101124 Letter to Melanie Trecek-King

Hello Melanie. 

My name is Ruby.  I live in Alberta Canada.  I just discovered you thanks you recent download video on The Thinking Atheist.  I think what you have to say can help me.  

Technically, I'm a Post-Christian Agnostic Atheist.  But I have been leaning heavily on the Agnostic part of that label  because I am surrounded by certaintists.  There is very little room in my off line environment for conversations with my people.  Because of their certainty, I am left to wade in the unknown.  I can't afford any confidence in a different narrative than the one I was raised with, I can only imagine and wonder about the possibility.  I have no platform and will endanger my relationships if I come out of my closet with any intent to declare such things like Genesis is a myth, Jesus was Jewish, not Christian, and even the Earth is not flat.  These seem like simple things, and I can embrace them in my own space... but I feel like I have to enable people's beliefs, even when they contradict my own understanding of life. 

I'm in my mid fifties.  I have learned to take care of people and put myself and ideas on the back burner.  I can be honest and authentic in my blogs, but not in my daily conversations with people.  I feel like I need to protect them.  I am thankful that I can write my thoughts and questions... I just can't share most of them.    

I am thankful for voices like yours who understand the nuance of life.  I want to listen to more of your content on Youtube.  Thank you for putting your voice out there.  I can't thank you enough for the encouragement I have listened to so far.  

Thank you.  

Ruby Neumann

Calmar, Alberta, Canada

(written October 11, 2024) 

Melanie's Website 

100524 MY quotes from last week

* There are plenty things in life that I can't live without. Having an explanation for life itself, isn't one of them. (October 5, 24) 

* I would like to have the opportunity to meet one human being where I don't feel like it's my responsibility to protect them from me. (October 3, 24) 

* The greatest loss is not losing a child. The greatest loss is the greatest loss for you. It might be your child, it might be your partner, it might be your sibling, it might be your cat. There is no universal "greatest loss". There is only your greatest loss and even then there may  be more than one greatest loss for you.   The lesson is... Don't compare losses with others and don't compare losses within your own life's journey. (September 30, 24) 

082224 It's not about evidence

It's not about evidence. I don't have access to the evidence. So many people don't have access to the evidence.  It is about the narrative we embrace, most often without choice. 

I was given a narrative as a young child and I embraced that narrative for a long time. After considerable thought, I could no longer embrace that narrative. 

Now I embrace a new narrative because that is all I have access to. I still don't have access to evidence. 

Even if I had access to evidence, I would still need a narrative, because stories are easier to hug than facts.

(written August 22, 2024) 

082024 No need to imagine.

In a world of so many possibilities,  I often find myself wondering why people plant themselves along the highway of life and don't go any further.  New ideas to them are either frightening, threatening, intimidating or seemingly impossible.  

I have done something over the course of my life that, in a way I had hoped would help me to not be so attached to the things and people in my life.  I would often imagine what life would be like without them.  That exercise wasn't all-inclusive.  I never imagined what life would be like without my sister.  I imagined my parents dying, I've imagined my husband dying.  What would it be like for me to go on without them.  I thought I needed to prepare myself if and when that happened.  But my sister was always a constant in my life.  Even up to the last year of her life, I still believed that she would outlive me.  I had no need to imagine otherwise.  But today... I am living without her because she died thirteen months ago.  

My mother has "Jesus" in her life like I had my sister.  "Jesus" is her constant and she has planted herself beside him in the highway of life.  She has no need to go any further.  She has no need to imagine life with him.  

And then I come along.  I dared to go further.  I dared to keep walking I dared to discover that, indeed, there is a world beyond where my Mom is.  Life does go on without "Jesus" at least for me it does.  So I wonder now what she sees.  Her whole world is filled with "Jesus" and yet I have travelled past that reality.  Does she still see me now? 

(written August 20, 2024) 

071124 Swimming with the other fish in the ocean.

"I'm not looking for another "thing" to embrace, as much as I am looking to figure out how to swim with the other fish in the ocean and not become them." 

(Written July 11, 2024) 

070424 Words I don't need to share with my mother

A text from my mother after we had an argument about swearing.   

"I love you Ruby, That is why it hurts so much."

The reply text I wanted to send her, but deleted.  

"I think the reason "it" hurts so much is because I'm your daughter.  Love is what you do because it hurts, its not the reason for the pain.  Your are the reason I exist.  That's a lot of responsibility to carry.  I don't know what that's like.  I wish I could understand, but I never will."  

Maybe a psychological response isn't necessary.  Maybe it's okay to let my Mom have the last word... even if I think it needs adjusting.  

