WARNING: THIS POST IS ABOUT RELIGION AND FAITH. IF YOU'RE A PDNER WHO'S HERE FOR LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT AND WHO THINKS RELIGION AND GOD ARE A LOAD OF BOLLOCKS, PERHAPS YOU SHOULD CHECK BACK TOMORROW. I'LL TRY TO BE MORE AMUSING THEN.
ALSO, IF YOU'RE A RANDOM STRANGER WHO WANTS TO BOMBARD ME WITH YOUR MESSAGES ABOUT THE ONE TRUE FAITH -- PLEASE DON'T.
Happy Easter. I actually went to church this morning, for the first time in a very long while. I was raised Episcopalian and educated Quaker, so I swing between two very different traditions: One "Catholicism light" or "All of the pageantry, none of the guilt"; the other no ceremony, no liturgy, no nothing -- hell, it's practically a coincidence you end up sitting in a room with a bunch of other silent people. So yeah, I get a little schizoid about my services.
The place I went this morning was Episcopal, and very, very high church. I was at the less formal of the two services at this church, and it was a sung mass with incense and such. At the more formal, it's a sung mass, incense, full choir and everything is in Latin. that's a little too high-church for me, I think.
Scary part is, I still remember the order of service and what you say when. I couldn't find my place in the prayer book a few times, and it didn't matter -- it all come tripping off my tongue without me having to think about it. Which is actually a little disturbing...
OK, we've established that I can, at times, be melodramatic. But if you think this is bad, you should have seen me when I was young. Lordy. Being "in the grip of [my] hormones", as my dad used to say (chant, actually), was not pretty. Among other things, I managed to have a full-on hysterical crisis of faith -- in the middle of church -- when I was about 17.
What brought that on was (1) reading an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson that basically said "It's not the non-believers who hurt the church, it's the putative believers who are just going through the motions without thought or passion," (2) working weekends and therefore not going to church for a while, (3) going to a church that had just kicked out a minister for moral turpitude, basically, and we were still looking for a replacement, and (4) pretty much taking things entirely too seriously. Anyway, I actually went to church with my folks early one morning before work, and we got to the Nicene creed, which says, in part, "We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church..." and I realized I didn't. I didn't believe that at all, especially not if it meant that my Jewish friends, and later, my Hindu and Buddhist friends from Hong Kong, were less valuable/damned/whatever just because what church they did or didn't go to. So, being the shy, retiring, sober type I am, I burst into hysterics and fled the church to wail in the memorial garden.
Like I said, I was loads of fun growing up.
I haven't been much of a church-goer since. I went to Quaker meeting for a while in Hong Kong, but stopped pretty much because I was dating someone who lived in the back of beyond and getting my ass out of bed early enough on Sunday to make meetings was just too hard. Then I only went to church on holidays. The next time I started going was shortly after my grandmother died -- I was dating someone who lived and worked in a religious community, and when I tried to go to services with him, hysterics ensued, at least in part because I couldn't go without thinking about Grandma Jersild. So that didn't work out too well.
Despite all this, despite a good 10 years of non-churchgoing, it's all still there -- I know this stuff. It's engrained in me. I can go through the motions with the best of them.
When I stopped going to church, the problem was never that I didn't believe; it was more a matter of I didn't feel like I believed enough. Today was an experiment. I was just going to go, see how it felt, see what happened. But for Easter, they did a renewal of baptismal vows, and I read the words with the rest of the congregation and then the priest went around with holy water, flicking it into the crowd. I sort of panicked -- "Wait! I'm not ready for this! I don't know if I mean it!" -- but, refreshingly, did not cry, scream or run. (Apparently the medication works!) But I was freaked when I left, thinking "I don't have perfect faith, I can't guarantee I'm that sort of person, I can't promise to believe and be what I'm supposed to be. "
But hang on, I thought, that's the point. No one has perfect faith, no one knows what they're doing. If they did, it wouldn't be faith or religion, it would be science. The whole point of religion, I think, is in the trying, in the effort to hear God or your conscience or your better nature or whatever. If I didn't worry about it, if I was smug and complacent, then I'd be pulling what Emerson warns against. But being scared and wary of that is actually a good sign. And if I wait to have perfect faith and perfect understanding, I'm never going to get started.
I don't know what I'm starting yet, or if churchgoing is something I'll keep up. I do believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. I don't understand him/her/it, and I don't understand why he/she/it would be interested in me. Maybe God isn't interested. Maybe it's all in my head. But maybe I need to find out.
