by Dongtini — Episode 36
March 21, 2012 in Podcast by dongtini
On this episode: We are persecuted for our native accents, we eat artisan s’mores and sample electric blankets, Stephy’s husband was banned from a Mars Hill Church event on grounds of being married to an outspoken Mars Hill naysayer, and we answer a voicemail from someone who doesn’t know how to tell his parents he doesn’t want to be a Christian anymore.
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Stephy's gourmet $11 s'mores
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Closing song: Lou Christie—”Lighting Strikes”
Hunter, let me hold you, honey!
I definitely hide my accent! Speaking English with an Afrikaans accent makes you sound dim witted no matter how smart you are!
There is one thing about accents I always wonder about though. I mean I know why I have an accent, English is my second language. But why all the accents in places like the UK, Australia and the US? Everyone speaks the exact same language! Where is the accent coming from??
I guess it comes from mixed influences. Australian accents are clearly derived from the Cockney accents of the convicts who first (white) populated the country. My own is a fruity mix of Australian, Sri Lankan and American so I really should start my own country. The dialect will be called “Simalese”.
I think what you guys did for Hunter is really really cool and I hope it helps him. This kind of thing isn’t easy at all. I’m 34 and I am not brave enough to tell my family that I’ve lost my faith so I can’t imagine how rough it must be for a teenager!
I know my family loves me and they are good people but they are all deeply religious and I don’t know how safe it would be to be honest with them. Especially my grandpa who I love very deeply and who has really tried to be a parental influence in my life after my parents died. I mean he’s a 93 year old, fundamentalist pentecostal – if he had to find out his eldest grandson has quit the faith it may literally kill him. Or maybe it won’t but I’m too scared to find out. So then I still talk the talk around them, I still say grace at family meals and I lie through my teeth about attending church when quizzed about it.
Blogging does help a lot as an outlet when you don’t have anyone to talk to though. Only problem is that I started my blog as a Christian who had some questions and doubts. I met some great people online and made some good friends but now that I’ve moved on from doubt to unbelief I feel like I have to censor myself. So yeah, even the opinion of people on the internet worries me. Lame, I know.
Although I do have at least SOME good reason to be vague about my beliefs. A good friend of mine and former “accountability partner” regularly reads my blog and even without me being openly agnostic, I still manage to get a very concerned call from him every now and again about the state of my immortal soul. So there’s that…
You make this sound so much easier than it probably is! When I lost my faith, I didn’t know how to keep it a secret. It was really hard to tell family and friends, but I imagined it would be that much harder to try to pretend to believe something that I don’t. Some would say it’s cowardly to “stay in the closet” so to speak, but I think it takes a lot of strength and willpower to keep up the face. I sincerely hope you find a way to be respectfully honest about what you believe. It’s a scary move, but I’m at least glad that I did it, despite the backlash and other consequences. It feels good to be honest.
Thanks Kate, I appreciate that. I really do hope to one day be out and proud about this. It’s not easy for me though. In fact it was really hard to just come out to myself regarding this! For a long time I really wanted to believe and I didn’t want to admit that I really don’t anymore. In fact, this was the first time I actually said the words out loud. Well not say so much as write them online but still!
I guess the moral of the story is that I’m pretty dishonest and rather good at bluffing so you don’t want to play poker against me!
I forgot to mention that your avatar looks like a dong.
I know! What were the odds?!
Y’all are great, thank you for putting yourselves out here. One of the wonders of the internet is encountering people you might not normally cross paths with in places like Mr. Rogers neighborhood.
Yeah, ‘coming out’ can be scary and even dangerous. So can staying in the ‘closet.’ Living in a closet isn’t very healthy, especially long term. We need the light of day to grow, thrive and survive. You’d like to think that coming out to those who ‘love’ you would be easier. What coming out (aka, honesty) does is test the quality (at the very least) of another’s love. There’s not a lot of the unqualified stuff going around out there. Honesty is a mirror and not everyone wants to see their reflection, so some may throw mud to blur the image they confront. If you want to live honestly, you’ll have to get used to having mud thrown at you, and also, not be a mud thrower. On the other hand, honesty will help you find others who are also honest. That’s a good thing me thinks. When we hide from the people we are supposedly in relationship with, we don’t really have a relationship, so do we really have love?
p.s. Cheesecake Factory makes killer meatloaf.
Paul, I loved this comment so much. So many of the lies or parts of us we conceal is done so out of a fear that people wont love us if they see the truth about is. It’s so hard to find the comfort with people to do that, but when you do, it’s such a great relief and the love is extra good because you know this person still loves you even though they know what you’re scared of and when you’re an asshole.
Re: Cheesecake Factory, I’ll have someone validate that. The sentence just made me distrust Cheesecake Factory though, I must say.
p.p.s. I think there’s something wrong with this web page. I kept clicking no that picture of the sailor and couldn’t get it to enlarge. might wanna get that fixed.
It’s not supposed to enlarge! That’s it. Sorry you can’t click to see the dong.
Losing your faith as a teenager can be really tough. My family had long since stopped going to church when I realized around age 16 that I didn’t believe, but I still knew it would upset my mom to tell her anything. I only told my mom after I’d graduated college, and even then, she said “but you’re like, an atheist atheist, right?” (Not sure what that means.)
