When the beatings continued into her twenties, Lynne finally broke free. Convinced she was a failure as a believer, she left home, and for several decades she endeavored to live by the tenets of the faith in which she had been raised.
Then when she was fifty, Lynne had an amazing experience of communication with beings in the spirit world. Under their guidance she completed a Master’s degree in Psychology and a PhD in Philosophy. She then investigated quantum theory and mysticism, coming to the conclusion that everything in the universe is one. This led her to question the idea of an external, all-powerful being who sits in judgment on his creatures.
For Lynne, the experience of realizing the oneness of all reality has been life transforming. In sharing her fascinating journey from religious indoctrination to spiritual freedom, she reveals a way to those who are seeking to find their own pathway to liberation.
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Excerpt
Early Days
God punishes those who fall below his standard of perfection. During my early years I did not question this idea. Punishment—both by God and my father—was gradually forming my identity. But I struggled to understand what I could have done to deserve the treatment I was receiving, and whether there was any hope of escape.
The time was the early 1940s at the height of the Second World War and the place was a modest home on the outskirts of Brisbane. Our dwelling sat on a steep slope, low at the front and with high piers at the back. Like those of our neighbors, our small front yard was bare of shrubs or trees. The back yard, beyond which was bushland, descended in four terraces. The bottom one was all weeds—long sharp blades that cut your fingers and thick fluffy undergrowth. Holes in the weathered grey palings of the back fence allowed a free flow of wildlife. Snakes dozed on our side, unaware of passing from public to private property. One slid up under the house and curled itself around a leg of the green gas copper, narrowly escaping Mother’s attack with a broom. Mother could handle anything, but when I thought of that horrible creature close enough to strike at her, I realized how much I wanted to protect her.
In the garden near our parents’ bedroom, feral cats mated. Father roared at them, hosed them, threw stones at them but they defied him. In retribution he drowned all their kittens. I thought it was cruel, but he said they didn’t feel anything.
The outhouse containing the lavatory stood at the end of the top terrace. We were too far from civilization to have sewerage, and too poor to afford a septic tank. The small timber structure provided strange acoustics when my younger sister, Deborah, stood on the seat and sang through the triangular gap formed by the inverted V-shaped roof.
The only feature of the narrow, sloping terrace below the outhouse was the incinerator, a three-sided stack of blackened bricks. Mother was known throughout the neighborhood for her regular burn-offs, though her fires were lit only after she had assured herself that no one within smoke range was planning to hang washing. Mother never kept anything for more than a few weeks. Cards, letters, even photos of unidentified people, fell indiscriminately into the flames, together with advertising junk and butchers’ wrapping paper.
Between the incinerator and the weeds was a terrace containing vegetable gardens, a strip of level ground on which we played a gentle version of cricket, and the chook pen, made of wire netting strung between wobbly square poles. Bits of tin and corrugated iron formed the walls and roof of a shelter, adjacent to the side fence. In the open area the roosters fought and the hens roamed free, except when pinned to the ground to satisfy the bodily needs of their masters. I felt sorry for the hens as they struggled to free themselves, but I never questioned the right of the roosters to overpower them. That was the way God had ordered things.
Inside the shelter were two boxes lined with straw—miniature versions of the manger of Bethlehem—and perches of parallel bars half way between the ground and the roof. Near the entrance was a round silver tin for shell-grit and a china bowl filled with water. Other food—sodden bread scraps and wheat grains, was thrown over the fence. We were supposed to scatter it evenly, but invariably it fell in piles, giving yet another opportunity for the males to demonstrate their lordship of the pen.
Scrawny white Leghorns and corpulent black Orpingtons dwarfed the scurrying brown Bantams, whose maternal instincts drove them to sit on eggs too large to have been produced by their tiny bodies.Each morning I squelched my way through the slosh and gently extended my arm into a nest, pulling it out quickly when a sharp beak dug into my skin. Normally hens did not object to the removal of their eggs, but they sometimes resented being deprived of time to deliberate upon their readiness for motherhood.
A few days before Christmas each year, one of the senior hens whose eggs had provided the foundation for sponge cakes, flummeries and lemon meringue pies, was grabbed by Father and taken to a chopping block. Deborah and I hid in the bedroom when we saw him take the axe. Did the hen struggle? Did she feel pain? I did not want to know the answers, but we could not avoid the sight of the bird a few hours later, dripping with blood, hung upside down by her feet from a clothes line under the house.
Whenever we had a surplus of eggs, we shared them with the Thompsons, who lived across the road. They lent us their goat, but a snake killed him. “He was old anyway,” they said, trying to hide their pain. Most of our neighbors cared for each other in practical ways. Washing would be removed if the owners were out and a storm was approaching. Other people’s gardens were watered during holiday periods and their animals were fed.
Lynne Renoir was raised in an ultra-conservative Christian home, but despite fifty years of giving everything she had to her faith, she failed to experience anything like the transformation that is promised to believers. A problem she faced was how to explain the transformation that seemed to be occurring in the lives of others, including those who held different beliefs, and those who held none. Her pursuit of this question led her to complete a Master’s degree in Psychology, followed by a PhD in Philosophy. At the same time, she developed an interest in quantum theory, and read everything she could find by physicists and cosmologists who write for the general public. Carrying out research in these disciplines led her to the view that Christianity was not the path for her. What proved life transforming was the realization of her oneness with the whole of reality.
Lynne is the author of two books, God Interrogated: Reinterpreting the Divine (to be published in March 2023), and her memoir, Leaving Faith, Finding Meaning—A Preacher’s Daughter’s Search for God. For her Master’s degree, Lynne wrote a thesis on the abuse of men by their female partners, which has now been published in digital format for all E-readers including Kindle.
A Preacher’s Daughter’s Search for God
Written By Lynne Renoir
Review By Heidi Lynn’s Book Reviews
First, I want to thank Lynne Renoir and Gail Torr of Galaxy Media USA for providing me with this book so I may bring you this review.
WOW!!! Lynne Renoir needs to be commended for being brave by opening up sharing her journey in Leaving Faith, Finding Meaning, A Preacher's Daughter’s Search for God with her readers. Lynne’s journey towards freedom is a very powerful read.
Damien Keenan did a beautiful job on the cover design! It was a perfect representation of the book and eye-catching.
Within Leaving Faith, Finding Meaning Lynne opens up by sharing very personal and in-depth stories of where she came from to make her the woman she is today.
Right from the prologue I got a bad taste in my mouth for Lynne’s father and it only got worse from there. My heart went out to Lynne for all the abuse she received growing up from that man! No father should treat their daughter the way he did.
I am a huge fan of all things royals and especially loved the part in the book about the Queen!
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