It's still going to be hard not to sleep in on Sundays, though....
ALSO, IF YOU'RE A RANDOM STRANGER WHO WANTS TO BOMBARD ME WITH YOUR MESSAGES ABOUT THE ONE TRUE FAITH -- PLEASE DON'T.
Happy Easter. I actually went to church this morning, for the first time in a very long while. I was raised Episcopalian and educated Quaker, so I swing between two very different traditions: One "Catholicism light" or "All of the pageantry, none of the guilt"; the other no ceremony, no liturgy, no nothing -- hell, it's practically a coincidence you end up sitting in a room with a bunch of other silent people. So yeah, I get a little schizoid about my services.
The place I went this morning was Episcopal, and very, very high church. I was at the less formal of the two services at this church, and it was a sung mass with incense and such. At the more formal, it's a sung mass, incense, full choir and everything is in Latin. that's a little too high-church for me, I think.
Scary part is, I still remember the order of service and what you say when. I couldn't find my place in the prayer book a few times, and it didn't matter -- it all come tripping off my tongue without me having to think about it. Which is actually a little disturbing...
OK, we've established that I can, at times, be melodramatic. But if you think this is bad, you should have seen me when I was young. Lordy. Being "in the grip of [my] hormones", as my dad used to say (chant, actually), was not pretty. Among other things, I managed to have a full-on hysterical crisis of faith -- in the middle of church -- when I was about 17.
What brought that on was (1) reading an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson that basically said "It's not the non-believers who hurt the church, it's the putative believers who are just going through the motions without thought or passion," (2) working weekends and therefore not going to church for a while, (3) going to a church that had just kicked out a minister for moral turpitude, basically, and we were still looking for a replacement, and (4) pretty much taking things entirely too seriously. Anyway, I actually went to church with my folks early one morning before work, and we got to the Nicene creed, which says, in part, "We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church..." and I realized I didn't. I didn't believe that at all, especially not if it meant that my Jewish friends, and later, my Hindu and Buddhist friends from Hong Kong, were less valuable/damned/whatever just because what church they did or didn't go to. So, being the shy, retiring, sober type I am, I burst into hysterics and fled the church to wail in the memorial garden.
Like I said, I was loads of fun growing up.
I haven't been much of a church-goer since. I went to Quaker meeting for a while in Hong Kong, but stopped pretty much because I was dating someone who lived in the back of beyond and getting my ass out of bed early enough on Sunday to make meetings was just too hard. Then I only went to church on holidays. The next time I started going was shortly after my grandmother died -- I was dating someone who lived and worked in a religious community, and when I tried to go to services with him, hysterics ensued, at least in part because I couldn't go without thinking about Grandma Jersild. So that didn't work out too well.
Despite all this, despite a good 10 years of non-churchgoing, it's all still there -- I know this stuff. It's engrained in me. I can go through the motions with the best of them.
When I stopped going to church, the problem was never that I didn't believe; it was more a matter of I didn't feel like I believed enough. Today was an experiment. I was just going to go, see how it felt, see what happened. But for Easter, they did a renewal of baptismal vows, and I read the words with the rest of the congregation and then the priest went around with holy water, flicking it into the crowd. I sort of panicked -- "Wait! I'm not ready for this! I don't know if I mean it!" -- but, refreshingly, did not cry, scream or run. (Apparently the medication works!) But I was freaked when I left, thinking "I don't have perfect faith, I can't guarantee I'm that sort of person, I can't promise to believe and be what I'm supposed to be. "
But hang on, I thought, that's the point. No one has perfect faith, no one knows what they're doing. If they did, it wouldn't be faith or religion, it would be science. The whole point of religion, I think, is in the trying, in the effort to hear God or your conscience or your better nature or whatever. If I didn't worry about it, if I was smug and complacent, then I'd be pulling what Emerson warns against. But being scared and wary of that is actually a good sign. And if I wait to have perfect faith and perfect understanding, I'm never going to get started.
I don't know what I'm starting yet, or if churchgoing is something I'll keep up. I do believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. I don't understand him/her/it, and I don't understand why he/she/it would be interested in me. Maybe God isn't interested. Maybe it's all in my head. But maybe I need to find out.
It's still going to be hard not to sleep in on Sundays, though....
posted by SAJ at
9:56 PM
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