Posted by Helen on: 02.02.2009 /
Seren sent me an online interview recently. (You can read all our online interviews here).
The purpose of this interview is to give you the opportunity to listen to Seren as she shares her thoughts and opinions with you. We don’t require Seren to defend what she says or prove she’s correct. We don’t consider doing so ‘part of the interview’.
I’d be happy to post more online interviews. If you’d like to send one in, you can find the instructions and questions here.
What screen name do you post under — so we know you when we see you?
I post under the name “Seren” – which is my name.
Would you like to share any of the following so we can know you better: your age range, whether you’re married or single, have children, what kind of work you do, what area of the U.S. (or other country) you live in?
I’m in my 30′s, and have just started work as a Mental Health Nurse in a ward for adolescents. I live with friends in a unit in an inner-city suburb of Melbourne, Australia.
What do you like to do when you have some time to yourself?
I’m an avid reader. I also fill my time with gardening, yoga, dancing, re-arranging furniture, and soaking up Melbourne’s free art and music shows.
Please share with us something you really enjoy about your life.
I really enjoy dancing. That’s when I feel my being fully, and create something beautiful.
If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about you or your life, what would it be?
If you gave me a magic wand to change things about my life you’d have a hard time getting it back again! I’m not a very satisfied person. Sometimes I think I’d like to be able to erase my memory entirely so I could start again. I was completely freaked out when “Eternal Sunshine” was released, and haven’t been able to watch it yet. Too close to home.
How did you find Conversation at the Edge (or, the eBay atheist blog) and what drew you to post in the comments section?
I was introduced to “Conversation at the Edge” by my sister and brother-in-law. Megan posts here sometimes and Benjamin is one of the hosts at “Justice and Compassion.”
I don’t know what it is about debating religion on the ‘net that draws me.
Is this the first time you’ve participated in any online discussions on the internet? If not, could you share with us what other sorts of online discussions you like to participate in?
I used to participate in discussions at Beliefnet. Initially I think the discussions gave me permission to think heretical thoughts. Now, I love being forced to think about things.
Were you raised going to church and are you currently a church attender?
I was raised in Church rectories. My father is an Anglican minister. My mother fits the mould of ideal minister’s wife pretty well. A minister’s job is not one that gets left behind at the office. We were a ministering family – life was structured around Church, our development towards growing our own ministry.
What is your main reason for choosing to be a church attender/not to be a church attender at present?
I don’t attend a Church now. In my experience Churches foster unhealthy dynamics and relationships.
Apart from church are there any groups you participate in regularly for faith-based, social and/or self-improvement reasons?
I occasionally attend Quaker meetings, because I like their ethical, left-wing take on what is happening in the world. It keeps me “in the loop.” I also attend gatherings and ceremonies of an Earth-based religious group affiliated with the Reclaiming tradition (you can read about them at www.reclaiming.org). I’ve learned to meditate from yogic, zen, and Tibetan Buddhist teachers.
It’s important to me that my practice keeps me in touch with my own body, and the body of the living earth – the human and more-than-human worlds. Yoga, dance, and meditation do this for me. As does trying to live sustainably and sharing resources (money) with people in communities less well off than mine.
Is there anything else (outside work and family) which you devote significant time to? Or used to, or hope to in the future? (We understand that for some of you, work and family takes up almost all your time at present)
I would like to put more time and energy into building relationships/ community here in my own back yard. Whether that means volunteering at the perma-culture gardens, or getting more involved with the Quaker meeting – I don’t know.
Please answer the following questions if your beliefs differ in any significant way from this: “Every human being has a “sin’ problem separating him/her from God and the only way to resolve my own sin problem is to believe that Jesus is God and Jesus took care of it for me”.
Has anyone ever called you “lost”? Have you heard or read anything which tells you that some people talk about you like that behind your back?
If I, as I was from about seven to twenty, met me as I am now, the young me would describe the current me as “lost” – lost in my sins, in need of God’s salvation, in danger of hell.
How would you/do you feel about being called “lost”?
I don’t mind the label “lost,” because it puts distance between me and the religious people who use the term. Yes, I am lost to them. I am lost to their God and their saviour.
What (else) would you like to tell the people who call you “lost” if you thought they were listening?
