And I remained abed until checking the time around 4:00 a.m. and then rising to put content into the new post I am working on at one of my six hosted websites.
I was soon to hear it raining outside, and quite heavily. When I finally made my return to bed around 6:30 a.m. ─ if it was not actually after 7:00 a.m. ─ there seemed to be considerable sunshine and blue sky out there.
But that was not to last, apparently. The day has mainly been one of recurring periods of rain.
It is rather odd to me that I now forget just when it was that I later rose in the morning, but it was probably no later than 8:30 a.m. My younger brother did not rise until after 10:00 a.m.
When I earlier risen around 4:00 a.m., it occurred to me that I could conceivably get out early to do some grocery shopping as soon as one of the markets opened that I do my shopping at.
Granted, I felt lazy and was perversely content with the excuse, but even at the age of 70 I find the Fourth Commandment about not breaking the Sabbath to be very difficult for me to break. I say that in admission that I have not attended a church service (apart from a wedding or funeral) since I was 14 years old.
I have been among those who believe that the true Sabbath is the day we call Saturday, and not Sunday as so many Christians believe and / or accept. As well, I believe that the Sabbath begins after sundown on our Friday evening and ends after the arrival of sundown Saturday evening.
Thus, I could in perfectly good conscience go shopping after dark this evening.
I have been convicted of this since I became impassioned with The World Tomorrow radio broadcasts by the Radio Church of God around the age of 12 to such degree that at night I would scour the radio dial to locate any broadcasts from radio stations all over North America that my transistor radio could pull in ─ it mattered not if I had already heard the programme, for I would listen anew.
Sometimes, a radio station would be as many as a couple of days behind another in the broadcasting of an episode.
I would also write away for every single free booklet that was mentioned, and I of course became a subscriber to The Plain Truth. I even began to tithe.
I would tithe by putting aside a rounded-up 10% of any money I was to come by ─ even money I might find. And when I accumulated enough to send in, I would do so as cash ─ another reason I rounded up to avoid mailing off any coins.
My young life was forever affected by the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong and his son Garner Ted. Yet I never attended a church service. Heck, I had no idea where any church near me might have been located, even if I did ever feel brave enough to want to attend one.
And eventually as a young adult, I did not drive and I also suffered extensive chronic unemployment, so I remained socially and geographically isolated.
Also, I had no 'good clothes' as an adult ─ none fit to wear to a church. In fact, in all of my life, I have never owned a suit.
I think that it must have been around 1985 when I finally broke away from tithing. My life at that point was so utterly ruinous that I was probably at my lowest ebb and could barely resist suicide.
I had no job nor hope of one, and no income ─ not even charitable income such as social assistance.
This was my reward for faithfully tithing since preadolescence? Even if my misery was of my own making, why had none of my prayers and pleas for help ever been surely and unambiguously answered?
And so I made the angry and painful decision to no longer tithe. Doing so was impossible for me to afford ─ there had never been any financial blessing for being such a staunch tither. I felt destined for destruction anyway, so why bother?
Of course, The Worldwide Church of God ─ and Herbert W. and Garner Ted Armstrong ─ were undergoing such controversial and endless disruption.
I could understand how Herbert W. might have been able to lose his sound sense and marry a woman a half century younger than himself ─ it made me uncomfortable, but I could handle it. We are weakly, fleshly creatures, after all.
But when other churchmen began to assert their authority and sought and obtained dominance in the church, I had enough of it. With Herbert W.'s passing in January 1986, I had pretty much stopped reading or consuming literature, as well radio and T.V. broadcasts, by the church.
I still liked Garner Ted and was more inclined toward him than the church Joseph W. Tkach had assumed direction of from Herbert W., but my life had known so much emotional and personal turmoil that the struggle just to survive edged out much adherence or attention to religious matters.
I went my own way, more or less.
Oh sure, I still prayed, albeit probably fruitlessly ─ and I still do, and every bit as fruitlessly. But as angry as I regularly do get at God, praying seems to be an unconscious habit that I find myself invoking uncountable times every day as surely as if I were just talking to myself.
It is most peculiar.
Anyway, all of this was just to explain why I have such difficulty shopping from sunset Friday evening to sunset Saturday evening.
I won't be going out after dark today, for my younger brother will probably be back home and have the T.V. turned on long before sunset.
And should he not be home by dark ─ I have an unspoken deadline for him that he must be home before 8:00 p.m. ─ then it will present the opportunity for me to get to bed especially early this evening. I would not want to lose out on that early bedtime by going out to do any shopping, and then come home to find my brother here expecting me to join him and operate our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box to fetch some episodes of T.V. series that we follow.
So early a.m. tomorrow will be my shopping venture ─ provided that I do not incapacitate myself by rising too early overnight and then burning out towards the advent of day.
There have been some heavy pours of rain over the afternoon, but the early evening is clear.
And as I type these words at 7:19 p.m., my aimless brother is home again, so I'm basically indentured to having to babysit him this evening and operate our Android TV Box to locate the latest episodes in the progressions we are making through some of the many T.V. series we follow ─ he is uncomfortable with the device.
And so it is that I wonder again with some anxiety: Is this the best that I am to know for what remains of my life? Can I not be free of the debt that has me shackled to my home and my strangling geographic location?
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