I was lucky to have a close friend in high school who I could share my feelings with, and who actually was going through the same thing. Hopefully Hunter has a friend he can confide in, and if not, I’d recommend the internet for sure – blogs, message boards, etc. Nothing’s better than knowing that tons of people are sharing your feelings.
Maybe “atheist atheist” means the annoying kind that gets in everyone’s face about it? Anyway, glad you didn’t have to go through that alone! Someone to relate to makes all the difference.
Thanks everyone for your input! Just the kind of online support and community we were talking about. Eugene, I can totally see why you’d feel compelled to keep this from your family. I guess everyone needs to examine how much the lie affects them. If holding back and pretending starts to have adverse effects, then it’s time to evaluate if it’s worth it or not. If you feel it’s something you can skirt around and maintain relationships based on a bunch of other things, then it might not be as hard. It is always hard to just go along with it when someone makes a rhetorical remark about what God thinks or does and you just have to go along with it. Stuff like that always stops me in my tracks and I feel like suddenly the air goes out of the conversation balloon whether or not the other person realises it or not.
I feel the same way about the God remarks now, too. I was out to lunch with my family today, and they all held hands and prayed before the meal. They didn’t bother trying to hold my hands. It was both awkward and alienating. Being an “atheist atheist” is probably something like that. The point at which you’re not even expected to partake in the rituals even to humor the situation.
Simone, Yes. We have built a whole culture on lying. Madison Avenue is very cognizant of the basic human need (and drive) for love, and has exploited it masterfully (‘if you’d only drive this car, others will think you’re spiffy’). When you step back and look at it all, it kinda slaps you in the face. We formulate ideas of what we think other people like and approve of, then we build an image to project to meet the approval of those whose approval we want. That’s delusion and illusion. We have this whole construct where we try to live on imitation love instead of understanding and finding ways to develop the real thing. But the image we construct to protect us actually ends up keeping us from getting the real thing and thus destroys us… or at least leaves us very malnourished.
“this person still loves you even though they know what you’re scared of and when you’re an asshole.” I love this insight and how you connect scared to asshole. If we would all just study the nature of love a little, get familiar with it, this could all be easier. The thing is, someone has to go first, overcome fear, At any point in time we have these choices whether to act out of fear or not. I try to remember and practice that “asshole” is not a permanent state of being, that we are all capable of acting like an asshole at any moment… so I try to remember to extend grace to someone who is having an asshole moment. Doing that creates a door for the person to escape their fear that precipitated that particular asshole moment . I don’t always “remember” to do this because of my own fears, but when I do and am brave it can be magical. If we all understood the principle and all tried to practice it, things would get better. But again, it’s gotta start with the only one we have any control over. “me”
“killer meatloaf.” funny how some colloquialisms are double entendre’s. It seems most comfort food will ‘kill’ us. The serving size could also solve world hunger.
Paul, I read this this morning and have been thinking about it all day. It would be so much easier if we could all let our guards down and be honest about stuff without the fear of being unloved. When it comes to things where we are upset with things others do, reminding ourselves that we do the same goddamned thing is so important to admit to help us forgive others and ourselves. Just a couple of weeks ago I did something driving 20 times worse than the way my husband does it and I go off at him for. He wasn’t there, but I told him what I did so he could remind me if I ever scold him again, but in just having done so, it has stopped me in tracks every time. That’s an example of not being afraid to be vulnerable and reaping benefits from it.
Having said all that though, I was thinking about a way in which going the whole hog with honesty is inconceivable the way things are, and that’s when you see people failing in ways that you don’t. Obviously you can say “Well, I don’t do that, but I do this. We all fuck up.” but in an extreme case, what if someone needs to be open and say “I know it’s wrong, but I’m really attracted to children.” It seems completely impossible for someone to be able to do that, and yet, if people were able to, it might save so many victims of abuse. That’s an extreme, but devastating example of shame, concealment, and lying causing serious destruction.
Simone, what a wonderful thing you did telling your husband about the driving thing. Often, in the absence of love, there is this power struggle that goes on in a relationship… particularly our most intimate ones. Who is the best, or after time, the less fucked up. Why not compete over who loves the best? That becomes a mind bending proposal when considered, it has layers. Playing with loving as a ‘competition’ is a way of tricking oneself out of substituting the idea that we’re better than someone else… something we do in an attempt to fill the need/want for love space. Asserting our superiority is an effort to convince that we are worthy of love. Every fucking thing hinges on our drive/need/want for love. I’m convinced it’s by far the biggest drive in humans.
Regarding inconceivable whole hog honesty. We punish honesty because of our own insecurity. If it’s an area where we feel secure, we can be magnanimous (that whole mirror thing). Have you ever seen the film “Dead Man Walking?” It’s an amazing story of a person loving the ‘unlovable’ and her struggles to pull it all off. Culture decides and measures offense. We imprison a person for harming a child sexually, but let the person who pushes the Happy Meal (a slow poisonous death) live in a mansion. Not a perfect comparison, but making a point. It’s impossible for that person to say “I know it’s wrong, but I’m really attracted to children” because there is no one for them to say it to. I think the answer is for ‘me’ to become the person to whom anyone can say such things. When we look at society as the problem, it’s way to big to solve… we cannot control how another acts (though that doesn’t keep us from trying ). But it seems when we think of our self as society, the problem becomes more fixable.