I’m glad I was able to break away from the religion of my family, of my childhood. The God I worshipped was a menace and a bully. I lived in terror of Christ’s return and the suffering that would be meted out to most of the earth’s human population. Then, beside the terror, great guilt that I did not live in joyful anticipation of the return of my Lord and saviour.
In a lot of ways my childhood really sucked. I wasn’t protected by any deity from horrendous things that were done to me, and I wasn’t protected by my loving, religious family.
I don’t know if there is a deity who exists. I hope, hope, hope there isn’t one anything like that described by the bible. Not that my hoping makes a difference to the reality. The things I value include the beauty of the more-than-human world – the amazing biosphere that is our home; and the fragility and potential of human lives. I think the big questions are important, and should be talked about. Everything from, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” to “How, then, shall we live?” I agree with Socrates, that, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Do you own a Bible? Do you ever read the Bible or look anything up in it? If so, what is your main reason for doing so?
I own a copy of the Book of Ruth and the Book of Job.
As best you know, has anything in the Bible influenced you in a good way (directly or indirectly)?
The Book of Ruth is a delightful story, and one of very few women’s stories to be handed down from antiquity in written form. The Book of Job is philosophy of religion at its best. It could generate decades of discussion. I was introduced to the Book of Job as an adult by Jack Miles, who discusses it in his book, “God: A Biography.”
As best you know, has anything in the Bible influenced you in a negative way (directly or indirectly)?
I remember reading the bible during adolescence, and crying and crying over what its authors had written about women. I felt slighted, undervalued, and doomed to a life of playing second fiddle to some man’s ego. I’m glad I no longer hold the words of the bible as any sort of authority.
Is there anything I forgot to ask that you’d like to tell us?
If you’ve got this far, thanks for reading.
I hope there is something in these interview answers that facilitates our understanding of each-other, people from all sorts of backgrounds with all sorts of world views.
Comment by: Helen
1Seren, thanks for sharing about yourself with us.
What caused you to change your beliefs when you were 20?
Comment by: Megs
2Seren darling, thank you so very much for expressing your beautiful thoughts and feelings about you, Earth, our family life growing up. I love you and am SOOO thankful for you!! When Coco opened your birthday present to her this morning she said ‘A LION! HOW DID SHE KNOW?’
You are one of the most generous people I have ever met in my life Seren, and that is so courageous and loving of you, to give in the face of having been taken from.
Comment by: Eliza
3Seren, thank you for doing this interview and for your thougthful posts here & on ebay atheist.
Comment by: Seren
4Thanks all.
Helen:
Good question. I’m not sure how beliefs quite work.
I don’t think any one wakes up in the morning and thinks, “Today, I’m going to believe there is a world external to myself that i can have knowledge about,” or “I’m going to believe the Virgin Mary is interceding with the Lord on my behalf today.” We kind of just get on with our day and believe a whole lot of things. And every once in a while i’ll notice that my behaviour has not kept up with my beliefs, eg i’m going to church but i don’t believe any of the dogma/creed/bible.
looking back, i think i probably believed the variety of Christianity i subscribed to because it’s what i was taught. christian life and belief was a big part of the family, and my parents, even my older siblings, never really aired the idea that this was one way among many to see the world/universe. Certainly it was never discussed as a viable option that any of us would grow up believing anything other than what our parents believed.
if you can imagine telling your child that all bus drivers have telepathic powers, the child is probably going to believe it. and may get to a good age before s/he realises that s/he’s never seen any evidence of bus driver telepathy, and perhaps mum was wrong.
does that make sense?
Comment by: Helen
5Thanks Seren – yes that does make sense to me.
Comment by: Jason Horton
6I was talking about Job just the other day by happy coincidence. In an unusually acidic mood I pointed out that God and Satan essentially conspire to ruin the poor guy’s life to resolve a bet between them.
God: Look at Job, he’s my most loyal worshipper
Satan: Yeah but only because of all the neat stuff you give him.
God: Not true.
Satan: Is too. I bet if you took it all away he’d stop being so loyal.
God: Right we’ll see about that.
My irreverent summary of Job 1:8-12. I take it that this isn”t what you meant by the philosophy of religion?
On the subject of the treatment of the feminine in the bible I have to agree. Women are treated as little more than property in the bible. You could call this a cultural hang up from the writers who interpreted the word of God if you were a believer but I don’t and I’m not. The culture of the bible is certainly carried forward in history though and women are still struggling for an equal footing which is a shame.
