Articles from April 2014

Poem about being stalked by Phil–College Memoirs: Life At Roanoke–October 1994, Part 10

Sometime during the month of October, Pearl, Sharon, Tara, probably Astrid, Mike, and I went to a Halloween party at Tanya’s house.

This Tanya was a Christian, sweet, outgoing, and–as Sharon put it–one of the cool people. She occasionally came to InterVarsity. I’ve mentioned her before, along with her boyfriend Matt; they had been in Sophomore Honors with us.

I didn’t get a written invitation–my friends were allowed to bring me along as their guest–so I don’t have a record of the exact date.

I dressed up like a gypsy again, as similar to my junior year costume as it could be.

Cindy’s friend Rick was there. He was the one who promised to call me sophomore year, then never called me, basically standing me up when we were supposed to have a date. Then I saw him again early junior year at a dance.

Tara dressed as Death. She put white makeup all over her face and black stuff in her hair, and wore a black dress. We loved it.

I think Charles was at the party, too, and I know Cindy, probably her boyfriend Luke, and Jennifer were there. Jason may have been there with Jennifer, but I don’t remember. Ralph Z. may have also been there.

The party mainly took up three rooms in the big farmhouse, with three different things going on, whatever you wished. You could watch movies or play games, whichever room suited your fancy. It was a great set-up, very well planned. There were lots of people, but it didn’t seem crowded. There was food, too, and a scavenger hunt. (No alcohol.)

Tanya’s house was in the country outside of K–, and it was a beautiful–though cold–starry night. Tara, Sharon and I grouped together with Pearl, and took turns pushing her wheelchair. Pearl usually used a scooter, but since her surgery, she needed a wheelchair.

We went around on the family farm and to another farmhouse, looking for clues. At the other farmhouse, an elderly couple waited for us in Halloween masks in their indoor porch. They gave us candy and another clue.

We had to find one clue around the back, at a door at the back of the house leading to a closet or shed downstairs. We had some trouble finding what we were looking for there.

Later on, I ended up in a room in which some people (some I knew, some I didn’t) sat in a circle and played a game. I don’t remember what it was, exactly, but I think it was like Taboo.

I sat next to a cute guy in the crowded room. He paid some small attention to me, which I liked, and I may have made one or two funny remarks to him. I wanted to stick around longer, but the game was about over. He was just what I liked–tall, long nose, skinny. He was kind of a blond Phil.

With me, both blonds and brunets could be cute, though I seemed drawn to brunets most of all. I saw this guy later on at various places around the school, such as the library. I had a tiny crush on him because he was cute, but it never went anywhere because I didn’t know him.

I decided to be nice to Rick again. I had figured, junior year, that it would pour coals of fire over his head to be so nice after he stood me up. I wondered if he remembered me, though. One of my friends thought he must have; how could he have forgotten? In any case, by being nice I wouldn’t make a scene, and if he asked me out again, I would calmly say no.

At the party, he played Trivial Pursuit in the dining room with Tanya and Matt and a few others for some time, while I was with my friends in the living room. At one point, we in the living room played Taboo.

Later on, several of us were in the kitchen, and I stood next to Rick and others by a counter. I sometimes felt or saw his eyes on me during the evening, looking me over. But I said nothing to him and acted like nothing had ever happened.

He ended up marrying his girlfriend; I don’t know if he was with her at this time, since they broke up on occasion. And yeah, he remembered me, even asked Catherine about me when he saw her years later.

On October 30, some of us went to a party thrown by Astrid. We first went to Astrid’s UCC church, a one-room affair except for the little foyer (though it may have had classrooms downstairs). This church looked like a miniature cathedral.

Then we went to Astrid’s house. I believe it was near West Bend, close to Kettle Moraine State Park, and in Washington County, a nearby county but a long drive from Roanoke.

Outside was a dog and an A-framed playhouse, which was neat. Lunch was good, and I even tried a few different cheeses from the spread. One had dill pickle in it.

Later on, after eating lunch and watching ZTV, a Christian music video station, on the satellite TV (and Pearl saying, if she had ZTV, she’d watch it all the time), it was time to leave.

This may have been the time Pearl and I ended up in the Beechwood school. We sat in the pre-school or daycare room and smiled as Astrid and her mother entertained the kids.

