I didn't have a television, by choice, until Sept. 11, 2001. I got rid of it in probably 1996. I decided I was going to go without T.V. and focus on my community instead of everything else. I still watched movies, but only PG and rarely, PG-13. After September 11, 2001, I was too afraid not to be informed. My roommate had called me up at 5 a.m. or so and told me planes were crashing into towers in NYC and it was a terrorist attack. She was watching it unfold at work, and I got in my car and drove to the nearest place that had T.V.'s, a thrift store. I was standing at the thrift store, in front of used 1950s-80s T.V.s, watching this unfold. I bought a small used television.
During this time I also decided not to go shopping at malls anymore. I loved fashion, but my goal was to abstain from material things, and focus on internal change and direction. I quit reading fashion magazines, didn't go to the mall, and didn't have a T.V. After a few years of this, I sort of forgot what was in style. I shopped only at thrift stores. Which leads to a funny story, which I'll write about at the end of this post.
I spent a lot of time in church, socializing, doing community service and playing with kids, and I also spent quite a bit of time praying on my own. I prayed maybe an hour a day, but didn't set times for myself, just as long as I needed to pray for all the things and people that came to mind. I practiced fasting occasionally. The most I did was a 3-day fast on only water. I did that ONCE!
I read the Bible on my own, and started going to public libraries for books on understanding the Bible in depth. I was interested, because I'd worked for some Jews and a Rabbi, in Judaism at the time of Christ and read books about the temple structure and traditions. I bought a Jewish calendar with their time table, and I later sought out an orthodox synogogue, because I thought the traditions might be more close there to what I was reading about from biblical times. I went to my church on Sunday, synogogue on Saturday, and always went to the library to read or check out books to read.
I was still at my house in St. John's when I decided, on my own, that I didn't believe in using birth control. I read children were a blessing from the Lord, and blessed is the man with his quiver full, and felt it came down to faith. Why would I want to refuse a "blessing from the Lord"? So I went to Powell's, and asked a book guy there for books on not using birth control. I was embarressed. I knew it was more of a Catholic idea, and didn't know many Protestants who thought this, so I wanted to find arguments for it. He was going to direct me to Catholic literature and asked me if I was Catholic. "No," I said, "But I just believe maybe in not using any birth control." He looked at me as if he wondered what planet I was on, but also seemed to have respect for me, even as he checked me out ;). There was one book, which I bought. So then I had a dilemna. I didn't believe in birth control. Great. "I'm NEVER getting married now!" I thought. It was hard enough for me to find a connection with a guy, and stay interested, and on top of it, I had (most likely) unreasonable standards about how he needed to be more religious than ME, so I was "equally yoked" (what a great term for marriage--yoked), and NOW I was adding "no birth control" to my list? I was only 23 or so and knew unless I married late in life, that could be a LOT of babies. I thought, "Hmmm. Maybe I'll just get married old, so I can't HAVE that many kids!" I shared my idea with my future roommate Halea and she agreed with me and embraced the idea and has practiced it in her marriage.
Okay, on top of this, I never drank (ever), smoked, or partied, and wasn't around anyone who did. I'd never been asked about drugs in my life. I had a half of a wine cooler for my 21st birthday, and that was it!
My goals were to improve myself and be a better person. I disciplined myself not to lie, to be a better listener, and a few other things.
My role model, since high school, had been Mother Theresa. She was my idol. I was working at CTR when I heard she had died. I still remember the day, because I was shocked by all the talk and publicity over Princess Diana, but not over Mother Theresa. I didn't know much about Diana, but I figured Mother Theresa trumped Diana in importance and felt sad she barely got notice. I figured part of it was that Theresa was old and it was her time to go, and Diana was young and this was a tragic accident. I never had any interest in Princess Diana, until monks started attacking me as being mentally unbalanced to cover themselves, and brought up "borderline" once. I then looked into Diana, who'd been called this too. Only in the last couple of years have I been interested in Diana, and now it is because I can sort of understand her. She and I both had Mother Theresa as a role model and someone we looked up and admired. I did volunteer and community work, like Diana, but in my own low-level way. I had worked with children for a long time, as had Diana. And, at that time in my life, I was coming up in Myers-Briggs, as an INFP, which is what Diana was. I always felt sad about my "type" because it was so rare and seemed like one of the more lonely types. I think then that I was repressing my true nature, which, as a girl, was more extroverted and more of a thinker. In trying to be "a good christian" I had sublimated my own personality to fit what I thought Jesus approved of, which was to be more "feeling" even if I was always more of a thinker (with a soft heart), and more of an Introvert in my attempts to keep quiet as a domestic employee, please everyone (even if I didn't please myself because I couldn't BE myself), and pray. I really began to feel a little unhappy because I had denied myself a part of me. I did it for people, and I did it primarily for what I believed my religion required or held in high esteem.
Here is the funny story...I was so out of touch with fashion that I once went to the thrift store to look for a new dress. It was still the 90s and I lived in Oregon, and there were these Eddie Bauer dresses which were in fashion (enough) at that time. I found one (I thought) in the dress section at the store. It was plaid, it had a collar and sleeves, and buttons down the front, and pockets on the skirt. I wore it to church.
