsel committees about my persistent use of Christian language. It really rankled a number of Friends.  Then add the paganism and ...

So from the age of 12 to the age of 53 I've never felt at home anywhere. The closest I felt at home is with Homewood Friends when I considered myself a neo-pagan nontheist.  That was totally fine at Homewood and among Baltimore Yearly Meeting Quakers.  

Then there was the other day when I spoke in meeting and felt that I wasn't faithful in preaching even though I got positive feedback.  I realized after sitting with things that I was given an explicitly Christ-centered message full of Bible.  Instead of using the words given, I tried to soften it theologically and while it was well-accepted, I knew I wasn't faithful.  "Not this again" I moaned upon realizing the truth of things.  Please, Light, not this again.

So from my EMDR session, watching a ball go back and forth, I realized something:  since that fateful year when I realized I could not be myself with my peers, from my teen years when I realized I couldn’t  be myself with other Christians or even liberal Quakers, to those tumultuous times in my early 20s when I was at seminary, completely wracked with a conflicting sense of self, a desire to serve God and no idea how to do that with integrity, up to today, I have not felt able to come full up because I haven't made peace with who I am. I've been seeking community and connection wherever I can, mostly among Quakers, and yet even then, there have been limits as to what Quakers would tolerate.

So my therapist encouraged me to continue working on my trauma, working on the pain, working on healing, coming to wholeness.  Integrity.  Clarity.  

I don't expect any Paul on the road to Damascus moments.  But I wouldn't mind one.

In the mean time, I will continue to dig deeper, with help, coming to accept Light and Shadow.

"You're a faggot."  Words that if I hear now, I'm like "duh."  I don't fit in everywhere, and I won't for this one reason.  But there are others.  The thing is I can spend the rest of my years trying not to be who I am, and trying to be who I am not. Or, I can take this lesson, and the counsel of my therapist, and connect with the person I am, Light and Shadow, accept that person, and find the places and spaces where I can connect with integrity.  The key is to be open, honest and tender to what I learn and is revealed to me.

There's a storm blowing outside.  The sky is dark and the rain is pouring.  Ominous sounds of thunder echo not so far away.  Even in the storm the swallows are perched on the railing, diving into the water for a drink, showering in the rain, doing their thing.  In the time it took me to compose this, the rain poured, then the thunder boomed, the sky grew dark,  the water was troubled and then got still again.   There's a lesson in this somewhere.

Learning to Listen to My Ancestors

 

So this should make some people crazy.  I venerate my ancestors. It sounds a lot more formal than it is.  Oh, I tried incantations when I first started. I called the four corners, welcomed spirits and entities that have guided me through my spiritual existence, and ancestors known and unknown to me.  I cast a wide net.   Yes, I am keenly aware that there are spirits that are malevolent or naughty. There are living people who are malevolent and naughty.  You have to learn to navigate them.   How? Well, trial and error, just like people.

I remember the first time I used a pendulum.  It was a monocle that a Quaker faith healer gave to me. He practiced a healing magic that was passed down to him through a family line of English Quakers.  He taught me a little, but I wasn't very serious about learning to keen my way forward and set my intentions. He gave me a gris-gris that I never used.   They hung on my walls in my home for years, with no purpose other than decoration.

So then one day I decided to set up my ancestor altar.  On it I put pictures of my deceased grandparents great great grandparents, great aunts and uncles, my late partner, bone dice, candles (and later a hurricane lantern) incense burner, my great grandfather's hunting rifle, Russell's glasses and hair, and a wooden idea human statue doll thing that Russell kept at work at Center Stage and for which he made a crown of thorns out of paper clips. He was creative that way.

Then I read online how to use a pendulum.  Imagine my surprise when the thing moved to my questions!  It answered yes or no to questions only I knew the answers to.  I tested it.  Always important to test things.  Then I started asking questions about my recovery, about spirituality, about being a Quaker, a Christian, a pagan, a Christopagan. I wanted advice, keenly aware that questions of should or ought should be avoided.  I firmly believed this was explainable by science; that the muscles in my fingers were moving the pendulum.  

