2. My Inner Rebel Finds God

Intuitive me - that part I call my spirit - would not settle for anything less than what it was looking for. My intellect had no words for this and did not drive this search. It was the inner me that wanted to live, to be loved.
My intellect - my conscious self - had settled a long time ago for something less than this. Consciously I was a liberal Christian. I accepted the scientific worldview as my faith perspective. I accepted being good and getting the right answer at school as my task. I accumulated many badges at Scouts. I delivered the morning paper. 
​I was not conscious of the enormous pain in my soul. I has no words for the depressed state of my spirit. I has no explanation for the urgency of my search. Year after year I kept reading books related to theology and more.
I had an interest in anything that showed up with information about the spiritual world. This is the world that the rational me, by accepting my dad's scientific and materialistic world view, denied. According to that perspective there was no separate 'spiritual' world. 
But like Curious George the monkey, I was curious. I pursued evidence of this world beyond.
Dad was a distant father. He was away 3 out of 4 years of me early childhood. He sat behind his paper after supper and refused any disturbance. If we bothered him he bellowed 'Outside!' and we were all shuffled outside to play. Then at 7:00 PM we were sent up to our beds to sleep. And that was true even in the summer months when the sun was still up and other kids were outside playing.
Mother was the happy smiling parent. She got me up in the morning and prepared a glass of cold milk for me before I headed out to do my papers. Oh yes, I had to get up at 5;45 because the Globe and Mail was supposed to be delivered by 7:00 AM. Mom encouraged my achievements at school and through Scouts. She encouraged the people pleaser in me.
Mom kept the kids quiet so we would not disturb dad. She taught me 'Peace at any price.' My parents did not allow rough housing, or tickling among us kids. That protected us from harassment by our siblings. But there was something else happening here.
Mother avoided feelings. That explains why I did not understand my own feelings of depression. We did not learn to express our feelings from mom or dad. 
In fact we were taught not to express our feelings and not to express our pains. Mom put these on ignore. It was like growing up on a kibbutz where your contact with parents is minimize and child care workers and peers are your main social interactions. 
We developed very high pain tolerance. we ignored pain signals and did not share our aches and pains. We developed ignorance to our emotions as no one was listening.
When in her teens my sister Janice tried to engage and express what was on her heart, mom shut her down. This is how deep was our training to avoid engaging at the personal level.
As the compliant child, I supposedly accepted all of that. But no. My heart did not. My spirit rebelled. Under my 'Nice Guy' exterior was this search for engagement and thus love.
My Inner Rebel was not going to settle for anything less than life, love and miracles.