"Cameo!" said my friends Lesley and Kathy, "Are you wearing a NIGHTGOWN?!" I was stunned and indignant. "What? No!" I thought it was ridiculous. I was wearing the dress with hiking boots. It was like, an Eddie Bauer outdoorsey dress, I thought. When I got home, I checked the label. "Sleepytime Dream" it said, or something to that effect. It didn't LOOK like a regular flannel nightgown, because I had those too! This dress was thick and had pockets on the outside, and a normal shirt collar...I remember I froze, sucked in my breath, and was mortified. I was so out of touch with fashion I had worn a FLANNEL NIGHTGOWN to church!!! No wonder all the guys were paying so much attention to me that night! I felt hot and my face was hot. Then I began to laugh, and just laughed and laughed, and couldn't stop. I had worn a nightgown to church! That's what I got for trying not to be vain--a serious dose of humility.
After that I decided to get some fashion magazines and go back to the mall. So by the time I sold my house, I used some of that $40,000 not just on others, but I did spend just a little bit on myself, buying some new things at Nordstrom.
During this whole period, I never swore, of course, and didn't have any enemies, that I knew of. There were a few people I look back on and wonder about, and I'll probably mention those names, but when I first found out about the monastery, this is where I was at, and what my life was about. There were no issues with law enforcement, or lawyers, or monks. I was just me. I went to the Abbey, innocent, having been directed by a pastor at my next church which was close to Lake Oswego.
I didn't know very much about sex. I had been excused from sex ed. in high school and never had sex ed. in junior high. I had only kissed one person in my life until I was 24 years old, and that was my high school boyfriend, Robin Bechtold. I met the monks when I was 25, almost 26 years old. I was a naive and trusting 26 year old with very little real world experience. I had also been through one other trauma which I'll write about next. I was raped, as a virgin, in the summer of 1998. How I dealt with that was not to run to a monastery, wearing provocative clothing, to seduce a monk. I was intellectually religious and studying the Bible, and my studies in Judaism led me next to self-motivated studies in Early Church history, which led me to listen to Catholic radio in Oregon, and go to a Catholic conference, and led me to consider becoming Catholic. I even thought about being a nun. I wanted to be where I could pray for others all the time, and to love Christ with my whole heart.
Love the Lord thy God with all thy Strength. The next commandment was to love "thy neighbor as thyself". I had read the Bible so many times, and didn't know many people, even in my churches, who had as much knowledge and memory of scripture as I did. When I was on the East Coast with the Jewish family as a nanny, they said I should be a pastor. I told they I couldn't be, because I was a woman.
I was thinking, instead, of becoming a nun. What happened was that my entire good character and reputation were trashed to ruins by monks, lawyers, and police who were friends with them, in order to cover up what really happened, when I finally tried to speak up and broke out of being submissive to "authority" at personal cost.
Everything the Willamette Week wrote, practically, was a lie, and they AND the monks and their lawyers, knew this. Those monks knew me for over a year. They knew everything about me and my history, and they trashed me anyway, to cover themselves, and did it publicly as well. Which has affected every part of my life, and affected the way even doctors treated me when I tried to leave and moved to Wenatchee, Washington. It also affected me in Canada, where the immigration lawyer had been directed, by WAshington state "authorities" to read the article by The WW online about me, as a kind of "proof" that I was mentally unbalanced and even criminal and dangerous. They know what they've done, and I am just about to get into the real story. However, without knowing my background first, it doesn't make sense.
I had a good family, lots of friends, and I was a good person, or tried to be. I wasn't mentally unbalanced in the slightest and no employer or friend would say so. I was highly involved with my community and social life.
They tried to break all of this apart, and they even persisted over time, hoping to bury me well enough that if the truth ever surfaced, I would be, by then "diagnosed mentally ill" or a bona fide criminal, or something. They have won every battle, and now my son is taken from me.
We have yet to see whether they will win the war, and whether anyone in the justice system of America will ever stand up for me and hold the people accountable who were used for their positions in law enforcement, to ruin and traumatize me, for their church's civil gain.
I have insights about the Portland Archdiocese case, my own case and what has happened up there, and even some things I discovered about their dogmas, which I found in the library on a quest for the truth. I have insights into who in the FBI is connected to whom within the catholic church, and which members of this church eagerly joined in to harass me. I believe and hope that some or a few went along, without knowing me, but believing what they were told. I pray some of them really DID think I was so terrible, because I know most of those who have hurt me and done illegal things, knew what they were doing.
John Kaempf and Dick Whittemore should lose their right to practice law. FBI employees Raul Bujanda and Armando Garza should be fired. Detective Rich Austria has no place in law enforcement. There are others, including some who knew the Abbey lawyers who assaulted me, and some women who went after me with their nails out, under the pretense of being my friend, but only taking documents out of my house and gaining information about my life, what I knew, and what I planned to do about it.
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