What hurts my Mom? ... so many things.  Maybe the argument about swearing wasn't helpful.  I came away with a little more awareness of who my mother is.  Maybe I was personally shocked that the word that started it all didn't seem that offensive to me.  So I got defensive.  I even told her I could make it worse... Like that would help.   

I still want to understand if the discomfort with swearing is word related or emotion related.  It's been in the back of my mind for a long time.  Even with my own discomfort.   What makes a jumble of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet so harmful?  I could swear in her midst in a foreign language and it probably wouldn't phase her, because those aren't the collection of letters that she was taught were "bad".  

"It's okay to use ass to describe a donkey, but not okay to use the same word to describe someone's backside or label someone when they are being a jerk?"   I am still confused.  But I learned again that it's not a conversation to have with my mother.  

Something else came up.  

"I wish I could have asked you this stuff when I was five.  That is when a mother gets to listen to her child regardless of the questions that child asks.  Now that I'm in my fifties, I don't get the freedom to ask anymore."  

Now my questions offend, hurt and bring on tears.  If I asked them fifty years ago, the emotions wouldn't have been so elevated.  Children's questions are easier to sweep under the carpet.  

I can surmise all I want about how my mother really thinks, and I may never come close to understanding her.  That is the challenge of any relationship I have... not just the one with my mother.  

Yesterday was just an example of how my words have hurt Mom.   This whole blog is a collection of words that would hurt her.  It's why I told her not to read my blogs anymore.  They are just more words that will cause her pain... and I don't even have to swear to do that.  My honest feelings about how I see the world do more to bring tears than a swear word will.  

Maybe it's not my job to normalize certain words in the English language.  English is a moving river and changes around every curve it goes.  Some move with the river, some park on the shore and want to stay where they are most comfortable.  It can make it difficult to communicate at times, but that is the challenge we all face across the spectrum of humanity.  

I still think one swear word couldn't have caused as much pain as the anger and the arguing that followed it did.  I could have let it go after the one verbal slip that didn't meet with my Mom's approval.  But I didn't let it go.  I got defensive and didn't want to back down.  I admitted yesterday that protecting my family from me is exhausting. 

What's my conclusion?  Maybe words are better harnessed.  Maybe people are better when they are protected?  Maybe, as exhausting as it can be, I can save my honest and unbridled words for my blog.  It's much like giving the horse a pasture without the saddle and bridle to roam free on it's own for a while.  But realizing that for the most part... the bridle and the saddle are a part of that horse's life.  

 (written on July 4, 2024... Independence Day) 

062524 The Pieces of Life’s Puzzle

For most of my growing up years… right through to high school and then on in to my twenties… I didn’t think of life as a whole picture.  I was part of some puzzle. Each moment, each event, each person that walked through my life was another piece added to that puzzle.  I didn’t have a box that the pieces came in.  I didn’t have a picture with which to figure out where the pieces fit.  All I had was pieces and the surface of my life in which to lay them on.  

I get asked at the grocery lineup if I’m a senior now.  I tell them I’m a dyslexic senior (56).  Now, I am seeing the picture of my life a lot more filled in.  There are still empty pieces, but even at 56, there's not that many left to fill in.  On my next birthday, I will be the same age that my sister was when she was finished filling in her pieces.  I am going to guess that she didn’t see her puzzle as compete at 57.  

Where does motivation and inspiration come from now that I am on the upward trajectory toward sixty… and then to seventy… and then to eighty… if I can afford to or find a reason to live that long.  Life to me now is survival for my close loved ones.  I need to keep breathing for them.  As long as my mother and my husband breathe, then I need to breathe.  But breathing is harder to do now.   Life isn’t the empty unassembled puzzle I had in grade school or high school.  

I just want to point out that this isn’t depression.  I understand depression well… and this isn’t it.  Maybe, I’m not seeing the planet, right now, as a place that wants me around for a long time.  It’s given my mother 87 years and for that I am thankful, because she still lives on the farm where the loves to be.  She still gets to drive to the places she wants to go to.  She still gets to be with people that give her joy.  But there is a big difference between her and I. 

This planet is just a passing through place for her.  For me, the planet is my only home.  Everything we’ve made this floating rock in the cosmos to be, is all that I have to work with.  No dreams of heaven, or colonizing on Mars.  Earth is it.  So if Earth’s resources are aren’t enough to see me to 87 like my mother, then that is when my breath ends and I turn into a memory for a while.  

