Christ-like Suffering
Alchemizing Abuses of Homophobia, Pedophilia and the Church
Foreword by :
Please join me in welcoming
to the deeper mysteries of the Creek!He was recently voted to become the newest Adeptus Maker by the patrons of this publication, through a poll on our Discord server.
As an Adeptus Maker, he has pledged commitment to a number of Arts and Services for the Creekmasons (for instance, writing blog entries around once a month and editing the Nodes in the Net podcast!)
Before I share the essay he submitted along with his petition to matriculate, I want to share a little myth that I can’t get out of my head.
This is the latest conception of the purpose of our Anarcho-Indie Publishing Collective slash Digital Sangha. We are meant to be a refuge for those forced into a liminal territory, yet who still want to Love and be loved and Be Love.
The Liminal Swamp, by
There’s this Other living out in the swamp on the very edge of town. A weirdo, both proud to claim what sets him apart from the crowd and perturbed by intermittent wishes for a home closer to Main Street.
The kids dare each other to ring his doorbell. There are rumors he has a pet alligator and that he can tell the future by throwing chicken bones into a cast iron pot. And yes. A piece of his mystical mystique is warranted: his home is filled with ancient books and his day with ancient rituals. He’s not bad or scary though, just different. Just wounded.
Still, when it’s harvest time, he shows up to help, like anyone else.
Living in the swamp—that liminal zone, neither land nor water, neither in the community nor totally banished—gives this Other a unique perspective that could be called wisdom.
Some villagers swear the bundled wheat they haul in from the field feels a little bit lighter after talking to him. They feel a little lighter. Just when he’s around.
In the strange territory of the swamp, there’s wild plants and endless time for reflection. Let’s just say it: he’s out there doing ayahuasca. He’s doing his daily meditation. He’s doing his scribbling—pamphlets, manifestos and whole tomes of his own that he hopes will vibe-shift the City Center enough that the fires he can see raging from his liminal home won’t engulf his loved ones in town. Art that might resonate the mainstream such that a spiritual specialist like him can belong in it.
He’s doing all this mystical, transcendent work. But in helping with the harvest, he’s also “doing the dishes.” He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty for the good of all. He’s not afraid to compromise.
What makes this possible? Why isn’t he hysterical, raving, mad? Squandering his mind like the best of Ginsberg’s generation? Why haven’t his social skills completely atrophied?
What empowers him to be a householder mystic, still merrily belonging in the community he lives on the fringes of? How is he managing to avoid becoming an ever more radicalized and disenfranchised hermit? Why do the wounds that he journeyed into the swamp to heal in the first place not overwhelm him, making him bitter and misanthropic?
His swamp, it turns out, is on the very edge of the boarders of several little villages. Also some towns. Some counties. Even a city or two.
At the intersection of all these outskirts is this special liminal place.
There are witches and hermits. Enby astromages. Shamans. Creeps. Mystics.
Creekmasons.
Each one a householder.
Providing each other a sangha. Providing comfort, companionship, compassion, and support toward both seeking transcendent liberation and seeking to remain a valued contributor to the goings on around Main Street.
In a word, providing Love. That bright vibratory resonance that unlocks each Creekmason’s Love of themself, in turn unlocking the welcoming Love of Main Street.
Like a thousand fires liminal to a thousand places. Each fire burns brighter as a result of finally finding art that resonates with their authentic experience, finding their tribe. Learning how to Seek and how to Find and how to Thrive embedded in the kindling… and the fires grow locally and ignite the world.
Vibe shifting the planet through interior work, alchemical art, and the art of conscious being.
Doing ayahuasca and the dishes
Let’s take a look at Christ-Like Suffering next. The following essay was submitted by
as a part of his admission to the Adeptus Maker (participatory and publishing) rank of the Creekmasons.Viewed through the lens of the myth we just explored, this was his reason for fleeing to the swamp in the first place. This is the backstory that makes him an Other, afraid to Be Love.
If he can heal this, transmute this, learn to love even through this suffering… I,
, believe that his infinitely courageous alchemy will flare up all of our fires so we burn the brighter.His suffering uniquely qualifies him to build in the Liminal. To build a digital sangha. A home for those hurt people who want to heal, and through our healing, help the world.
Here’s Colin Reinagel.
Christ-like Suffering by
Alchemizing Abuses of Homophobia, Pedophilia and the Church
As a child I was taught about the suffering of Christ. How by suffering unjustly, he was able to cleanse the sins of mankind; taking them upon himself. That by doing so with grace and love he could clear karma or break cycles or release blocked energy from the collective of humanity or whatever metaphor you want to use for the change Jesus made on the cross and through his resurrection. I wanted to do that. Thatidealistic child believed that the greatest nobility was to take on the suffering of others and heal it personally on behalf of the collective. Maybe I could be a microcosm of Christ’s example. Today my beliefs on inner divinity and the fractal nature of God leave little doubt that my life exists as an expression of divinity; however my ideas at the time were much more grounded in the real benefits I could create if maybe I could heal some collective traumas. Although I had no idea what I would be getting myself into.
