this is why I know him

If you want a peek inside my skull, go here and read.

religious? right!

Ok, having finished Coupland’s latest novel and Mailer’s latest “book” (really just reprints of speeches or articles surrounded by interviews with his son so nothing exciting, although, in looking it up on Amazon, I discovered that they list a new novel coming next January, which is now on my wish list), I’m back to reading American Gospel by Jon Meacham so my thoughts are very much on church and state tonight. For all the nutty liberals who read this blog (which I think is just about everyone who reads it), here’s a little fruit from my grey matter orchard that you can hurl at unsuspecting members of the religious right (and which I word here as directed towards such small minded folk).

If business operates best when it is least entangled with the government, an idea upon which I think most people out on the right end of the spectrum agree, then why do you believe Christianity is so weak spined that it requires support from the government? Why do you have such little faith in your faith? And if we were brought forth upon this continent as a Christian nation, then why is there no mention of God, the Bible, or even Jesus in the Constitution? (Granted it does mention the “Blessings of Liberty”, but that could just as easily be read as meaning a blessing of Allah.)

Personally, I see Christianity as much stronger and grander than our republic (or any government for that matter). Men created the latter and men can destroy it. God through his Son opened our eyes and hearts to the former and only God can withdraw that blessing from us. If Chrsitianity could survive through a time when it truly was outlawed, which was also at the point when all things are at their weakest, its infancy, then surely it can withstand the removal of the Ten Commandments from a courthouse or allowing women to choose (or not choose) abortion.

why i go to church

Last night, as a good friend and I were walking to a fund raiser at the Boswell Gallery, he remarked on being a bit surprised when he read here about my attending church. As I’ve been wanting to write more about my steps down what I believe is the path I am meant to walk, that conversation presented a subject about which I do think I can expound (as I don’t think I’m ready to present any scriptural analysis, though someday soon I hope to). Writing about that subject would also, I realized, force me to solidify my reasoning. So why do I attend church?

At the root of the answer lie two flaws in my character: I’m lazy and easily distracted by the (secular) world. While I recognize that our present society considers neither to be a “deadly sin” (or even just a run of the mill “sin”), I do consider both to be elements of my personality which I need to purge. A lazy and easily distracted person attempting to eliminate such traits from himself though is a bit like putting the fox in charge of the hen house to stop him from eating chickens. It may work, but it’s going to cost you a few chickens in the interim.

Going to church forces me, for the hour I am there, to focus exclusively on the religious. I can’t decide, “I’ll just take a quick peek at my email” or “I’ll take a short nap and read this passage after”. For that time, the circumference of the world shrinks down to encompass nothing but those pews and those people. By being so enclosed, I am then free to explore the larger world of my faith. (To some of you, I’d imagine, this description sounds very much like all that you see wrong with organized religion, very structured and limiting. However, just as great beauty can burst out from the very strict rules of a sonnet, so too does the strict adherence to weekly worship allow my belief to bloom into something grander than the structure from which it grows.) Ideally, I wouldn’t need to go to church to focus my thoughts on the spiritual (and in fact it’s not that this one hour each week is the only time when I concern myself with that aspect of the world, but it’s the only guaranteed time). For the present, however, I do it out of necessity. In the future, I expect it to shift more into the realm of desire and that an hour (or more) each day, not just each week, will be given over to spiritual concerns.

Sitting in church today, I realized that not only is it a time when I can take the time to plumb the depths of my faith, but also a time when I am open to any guidance from God. Which brings to the fore an aspect of my faith about which I have been tight lipped, that while each choice I make in my life is made freely, God’s will is the primary criteria by which I judge and evaluate my choices. How do I know God’s will? I don’t. I infer it from the world around me. I have long believed (as some of you know) that there is meaning in everything, that nothing happens by accident or coincidence. Once I placed myself in the hand of God, to crib a phrase from Dave Sim, all the meaning which I had thought was there, but which seemed so elusive, was suddenly laid bare. Extracting that meaning from the world around us does require one to first sit back and listen, to take it in, (before then applying thought to reason it out). Before, during, and after the service I do just that, I open myself to whatever He chooses to communicate to me.

Additionally, for that brief time each week, I am surrounded only by people who share, at least in part, my beliefs. While I’ve got no problem being friends or spending time around you whose beliefs (if you have any) are either ambivalent towards or directly opposed to my own (my faith is strong enough that it is neither threatened nor weakened by such oppositions), it is comforting to spend time in an environment where I am welcomed in toto. An acquaintance of mine recently wrote about the differing atmospheres at two parties he attended in the same night. While I do not posses his eloquence, his description of the dichotomy applies here as well. As it was a private and personal entry (and therefore not one to which I can direct you), I’ll just present here my own poor paraphrasing. The atmosphere of one party felt stiff, interactions occurring very much at a superficial level, while a certain intimacy and openness permeated the second party. That difference is much of what I have come to feel going between the world at large and my time each week in that small little building. (Yes, I do feel that closeness with some of you regardless of our divergent spiritual paths, but you are the exceptions.)

