Jimi Hendrix's Band of Crazies

Thought I'd post an update on the progress of the first ever meet-up group here in Morgantown. It's becoming a very slow, very interesting climb into something good. After my first meet-up that no one came to--my fault for not promoting it louder--I considered whether I should even continue with this project. I mean, what's the point, anyway?

I'll also admit I was concerned about the number of people I was going to get with bizarre mental hangups. JW's have the highest concentration of mental disorders of any other religious group--we're 3 times as likely to be admitted to a psych hospital. So what are the chances of winding up with a band of crazy people? (As if I'm the normal one in this group!)

But bit by bit, it's becoming a little too interesting to let go of...yet. I have a couple of online members who live too far away to make the meetups. One has a countercult ministry where he goes around providing talking points against the JW theology. I'm curious to tag along for the nosy factor. But he's also Southern Baptist/Evangelical, so that's slightly...scary. Another member disassociated himself as a teenager and says he sees angels. I'm not going to argue with him. He's also the only one who knows I'm an atheist. My own religious beliefs have been probably the number two question people are dying to know the answer to, second only to: What made you want to do this? Indeed.

But the best experience to date has been a woman close to my age who called me because her husband saw it advertised in the paper. She has a similar story to mine, and most importantly, no one to talk to about it. At least, no one who understands why we have to keep talking about it. Her husband's typical response is, "Why aren't you over it yet?" He's a very supportive man. But outsiders just don't get sometimes that we'll never be over it. We don't want to get over it. What happened was a crime against humanity, just on a local scale.

She reports that she's still afraid of her father. I remember what it felt like to be afraid of people. And I remembered that's why I wanted to start this group. Not to de-evangalize anyone or to antagonize the JWs (although they could use it). Not to draw away membership. I already am part of a nonprofit. I just wanted to give people like me someplace to go and have a cup of coffee with someone else who "gets" what its like to break out in a cold sweat when you see what looks to everyone else like an ordinary little man.

Someone else who can joke about the inside slang, and who can snort sarcastically with me when I say someone just experienced a "falling away." Someone to mock the rituals and the hypocrisy without having that tone in their voice or look in their eye like "And you joined this cult because of...why, now, exactly?" Most of us were born into it. Our nature railed against it, but our nurture still interweaves every aspect of it. Even after 10 years, I still wake up sometimes thinking Tuesday night is "meeting night."

But I'm not afraid anymore. And I don't want her to be, either. When I was first kicked out, I thought to myself of that old expression that "revenge is a dish best served cold." But through the years, I've come to realize that revenge is, in fact, a life well lived. In the face of those who expect you to turn to ash. That's what's so "dangerous" and "influential." That's what must be stamped out at all costs. So they instill fear to keep you self-regulating throughout your own life--afraid to talk about it to others, deeply ashamed of something you can't put your finger on.

Well, no more. I pulled out the microchip, and I'm sure others can, too. I think I've even figured out a way to make it less bloody & painful. My goal is to give people a space to decide to do that for themselves. A space I never had and desperately wished for. In a way, we're like a band of gypsies. Once we're tossed out, we're never really at home anywhere. We float sometimes from theory to philosophy, looking for a system to put into place. Some of us live in anarchy; we stay in that black hole of being divorced from every known standard you grew up with.

Sort of like when Jimi Hendrix announced at Woodstock that, "We were getting tired of the Experience, you know, it was really bumming us out, so we changed the name to Gypsy Suns & Rainbows, because, you know, we ain't nothin' but a band of gypsies."


We'll meet for coffee at 5 o'clock.