Accidental Jesus Freak: One Woman's Journey from Fundamentalism to Freedom

Praise for

Accidental Jesus Freak

Accidental Jesus Freak is a compelling story of why a smart and creative woman wholeheartedly surrenders to a fanatical religious sect that repeatedly trashes her self-respect and abuses her emotionally. Starfire’s memoir is not just a courageous look at one woman’s awakening; it offers wisdom for all of us on how to recognize and claim our authentic selves, and create not just happiness, but lives that fulfill our hearts and spirits.

— Susan J. Tweit, award-winning author, speaker, teacher

Amber Starfire’s ability to bring home a young woman’s life through the trials of religious misanthropy, marriage and ultimately her quest for identity and meaning makes for a wonderfully compelling and timely read. This is the journey of the feminine told with insight, vulnerability and honesty.

— Susan G. Weidener, author of Morning at Wellington Square, Again in a Heartbeat, and A Portrait of Love and Honor

In Accidental Jesus Freak, Amber Lea Starfire tells a compelling personal story with eloquence and grace. That alone would be a praiseworthy. But there’s more. This memoir offers an unflinching view of a young woman’s journey from college music student seeking love, purpose and spiritual guidance, to born again Christian wife and mother who goes all-in to follow the tenets of her restrictive religion. Her path is fraught with adversity, but her resilience and drive ultimately enable her to create a life that is authentically hers. In a larger sense, this book contributes to understanding societal forces that shaped people’s lives in the second half of the twentieth century and continue to influence us today. And as a work of art, it stands as an example of the best of what memoirs have to offer.

— Laura McHale Holland author of Reversible Skirt and Resilient Ruin

Gripping and beautifully told, harrowing and lovely, Amber Lea Starfire's Accidental Jesus Freak is an unforgettable story of what it means to follow in the orbit of others—her husband, religion, men who think they know better—only to finally realize she's a star with her own powerful gravity. Anyone who has ever sought their true path will be unable to put this story down.

— Jordan Rosenfeld, author of Women in Red and Forged in Grace.

Amber Lee Starfire had a psychedelic-fueled conversion to religion that took her on the road and on the run through 1970s America and 1980s Europe. Living amid a spiritual, fundamentalist Christian community, she reports from the front of being deeply embedded in a communal sensibility and on what happens when she decides to create her own destiny and find a life of her own.

— Marion Roach Smith, author of The Memoir Project, A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life

Special Offer

Accidental

Jesus Freak

One Woman’s Journey from

Fundamentalism to Freedom

Amber Lea Starfire

MoonSkye Publishing

NAPA, CA

For my children, Ezra, Evan, Jennifer and Aidan

by way of explanation and apology

Preface

People who have come to know me after the events detailed in this memoir always express surprise when they learn I spent a large chunk of my life immersed in the evangelical, fundamentalist culture. They shake their heads because they can’t reconcile their view of me as the strong and independent woman I am today with the subservient role I played in the patriarchic structure of the Church. I’ve often wondered myself about the underlying needs and influences that led me and thousands of other young people in the 1960s and ‘70s into the Jesus movement—many into cults such as Child of God, Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple, and the Unification Church.

Why would any young person come to the conclusion that she is inherently flawed and wrong? She wants what anyone wants: to feel loved, secure, and a sense of belonging tucked safely within a family and community; she wants to be seen and accepted for who she is and to feel good about herself; she wants to grow and expand and experience joy in her life. Why then does she instead experience rejection, shame, and embarrassment? Why would she feel she must drive her natural self underground and become invisible, become someone else, in order to be saved?

These questions have haunted me over the years and are what motivated me to write my story. Within these pages, I explore and unravel this tangled thread of my life to discover what influences and characteristics lead into—and out of—so many years of religious dogma and confusion. Why was it so easy to lose myself in an attempt to achieve approval, love, and belonging? And what were the factors that led me out of that life and into becoming who I am today—the person I was in my core, all along, if only I had been able to see myself clearly?

My story is not unique. I hope, by sharing my experiences and what I have learned, that others like me will gain the courage to come out of hiding, to blossom and grow, to live in joy, to accept and love and express themselves as they are.

This is a story that relies on memory, and while I have made a concerted effort to portray events and people as truthfully and accurately as possible, others may remember them differently. Some minor characters have been given pseudonyms and, as is the case with all memoir, dialogue is a reconstructed approximation.

It will help you to know that I changed my name to Amber Lea Starfire in 2009. I was given the name Linda Carr at birth and, throughout the memoir, I am referred to as Linda. If you are interested in knowing more about my name, I have included a short essay at the back of book in which I share my reasons for becoming Amber.

