The Unbroken Green Coffee Cup, Now Broken & A Stack of Notebooks Stored Away in the Dark of a Garage Drawer & A Long Ago Memory Shining Light into the Present
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After I had left the church I had attended from 1974 – 2020, when I was posting to my website the letters I wrote over eight years to the church I attended, I also added additional postings – The Broken Coffee Cup series – basically attempting to explain my departure to friends and others who were concerned that my leaving was sinful, unthinking, or disloyal to the church. The posting following that series was The Unbroken Coffee Cup, written and posted now just over two years ago.
As I prepared to write this posting, I went back and reread The Unbroken Coffee Cup, and I found one paragraph particularly pertinent and even in a sense prophetic in writing this posting:
And as the pose of the rooster on the green cup suggests, this posting is a pause, a pondering looking backwards, one last contemplation of the landscape of the past, to make sure that I have communicated all I was led to see and learn and understand, because now I turn from this part of my past and step into a new geography with a different landscape and new horizons prepared for me by the Lord. And whether it be a three day or a three-decade journey or anything in between, this is the path I am now on, with signposts and mileage signs nowhere in sight except two very near, one with the name of the pathway – “Trust in the Lord Road” – and the second, “Caution, Bumps Ahead.”
About two and a half months ago, the handle of the green coffee cup broke when I set it down on the small chest of drawers in my study. I’m not sure how or why it broke, as the handle just seemed to break into pieces, spilling coffee all over the top of the chest of drawers and all over and around my little Treasures residing on the top, a completely surprising and unexpected physical occurrence.
But as I wiped up the coffee from all over the top, I thought about the coffee cup breaking, and it was not surprising in terms of the Lord’s direction in my life but actually validated my desire and prayers to finally be free of all internal ties within me to the church I left. For since the beginning of the year, I have understood 2024 as a time of change, with new beginnings and new directions, both physically and internally, and with fresh and different understandings, undertakings, and approaches to life, others, my writing, and prayer.
So now that it is broken, what do I do with this cup? Well, I will place the green now broken coffee cup on the small chest of drawers next to the blue coffee cup, both then together again, now becoming intertwining reminders of my church journey along the way. And this journey along the way encompassed the path of leaving my former church, the way of reaching out to friends, attempting to explain individually to them my reasons for leaving and the path that led me to another church. For I had hoped to preserve the years of friendship and family experiences we shared and, at times, struggled together to help and encourage each other, through which we grew individually stronger and closer together.
And after leaving the church, there were also the attempts to recover the prior depths of friendship and the emotional and spiritual bonds of our lives, which had been lessened and finally broken in some cases, by the effects of the ongoing political overlays to Christ and His gospel which the church was still surreptitiously attempting to further deepen within the minds and hearts of many within the congregation and church’s ministry reach.
Then, thinking back even further, I remember while still at church, slowly realizing that after eight years of writing letters, that there was nothing that I had ever been able to do, or say, or write, to call the pastors and elders back from the entrenched idolatry in their minds and souls – supporting and promoting a lawless and godless man and his pronouncements as a Christian good and even imperative at times to the congregation and those within the church’s media/radio reach.
Nor could I any longer think of anyone else at church to attempt to talk to – I had effectively been dismissed and negated with all ears turning away from me by those pastors and elders I had approached – nor could I think of anything else to do or write about this sin that could feasibly effect change.
This understanding, truly sad and emptying of any strength and rationale to continue writing to the church, also carried within it the equally sad realization that I really had reached the end of any place I might have had at the church, and that many relationships at church would now wither and die, the resulting soil of faith at the church, because of the move away from Jesus, now shallow, without substance, no longer watered by prayer, and without the true gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit.
But one thing that never left me, and which had always motivated my letter writing and had eventually given great passion to my prayers for the pastors and elders after I left, was the hope that they would be led to an understanding and acknowledgement of the dark and blinding sin of this idolatry, and seek a deep, face down in the dirt repentance before the Lord of this sin distorting yet defining their faith and lives, the sins against the Two Great Commandments deeply entrenched within their hearts.
