Please notice this...

[sjcarpediem]

Clear, 17C

I am usually the first to preach not to keep secrets. Well, I've realized that I have one. A really big one. A guilty, horrible one.

I once lied about my identity; and benefited in ways that money cannot equal ever, under any god or heathen, while someone, somewhere, must have suffered. It doesn't matter how naive or knifing or plausibly deniable it initially was; or how or when I realized the fact and the weight of the lie I told.

The fact is that I told it and I benefited from it. I discovered and experienced and when I understood that I had been given access to that only through a lie I tried and tried to make the lie a truth. In part of doing that, I see now that I actually perpetuated it.

Until I also understood that it was once a lie and would always be a lie; no matter what happened as a result.

We all tell lies. We all make mistakes; and though I usually feel like I've made more than my fair share of big ones, the fact is that I have--almost as a rule--accepted, even sought, bearing full responsibility for them (even if I have regretted it, later, or known that I would).

The lie is not my secret, nor is the mistake of it.

My secret is that I have never atoned for my dishonesty. The worse of it is that I have meanwhile been praised and honored for being honest.

That part on how I gained from it is only to emphasize to what degree atonement is necessary.

The fact of the matter is that I have kept this secret because I did not know how to deal with the repercussions of letting it out.

Well.

I'm done with that.

I'm sorry to everyone who was tricked and misled into believing things about me that aren't true (though to be fair and honest to those who've joined me only in the last five years, you had already missed my error by then). I know that now you know I can't be trusted because there's no way to sort the fact from fiction. You must always wonder, now, if I am who and what I say I am or seem to be.

If I was a decent person I'd never tell another soul--and that's what I thought I was trying to do for the past five-plus years. Maybe I'm just being weak and taking "the easy way out" by outing myself after the recent chain of disappointments and challenges and cries in the night for support of some kind....

But I realize I was wrong then and am, now, and always will be until I've earned and been granted forgiveness from the ones I've wronged. I don't enjoy being wrong and the longer it goes on the more people I'll need to apologize to and beg forgiveness from. I'm damming this polluted stream.

So I'm starting, here.

Actually, that's another lie... I've already started somewhere else. The plan is to start at the outside, with the least affected and work my way in to the ones I'm aware of harming most directly.

If you want details or to harangue me or de-flist me or try to exact penitance or other explanation; I'll be leaving this entry public, and screening replies in case of any foolishness. The point is that your comment is between you and I unless you request otherwise.

Comments

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

According to Jewish law (halacha) a person is Jewish through the maternal line, or halachic conversion [usually comprised of education by a reputable rabbi and community, a hearing in a beit din--rabbinic court--which includes the giving of a Hebrew name, and immersion in a ritual bath (mikveh)]. You come out of this process completely Jewish, a Jew-by-choice; as such, it's a little more than simply sad if you then go on to desecrate the religious laws--those who haven't had the choice are given some more leeway [although there is a delightful argument in Talmudic (oral law) tradition that every individual as well as all of humanity is given and was given the choice of existing or not...]. You cannot be Jewish otherwise.

As for proving it : My mother was raised a Roman Catholic, that's what my mother's mother said she was, and I can't find out anything about my mother's mother's mother. Because of the time and various other things, it is possibly plausible (in fact likely) that my maternal grandmother is covering something up. Of what that something is, I have no solid idea. All of my requests for details are completely ignored, as if I haven't made them. Proving the matter would require rabbinic documentation of at least one of these women or their mothers, but this is not typically available in cases where the woman has renounced or otherwise given up or left the community (for whatever reasons) and especially if the women have been out of and separated from the community for several generations and the Rabbinic Authority in Israel uses ketubim (marriage contracts) for their proof (so your mother--not your mother's mother--would have to have left the community after her marriage--meaning she was most likely at least partially raised in the Jewish tradition) at least this was the case when I was researching it. one change, though, in regard to converts is that the Israeli Authority now recognizes certain Conservative conversions (they still include mikvot, but their interpretation and practice of some religious law is considered less stringent than Orthodoxy) where before they had only counted Orthodox ones.

Perhaps my attitude in explaining this is too ambiguous. The law clarifies that in the case of doubt, one cannot and does not assume in favor of legality unless that doubt is indeed compelling in which case the question is brought before a rabbi (who is basically a religious lawyer ; being a rabbi means you have sufficiently studied the necessary texts and commentaries to sufficiently and adequately lead a community, to answer their questions, to preside over their cases, and to guide their observance of the law, and if not to discern when you cannot do so safely and to know the question to then put before a more learned rabbi). This is the point : doubting something doesn't make it true.

About your Cherokee puzzle : can't a slaveowner also be a white southerner?

[bowtomecha.livejournal.com]

yes a slaveowner can be a white southerner. i was just stating that i believe that most people of cherokee descent have a better chance of being descended from a cherokee slaveowner than southern whites have of being a descendant of a white slaveowner. mostly because there actually werent all that many white slaveowners in comparison to non slave owning whites in the south to begin with, plus the cherokees were in smaller numbers yet were known to have slaves a hundred years before their scattering. with the idea in mind that they most likely had most of the same common ancestors multiple times in their recent history (small communities tend to have greater chances of having one ancestor appear multiple times, say a 4th great grandfather also as a 5th or a 3rd grandfather somewhere else across multiple lineages, the result of distant cousins intermarrying) so they would have a better chance of being that much closer to the slavery issue than many southern whites. not that it should matter. but i think it will in the future since repriations from an indian nation might be easier to get than from the national government itself and what with the cherokees kicking out most members of slave descent recently it could at some point go that way.

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

Gotcha. I read your clauses incorrectly. Sorry!

Ahh... so they're targeting tribe members of slave descent... I hadn't put it together.

Isn't that some kind of ethnic cleansing/genocide; except instead of murdering the people physically you murder them socially (and I don't mean popularity contests, I mean to their social systems, e.g., the tribe)?