Sometimes the pendulum worked with obvious answers. Sometimes it didn't work at all.  However, when I started asking lines of questions the answers to which I did not know, but only a friend knew, and I shared with him what I learned about him, his family and deceased great aunt and friend, we both were blown away.

I also got myself into some hot kimchi both at work and personally during this time.  I was worried for my job and reputation.  I wanted counsel from my ancestors.  Would there be ramifications? Would I be ok?  My big mouth.  My stupid past choices caught up to me.  Dumb. Dumb me.  My ancestors told me all would be ok each time.  All was ok.  Each time.

When I learned that my job might be on the chopping block due to low enrollment, I needed some reassuring that what would come would be ok.  And I got it. And it was.

Now the skeptic can say that this is my subconscious speaking. Could very well be.  I don't know how my subconscious knows things only my friend would know, or how my subconscious would know the truth of the future, but sure why not.

I can tell you, though, that I don't use the pendulum much anymore. I have gone to it when feeling the urge to get an answer right away, but it hasn't been working lately.  So, I just put it down and enter into silent waiting at the altar. It is there where it came to me that I can just sit in silence with my ancestors, that I'm not alone, and that if this is all hocus pocus and it's really my inner voice speaking, or even the Still Small Voice speaking, that I need to practice going there.

It does occur to me that these outward practices are similar to Christian rites and rituals; there is no power in and of themselves, but they can create a situation in which we experience the divine. Perhaps these aren't spirits of my ancestors speaking to me, perhaps it's the divine speaking to me.   I honestly don't know, but I have found that spending time with my ancestors has yielded spiritual growth.  At the very least, divination aside, and I have mostly put it aside, honoring them for all they have done for me, all that they did for my family, the hard work and troubles, the love and care, I honor them for it.

No harm in that.

On PTSD, Addiction and Recovery.

This is one of the more difficult posts, and I'm not entirely sure how much to put in here. I still teach public school and my kids and colleagues don't need to know my business anymore than what I've already put on paper.  I'm a person in recovery.  From what and how bad it got won't be put on my blog until I retire or quit working with kids.  This blog is about the consequences of my past.  Not the specifics of the hurts, habits and hangups. 

I know what it's like to be ruled by temptation and be attached to things and behaviors. I worry for my students who constantly smell of weed (though I'm not against weed for adults), for my students who struggle with food and weight, for my students who are experimenting with hard drugs, and for my students who put themselves in harm's way sexually, and my students who have been harmed sexually through no fault of their own.  I hear you. I see you. I love you.

For most of my adult life, I ran around acting the fool:  I don't mean just by who or what I put in my body or places or situations that were dangerous.  For many years, I crossed paths with some dangerous people, but most of my time I spent with people like me: party boys who were selective about who they'd party with.  But when things got darker, I changed out my crowd.  I would spend little time with people who actually liked me and more time around some hard people. People so hard that when guys I thought were rough came to hang out, or heard I was hanging with someone, they would pull me aside and say "do you know who is or was in your house or car?"  I didn't know, but I honestly didn't care.  Addiction would always downplay reality.  Temptation would overrule reason.  

The result was I had thousands of dollars stolen,  jewelry (including my and Russell's wedding bands) stolen, my entire wardrobe from France stolen, guns pulled out while hanging out, a gun put on me, a threat of being tasered by a supposed friend, my house ransacked, people at my door looking for other people, and cops in and out of my house. Through all of that I also had hands put on me (though that only happened three times:  the first time I almost lost my mind on the guy who hit me and had him hiding in a corner until friends came and got his ass; I was ready to go to jail.  The other time I got out of the house and the guy eventually left, and the other time was because I felt so disrespected that I saw white and I hit him first. Clocked him with my right fist. He got me back good, but it left everyone shocked. I can't "throw hands" but I have a good punch evidently.