Their first great sin was the abandonment of the love of God with their whole mind, heart, and soul through the idolatry of lifting up and praising an openly godless and prideful man in place of Christ. Their second great sin, even darker, uglier, and more pervasive and deliberate, was their persistent attempt over the years to entice and lead multiple thousands of God’s people – those given physically unto their care at the church, and as many as they managed to touch through their wide-spread media reach – away from a simple devotion to Christ and His gospel of love and grace, endlessly striving to attach God’s people – their nearest and most abundant neighbors, those who should have been dearest to them – to their own idolatrous support and praise of this hollow godless man.
And something else which has not left me is best expressed by the passage below from my “Letters Written to My Church – 2019” posting where in the section titled “Thoughts on the Note from Pastor MacArthur & Church Environment“, I express my sadness and concern that no one at church seemed to love Pastor MacArthur enough to confront him over the pervasive idolatry which he had chiefly preached to embed within the church.
I kept wondering why none of the other pastors or elders seemed to be really addressing or confronting Pastor MacArthur with what he was captivated and doing. I kept wondering, “Doesn’t anyone love him?” I never truly understood their silence, their accommodation, encouragement, and applause and agreement with him as they all together seemed to descend step-by-step into the world of political machinations and pollution created by the president’s lies, pride, and violence – into a joint church ministry now becoming more devoid of a true intimacy with Christ and a close walk with the Holy Spirit. Were none of them concerned with our pastor losing spiritual award or incurring judgement for taking the church down this dangerous and gospel denying path?
When I have been questioned about my loyalty to the church and Pastor MacArthur, or my motives in writing the letters, or publishing them on my website, I have answered – with emotion – that because of my gratitude for all that I have received from him over the years, I demonstrated my love and loyalty to him by writing letters over eight years urging him to turn away from the political path he was on and back to the centrality of Christ and His gospel.
I asked a few others if they had done as much to demonstrate their love. But no one answered me, basically because the only sin they perceived was mine in “criticizing” our pastor and publishing my letters on my website after I left – letters I wrote years before I even thought of leaving, to which I never received a reply, letters I wrote because I always thought – not hoped, but thought – that I would always eventually receive a reply and that there would be a turning from this sin – and a return to the promises and joy we have in the Lord – a new blessed communion amongst us, based on a renewed love of Christ and renewed commitment to pursuing our faith together by fulfilling the Two Great Commandments within our lives, but that did not happen.
This hope for repentance and good is now greatly diminished within my heart, and I have turned these leaders, whose teaching I once sat under, over to the Lord, still calling out for mercy and a work of repentance within their hearts. And though I still pray for the leaders of the church I left, I no longer place any of my own confidence or hope in them, but now only fully in Christ, who entered my life when I was three, and who is the only one in whom I, or anyone, can really, can truly trust, as scripture enjoins upon us.
And my journey along the way, as I stated earlier, also included a new path, a path towards new understandings of the gospel and a new church. So, the breaking of The Unbroken Coffee Cup is in many ways one of the final steps away from the church at which after more than forty years attendance and membership, I was no longer a part of or welcomed. But even before I finally left, I was already enjoying and growing in new directions through the preaching and teaching from the on-line church I finally later joined.
For through this new teaching, much more centered upon Jesus and the saving and transformative power of His gospel of love, peace, and grace, I had already begun moving towards a greater spiritual freedom – understanding and experiencing more clearly the presence of God, a deeper and more intimate prayer life with Christ, and a close moment to moment walk with the Holy Spirit. And I also experienced a freedom further deepened by breaking away from all the internal spiritual interferences and confusions taught by my former church, and a fading of the last control-laden whispers denying me the love of Christ and belonging to Him, and the beauty and light of His gospel.
So, for years now, I have been stepping on-line into a new church, where the work of the Holy Spirit in the individual life is spoken of and experienced as a blessed norm, and where “sinners” are welcomed instead of excluded and attacked for cheap political gain. A church where a knowledge of and adherence to a full embracing of the Two Great Commandments of loving God with our whole heart, mind, strength and soul, and loving our neighbor as ourselves, is truly taught and lived out as the goal of our Christian faith. This is a source of joy in my new life, a good life, a life that I am now welcomed into, and am part of, and will continue within.
But even with the joy of a different church and a departure from the still gathering darkness of the first, there is also still here another sadness.
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For some four years now, since my first posting on this website on September 9, 2020, I have been “too busy” – my preferred convenient all-purpose excuse – to deal with or even think about the decades of notebooks full of notes that I took while listening to the sermons and the teachings at the church I left. And in fact, yes, I have been busy with writing postings for this website and other pressing pieces I need to write or rewrite, but the truth in terms of inaction with the notebooks is closer to just not knowing mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually what to do with them.
I had sent in my letter withdrawing my membership from my church after more than forty years attendance on September 24, 2020, and then sometime in the early months of 2021, I had taken many of these notebooks out of my study – and away from my sight – and stored them in one of the drawers in our garage. Once I had placed them inside the drawer I closed it, thinking that I could then temporarily and “safely” not deal with them for a while – the temporarily however now for almost four years.
However, as it was, this “out of sight, out of mind” routine did not really work for me, as nearly every time I was in the garage, I saw the drawer, and images of the routines of my church attendance and the notebooks always formed in my mind – my heavy bible in its brown leather-zippered cover in hand, always carried to church, along with a notebook of various colors over the years, but mainly green. For in these notebooks, I took extensive notes on all the preaching and teachings I attended – the Sunday morning service and fellowship group, the Sunday evening service, Saturday men’s groups, classes, and other gatherings.
My wife and I attended all these services and events for decades, and attended joyously I might add, before the darkening of the political overlays arrived to my dismay, expanding like developing cataracts, slowly blinding and leading both the congregation and the preachers and elders into a path of even further darkness, into which the light and grace of Christ and His gospel began to be diminished, and dimmed almost to the point of extinction, in seemingly everlasting and fervent support and praise of a lawless man of chaos.
However, during those years and after, these notebooks, for me, remained objects of life – perhaps something somewhat akin to old love letters – for they contained depth of meaning, and were always associated with warm memories of teaching, shared music and singing, and mingling with friends and acquaintances in the fellowship group in the morning over coffee and donuts – the custard filled chocolate covered ones always my ultimate donut choice – wonderful and satisfying memories of when I could still joyously consume these donuts and the tons of sugar within – sweet memories, within even numerous sweeter ones.
But the image that also came to me, when my eyes came upon the drawer, was also of all these notebooks, which for me were still warmly filled with life and light of a tender and gentle nature, but which were now hidden away, by me, in the darkness of a closed drawer in our detached garage.
And then, with the breaking of The Unbroken Coffee Cup, there arose within me an urging, vague and gentle, to return to the notebooks, and to open the drawer and finally face and figure out what I should do with all these notebooks, with so much from and for me still within.
So eventually I took them out of the drawer and spread them out on the glass topped table in the patio. I then went through them, skimming some of the sermons I took notes on, looking more closely at the notes I took from the tapes of sermons I listened to starting in 1976, the year after I started attending Grace Community Church.
And images and impressions of those wonderful quiet times of listening to the tapes, along with the objects that surrounded me at that time in my apartment, began to take shape within my mind, like a camera slowly bringing into focus the past, or songs heard long ago again beginning to sing within my heart …
… curled up in my second-floor apartment within the huge blue cloth bean bag chair I had made while still at home, on one of my periodic days off from my then part-time job with the federal government – an easy and pleasant one-mile walk away from my apartment through neighborhoods of single-story houses, coming eventually to the treelined streets of the Van Nuys civic center …
… curled up next to one of my brick and unfinished board bookcases, a can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup on display – perhaps inspired by Andy Warhol – along with books read and still unread, and with pottery created by art students scattered about, that I had bought at college – UCR, the University of California, Riverside – where I excelled, where the most life-changing class I ever took was a year of art history, and where I was confirmed into a life-long love of knowledge, learning, history, and books – so formative of the person I am now, and still always becoming …
… and most significant, curled up listening to the sermons on the tape recorder given to me as a high school graduation gift by my godfather the last time he visited us. My godfather was a Los Angeles County Sheriff, to me, always physically big, and always kind and gentle with me. One evening, during the summer between my high school graduation and leaving home for college, he visited us alone without my godmother, which I thought was odd for they always visited together, and he was in what I thought was a strange different uniform – a brown uniform – which confused but interested me. He told my dad that he had quit the Sheriff’s Department and joined the Brown Berets – an emerging pro-Chicano paramilitary and social justice organization in the late 60’s, which at the time of his visit, I knew nothing about. After talking to my father, as I remember, for just a bit, he turned to me, and as he spoke, I looked up into his face, as always, and I could sense changes within him.
He was slower and more deliberate in speech, and he seemed quieter, more subdued than normally, and his eyes were more focused upon me than usual. I literally do not remember anything he said, but I knew that what he was saying was very important to him, and important for him to say it to me. And though nothing of his words remained with me, what I do remember to this day, is how he made a special trip out of his way to see me, to tell me something important, for he lived all the way on the other side of Los Angeles.
He delivered his words absolutely focused upon me, and this act and its impact upon me is what I remember most about my godfather, Alfonso, “Al”. For even though I did not fully understand it as such when he visited, as I came back to it occasionally over the growing number of years of my life, and as I thought about it more over the course of writing this posting, it became a unique example, quiet and humble in its power, of a man in my early life going out of his way to give me something in words that was important to him, his act becoming touchingly significant and informative for me, and my godfather becoming larger in my mind as a person than he was even physically. For me, dwelling on this event was like finally opening an inheritance I had received long ago and finally beholding and understanding the worth and beauty of the treasure I had received.
Then after spending just a short time at our house – not even sitting down and having a beer with my dad – my dad seeming uncomfortable with his changes – my godfather left, and I never saw or heard from him again. I learned later from talking with my dad, that my godmother had left him, which confused me even more and made me sad for my godfather who was attempting to give me something important to him.
And all this, after more than fifty-five years, still remains something to ponder and consider, probably never to be completely understood or fully placed within me, but still remaining a light given long ago to me by God, to consider within the further darkening of the present time …
(To learn more about the Brown Berets, and the significance of my godfather leaving the Sheriff’s Department to join them, please use the link below.)
And as I began to contemplate these memories with all these images and thoughts and events swirling within me – a time of peace of listening to the tapes, my love of knowledge and learning, the light my godfather shined into my life – a sadness for the notebooks came over me as they now seemed less than cherished old love letters, but they still had significance in my life. For I was single when I first attended the church, I was baptized and married there, and my daughters grew up within it – and these notebooks were a very tangible aspect and witness of my relationship and presence within the church over all those decades of years.
So, within this dilemma of sadness and worth, the question arises as to what do I do with these notebooks? I hesitate to just toss them out in the trash, for they are not trash, nor would I ever think of them as such. Burning these notebooks seems more fitting, for it always has seemed more fitting to me to quietly and privately burn old love letters. And perhaps burning these notebooks in the raised firepit I had built outside in the garden out of extra bricks and pavers, for five of my grandchildren while they were still in California, would be for me like burning love letters, because what was once good and very good, and was of life and cherished, somehow did not last, but faded and withered and sadly went away, and I could always eventually work their ashes into the soil of my garden, but still …
And now … for me, where I am internally, there are also many new understandings of how moments in my past – the good and painful, the exhilarating and disappointing, the intense longings and times of wonder – were formative and important to the person I have become.
For I am deeply grateful for the person, that all the changes, insights, and depths of understanding over the entire process of my life, has formed me into, by the plan and grace of God – a person evermore grounded in the love of God, in a deep and simple trust in the promises and faithfulness of Christ, and in a grateful yielding to the ever-present work of the Holy Spirit within my life.
So, with the notebooks, not in the trash because they are not trash, and not burnt in the firepit because they are not old love letters, but perhaps best put in the recycle bin, where, as paper, they can again be used to make perhaps more notebooks, a noble use, made more noble by what is able to be again recorded within them. Not an emotional decision, but one based on the Second Great Commandment of loving my neighbor as myself by recycling resources for our mutual benefit and for green ecological reasons. And this … is good.
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To View all Letters & Postings in Letters, Correspondence, & Dialogue with Church & Friends on Christ, Faith & Christian Living, Please use the Link Below.
To Read More Information on the Brown Berets, please use the Link Below to a Wikipedia article on the Brown Berets.
Sometimes it so hard to leave a place. This was very touching, and I could see the mental and physical anguish you experienced. Our Lord led you away. We do not follow a pastor. We follow Jesus.