Comment by: Eliza
7Too true. (Though I like to picture Solomon’s 700 wives + 300 concubines as ruling the roost, supporting each other, & being like sisters to each other.)
Comment by: Seren
8yes, that’s about right on the opening of Job!!
i’ve read that the Hebrew of the opening and final verses of Job is clearly much older than the bits in between (like if someone read a poem that started and ended with Chaucer’s English and had the language we are writing in now in the middle). so the old folk tale, with deities who sound like they’d be very much at home on mt olympus, served as a springboard for some bard’s work.
i can highly recommend it, i think it’s as good as King Lear. They have the same feel to me.
i think it’s an interesting discussion of whether there is a tension between the mystical and the moral.
it’s a good read.
Eliza, as there were so many of them, at least Solomon’s women were only bothered by him about once every three years!
Comment by: Doreen
9thanks for the Q&A Seren. dancers fascinate me; it seems like such a liberating ability / passion.
Comment by: Benjamin
10This is perfectly put. Thank you.
To follow up (or perhaps re-iterate) Helen’s question–can you talk about the process of coming to your current belief about/involvement in earth based religion/reclaiming? How did you transition from the religion you were taught as a child to where you are now? Is there a particular person who helped/influenced you in that journey? Is there a story(ies) that you can share with us?
Comment by: Seren
11Hi Benjamin.
A story i can tell you is of one of my earliest memories. I think i’d have been three or four. I was camping near the beach with my family, and I could hear music, which I followed. The sound led me from the camping ground to the beach, and i stood and watched a storm roll in. The “music” was the sound of crashing waves and thunder.
My mother tells me now that she was terrified when she realised i’d gone, and hugely relieved to find me on the beach not drowned.
I know i was introduced to earth-based stuff by reading Starhawk, but i can’t honestly remember how i came across her. Probably at the Nedlands local library, in Western AUstralia. Perhaps from browsing the shelves?
i’m sorry i’m so vague. i have a truly terrible memory. it’s not just things that are irrelevant that i forget, often things that are important to me get lost too.
How did i transition from (my version of) Christianity to where i am now?
i think it was a journey of personal growth – i started to trust the reality of my own experiences more. this was painful – i think taking on the beliefs/ realities of those around me protected me from acknowledging the more painful truths of my own reality/experience. as this happened, i naturally dropped the beliefs that weren’t intuitive to me, and gave expression to my own story.
the individual who influenced me most was probably my ex-husband, Kieran. He was going through a similar examination of the religion he inherited from his mother. He grew up in a Baptist church that was well known for its fundamentalism – old school, dry, protestant fundamentalism.
have i understood your questions?
Comment by: Benjamin
12Yes. I am so stoked that you … became able to trust the reality of your own experience. This is something that is really really important to me–that we become able to express our own story/reality/experience and conversely become able to hear others express theirs, without that having to be … threatening to one another. I find I am still not super good at this–sometimes I get easily threatened/squashed by certain others’ realities, and then I can’t listen to them. I wonder if this is related to my own lingering inability to fully trust/understand my own experience? I suspect it is.
When you say
was there *also* an element of your willingness to take on those beliefs/realites because doing so was kind of … your membership card into the community of which you were a part? I mean I know for me a part of my own unwillingness to acknowledge the reality of my experience was that I (correctly) understood that to do so would most certainly mean alienation from the community of which I was a part.
Please feel free to say so if I am being too invasive with questions =)
Comment by: Seren Rose
13tough questions!!
i certainly expected to be rejected by people, including family, when i told them i was not a Christian. as it turns out, i was wrong (in most cases). i haven’t been rejected, but i have been frequently misunderstood! that’s ok, though.
in terms of admitting my unbelief to myself, acknowledging that “this doesn’t feel right,” rather than refusing to think about certain aspects of the faith… rather than “alienation” i think it was more to do with identity. i don’t think i’d have been strong enough to assert my own picture of reality, the way i think things should be. so i accepted the picture of reality presented by my family/church (big overlap there for a PK).
it was a failing in me, i think. but one i’ve done the time for already! (i was the only person who missed out on living a full life as a result of not rocking the boat).