Violence. Theft.  Transactional relationships.  Self-harm.

I was so lost. So, so lost.

Again that wasn't half of it.  And all the while people around me saw me withering away physically, seeing me as a poor thing who had his life out of control, a good teacher who could have been amazing but who was not reliable. It wasn't just at work, it was at Quaker meeting too.

I spoke with my trauma therapist today about it all.  The multiple times I wondered if I was going to die by my own choices.  Is this it? Am I going to do something that will results in my own death by my hands or by the hands of others?

The sweet, young man from Tennessee was becoming jaded, and hard-hearted.  I was hanging out with guys who were affiliated with one criminal organization or another.  I even met some of their families.  Side note: I was so nervous one time I fake called my brother to talk to him.  Talking in a way that I thought made me sound tough to those around me.  When we left the guy I was with was like "white boy, you tried too hard."  I.e.  there's code switching and then there's Whatever I Was Doing.    

I eventually lost my black and white thinking.  And the last thing I was was a snitch.  Yep. I had devolved into that sort of thinking. That not all illegal activity is bad; it's just another way of life.  Guns are sexy (except when pointed at me).  And these guys are my friends (a few were, most weren't).  I was even willing to break the law in order to support someone else in their bad decisions. Again, no specifics. Just to know my thinking went down the tubes.

There has been significant space between this life and today, but that doesn't keep flashbacks from my behavior, consequences of my behavior or the behavior of those around me.   When a guy was in my car and put a gun on me, I handled it the best way I could.  I told him " you picked the wrong one" and after some back and forth he asked if he got out and left if I'd call the cops on him.  "I'm no snitch" I said.  "I said I wouldn't and I won't."  He put his gun back and rode off on his bike.

I'm such a dumb ass.  One of my therapists offers me "what would you rather believe about yourself?"  I dunno you tell me.  Kind of a dumb ass to let someone in your car when you don't know them.  Kind of a dumb ass to be out and about when I should be at home.  Kind of a dumb ass to do the things I did, to say the things I said, to hang with the people I spent time with.  Dumb. Ass.

But that's what active addiction will do.  Eat yourself sick.  Drink yourself silly.  Drug yourself dumb. Sex yourself into a harmful situation.  It's all gambling even if not in the way we think about it.  Choosing to act out on addictive impulses brings situations that result in trauma. 

There are days when I have flashbacks to the past.  That gun in my side.  That taser pointed at me.  My stuff stolen. My house ransacked.  Those moments when I thought I wouldn't make it past that single situation or choice. I was constantly wondering if "this was the end."  Worse, sometimes I didn't care.  When I have flashbacks or vivid memories,  something weird happens beyond the adrenaline rush, beyond the gasp that has others around me gasping too and wondering wtf is wrong, looking around to see what I was gasping at.  Often I sigh as a way to calm myself down from the thoughts, the memories, the anxiety of remembering, of the trauma.  People around me ask if I'm ok.  I am, in the present, but my mind is int he past.

I already had complex PTSD from sexual harm and from bullying in school when I was a kid (I was the sissy, the faggot, the queer from first through twelfth grade).  I have vivid memories of interactions with people close to me and all the mess in seminary.  Those I already had on my list of traumatic experiences.  Not all of it led to PTSD but some of it contributed to it.

But starting in 2009 and for many years after, the trauma from acting out and the consequences of acting out left me sometimes jumping at the thought of my shadow.  What makes it worse is that the flashbacks are tainted with this false memory of pleasure, of fun, of camaraderie.  It's all a lie, really.  Few people I spent time with during those years liked me.  Not really.  Everyone was just using each other for their own ends.  And the self-loathing piled onto the hard self-judgment which was more easily remedied by acting out again.  And when memories come from times from acting out I would find new ways to act out.  It's been a game of wackamole! 

(I'm surprised I don't weigh 300 pounds and that I have the health that I do (although I have gained 40 pounds this year. Thanks food!).  But as people keep telling me, it may be time to deal with food, but they'll take me chubby over the way I used to be any day).