“Be careful what you wish for” is much more than just an expression.
When I was 9 years-old, I started puberty, and my parent’s discovered that I was gay. My dad told me first that he felt similar feelings as a child but that they went away. He then had me write a series of essays based on passages of the bible he selected so that the belief that homosexuality was against God was thoroughly ingrained. This was the closest thing to a "birds and bees'' talk I would ever get from my parents.
At age 10 I left the school/church I’d been attending and I began public school. At the same time the new church hired a new youth pastor. He told the church about emigrating from South Africa and among other things how he "overcame his sins of same sex attraction through the power of God." Then he offered to work one on one with any of the youth in the church who were going through similar struggles. Well obviously my parents thought their prayers were answered because they asked him to start on Monday first thing after school.
I knew from the moment I saw him that he was a predator. In my eyes he had the look of a hungry lion–I just wish I could’ve said then how accurate my impression was. For the next five months of my life every week for two to three hours a day I would be struggling to breathe and learning to suppress my gag reflex during these "conversion therapy sessions."
He was angry. Violent. And exceptional at manipulation trying so many lies and tactics, but I resisted and refused to submit through it all. Always lining up insults, biting, hiding, and otherwise doing everything I could think of. Since my parents refused to call off the sessions I could at least make it as unpleasant as possible for him, when I wasn’t simply watching from the other side of the room and obscuring my own face so that I could pretend it wasn’t happening to me.
I couldn’t possibly have told them what was actually happening. When you learn about sex from a rapist and not your parents you don’t have the language to say what’s happening. Worse, I would begin re-experiencing it whenever I tried to think about it… You can't talk while you’re choking. Then I couldn’t answer when my parents asked what was happening and why I felt like I was choking. Ultimately I stopped resisting the gentle blackness, and I wouldn’t allow myself to know what had happened to me until 9 years later while violently baked and holding a pelvis opening yoga pose for about 15 minutes. For of the repressed years I was directing the negative energy of trauma and pain towards myself and my sexuality.
I was a child with a dark and horrible secret, but I just told everyone that my dark and horrible secret was that I was gay, and it wasn’t long before I was telling myself that too. The first step that I needed to overcome was the fear of eternal torment in Hell, since I already had a pretty good idea of what that would be like.
All of this came to light in my family about four years ago, just two years after I finally turned the corner on accepting myself as homosexual.
We were all sitting around on couches in my parents’ home for Christmas when someone offhandedly mentioned his name. That night after everyone was asleep, I woke up with a painful erection and massive nausea. I vomited for about half-an-hour straight until there was nothing left in my entire GI tract. Then, again, a few weeks after I returned home. Only then was I able to admit to myself what had actually happened. It would be another couple of months before telling my family.
The first thing my father asked me in person was if being raped was what made me gay. Even though I’m tempted to be furious at him for that I just feel sorry for the guy. I could tell from the look in his eyes that he was more concerned about his own history and his own “struggles” with “same-sex attraction.” I had to remind him that I was only in the situation because they found out I was gay and did anything they could to try and fix it. That seemed to reassure him that he probably wasn’t attracted to men because he had been raped and was still repressing it.
My mother was the one who took me there from my home, against my wishes. I didn’t have the language to explain why or tell them what was happening but they knew I was miserable, and they knew I didn’t want to go back. Had they listened to me and respected the autonomy of their child, I would’ve been spared a lot of suffering. I coped by replacing my mother in my mind. A different and unfamiliar woman was responsible for delivering me into this situation, because if it had been my mother I would never have been able to then turn to her for comfort afterwards.
While it was very obvious to me that I would have to grow beyond Christianity to a more whole and integrated philosophy and set of beliefs, it would be easier to make decisions and navigate my relationship with my parents if it was also just as obvious. My parents are not necessarily bad people though, and they were just as much deceived as I was. They’re now comfortable admitting that they do not trust the church the way they did and will not stay at any congregation that openly speaks against homosexuality. In their words, the community is more important and gay people are just looking for that community—same as everyone else. Not that they’ve necessarily changed any of their beliefs but they’ve at least realized that it can be harmful to say those out loud.
What is the larger correlation though, why can I assume that my experience is a greater metaphor to heal cycles out of the whole collective?
Homophobia, pedophilia, and the Christian church have been a deadly trifecta for some decades now, but it was not always that way… The Old Testament was full of rules, some that are obvious to us now like having your BMs away from your drinking water. Others that are less clear like wearing mixed fabrics or eating pork. Jesus said that he didn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfill it… now, what does that mean?
For most it means that you follow the laws in the center of the venn diagram of the Old and New Testament but not the rest. Those laws which were, in the late 1950s, retranslated to directly refer to homosexuality. I did my own research though. I learned a little Arameic and a little Greek, the original languages the Old and New Testament were written in, and the more accurate translation is not “men who love men” as is being preached today, but “men who love boys.” The condemnations of pedophilia were removed from the Bible and replaced with condemnations of homosexuality.