I spend a lot of time working on puzzles and in the summer… weeding and watering my flower garden.  I am working on pictures every day.  Trying to make something beautiful while I’m still here.  My mind doesn’t wander far into the future, because that place isn’t safe for me.  It wanders more to the past where I still had lots of pieces to assemble.  

I find myself wanting less and less to mingle with people who have thrown out their puzzles.  Some look at their life and see only disappointment in the pieces they have laid out.  So instead of valuing them for where and when they were laid, they throw out the puzzle and buy a new one.  I still struggle with who I was, but have no need to deny that I was someone of value, even when I was misguided and misinformed.  

Thank you for reading this far.  Today is an unknown.  I just wanted to voice my thoughts not knowing how the day will end.  I hope I will find more pieces of the puzzle and more ambition or inspiration to place them for a while longer.  

(written June 25, 2024) 

062124 The Middle is Okay

I tell people... "I'm not a theologian, I'm not a scientist... I'm a poet." I hope that simple statement gets me off the hook either way for defending the opposite ends of the understanding of life. For some... it's really okay to dwell in the middle. We don't have to know everything. We just have to be... and be ourselves. I like listening to Forrest Valkai and Neil DeGrasse Tyson... I just don't have to be them... that is refreshing.

(written June 22,  2024) 

061224 "You have a right to feel empty."

 "You have a right to feel empty."

I just saw these seven words of encouragement on one of my Facebook groups.  There was something profound in these words for me.  After decades of being taught to fear the void... it is strangely comforting.  It is the same wisdom I would pass along to someone who has just lost a family member or a dear friend.  It's okay.. "you've done nothing wrong."... also words of encouragement from the same post.  We don't need a full glass of water all the time. The air is sacred too.  It's what we need to breathe so we don't drown.  I call it the balance of life.  

(Written on June 12, 2024 - during my first visit to Fort McMurray) 

061124 My thoughts on prayer

My thoughts on prayer: When I stopped believing that "God" or "Jesus" were listening to me, I still wanted to talk to someone. I felt that in my alone time, I wanted to share my thoughts with someone if only that someone was just as absent as "Jesus" and "God" were. So I focused more on having those conversations with my deceased family members. It was my way of keeping them close... and the conversations seemed to be more relevant than the traditional prayers to a deity. Because now I was bringing them back into my life in a different way. It fills the same hole that prayer did. I don't expect anything to change as a result of talking to my dad, or my nephew or my sister. But I "feel" that I'm not alone in those moments of needing comfort. Maybe that is what prayer gives people. Maybe people really don't expect a cosmic force to change everything for them... but they just don't want to feel alone.

(written June 11, 2024)

052224 Trading a thousand fans

I would trade a thousand fans for one family member that read and was inspired or helped by what I wrote.

(written May 22, 2024) 

052024 Okay to love them

I am okay to love them. I am not okay to look at life through the same lens as they do.  I hope love doesn't require me to do that.

(written May 20, 2024) 

051624 The last cross to go down

As I write this I am laying in my bed and looking at the last cross that still hangs in my house.  It's been a few years since I started purging my walls and book shelves of the remnants of my Christianity.  But one cross still remains on my wall.  It bears no resemblance to the crude wooden beams that it is suppose to represent.  Those crude wooden beams  tortured and displayed Jewish insurgents who defied the Roman government around two thousand years ago.  This cross is made of white glass with two gold coloured circles entwined underneath the horizontal piece.  It's a stained glass piece of art that was given to my husband and I when we got married fifteen years ago by the pastor that married us.  

It's not the only gift we got from that pastor and his wife.  There are spruce trees in our yard that remind us just how long we've been married.  They were mere saplings when they were given to us fifteen years ago.   We call them "the wedding trees".  They are alive and change with each year and remind us more of our married life than that piece of glass that still hangs on our wall.  

Why haven't I taken it down yet?  The cross holds no meaning for me or even my theist husband.  He has no need for cross to connect with "Creator".  He needs no "middle man".  I have no need of a cross to remind me of a Jesus who I buried on Good Friday over two years ago, and then didn't resurrect him.  We have no need to display it to show our appreciation to the gift givers, because in fifteen years they have never come to visit us.  So why is it still hanging in a prominent place in our house?   

What about the wedding rings that are interconnected with each other.  Do they still hold meaning?  The only rings that hold meaning for us are the ones on our fingers.  They were given to us by my mother.  My husband wears my Dad's wedding ring and I am wearing my Opa's wedding ring.  When we got married, there was already over 100 years of marriage represented by those rings.  They are simple gold bands and can't be more precious to both my husband and myself.  

So why don't I take the cross down?  I guess to ask that question, I also need to ask if it reminds me of something else.  

