I've got a draft email response saved from two months ago.
She emailed lamenting that oldest brother Walt is again an author in a Lutheran devotional magazine.
I understand that this upsets her due to actions she pursued first, then we pursued together not too long after I got sober and recovered memories and that she pursued again on her own.
But?
I don't need to be involved and I don't want to be involved.
First, nothing's going to change, and I accept that.
Second, I'm not a Lutheran. Or religious at all.
And, this is the part of the email that rubs me the wrong way.
Like Tim and his pseudo-apologies for not protecting me, she claims that Walt's abuse made me an apostate.
No. Not only is that wrong, but it treats me as less than a free agent, to the degree any of us as individuals is close to a unified self, pace Dan Dennett, and to the degree any of us has something like free will, pace Dan Wegner, and pace David Hume and my own ruminations on both counts.
Ultimately, this is her battle, as I tell her in the draft email, and then look at both of these reasons, but mainly the second.
What both Walt and Tim did, or even what Dad may have done if he sexually abused past the level of Walt (which also wouldn't surprise me), have little to do with my metaphysical stances, which were arrived at by a lot of intellectual reasoning and emotional pondering ... before I basically recovered most memories about that, or at least, before I psychologically and emotionally reattached to and resurfaced those memories.
As I further indicate to her, and to riff on Dennett (who I doubt she's read, and would probably be aghast to read thoughts like this), it's arguable that those memories, precisely because they weren't conscious at the time, had some effect. It's even more possible that this was in part a rebellion against Dad. But ... it's likely that it was mainly just as I described the conscious process above.
And, it WAS that way. I started with intellectual judo in seminary against the fundamentalist version of Lutheranism in which I was raised. (She hates it being called "fundamentalist," but it is; just with a different set of fundamentals than Calvinist fundamentalism.) I looked at "mainline Protestantism" in the form of the liberal wing of Lutheranism, but decided that it had too many artificial "pegs" for accepting some portions of the bible as literally true. I considered Unitarianism, but ... couldn't do that. I even toyed with a Buddhism of some sort, but knew that karma and reincarnation as actually understood in most Buddhism and Hinduism, not New Ageism, were as offensive as a literal hell and original sin.
I did at the same time wrestle with the emotional issues that an omniscience-based theodicy just can't answer. That's the other reason, the bigger one, I rejected Unitarianism, or liberal varieties of Judaism. If your god is that much short of all powerful, why call him god? Or, if that much short of omnibenevolence, again, why call him god?
Back to sis, though, as this is more thorough than what I wrote her.
I'm slow to anger, and even when the fuse hits the dynamite, it's often muffled. But, I am kind of angry about this.
I think I've told her the story about how I laughed under my breath at dad when, after an Ash Wednedsay service in Gallup, a schizophrenic came into our church and asked to be exorcised. Among our board of elders was a psychiatrist on staff at one of the two hospitals in town and dad had him call for an admission. But, I knew what Jesus told his disciples about "whatever you attempt to do in my name ... " and wondered why dad didn't perform an exorcism.
Maybe THAT's where the rebellion started, to the degree any of this was rebellion. Maybe my atheism arose in part because I figure that dad's emotional and religious abuse was bad enough, in this case, me getting the worst of all five kids, that my break with him religiously as an adult had to be total.
I don't know.
But ... that's not due to Walt's sexual abuse. It's due to dad's emotional and religious abuse.
That said, I'm now reminded of, either the Christmas before or maybe two before that. I asked for a gift subscription to Scientific American, back when it was a semi-technical science mag, not a gussied-up Discover.
Didn't get it.
Yes, I got money to "get it myself" if I wanted. But, wasn't gotten it. Nor did anybody talk to me about "Wow, reading Scientific American at 12!"
No, Marie. No.
"Blaming" Walt for making me an atheist makes me into a two-dimensional caricature.
I still haven't sent it. As with Abraham Lincoln's famous unsent letters, maybe I never will.
There's one other reason I've not sent it yet.
It's called self preservation.
I'm in a semi-dying profession. Sis has offered before to take me in if long term unemployment led to possible problems. As in, being broke type problems.
I don't want to bite the hand that potentially feeds me, so if I do say anything, it must be mild, tactful and deft.
Also, I'm now within five years of the early U.S. government "finish line," if you know what I mean, and every day closer to that is a day closer to not having to worry about biting hands that might feed me.
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As of right now, the answer is: I don't write.
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Six months on, after she dumped some new stuff about Andrew on me, I was slightly tempted to use that as an opening. Only slightly.
Per another recent post here, I'll almost certainly wait until I'm past the early federal finish line, if nothing else.
