WTFWJD?

(I saw the title of this post on a bumper sticker this week. I kind of want one.)

As you’ll have read from my last post, I just started reading the Harry Potter books. Now plowing my way through the fifth book, I’m getting around to that blog post I promised on why a (practically) grown woman is reading the series for the first time. I also figured out how to read and knit at the same time. Hardbound books may be cumbersome in a knitting bag, but they stay open better than paperbacks.

When the Harry Potter books started coming out, I was a teenager, just starting to get really serious about being a Christian. I think somewhere before then, I’d given my “testimony” which involved turning from a wanna-be witch into a God-following Christian. As 10 and 11 year olds, my best friend and I had made up a book of curses and spells to put on people that treated us like weirdos (believe me, it didn’t help). I read all the books that The Dalles Library had on witchcraft, mostly juvenile fiction ones that involved wanna-be witches like myself. And I continued to do this until a Christian friend told me “You know that’s against God, right?” So I “put the darkness behind me” and got rid of my stuff.

Enter J.K. Rowling. My school librarian was really excited about Harry Potter because kids were actually reading them. But Jesus told me not to. “That’s not stuff to mess around with!” I insisted. I steered clear of the books because people told me that the author used verses from the Satanic Bible in the spells. I was terrified that I would be led into temptation and want to be a witch again.
After a while, I stopped caring so much about the peril of my soul and just never bothered to read them. I learned to be terrified of other things, like someone from my Christian co-op seeing me linger too long at the Pride Day celebration and asking me to leave the house. Because, you know, Jesus says no.

It’s only recently that I started to laugh at all I bought into because other people said that Jesus said things were bad. I missed out on all the great Harry Potter parties at bookstores! I missed out on all the drag shows! I started reading “Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies” and bemoaned all the fun and imagination I could have maintained in high school if I hadn’t been scared away from “evil” things like D&D. I started doing yoga, which was amazing and relaxing. And I found that Harry Potter books are very moral. There’s good, and there’s bad, and it’s clear that you want to be on the good side. And you know what? Jesus doesn’t seem to care.

The end of the Trinity

My cousin married a man whose father was a Lutheran pastor. Now, Fred is a professional juggler, comedian, and all-purpose smart ass who has no problem offending people's sensibilities, and at least once in a conversation he can usually trick you into embarrassing yourself. He doesn't really hold to a particular belief, if any, but he attends church regularly for tradition's sake. I'm sure all that doesn't accurately describe my cousin's husband, but it's a start.

Anyway, today I was wearing a sweatshirt with "Trinity" printed across the front. Trinity is the name of the Baptist co-op where I lived for three years in college. Fred tried to make a wise crack about how there was no Trinity and that there was only one "Jehovah God." I said, "Well, I don't think it's true, either." He asked me "You don't believe in the Trinity?"

So there I was, asked the question that separates me from liturgical churches and most statements of faith of other churches by my joker of a cousin. And I said "No, I don't." He called me a Jehovah's Witness and went on being Fred, and I thought, "Huh, that was easy."

I wish I did, sometimes, because things like Celtic spirituality really appeal to me in their mysticism and prayers, but it's very much focused on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I would probably become Episcopalian if you didn't have to stand up and recite the Nicene Creed every Sunday. I believe there's one God, and it's a disservice to call God "Father." I believe in the virgin birth and the crucifixion and the divine nature of Jesus' life. I can even buy into the idea of Jesus being God in human form, but if that is so, than I cannot call him the Son of God because that implies a separation. But more I believe that Jesus' life purpose wasn't to be God, it was to show people a right way to live, because there's no evidence that I've seen that implies otherwise. The resurrection gets a little wishy-washy with me, and I'm not really sure what I believe about that. I don't believe in the Spirit of God as an entity in itself. I think that God speaks to people, and there's no reason to create a whole other being to describe that.

For me, to say "I believe in the Trinity, even though I don't understand how it works" is to say that I'm willing to suspend belief for the sake of fitting in with other people. I wonder how many people do that, say "I believe in the Trinity, whatever that is." I don't think that dogmas are all that important to faith in God, which is why I wonder why churches put so much emphasis on this abstract theological thing that no one really gets rather than practical life that reflects the way that Jesus lived. I'm cool with believing unitarian.

Sing. Sing a song.