When my husband and I were planning our wedding, we didn't have a church connection.  When it came to who would officiate at our wedding, there was no easy selection to make.  It wasn't until I was at a gathering with my mother that I told a former classmate of hers and long time friend of our family that I was getting married.  He seemed excited.  

"Can we come?" He asked

"Can you marry us?"  I replied

He said he was honoured.  I felt somewhat embarrased at that moment.  I had not been a card carrying Lutheran for decades and he said he was honoured to do my wedding.  He even invited my husband and I to join him and his wife for a month of meals at their house to get to know us as a couple.  They call that pre-marital counselling... but we were both in our forties, so it had a slight different emphasis.  

His wife tried out new recipes on us and it was an enjoyable experience.  I looked forward to our Tuesday double date nights.  

I imagine now what it took for him to make that cross.  He had dabbled in stained glass art for a long time.  It is a meticulous time consuming art form and is not made without a lot of effort and skill.  He spend hours making that cross and rings for us to give us on our wedding day.  He gave us his quality time, and for me that equals love.  

Maybe that is why that cross still hangs on my wall.  I don't see it as a symbol of anything else but the love of a friend who gave my husband and I his time.  And to me, time is the greatest gift of love.  Maybe one day I will take that cross down, and then it will be the last cross to go down.  But it doesn't have to come down today.  

(written May 16, 2024) 

051424 Mother's Day and what I really saw in church service that morning.

May 12, 2024 was the first Mother's Day since my sister died, so I wanted to do something special for my Mom.  This year marks seventy years since my mother graduated from high school, so I took her on a road trip to Saskatchewan and we ended up at our small town high school for Mother's Day and Graduation.  Graduation at the boarding school we both attended has always landed on Mother's Day.  I thought it would be special for her.  

We did take in the evening grand march and talent show that had it's own issues, but that's not what I want to write about.  The following morning... Mother's Day morning... Mom and I attended the 10:30 service in the school gymnasium.  I wondered how I would navigate the religious triggers.  But thanks to a crappy sound system and a less than enthusiastic audience... that wasn't a problem.   I spent most of the service looking at the people trying to figure out if they were enjoying themselves.  I have to report that my perception of the crowd left a lot to be desired.  Maybe it was my fourteen years in the Pentecostal world that had me thinking that Jesus people "should" be more exited about Jesus, but there didn't seem to be much enthusiasm.  For the most part. 90% to 95% of the crowd looked as bored as I was.  The grad class was situated on the stage and it was not a pretty sight.  I watched them when the hymns were being sung... and a few lips were moving, but not many.  I watched them when the prayers were being recited and a few lips were moving but not many and there were more eyes opened than closed.  If their lips were moving, it was easy to see that they were just going through the motions.  But for the most part... most of them looked as bored as I was.  

One of the graduates had a big and long poofy grad dress adorned with running shoes and was significantly slouched for most of the service.  She held the front and centre row position.  Can't say that looked very "ladylike".  She didn't give me the impression that she wanted to be there either.  

I only had it out with one woman that day about what I saw.  She had the job of reciting one of the scripture passages that morning, like her mom did at our graduation in 1987.  That woman was a former classmate and  the valedictorian at our graduation.  I mentioned to my friend of almost 40 years that if Jesus is who Christians say he is... one would think there would be more enthusiasm in a church service.  Why was I only witnessing such boredom.  Was that all they had to offer as an invitation to me?  Could they blame me for not wanting that in my life?  If they were trying to encourage this agnostic atheist alumni... they really sucked at the job.  My friend mentioned... that was my perception.  I guess so.  It is what I saw, even if no one else did.  

But I didn't go there to be encouraged or entertained.  I went there to give my Mom a special Mother's Day... and she had one.  She didn't notice the bored grads or the crappy sound system.  So maybe it wasn't a big loss.  

Was I actually amazed at just how many rose-coloured glasses were being worn that morning.  Maybe.  Was I really the only one who saw the Mother's Day monotony?  I guess so.  I took those glasses off years ago.  

(written May 14, 2024) 

050224 Giving them "God"

 Sometime love means supporting the fantasies of those you love.   Our parents gave us Santa Claus, Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy... we, in return, get to give them "God".  

(written May 2, 2024) 

050124 The devil went with it.

I had a thought this morning... "If you are going to get rid of the demons, you need to get rid of the god." It's really one coin. I don't know how one can get rid of the evil supernatural and keep the good supernatural. They seem entwined... like the same coin... two faces, but one package. When I let go of "God".... the devil went with it.

(written May 1, 2024)