But let’s start at the beginning.

PART ONE

● CHAPTER 1 ●

Leaving Amsterdam

May 1985

In two days, I would pack all the belongings I could carry and return to the United States with my husband and two children. Instead of the excitement and sense of adventure we brought to Amsterdam ten months before, we were carrying back the heavy weight of failure. We had sacrificed everything in order to make the move—our house, our belongings, most of our savings—and now we had nothing left. I was no longer sure who I was or where to call home.

I exited the doors of Youth With a Mission’s city headquarters for the last time and crossed the street to wait for the tram that would take me to Amsterdam’s Central Station. From there, I would catch the ferry to return to our apartment in North Amsterdam. As I waited, I gazed across the street at the mission and the row of tall brick buildings it sat next to. Cars and trucks and bicyclists jockeyed for space in a chaotic rush-hour dance accompanied by the beeping of horns, the dinging of bicycle bells, and friendly people shouting to one another. Women carried home bags stuffed with bread and bright bouquets of flowers for their dinner tables. I inhaled the smells of steel and diesel, familiar and comforting after nearly a year of living and working in the city. Whiffs of cigarette smoke from passersby mixed with the moist, slightly salty air of the nearby canal. I never thought I could love a city this much.

It was the last time I would hear the chaotic city sounds, the bicycle bells, the clanging of the trams. It was the last time I would see these people in this place on earth. The thought made my head swim.

I looked again at the buildings across the street. It was hard for me to comprehend how Youth With a Mission had been the center of my hopes and dreams less than a year ago. We had come in answer to an internal call to serve God with our music, but everything had fallen apart. Mixed emotions—anger, fear, confusion, and disappointment—roiled inside me like crabs thrown into boiling water. What had I done wrong that I should be punished like this? Why had God abandoned me?

That’s when I saw Floyd McClung, the charismatic leader of Amsterdam’s mission, on the opposite corner. When the light changed, he stepped confidently off the sidewalk and strode across the street. Tall and blond and well built, handsome in his suit and white shirt, he would have looked at home in any boardroom.

With a sick, empty longing, I watched him come toward me. For four of those ten months I had worked for this man in the name of God. I had answered phones and typed letters, organized transportation and hotel rooms for foreign religious dignitaries. I had learned to use the telex machine and communicated with mission offices all over the world. I had worked as one of his secretaries in a small, wood-paneled office, where he had walked past me and into his office each day as though I were invisible.

I watched as the man who had held complete power over my life and that of my husband and children for the last 312 days, who had barely spoken directly to me, advance. I expected him to pass by me, where I would remain unseen and invisible as I had always been. Instead, he stopped in front of me, a sympathetic smile plastered on his face.

We will miss you, he said, his voice warm and smooth. His expression had changed to one of concern and compassion, but his cool eyes looked past me, as if I were already gone and he was seeing my future. I looked up at him, willing his eyes to meet mine, willing him to see my brokenness, but his eyes remained distant. I wondered what was going through his mind. Did he feel ashamed or conflicted? Was that why he would not meet my eyes? Or was I simply not important enough to look at? Did he care at all about me or my family?

Without warning, he stooped and kissed me lightly, briefly brushing my cheek with his lips. Then he straightened and resumed walking like a man who knows his place in the world.

Stunned, I raised my hand to my cheek. His kiss burned as though he had placed a hot ember against my skin instead of his lips. It was, I thought, eerily like the kiss of Judas, a kiss from the man who had taken away my dreams and delivered me into the hands of pain and loss.

The ghost of his lips on my cheek opened a sudden abyss of grief, and I felt my knees give. The world swayed and dropped away, everything around me going soft and gray. The traffic noise receded into a fog as my vision telescoped into grainy static. I managed to remain standing by steadying myself against the pole of a street lamp and was surprised to realize, when I moved my hand away from my face, that it was wet with tears.

How had I come to this?

● CHAPTER 2 ●

Twirling

Whenever I contemplate this part of my life, I inevitably go back in time to what I think of as my first spiritual experience. It was only a moment in the life of a child, but that experience influenced everything that came after.

I am eight years old, out on the lawn in our front yard twirling in circles. The spreading California oak that sits in the front corner of our lot keeps me company as I spin around. How I love that tree! I love its low climbing limbs, the roughness of its bark, and the way it hides me from the view of others—particularly my brothers. How I can climb above the earth and perch like a squirrel or a bird and sit for what seems like hours, my feet dangling from its branches. I feel safe and secret in its arms. Even being near this tree feels good to me. So here I am, under its considerable branches, twirling and twirling, my favorite plaid skirt ballooning and whirling and dancing around me.