On the way back to Roanoke, I composed a poem in my head. I later wrote it and additional verses in my diary. It gets harsh at times, but I put it here because it shows the often losing struggle with anger I had in my heart, and because people might identify with it. It also shows just how dark this time was for me:

I pushed away the pain
And it worked for a while
But it came back again
And won’t be denied this time

I try to push it back away
Try to kill it
Try to stab its night into day
But it’s made of bullet-lead

Die, die!
Die, the source of my pain
The one who gave in to the lie
–But I can’t think that way

Obsession
Watch your heart, watch your thoughts
Damnation
If you give in to hate

As Ahab hunted Moby Dick
I hunt my pain
This hatred makes me sick
Fills my stomach with bile

Leave me!
Leave me with peace and love
Pain, how is it you can’t see
What your greeting does?

Why I greet you not,
Why I pass you by?
Why my anger is hot
And you see only a scowl?
God, take this thorn
From my side!
I’m wretched and forlorn
And on insanity’s edge

Help me, help me
Lest I perish
Rescue me
From time’s oppression

In October, the American Lit class read Moby Dick. Catherine had hated it when she took the class. But Dr. Nelson let us skip the “whale lore” chapters so we read the actual story.

The sexual innuendoes were surprising: Ishmael and Queequeg in bed at the beginning, Queequeg putting his arm around Ishmael, everyone squeezing out the sperm (oil) and having a wonderful time….

I read that the author was gay, so it’s possible he actually meant it that way.

Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

September 1991:

October 1991:

November 1991:

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound

January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD

February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year

Summer 1992:

September 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

November 1992:

December 1992:

January 1993:

February 1993:

March 1993:

April 1993:

May 1993:

Junior Year

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

September 1993:

October 1993:

November 1993:

December 1993:

January 1994:

February 1994:

March 1994:

April 1994:

May 1994:

Senior Year

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

July & August 1994:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:

October 1994:

November 1994:

December 1994:

January 1995:

February 1995:

March 1995:

April 1995:

May 1995:

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on April 6, 2014January 20, 2021

“Kingdom Come”: Left Behind Review, Part 2–Old Testament Law Reinstated; Millennium’s Totalitarian Government Cracks Down on Thought-Crimes

Part 1

On page 14 is a reminder of how, well, fake everybody seems, like Stepford Christians: All around Rayford and Chaim on their way to the Temple, people shout the same thing, passages taken from the Bible. Rayford stands “with arms outstretched, reaching toward Jesus.”

There are multiple scenes just like this throughout the series, things like people praying stretched out on the floor. It just doesn’t seem…real. Like real people just wouldn’t behave this way.

Also, the book’s Jesus tells everyone, “Jerusalem shall be holy,and no aliens shall ever pass through her again.” So…immigrants are banned now?

Pages 15 through 16 are full of technical details describing the Temple. They sound like they were taken from the Pentateuch, basically a bunch of boring description that makes that part of the Old Testament such a chore to trudge through. I’m lost: With my NVLD, trying to visualize all that technical detail hurts my brain. So skip past it….

Page 16 talks about priests, burnt offerings, sacrifices–Obviously some Old Testament prophecies are being confused with End Times prophecies. On page 23 it’s explained by “Jesus” that the Jewish people “must continue to present memorial sacrifices to Me in remembrance of My sacrifice and because they rejected Me for so long.” WHAT??!!

Then on pages 27-29, Tsion is thrilled “to learn that the glory of the Lord would fill the temple and that the Mosaic laws would be observed–even the sacrifices.”

Well, except for the Passover lamb, which would not be sacrificed, to remind the Jews that “Jesus had been the perfect and once-for-all sacrifice for the sins of the world. And for these observances, even the Gentile nations would be required to have representatives sojourn to the temple.”

And if you neglect to send them, your whole country will suffer dire consequences, as Egypt later discovered….

WHAT??!! A restoration of the law that the Apostles said, in Acts 15:10, was a yoke that neither they nor their ancestors could bear, so they released the Christian church from this burden?

A seemingly endless set of laws for every minute detail of life, including that you can’t mix fabrics or eat shellfish, and women have to be separated for eight days a month? And Tsion is thrilled about this?