Rome was the setting of the New Testament and the home of the churches that Paul wrote his letters to. Those letters form the majority of the New Testament, and so to understand what he meant we have to look at what sexuality in Rome was like. Who were these men who love boys that he was talking about and why would they not be allowed into the Kingdom of Heaven, as he said?
The Romans did not care about gay or straight–that was largely irrelevant–but when they had an emperor who didn’t have any same-sex action at all, it was out of pattern enough to be recorded in history. What they did care about in Rome was who was the active v.s. receiving partner. Another Emperor was consistently the subject of talk because the ruler should always be on top, but this one was a bottom. Teacher to student, husband to wife, master to slave, any of these were acceptable sexual relationships as long as the power dynamic was expressed through the sex, including underage boys who were effectively women in the eyes of the Romans and their elders.
They didn’t care about their age, only that they were passive, submissive, and did what they were told. The pedophiles wouldn’t get in trouble—that was openly practiced and accepted. The children would be in trouble if they stood up against it, and so these men who love boys were individuals who abused their positions of authority to create a system that gave them protected permission to take advantage of people. We talk about rape culture today, but we really have no idea how far we have come.
Fast forward back to the 1900s there had been so many examples of positive and affirming sexuality through the 1800s and even into the early 1900s. “GI becomes Blonde Beauty” was a national headline celebrating a veteran coming out as transgender! But something changed. In the 1940s waves of ideology swept the world and no culture was fully inoculated against fascist groups. Not many people know that the very first place the Nazis went to burn books was at cutting edge health clinics for gender affirming care and research into how to support those we now know of as trangender people, but by the early 60’s anti-gay misinformation and propaganda was in full swing in America, and the western world.
Between the 1950’s and today there has been massive public backlash against homosexuals, transgender people, and the entire LGBT community. The most extreme criticisms of homosexuality in the late 50s and early 60s were coming from the Church and Hollywood. “Boys Beware” was the film that asserted that all homosexuals were pedophiles and rapists. Of course, we are just now learning how these churches and Hollywood executives have used their power to cover up the exact behaviors that they were accusing.
On the west coast, The Casting Couch was synonymous for movie makers withholding roles for people who are willing to exchange sex for it. In deeper and darker parts of Hollywood child actors and actresses suffered horrible abuse at the hands of their adult directors and producers. Today, there are more people than ever working to expose these shadowed rings of abusers. About Hollywood itself the film “Quiet on Set '' shed light on the abuse. The global sex trafficking industry is revealed in “Sound of Freedom '' by a man who spent years undercover in sting operations, and the abuses described below were brought to the public by “Spotlight” and reporter Walter Robinson of the Boston Globe .
Within and across dioceses of the Catholic Church priests are relocated and cover stories were created to prevent the public from fully becoming aware of the unimaginable levels of sexual abuse that was happening, all while they continue to spread the messages of homophobia. My experience seems to fit pretty exactly into that slot. Homosexuals experiencing the misplaced violence of pedophiles and rapists, through homophobia and a lack of information.
Now as I enter the 16th anniversary season of those horrifying experiences I've done enough work to begin coming to terms with my shame, and am now in my fourth year of a relationship with my loving and patient boyfriend. It’s been obviously a long, painful, and arduous process but I have found a safe and supporting environment to dedicate myself to this process, but I've begun wondering if I haven't been healing more than just myself.
Am I suffering like Christ did?
Have I been carrying more than the weight of my own sins?
No, I don't claim to be doing what Christ did on the cross by any stretch. I may not be absolving the entirety of human kind, but maybe I've been healing more than just myself.
Can one man's injury be a greater metaphor in the great scales of the cosmos? Do we believe that a hero can, through their individual tribulation, resolve larger imbalances in the world? If so, does there need to be a linear causation or can the spiritual components of our world carry that deeper meaning outward into larger manifestations?
At the very least in my own family line, I have reconciled my own father’s repression and pushed through the shame that held him. I still have much work to do before I can say that I have alchemized this pain, but in living my life as honestly, shamelessly, and with as much healing as I am able to take, I believe that I am changing cycles and improving the collective.
I was introduced to yoga and meditation a couple of years before this happened to me, and these traditions have invariably been a source of progress, and there are many more essays to be written about how I have worked, healed and processed. With every aspect of repressing memories I told myself lies. I set up stages for myself to deal with it level by level. For example I told myself I was 12 when it happened so that I wouldn’t feel as bad about having my puberty ruined before I was even two years in. I told myself that the sodomy never happened and that it was just oral since that felt like it was too much knowledge for me to handle. In so many more ways I hid what I knew from myself. With each of these painful lies came neuroses, anxieties, outbursts, and self destructive impulses I should not have acted on.
Slowly… layer by layer… habit by habit… reaction by reaction, I am integrating, and resolving.
Needless to say it’s very complicated and I have a lot of work left to do, but I keep working, processing, and growing closer and closer to full honesty and unfettered authenticity. I have a responsibility now. I can only assume that healing from this will be The Great Undertaking of this lifetime, it certainly feels that way for now and if it is truly healing the world of some greater pain then all the work will be worth it.