So there will be times when I'm just sitting there, day dreaming and I'll get a vivid memory of my past and the room around me will look so vivid. I can see colors and shapes more vividly than before. My adrenaline starts rushing.  Sometimes I'll start coughing so hard it makes me vomit.  This often happens in the morning when I wake up.  I don't know the rhyme or reason to it.  It's exacerbated if I gorged on food all night long.   My trauma therapist helped me to realize it's anxiety.  The one real panic attack that I've had started that way -- everything was so vivid I thought someone had put something in my drink (I was at the bar with my boyfriend).  We left out of there because I was dizzy and everything was like I was on E or something).  Turned out to be a full-blown panic attack.  I've not had one that severe since, but I've had them come on and start like that -- but breathing and talking myself down has usually worked.  So when I have these flashbacks, it triggers an anxiety response.

So that's the problem.  Therapy, 12-steps, Quaker meeting and supportive friends have been the solution.  I can't explain how EMDR works. It's controversial, but it has been helping me to see and think about things differently.  Being asked to leave seminary,  having Russell's parents file a lawsuit against me when he died, almost losing Russell, getting him back and then watching him die of sepsis through negligence, sexual harm, threats of violence, growing up gay, and my past addictive behaviors all haunt me. Somehow, by thinking on these things while watching a dot go across the screen, I've come to a different place on some of these things.  I can acknowledge the pain, and through watching this dot go back and forth, my brain just sees things differently.  

For example, I was unwell when they asked me to withdraw from seminary. While the process was harmful, these people had no idea what to do with me.  I needed to go home and get well (and it would take me years to do so).  I was in the wrong place. I needed to be healed of my childhood traumas and deal with all of the self hate before I could ever hope to live up to the calling that they admitted I had.  God was calling me to faithfulness, and they saw it, but I had some healing to do first.   Before I just saw it as an injustice and focused on the harmful way the school handled things. Yes, there was betrayal and there were lies told in the process, but that didn't hide the truth that I had spiritual gifts that were being drowned out by the spiritual and emotional illness that I had.  Somehow in one session, I came to a place of acceptance and understanding I did not have before.  That's also what the 12 steps can do.

In 12-step groups, a person doesn't sponsor another person until they have worked all 12 steps and are living a life of recovery.  The same is true for ministers and elders (at least in Quakerism).  While many are broken in some way, we all need to work a solution into a life of good choices and faithfulness to our higher power.  I have a ways to go still on the steps (I've only ever worked up to step 9 --- making amends) and I have a way to go to a life of consistent yielding to the Light.  

This isn't a story that has a happy ending beyond that I'm not wrapped up in that shit anymore.  It still haunts me but with my two therapists and my sponsor I met in PIR , I am gaining better perspective and learning new skills to cope.  While I've been in 12 step programs since April of 2012, while I've had multiple sponsors in multiple programs of recovery, while I've gone to retreats, hospitals and recovery centers, I'm working the steps again.  I'm in therapy twice a week every other week and once a week on the other weeks.  My life consists mostly of service in my religious society.  But I can tell you that while the Inward work is ongoing, while there are times when peace is shaken, there is a solution and a power that surpasses any understanding.   And each day I am awake,  each day I choose to use the coping skills I've been taught, to say no acting out and yes to being of service or doing something healthy for me, is one more day upon a bunch of days that I've put together.

People who don't know me can't imagine my past.  I have my health, I'm pretty even-keeled, my sense of humor is alive, and I make a difference where I work, worship and hopefully with my friends and family.  Whereas in the past people  believed me to have it mostly together, but in truth I was living a double life, now that is not the case.  What you see and experience is me, and I'm learning to come full up in to any situation.  

One day I'll be more specific online.  But this is all that anyone needs to know.  If you're struggling, or have a friend or family member who is struggling with addictions and attachments, with hurts, habits and hang-ups, I get it.  But there is a way out. One day at a time.