Where the heck does this even come from? It flies in the face of 2000 years of Christian theology, no matter which denomination you belong to. It certainly doesn’t match anything I heard back when I was a premillennialist studying up on this stuff. It would make the Millennium not so much of a paradise after all.

On page 29, we meet King David, who the authors tell us is “plain.” Say what? Here’s evidence that the authors don’t know the Bible as well as they claim, because 2 Samuel 16:12 describes David as healthy and handsome, with beautiful eyes.

This book is padded with all sorts of biblical quotes, which is not new, but now we also get to re-read stories we’ve already read many times before: Old Testament heroes speak to the children, and the children cheer, giving us absolutely nothing to advance the plot. I did a lot of skimming.

This does not apply to the Jews, but any of the Gentiles who do not accept Christ by age 100, die on their birthday and burn in Hell eternally. The ones who do accept Christ, age very slowly, since they are not to die at all during the Millennium (millennium=1000 years). So by age 100, they’re still adolescents.

But of course, anyone who has reached middle-age knows that teenagers often rebel against religion–but eventually come back to religion after reaching maturity. This rule is put in the book to pound the prophecies into a literal fulfillment, but ends up being draconian and arbitrary.

On page 46, the first adolescent dies at age 100, shocking many–but not all. Some people knew she was not the good Christian she appeared to be. Now Cameron ponders speaking during her funeral about the need to be saved.

(He used to be Buck, but now he’s Cameron again. Are nicknames unrighteous and not allowed in the Millennium?)

Rayford says on page 47, “The only benefit I see coming from [Buck–er, Cameron– speaking at the funeral] is if [the parents] allow you to warn other young people of the consequences of putting off the transaction with Jesus.”

Transaction–UGH! Salvation is not a business deal!

On page 70, rebellion has already begun, with an underground group of young people doing everything they’re not supposed to do. Their nightclubs “are frequently raided and revelers arrested and imprisoned.” Anyone who commits “actual crimes” is put to death on the spot by lightning from God.

So–does that mean the ones imprisoned, have not actually committed crimes? Are they just imprisoned because of their beliefs–a trait of oppressive regimes around the world, considered a human rights violation?

And the ones who do commit crimes–They get no chance at all to repent or rehabilitate before they go to Hell and burn forever? It’s no wonder this group is rebelling!

Yet we’re supposed to be on the side of the believers, even though their side is trying to turn into the USSR or some Middle Eastern despot, just because they’re on the side of “God” and the “good guys”?

But hey, at least it provides a plot for this book, some evil baddies to fight! Though the main plan of action is to fight them by indoctrinating–er, converting–the young.

The baddies are The Other Light, or TOL, trying to build Satan’s army for Armageddon–knowing they’ll die at 100, but hoping to pass on their beliefs to the next generations first. They expect to be resurrected by Satan.

The speech of the young people is also stilted and unnatural, like they swallowed a dictionary, with none of the usual “teen speech” you normally find in every generation.

They even use big words and academic speech, which is okay for textbooks and professional work, but just does not fit in the everyday life of teenagers. So is slang evil, too?

Then on page 255, Kenny calls his girlfriend “sweetheart.” Why must these kids sound like they grew up in the 1940s?

On pages 79-80, Qasim, a worker at COT (day care center used to evangelize children)–and potential recruit for the group of “good guys” infiltrating the TOL–is grilled on how holy he really is, with questions like, “Have you led children to Christ?” “How did you come to Christ?”

The verdict: He is not a real Christian, because he hasn’t led any of the children in prayers of salvation, and his “passionless recitation of the steps to reconciliation with almighty God.”

Eh, lots of us Christians don’t have a tally of souls we led in the prayer of salvation. Lots of us were also baptized as babies, or became Christians so young that we don’t have much of a story to tell. That doesn’t mean we’re not Christians.

To be continued.