Of course the most important reason is that I look damn fine all dressed up.

the da vinci comedy

Using up some of my gift card funds I decided to purchase one of these cases for my iPod. It came with a free trial membership at Audible (supposedly a month long membership, but in signing up it came up as just 14 days). In poking around the site deciding how to use my one credit, I came across the audiobook copy of The Da Vinci Code. Given all the hubbub (and the upcoming movie and being a somewhat reformed conspiracy buff), I’d been considering adding it to my reading list for a while, but not been curious enough to actually buy a copy. So I downloaded the audiobook and have been listening to it the past couple days.

It is hilarious. The writing is, well, clearly aiming for those people who consider reading the credits on a movie to be challenging (I don’t need to hear the dead guy’s four line message repeated twenty times, especially when you’re trying to explain what just one line means. Heck, I’ve heard it enough I could now recite it backwards in pig latin while drunk). The exposition sequences are even more ponderous than the description of the tabernacle in Exodus. And for characters that are supposedly such brilliant thinkers and have amazing storehouses of knowledge of these secret machinations they sure are slow to reason out what’s going on and what each little clue means.

On top of it all, so many of the “facts” and theories are either wrong or just lack any real reasoning. The best debunking I’ve found in the tiny bit of searching I did (I don’t plan to do any more as I’ve got much better ways to spend my time), is this write up, Crash Goes the Da Vinci Code. On a few points, that piece’s arguments don’t quite hold up to the light of reason (or historical evidence), but it does point out the flaws and inaccuracies in some of the more outrageous claims.

Overall, it keeps making me think of the Celestine Prophecy, which I will admit had gotten me on the verge of believing back when I read it in high school. In my defense, I was in high school and it was around the time that I was toying with a belief in the Force. (pausing while the laughter subsides) Anyway, back to the funny book for me. (And for the one (or more) of you waiting for the political invective to shoot forth and burn out your eye sockets, it’s coming soon. And it’s bringing a local friend.)

regrounding myself, part the second

To put my problem in simple terms (and help everyone, including me, remember where we left off), I have a relatively newly formed spiritual foundation over there, but my life is currently built up over here away from it. I see two important questions I need to answer in the course of writing this piece:

1. Why aren’t I building my life up on that foundation?

2. What do I need to do to move my life onto that foundation?

Since I started writing this second part, I’ve taken a bit of action in the real world and done a lot of thinking away from the keyboard. As a result, I think I’ve already worked out an answer to the first question and it’s a stunningly simple one. I’m not building on the foundation because it’s not fully formed yet. Of course that answer just begs the question of why hasn’t it solidified?

In part it’s because I have very wrongheadedly been nervous about being open about what I now believe. See my beliefs fall under the heading of Baptist. (Now before you start phoning up the proverbial men in white coats, at least take a look at the wikipedia article on Baptists. The perception and in some cases practice of Baptist doctrine has been skewed by, among others, the Southern Baptist Convention. So what you think it means to be Baptist is likely wrong. In fact the sermon at the church to which I went on Sunday covered that exact topic.) That nervousness has held me back from fully embracing and building up this new base. I realized though in starting to write about my efforts that those of you who are really my friends may question me about this path or even think you should call the asylum, but you’ll know that a lot of thinking has gone into this decision and will at least support my freedom to make this choice if not the choice itself. (I’ve got one friend who likely still believes I made this choice because of her, but, like me, she can be too egocentric at times.)

So now that I’ve gotten past caring what anyone else thinks about my faith, is there anything holding me back from firming up that faith (which is clearly the first part of the answer to question number two) so that it can be the basis of my life? I don’t think so. For years I avoided settling on a single set of beliefs because I thought the search was of primary import and that once you embrace a religion the game was over. Over the past year, however, I’ve come to understand that after the choice comes the process of understanding and doing; understanding the meaning and implications of your faith and doing by putting it into practice. Both are as much of a struggle as the search itself was. So avoiding making a choice was the only other thing holding me back. (Not making a choice is of course making a choice and, I believe now, the wrong choice.)

So, I’m not building on my faith because it’s not strong enough yet to support my life. To ground my life on my faith, I need to first strengthen it. I’ve gotten past my self imposed obstacles and have now found the tools I need to take that step. As for what I need to do after I’ve firmed up my belief, that part of the answer will have to wait for a third part sometime down the line.