Attention: “Chiara’s Boyfriend” is now most accurately spelled T-O-B-E-Y. Just an update, for those of you following along at home. But as you may have noticed from the title of this entry, we won’t be discussing his adorable lopsided smile or his entertainingly googly eyes today, nor the little butterflies in Chiara’s stomach that appeared when she watched him last night in Spider-Man. You may have already figured out that I am not really up on the pop culture, so I won’t be dwelling. I will merely be loving from afar. So today, in fact, we are going to talk about church.
I don’t think we’re neccesarily going to talk about God or even faith though. Connected issues, certainly. Stuff I think about. Stuff I have come to think about differently in the past couple of years than I did, say, ten years ago, as anyone who was either in church youth group or in college fellowship with me might attest, were I able to speak coherently and without breaking down into guilty tears after about five minutes of discussion. I don’t know why I find it so hard to talk about, considering I spent a not-insignificant portion of my wild youth talking and thinking about God. I think I feel sad that I don’t feel the same way about the church and faith and my place in them anymore, and I also feel that the ways that it made sense for me to be faithful then don’t feel right anymore.
This is just a big windup to say that this morning Carl and I went to Quaker Meeting, as we are wont to do every other Sunday. Have you been to a Quaker meeting? No? If you grew up in the Christian tradition, as I did, much to my parents’ dismay, then it might seem a little odd. I imagine if you grew up in an entirely other religious tradition, or no religious tradition at all, it might seem odder still. There’s no pastor, no hymns, no collection box, no sermon. I’ve been going for about a year, I guess, off and on, and I still don’t get it completely.
Here’s what you do: Go in and shake hands with that week’s greeter. See the big sign in the lobby that says ‘Let us be silent so that we may listen to the voice of God.” Sit down in the five-sided room. (If you are Chiara and Carl, sit near the back). Read the announcement sheet. Look around. Look at the kids. Look at the sensible shoes everyone’s wearing. Look at the Roosevelt bridge, right outside. Look at the cherry tree outside the window, getting blown to bits by the wind. Sit silently.
Try not to think about all your favorite kinds of cheese. Try to pray, or meditate, or to think about serious issues in your life. Ask forgiveness if you feel you’ve done or thought or been bad, and say thank you for stuff you’re happy about. Bow your head and look at the pattern of your shirt. Think about Martha Stewart, and wonder what that new book about her is like, and wonder why you’re a little obsessed with dirt about her, like when you went to the truffle class last weekend and the Chocolate Guy told about a food photographer he once worked with who had worked with her, and told all these horrible stories about her when she was a caterer, and how she would take the leftover stuff from one wedding to be the appetizers at the next. Think about the tart recipe from her magazine that you tried to make and which totally crashed and burned. Wonder what you’re doing here at Quaker meeting when you can’t keep your mind off pastry, let alone listen to whatever God may wish to tell you. Guess that if God is telling you anything, it probably is along the lines of “Pay attention!” Guess that that’s pretty good advice.
About this time, someone will stand up…just any old person in the room…and give what Quakers call “spoken ministry.” In theory this is because God is in everyone and speaks to everyone, so therefore everyone is equally able to share what God is telling her or him, without the need for a professional pastor. This morning, the first guy who gave spoken ministry gave a pretty long lecture about various philosophies of knowing that God exists. It was interesting, I thought. I wish I’d written it down. Anyway, the one that made the most sense to me was the one where you look around you and see how stuff fits together and conclude that there is some purpose and theme to it. I knew a girl in college who became a Christian because she was out in the woods one day and was looking around and suddenly said, “Hey! This isn’t all random!” I started thinking about when I went to Costa Rica and we went on a walk in the rainforest and learned all about how the various trees make up the canopy and about the relationships between the insects and animals. I thought then that it was all pretty well put together, like it was a good system that seemed to point to some sort of mind, or personality, or intention. So that was fun to think about.
But then…man, I’m such a whiner. I think I would have been happy if that person had been the only person to give spoken ministry, so I could have things just like I like them (people who know me will attest that this is my favorite state of affairs). I wanted to keep thinking about how cool the human body is, and about niche ecology, and feeling like God’s green earth really does support the idea of God. But then someone stood up and started talking about how terrible he feels that his tax dollars are going to support the war on terrorism, and how he doesn’t feel that people who claim to be part of a faith based on love can live in a society that funds killing innocent people. He also said he didn’t think that we could have joy and happiness while we were hypocrites like this. And then someone else stood up and said that thinking about God or about the existence of God is a waste of time and energy and we should just believe that there is a God and get on with our lives. By that point I was ready to get on out of there, and we did as soon as everyone was done shaking everyone else’s hands, because that’s how you know meeting is over. It’s a little mellower than the Doxology, certainly.
So, what’s my point here, you ask? Well, clearly one of my points is that I don’t like to think about stuff I don’t like to think about. We all knew that about me anyway, though, didn’t we? I guess it’s this: I want spirituality, faith, belief in God not to be compartmentalized in my life, like I want it to permeate all the different bits of me. I’m trying to find a way to do that and find a religious or spiritual community at the same time where I can think about those issues and understand God a little better. And today just didn’t cut it for me. I guess that’s it, that’s the point of this whole silly entry: I didn’t much want to go to Quaker Meeting today, but I did anyway, and I enjoyed some of what other people said and disliked some other things that other people said, and I came away from it feeling irritated and confused, but that’s not how I want to be, but that’s the way I am anyway. Make sense? No? Yeah, me neither.
a few minutes after I posted the above
Okay, this has nothing to do with anything, but I forgot to tell yall that a very cool journaller linked to me…she’s like a journaller who has people who read her that aren’t in her immediate circle of friends, even! She’s here and she is part of MATH+1, all of whose member journals I deeply admire. I’m very excited about this!