I feel stalked by ex Phil–College Memoirs: Life At Roanoke–October 1994, Part 9

Here’s a letter to the school newspaper editor in 1952, reprinted in the fall of 1994 in a special edition. You can see things hadn’t changed much:

Would you please tell me why something hasn’t been done to solve this unfortunate transportation problem on campus? It is a shame when a student cannot move from campus without becoming a parasite on some person owning a car.
Many college students are working at the present time to support themselves in school and thus do not find that they have the money to pay for the up-keep of an automobile. Does this mean that they have to continually be shut within the walls of this campus?
An individual gets sick of asking a friend or acquaintance for a ride into a neighboring town or community, and so does the driver of the car get sick of hauling five or six passengers every time he leaves the campus!
This transportation problem also makes it hard for dating (a natural pastime at all colleges). The fellows who do not own cars have no means with which to take out their girls. On Friday and Saturday nights, when it is most likely for them to have their dates, the book store isn’t open to the students. Where are they going to go?
Maybe a few are lucky enough to be able to double date with a friend who has a car, but maybe they are not that fortunate. The dorms are closed to the students of the opposite sex after certain hours in the evening and therefore only one solution comes to the couple: sitting in someone else’s parked car! It is only due to the many inconveniences around campus which force the students to take this undesired course. Can you blame them?
It is about time for the students on this campus to get busy on solving this transportation problem. It is a sure sign that if we don’t do it, someone else will!

(What would you do in the book store on a date, anyway? Buy some textbooks or a college sweater? And it’s funny because I don’t recall guys having trouble just hanging out with their girlfriends on campus.)

By our day, the campus did have shuttle vans to S– on certain days and at certain times (I think on Sunday afternoons), though it probably hadn’t started up for the year yet when I needed Phil to take me to get milk and orange juice.

I usually got haircuts and stocked up while at home on breaks so I wouldn’t run out of toiletries at school, except for ones available in the Campus Shop. Senior year, Mike started a “shuttle service” of his own, taking a bunch of us in the Group to S– on Friday nights to go grocery shopping. Now that we had our own kitchen, we liked to keep food in it.

As the Mirror said, some of the dorms had now put computers in the lounges for people who couldn’t get to the computer lab. The following year, they’d even get Internet access.

Every other college in the country seemed to already have Internet access, so it’s funny to see how times have changed, reading on the Roanoke website [1998] that now they’re “one of the ‘most wired colleges’ in the nation.” Wow, they even have access ports in the dorm rooms now!

In 1994, the Internet was only just starting to get popular, having been a little-known service for academics and government researchers before then. Beyond users of Compuserve, Prodigy and AOL, few people had heard about it until the mid-90s. (A source.)

****

Anna met Persephone through the Mirror, and seemed to like her. She liked her sense of humor; Persephone would say things that made Anna look at her in surprise. I think Anna said I was the same way.

****

Wednesday, October 26. Sharon and I went to third-floor Jubilee, and sat outside an office waiting for our turn or maybe for Pearl. To my consternation, Phil showed up there as well. (Why did this sort of thing keep happening?)

He said hello.

Sharon said nothing. I just looked away.

He said, “Okay.” He hung around for a few minutes, and tried to say one or two things to me or Sharon, but I just kept quiet. He even congratulated me on dating Charles! (Seriously?)

Sharon went in one of the offices and Phil went through the door to the stairs, saying to me in a surprisingly non-sarcastic voice, “Good-bye. Nice talking to you.”

I asked Sharon if I’d done the right thing in snubbing him. She said maybe I should coldly say hi and bye–but that he was an idiot to try to keep talking to me when I clearly didn’t want him to.

Pearl said I gave him the treatment he deserved. So it’s hard to say. Anne of Green Gables would probably agree with Sharon, though. 🙂

I see from my diary at this time that I felt like these constant instances of running into him, were not coincidence. On the sidewalks, at meals (he was a commuter, yet kept sitting with Persephone, who sat with my friends), coming out of the Campus Shop….

He had my work/school schedule from the beginning of the year, which I gave him before the breakup; was he watching for me, so he could pass by?

It seemed the more I wanted him to go away and leave me alone, the more he came near me. It infuriated me. I felt stalked.

****

Thursday, October 27. My friends and I went on the Halloween tour through the woods that night. There was a huge line by the Pavilion, but we finally got through it.

The Hall Council advertised that the tour would be scary and we’d learn all the legends of the haunted Roanoke woods. Instead, it was funny at times, and had rusted cars and other debris here and there, but I don’t think the stories we heard were true.