I spread my arms out wide and tilt my head back as I spin, my skin soaking up the late afternoon sun. I inhale the familiar scent of dry grass that wafts from the nearby hills. I do not close my eyes, but watch the clouds and tree limbs and blue sky whirl above me. I spin in one direction and then stop, breathless, just short of being too dizzy to stand. Then I spin in the opposite direction. Each time I begin to spin, I glance down. I am pleased by the fullness of my skirt, the way it spreads out until it is nearly a perfect circle with me at its center. And how, when I have stopped, it continues to spin until it wraps itself tight around my body before falling loose again. The object of my spinning is not to get dizzy or fall down, but to submerse myself in the joy of dance, for that’s what it is; at this age, I am always dancing. I take ballet and tap lessons, practice my stiff little plies and point my toes as I brush my teeth, perform chaîné turns down the length of the living room. I dance soft-shoe for my parents, who clap their hands and tell me I’m beautiful. Most of all, I spin. I love to spin.

Now I pause, and in the midst of my pause I am flooded with deep quiet and a sense of something much, much larger than myself. The sensation fills me and the air around me. My body is light, no longer bound to the earth, but floating. The air is of me and I am of it and of the sky and the grass and my beloved oak tree all at once. And yet, somehow, my feet are also firmly planted on the ground. I am still me.

Surprised, my breath caught in my throat, saturated in this flood of feeling, I am aware of being part of something huge, something expansive and unseen. I am both more aware of myself and of the world around me, and yet I do not feel separate from it; it includes me. A new and unfamiliar sense of self-awareness, overflowing into and through it all, vibrates every cell in my body.

I have no name for what I am experiencing. I do not yet call it God or the Universe. I do not yet call it Presence. Our family has no religion, does not go to church, and I have no real frame of reference for what is happening.

I walk off the lawn a little dizzy and awed, in wonder about what I am feeling. But, as happens to children, something else soon captures my interest and I put the experience aside for a while.

Many years later, the memory of this moment is still so clear I can feel the pure joy of the movement, of being in total control of my body, of the sun and air against my skin. I wonder if this is precisely what Sufi dancers strive for with all their twirling.

Looking back, I realize there had to be some religious influences in my life from friends, school, or the blue-collar, middle class culture we lived in. But none of that played a part in my understanding of the sudden awareness I experienced that day on the lawn, which convinced me there was something larger in the world than myself, something that I belonged to and that belonged to me, and I wanted more of it.

My mother used to say I was a born true believer, a term coined by Eric Hoffer¹ to categorize followers—those ready and willing to surrender their locus of control to someone outside themselves and prone to fanaticism. I always rejected her assessment of me, taking it as insult. But maybe she was right. Maybe there was always a part of me that felt a misfit, a part that pined for a sense of belonging I couldn’t find at home or school.

I mark this day, when I was eight years old and spinning on a patch of lawn, as the beginning of my spiritual quest, though it was never a conscious quest until I was much older.

● CHAPTER 3 ●

Eric

1973

I met Eric at Foothill Junior College when I was seventeen, while I waited for my turn outside the music practice rooms. He appeared as a sudden apparition before me with his long, wavy hair, floppy leather hat, and macramé bag slung over his shoulder, his hands waving in the air as he asked me a question I was too stunned to register. I was smitten, immediately and irreversibly. That moment was burned into memory as the beginning of a time of deep infatuation, elation, and hope.

My attraction to Eric wasn’t merely physical, though with those gray-blue eyes, sandy, shoulder-length hair, and dancer’s build, he was certainly attractive. Eric embodied creative energy. He was feral and hopelessly naive and believed in himself in a way I had never experienced in anyone before. When he walked into a room, it was as though a riotous wind had entered, swirling with iridescent leaves. Everything blew and shifted in his wake. Being with Eric was exciting and dangerous, like walking on the edge of a cliff with pounding waves surging spray from below and a wild wind threatening to topple me over and into the sea. With Eric, I felt invincible. I felt as though I could fly.

He stood 6’ 2", but it wasn’t his height that gave him such a presence. He had a native charisma that captured your attention, kept it, and shaped it to fit his ideas and desires. And although Eric would take on a dark, bitter edge over the years, he would always keep that uncanny ability to draw people into his circle of followers.

In spite of the fact that he couldn’t read a single note of music, Eric was as much a master of the piano keyboard as if it were an extension of his hands. He had the musical genius of George Winston, Elton John, and James Taylor merged with the showmanship and energy of Yanni. When I asked, he told me he’d been taught to play by the little old lady who lived across the street from his childhood home. She played Broadway tunes and old favorites like Hi Lilly Hi Lo on her Hammond organ, and it was on these songs that he cut his musical teeth and learned to play by ear.

After we met, Eric and I were inseparable outside of school. You could find us at his Mountain View apartment smoking hashish, jamming with other musicians, partying, or wandering around my mother’s Palo Alto neighborhood, stoned and giggling. Once, for the fun of making people gawk, we goose-walked down Embarcadero Street wearing embroidered, satin smoking jackets, shorts, and flippers (yes, the swimming kind). Our whole generation was on a kind of high. Earlier that year, the U.S. began to withdraw from Vietnam after years of protests, Roe v. Wade had given women the right to own their own bodies and reproductive decisions, President Nixon was under investigation, and the papers were full of Watergate. At the time, none of that mattered much to me; it felt like the future was bright with freedom. Whatever we wanted was ours to take or create.

I wasn’t Eric’s only conquest. When I met him, he had a small harem of smart college girls, six of us, who played flute or cello or sang. We were all friends and maintained a harmonious existence with one another. I never minded sharing Eric. Having just extracted myself from a verbally abusive two-year relationship, I felt a kind of safety in numbers. I didn’t want to be the subject of anyone’s laser focus. No commitments meant no heartbreak; I was content to be one of the many. But the other girls drifted away, one by one, until there was only Mary and me. And she stormed out of Eric’s life after he gave the wrong answer to her demand that he choose between us. In the end, only I remained, astonished to be at the center of this whirlwind that was Eric.

Education was more important to me than it was to Eric. I can remember more than one occasion when, after a night of partying at his mother’s apartment (she was a travel agent and frequently away), I would get up early so I could make it to school on time.

I would slide quietly out of the narrow single bed we shared, trying not to wake him, but he’d wrap his arms around me.

No, stay, he’d mumble, eyes still closed, nuzzling my shoulder.

I have to go to school, and my books are at home.

Don’t go. Stay with me.

I’d giggle and push his arms away. "No. Seriously, I want to go, and I need to drive home, change my clothes, get my books, and be there by nine."

He’d open his eyes and prop himself on his elbow, watching as I hastily dressed in the clothes I’d worn the day before. Why is school so important to you?

I don’t know. It just is. I’d kiss him lightly. See you after, okay?

Yeah. Then he’d roll over and put the sheets over his head as I closed the door.

Before meeting Eric, I had enrolled as a music major at Humboldt State College for the following year. So, in July, in spite of Eric’s pleas for me to change my plans and stay, I moved 300 miles north to Arcata in preparation for fall semester. I knew I would miss him, but I was wary of becoming dependent on anyone. I was determined to create my own life, so I pretended it would be good to keep some emotional distance between us.

Soon after moving, Eric stopped by to visit me on his way to Oregon. He and his friend, Crazy Dan, were heading to Portland to procure a load of hashish for resale and meet up with a couple of Eric’s musician friends.

It was August 4th, just four months after we met. Eric and I were in bed in my newly rented room in a rundown Victorian in Arcata. He was lying on top of me. We gazed into each other’s eyes, grinning, the scent of our sex still thick in the air around us.

Will you marry me? His eyes opened wide and his eyebrows shot upward. I don’t think he intended to ask me right then; the words just popped out. But there they were, hovering in the air between us.

My heart raced as my mind sifted quickly through the days since I’d met him, and his fast progression from a playboy with six girlfriends to a guy with only one—me. He was so creative and playful and non-destructively wild, he was like an entire school of dolphins spinning in and out of the water. Just the day before, we’d run around the park together launching rubber band-powered toy birds into the air and laughing in delight as they fluttered and zoomed over other park goers, who pointed at the birds with astonishment and curiosity. We played hide-and-seek, but he’d break the rules and sneak up on me when I was trying to hide, grabbing me around the waist and making me shriek in surprise. Finally exhausted, we collapsed onto the lawn and lay side by side, hands clasped, inventing shapes in the clouds. When I was with him, I felt free from convention and allowed myself to enjoy being in the moment. I could not help loving Eric, and I wanted nothing more than to be like him.

If I could have looked into the future right then and seen how this decision to make Eric the leader of my life would turn out, I might have paused. I might have