A friend at church brought up a few weeks ago that hardly anyone ever sings with him during church. Now, we've only got 8 or 9 people at most on a Sunday, and one of those people has yet to speak her first words. But sometimes, I don't. Sometimes it's because I don't know the words. And sometimes it's because I know them far too well. I like to think that I take my poor experiences with big church and its young adult group in stride, but I never realize how much baggage I've got until those songs start playing. It's hard to describe the flood of emotions and memories of being parked in a room of people who have worked themselves into a feel-good state, and their faces are just glowing and I was on the outside of that. Even in the middle of people doing what worship is "supposed" to look like, after the first year of crushing loneliness, I couldn't tap into it anymore. I knew what I was, still a weirdo, still a tagalong. Except for the few close friends I made, I felt like I wasn't free to be myself, or even to show the pain I felt about it for fear of being dramatic.

Don't get me totally wrong; I'm a big believer in mystical worship, feeling the presence of God, and the overwhelming joy that goes along with that, and I wouldn't dare venture to say that any person in those big church worship times was just following through. But during those times, I could not speak the words of those songs and be honest. Despite living in a place called Trinity, I really don't believe in the Trinity, so singing about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit feels like I'm lying.

But there are songs that break through that shell. Songs of honest sorrw and the hope of repair, songs where I can admit my faults and brokenness as a messed up human being are freeing to me.

On Doctor Who, the Doctor and Donna encounter the Ood, a race that's been enslaved and had their external brains, which allow them to communicate telepathically, connect with emotions, and SING, they have that cut off and replaced with a translator that gives them a pleasant and compliant voice until they plan their revolt. They can't even express their feelings about being slaves. In a holding cell, they find "unprocessed" Ood who still have their secondary brains. The Doctor can hear their painful, sorrowful song of slavery, but Donna can't until he opens her mind. When she hears it, she's so overwhelmed by the sadness that she asks him to take it away.

I identify with those kind of songs. I've never been a slave, but I love the honesty and hope of songs that throwback to the Israelites in Egypt or in the desert. At the end of that episode, the Ood give the Doctor and Donna their song to take with them, this time a song of freedom and the triumph of good. It has no words, but to me, it's a song that lifts my heart in hope like those church songs do for other people. It brings be tears of joy.

And sometimes it's not even that I've got baggage connected with a song, but I feel more like contemplating the words that day. I did spend a significant amount of time with some Quakers, you know.

I like singing. I wish I was better at it, but I'm mostly stuck with singing in the car or doing karaoke. I just hold my God-related song life close to my chest.

What happened to the idealist?

Last year about this time, I was hopeful. I'd just left a roommate situation that made me want to spend more time out of the apartment than in. I moved close to work and the church plant I was involved in was just getting off the ground. And man, I was going to move mountains. Maybe that vision I'd had the year before, hallucinating on Percocet, where I was flying over the city, seeing everyone touched by God...maybe that would soon be coming true. (Note to reader: don't try to numb a broken heart with Percocet)

And then the shit hit the fan. I broke my toe, which brought out all my minor frustrations with the kids in my job. I had a performance review in which my supervisor basically told me that I was in danger of losing my job if I didn't shape up. The roommates I thought I would be living with spent nearly every night away from the house. I started looking for another job, and I found that the Bosco House, a Catholic Worker community with a mission to house single mothers and their children, needed a live-in staff person. Perfect! I thought. I could get away from my supervisor and actually make a difference in the world.

But it wasn't what I'd planned on. I knew that my social life would suffer somewhat, but I didn't count on having to spend everyday from 4:30-11 sitting on my butt waiting for residents to get home so they could come home and tell me about all the drama they'd gotten themselves into that day. I couldn't spend time with my aging grandparents or my new baby cousin. It turned out to be a former Catholic Worker house, one in which a former worker had damaged ties with the outside community of support. My coworker was negative about the residents and it rubbed off on me. My church continued to meet in a suburban living room instead of a downtown retail space that used to be a strip club. I got grumpy, cynical, bitter, everything I didn't ever want to be. I started to say to myself what I hoped just a year before I would never say, "There has to be more to life than this." I honestly felt, and still kind of feel like God ditched me.