It wasn’t scary. It was a walk at night through the woods with a flashlight or two.

We saw Persephone in the line while we waited, and she grinned to see us. She was friendly with me and I was friendly back, especially since last I knew she and Phil were broken up, but I still felt weird around her because of Phil. It’s possible that, by then, they’d gotten back together and then broken up again.

Either before or after reading a CCM article about Brent Bourgeois, who’d grown up with Charlie Peacock, Pearl got his new debut CD, Come Join the Living World.

(Websites say the CD came out in January of 1995, but I could swear she had the CD before then, when I was still in deep depression.)

She also got one by a group called Pray For Rain. I thought it was new, but it was copyrighted 1992. (Not surprising, since my sources of Christian pop at school and at home were limited.)

I soon had three favorite songs from these CD’s: “Blessed be the Name” by Brent Bourgeois, and “My Time” and “Stay” by Pray For Rain.

Two were sad and fit my present situation without being unbearable, unlike many secular songs based on sad situations. One was based on Job, and one was about a marriage in trouble.

“My Time” was about devotional time. That one took me away from my situation.

They were also musically superior songs, with original, innovative tunes that I loved (love) to listen to over and over again.

Sharon said, the first time she heard the Bourgeois CD, “That sounds like something I’d listen to over and over.” It had a calming effect on me, as did plenty of Christian music.

I’d been playing my Christian CD’s more than anything else, especially Shape of Grace by Out of the Grey. Unlike romantic-love-soaked pop music, they took me away from my situation and reminded me of God’s love for me, that He doesn’t leave me alone, ever.

I didn’t want my music to remind me of the breakup. Pop music would remind me constantly.

(By the way: Pray For Rain had to change their name because of a pre-existing group with that name. Yet the secular group Mastodon has the same name as pre-existing Christian group Mastedon, yet never has to change its name? What is up with that?)

****

Trina didn’t like to hear that Charles was dating me now. One day he saw her through the Campus Center window (she was sitting in the lounge), and waved.

He left the window and re-joined me on the sidewalk, then said, “I really shouldn’t have done that. You’re not supposed to rub it in your ex’s face when you start dating again.”

That made sense to me, especially now that Phil kept rubbing it in my face that he had a new girlfriend.

For example, even though none of us liked him except Persephone, he would sometimes sit with us at meals. On November first, he even flirted with her while sitting right across from me.

I don’t think Charles did things like that to Trina. I don’t think she sat at our table when he was around. After a short while, she seemed to get over him and start looking around again.

Charles said Phil congratulated him on dating me, too–and right in front of Trina. That’s weird: Congratulations are for engagements and weddings and the births of babies, NOT for dating somebody casually.

Those machines! We only had one washer and one dryer for the whole building. We didn’t have a lot of people using it, so this would be okay, except that our brand-new machines kept breaking down, and other halls were locked to non-residents.

The suites’ laundry room, last I knew, wasn’t locked, but that was all the way over on the other side of the campus. The Phi-Delts heard a rumor that their sorority suite key cards would also open up all the other hall doors, but I didn’t have such a key card.

When we first got there, the washing machine would fill up with water, not drain properly, then the water would get all over the floor and soak your clothes, so water would stream out of them when you took them out of the machine. I learned this the hard way, thinking it had been fixed.

Then they finally fixed that, but I think the dryer broke, or the washing machine again. So I had to go over to Muehlmeier, but the only way to do that was to call up Persephone and ask her to open the back door for me.

It was a short walk, just to Muehlmeier in decent weather, down the hallway to the other end of the building, then downstairs to the laundry room in the basement. But carrying a load of laundry made it harder to handle, and added to that was having to ask Persephone to help me.

By this time it must have been late in October. We were friends, but for me it was a wary friendship, since she was seeing my ex-husband only a few weeks after our final separation. I just didn’t understand how she could do this if she wanted to be my friend.

When I talked to her, it was hard to keep unwelcome images out of my head–her dating Phil, kissing him, talking with him, laughing, dancing, maybe even worse. I didn’t know yet that she refused to go past kissing him.

Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

September 1991:

October 1991:

November 1991:

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound

January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD

February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992: