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    Autobiography of an Earthling: My Funky Spiritual Memoir
    Autobiography of an Earthling: My Funky Spiritual Memoir
    Autobiography of an Earthling: My Funky Spiritual Memoir
    Ebook84 pages1 hour

    Autobiography of an Earthling: My Funky Spiritual Memoir

    By Jack Preston King

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    The last day of confirmation class arrived. Reverend Fire and Brimstone, having taught us everything he believed an eleven year old needed to know before making an informed lifetime commitment to the Methodist Church, now reminded us of the gravity of the choice before us. He opened the floor to questions.

    "Final Questions..." is the term I remember him using, as if we faced a firing squad, though my memory may be skewed on that one.

    A squeaky, quavering voice shattered the wall of silence around me. To my horror, I recognized it as my own.

    "So, um... Like, what would happen if, like, after you join the church and stuff, like, maybe as an adult, a person sort of, like, decided to change religions or something?"

    Fire and Brimstone pressed his large hands together prayerfully and broke into a wide, patient smile.

    "That's okay," he said, beaming. "Good question, Jack. Say a person starts out a Methodist, and decides later to become a Presbyterian or a Baptist. That's okay, because we're all brothers in Christ. When people get married, for example, they often change denominations, so the husband and wife can attend the same church." He scanned the crowd of cowering middle school faces as if measuring our comprehension and blind acceptance.

    To my renewed horror, I felt my mouth opening again, heard words again splashing out like flat rocks breaking still water.

    "Okay, thanks, Reverend... But like, okay, what if someone, as a grown-up maybe, wanted to become something like, say, a Buddhist?"

    “This is spiritual memoir at its finest, at once insightful, funny, honest and profoundly moving. But more, I am amazed how artfully, yet accurately, King manages to weave a treasure trove of important, hands-on spiritual knowledge into this deeply personal, riotously entertaining narrative.” - Harold Zo, author of Zo-Zen: Zen Buddhist Essays and Insights from the Small Town "Big Mind" of Harold Zo.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNew Paradigm Press
    Release dateMar 18, 2010
    ISBN9781452369396
    Autobiography of an Earthling: My Funky Spiritual Memoir
    Author

    Jack Preston King

    Jack Preston King is the author of "In Defense of Magical Thinking: Essays in Defiance of Conformity to Reason" and other books for rebels against the spiritual, creative, and cultural status quo. He writes unruly poems, short stories and novels, too. Visit him on the web at jackprestonking.com. He's also on Twitter, Medium and Facebook.

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      Book preview

      Autobiography of an Earthling - Jack Preston King

      cover.jpg

      Autobiography of an Earthling

      My Funky Spiritual Memoir

      Copyright © 2008 by Jack Preston King

      Published by New Paradigm Press

      All Rights Reserved

      License Notes:

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please return to Smashwords.com and purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Brief quotes used throughout this book are reproduced under Fair Use guidelines of US Copyright law. Questions or concerns? Email the author at jackprestonking@gmail.com.

      Cover image by NASA/Public Domain

      Cover design by Jack Preston King

      Contents

      I: Skating Away

      II: Manic Depression

      III: Blinded by the Light

      IV: Piece of My Heart

      Also By Jack Preston King

      Fiction, Poetry, and More by Jack Preston King

      Connect with Jack Preston King

      I: Skating Away

      img1.png

      To discover what is true demands freedom from tradition, which means freedom from all fears.

      – Krishnamurti

      img1.png

      I grew up attending a small town United Methodist Church, which back in the '60s and early '70s provided a nurturing spiritual environment for the young. Those were the Hippie-Yippie, Liberal Protestant days of God is love, and don't sweat the small stuff Christian theology, long before the Religious Right sank their regressive fangs into the pale white throat of Middle America, placing much of US Christendom under the Republican Party's brooding and hypnotic spell.

      When kids turned eleven in my childhood congregation, we lined up dutifully for confirmation class, a sort of extended Sunday school designed to prepare us for adult entry into full church membership. Just as I reached that critical age, after spending my first decade of life guided by the gentle spiritual hand of a kind and open-minded minister I greatly admired (and whose wife had been my first grade teacher), the larger Church chose to utilize his talents elsewhere, leaving my confirmation instruction in the hands of the new guy – a larger than life, slow-talking Southerner, with legitimate Methodist credentials, no doubt, but whose attitude had General Baptist written all over it. He was the first Hell and Damnation - Fire and Brimstone backwoods-style preacher I had ever even heard of, let alone heard preach.

      The guy scared the hell out of me. He was large and loud, with no sense of humor discernible to my eleven year old mind. He didn't like kids very much, or at least he always seemed to be shouting at one of us to cut that out right now! (that could be anything. If he didn’t like it, it was sin and had to stop). His God loved you, sure, so long as you obeyed the rules. The disobedient were deservedly doomed.

      For the first time in my life, I began to question whether what I was being taught in church was universally valid, if there wasn't maybe just a little something more to this whole issue of God and spirit and the meaning of life than I was being told about in my now rather frightening I talk, you listen confirmation classes. I was a smart kid growing up half a block from the local public library, so I launched into a secret, self-directed study of world mythology and religions, reading up on everything from Angels to Zoroastrianism, searching everywhere for keys to a more inviting spiritual door than the dark and narrow hatchway I found myself being shoved toward by the Good Reverend Fire and Brimstone.

      One book in particular caught my fancy, a full color, oversized coffee table encyclopedia of world religions. Christianity was fairly represented, as was Judaism, Islam and the very-strange-to-me-at-the-time Hinduism, with its many-armed, human skull bedecked, and animal-headed gods and goddesses. I found all of it intellectually stimulating, for sure, but the big emotional impact came one afternoon when I turned a page onto a full color, double-splash-page photograph who’s every detail I can still call to mind today. It was a panoramic photo of a Hall of Buddhas – hundreds, of sparkling golden Buddha statues lined up shoulder to shoulder, trailing off into infinity. I fell instantly head over heels in love. It was probably all that shining gold, the sheer overflowing treasure vault/King Tut's tomb quality of the image that set my adventure-hungry young mind on fire, but I absorbed the theological write-up surrounding the picture like a sponge, marveling at the life of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, who gave up a life of riches and luxury to seek (and find) answers to the very same questions perplexing little old me.

      The last day of confirmation class arrived. Reverend Fire and Brimstone, having taught us everything he believed an eleven year old needed to know before making an informed lifetime commitment to the Methodist Church, now reminded us of the gravity of the choice before us. He opened the floor to questions.

      Final Questions... is the term I remember him using, as if we faced a firing squad, though my memory may be skewed on that one.

      A squeaky, quavering voice shattered the wall of silence around me. To my horror, I recognized

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