So what really happened?
This Sunday, my church talked about when Jesus going out to the desert for 40 days. Wallowing in my funk, I just sat through it and listen because it didn't seem relevant to me at all. Who sits around talking theology when they're dying inside besides like, David? But one person said "Maybe Jesus didn't know that he'd only be there for 40 days. Maybe he went out there knowing that he had to experience trials, and never knew when or if it would end." That spoke to me. I don't know when I'll finally learn some skills to deal with times when I'm depressed. I don't know if I'll ever not feel lonely. I'm not really ok with that, but recognizing it somehow makes me feel better. I don't know what I believe about God and Jesus at this point. But I know I don't like feeling bitter about being good to people. It's hard to think of people as beloved creations of God when you feel like God has cursed you, but there's a crack in that, and it gives me at least a little ability to wish.

Wear your religion on your chest

A few weeks ago, I went to Cornerstone Festival, a huge Christian music festival in Illinois. I was already cranky from the emotional things I was going through, and then...I went to the merch tent. Coming at me from all sides were tshirts that read "ABSTINENCEISAWESOME" and "I love my future wife" (tempted to get that one), booths for Christian colleges that promised the tools to win souls or get a degree in "Worship Leadership," and a general black hole of creativity in design and thought that proclaims "Christians are to rip off every worldly trend, slap a smarmy saying about abortion on it and in so doing fit into the box that we have created for you that makes you look like an even BIGGER asshole than the guy at the entrance holding a sign and passing out Chick Tracts."

Why am I a Christian again? Oh yeah, the monsters! (Thanks Otto Nobot!)

No really, what gave me a little hope at Cornerstone that Christianity isn't just a boxed in money market were the people who reminded me that human beings are gross and monstrous and we're ALL like that. Christians aren't special by nature of their sexual mores (they just would rather not talk about it) or their appearance or their GODAWFUL music or even by nature of their religion, because God is for everyone. I don't know if God wants everyone to become a Christian or not, but I think he loves people who aren't Christians just the same. What gave me hope was knowing that in little pockets of the world, there are Christians who believe in doing good unto everyone instead of being self-righteous. There are people who walk Palestinian children to school so Israeli grownups don't throw garbage at them. There are people who take in seven teenage skaters into their houses like they're their own kids. There are people who put the money that their churches generate into paying an acquaintance's medical bills instead of building a mahogany pulpit for the church.

I think that things like saying thanks to God and valuing life and saving sex for marriage are right and good, but there's so much more that Christians are responsible for. If someone gets some kind of spiritual nourishment out of the church with the mahogany pulpit, God bless 'em, honestly. But if your entire faith is based on rubbing it in someone else's face that you're saved and he or she isn't, then it's not really following Jesus' example. That's what the Pharisees were doing and Jesus made no bones about how pointless it was.

So Cornerstone made me throw up in my mouth a little. All this has probably been said on the blogosphere before, and I really don't mean an ill will toward anyone. It's saddening to think that this might be all that Christianity is cracked up to be, and I'm not feelin' it. I was much happier to get back to Eugene and the Country Fair, where the jugglers didn't have any self-righteous agendas, the women didn't dwell on causing their brothers to stumble over their painted breasts (although literally...), and pregnant mothers celebrated the life inside their bodies with decoration rather than preach to the choir about how awful abortion is and leaving it at that.

Cleaning out the closet

This coming weekend I'm moving to my fourth residence within a year. I hate moving with a passion. Last time was a little easier because I only lived in the place for four months and most of that time I knew or hoped that I'd be moving out, so I just never unpacked my boxes.

I heard somewhere that every six months you should clean out the closet of what you believe, to see if you really believe it or if you're just going along with something because it's easiest. I think I'm overdue. So tonight, as Eminem says, I'm cleaning out my closet. Do I still believe in God? Yes. Do I believe that what Jesus taught is good and true? Yes. Do I believe that Christianity is the religion most suited to carry out those teachings? I don't know so much.

For the first time since I've been a Christian, I'm ok with looking at the beliefs of other religions without a Biblical screen. I don't feel like I have to block out everything that isn't Christianity as a cult. It's scary, like free-falling through the world of religion kind of hoping I'll land firmly on Christianity because it's a big organized religion and that makes things easier. But I'm frustrated with the lack of unity in Christianity. Jesus, why didn't you explicitly say that all peoples are equal and that God is for everyone? Baha'u'llah did a much better job, and his religion has pretty much stuck together so far. Maybe I ought to give it a couple millennia, except then, according to him, there will be another Mouthpiece of God to fill his shoes.

So with a spiritual chip-tossing, a move that's kind of contingent on landing safely back at Christianity, and a beyond complicated trip across the country, I spend most of my time in a mental daze. I wish I could unpack these boxes already.