title: Resolve(d):
Hi Mr. Unger:
It has taken me a long time to come to this painful conclusion of my life, but I think I am able to face it now. As when I was getting married and my folks have been the biggest obstacle to my own personhood, this involvement with Prairie in a way, help me to break from my image of God as it was given me here in the West. I am not an atheist, nor am I lack of the love and appreciation of Bible. But following my board experience, I was quite upset and sort of lost without a recourse.........what to do. I struggled, watched the old faithful struggled, and the kids who were there struggled. I watched this and left. I felt the knots tighten in my stomach for quite a long time. Prayers failed to help me, my past of god talk failed to give significance to this event. My faith was not strengthen at all, if any, it made me come to terms with this new definition of God. That God failed to come, to come through even after his faithful pleaded and struggled before him. That the old Prairie God has been washed out and that spirit of firm resolve, of firm trust in a personal deity that cares, listens, does miracles, none of that came to our help in the periods of 2003-2004. That God was dying, and part of me died with it, and dying was very difficult, painful. I have in my upbringing of 1980-2004, a deity, who was so familiar to me, and daily I walked with Him, even to the darker part of my personal struggle to marry during the period of 1995-1997. But this deity had to die, when I watch how his faithfuls who retired and became forgotten. Many of my former high school teachers, volunteers, and staff were forgotten during the the tenure of Jon Ohlhauser. Jon being an extraordinary man who prides himself in his powerful fascistic (strong, bundle like grip of power)way, he for me, help me to laid the stone on the death and dying of my God. My God was outdated, and he out grew the generation, so he had to die. He did not come to our aid, and he did not do much other than what I saw, everything was to be swept away, so the new school could be born, and yet as many praise this new deity that was born under the leadership of Jon Ohlhauser, I saw this as a perversion of my childhood God of Prairie. I am not sure taking government funding, 100%, and in a sense, using money that polluted the environment, money that comes sin-tax of cigarettes, and alcohol, and money that comes from mass gambling, much of this type of money other than regular tax payers in Alberta (I do not think regular Albertans have this type pf money to give away themselves), and yet God's people lose out in this struggle to Jon. I would not hail the new school PCA as God's will, I will not accept that simply of what we have created an image of God with old Prairie, but this new image Jon brought is not my God, but in the process, my God died, and this new God Jon brought with him, is dying as soon as he is publicly hailed as success, a marriage of our faith mingled with an unbridled American capitalism, the Jerry Falwell brand. Jon's God has no role to play, except to follow Jon's directives.
So as Lloyd Geering so ably helped me with the definition of superstition, that a belief or practice that has outlived its time. Our Prairian God ,we believe, could intervene in the lives of so many, has died with this 2003-2004 for me. He is no longer real, simply he failed to intervene or to stop this man who vows to remove any elements of faith that was left in this school whose foundation was laid with this belief. Jon was there in full control, reduced the school to a regular college, the miraculous element, the faith element died with him.
So I had to come to terms with this new reality, my God has died, but that my definition of a personal God who listens to all prayers, who acts in decisive ways to ensure our faith survives, has not come to pass. Perhaps this image of God no longer has meaning for me, this concept of theism died during this 2003-2004. In the wake of this thought, I began to appreciate that perhaps God is not all powerful, for perhaps that is our own definition of Him, because of our own human needs, we propped up this God image. I think he is beyond all powerful, I think perhaps the image and definition of him being all powerful fails to capture a God whose being is beyond all we can think or pray to. This newer image of God is this Tillich's the ground of being, this impersonal deity is beyond human comprehension, and his impersonality peeked for me around 2003-2004. I rejoice at this fact, at this God behind God, a Tillich's simple image, trying to capture this impersonal deity whose dwelling as St Paul reminds us, that he dwells in the splendor of light whom no one sees nor can anyone sees him.
So in a way, my God died, but in a way, I appreciate a God beyond all our desires. That he is impersonal, beyond all means, fails to intervene as he wills, and fails to helped the needy when they called. That is the beginning of my new resolve, of a God beyond God, a being that bears the weigh of the world, in this being we move, breath and live, yet how many times, humans failed to capture this God by their own limited means or simplisitc personification of this deity, hoping for something, May be Maxwell says it best, hoping for nothing. In that struggle, what we share is our own humanity, our sense of community, and how we each helped each other to be, may be God is in that. When this sense of Prairie community died with Jon, it died with me as well. In a way, Jon is a teacher to me, that my own simple God no longer lives, he has been killed by Jon. Praise to God who lives, who is in the highest places, and may Glory to be brought to this mystery, and as mine died, so the new has born. I no longer look to the mountains that the psalmist wrote, I look to each other to place ourselves firmly in the community we are at, in the earth that we have been provided with, and the animals and creatures we shared so much. These I see the works of this unknown God, these shown him forth .
Hope this helps to illustrate my path these few years. Please take care and I will send info about my children/family soon. This email had to come first, to help you appreciate what went on in the years of silence 2005-2010.
Ben
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