Comment by: SeekingSomething
14Thank you so much for this Seren. I lurk here mostly and only post occasionally but it does me good to hear from people in a similar situation to my own.
I post as ‘Seeking Something’ because, a couple of years ago, when I first began to admit openly that I was no longer a Christian, I felt then that I was then desperately seeking something to fill the void left behind where my faith used to be. To my surprise and pleasure I have found that I can fill that void with life in the here and now and that I no longer feel that same void. I’ve kept my name just out of convenience and for the sake of keeping my identity for the time being.
Comment by: Bob
15Hi Seren – Thanks for posting, it’s really interesting to learn more about people. I know you touched on this before but is there one specific things that draws you to the book of Job in terms of Job as a character? I’ve always found it a tough read and it also troubles me. Do you relate to Job or is it the just the likeness to other types of literature that attracts to you to it? Just curious. Thanks.
Comment by: Seren
16Thanks for your response, SeekingSomething.
Bob, i’m one of those people who needs character to find writing really good.
Job has an immense dignity throughout the story. That’s actually what reminds me of King Lear – Lear has an immense, quiet dignity throughout his demise also. Of course, there is a difference, because Lear has brought his downfall on himself, whereas Job is persecuted because of the bet, well described by Jason Horton above.
I agree that it is a tough read, and disturbing. but in a good way. it’s immense. Like a William Blake engraving.
i don’t relate to Job in that i don’t think i’ve suffered more than those around me. i don’t have the same sense of my own dignity, or self worth – i love the way that Job is so indignant, that he should be suffering the way he is. i’m more likely to think i deserve it.
Comment by: Bob
17Hi Saren — Thanks for the response. You are right about Job’s response, his responses are compelling in and of themselves. I think there’s stuff to be learned there but I’m not of sufficient metal for such a a learning experience.
It doesn’t bother me so much that there is suffering, just the way in which it comes about in the story is hard to take. But I guess it’s not entirely untrue to life. When any person suffers we tend to think either it’s unfair or perhaps in some way they brought it upon themselves. Often neither is really true, at least to the point that there’s always someone who suffers more and someone who suffers less, so what is fair is relative at best.
Does anyone really deserve it? We like to think so but maybe not on the cosmic scale. This life seems to hand out reward and rebuke in illogical and unpredictable ways that have little to do with justice or fairness that is based on our own conceptions. It just is what it is.
But I’m glad you can appreciate Job’s account better than I can. Maybe I’ll try re-reading it.
Comment by: Jason Horton
18I wonder if the telling would be as interesting if Job had rejected God after having all the hardships heaped upon him. If he’d stayed loyal but then in Job 42 when he finds out that his hardships were all a test he railed against the unfairness of it all. Would the bribe in Job 42:10 be enough to secure his loyalty? For some reason I am reminded of Robin Hobb’s Farseer trilogy where Fitz is tested by his mentor to betray the king in a small way (stealing a knife) but resists. When he discovers that it was a test he boldly takes the knife from the king and plunges it into a wall. The symbolism is clear.
Comment by: Bob
19I think it might be easier to relate to, but not as interesting, or at least not in the same way. Not saying your idea wouldn’t make for an interesting story, it just wouldn’t be all that things that Job seemed to be.
Maybe it bothers me simply because I don’t think I could do what Job did? I don’t like the unfairness of it but there are plenty of unfair things in other stories and life in general. Also just the wager aspect of it is disconcerting. Of course not everything we read needs to be written to give us a warm fuzzy feeling. Sometimes we might need to be made uncomfortable in order to be challenged into growth.
Comment by: Seren
20Job’s response is fascinating.
i don’t think he does say, “that’s ok, God, you can test me any time.”
he remains completely dignified, completely human in his response. it’s quite a scene.
Comment by: Seren
21It depends on the translation of the scene –
Job 42: 5-6
I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.
Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
– King James version
S. Mitchell’s 1989 translation has it,
I had heard of you with my ears;
but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I will be quiet,
Comforted that I am dust.
Comment by: Bob
22Good point. He’s steadfast but doesn’t have to act like it’s okay either. That might be a good model for people to emulate in their faith. The glossy shell of Christian culture doesn’t do it any favors. People can’t relate to it because it isn’t realistic. Content or accepting is not synonymous with being happy. Job certainly wasn’t happy about what transpired.