3 posts tagged “faith”

Many of my neighbors are aware that the Voxer shush now has written a novellette (novena? ;)) entitled honest conversation.  I have used lower case deliberately, as both the title page and the inside flap do so (shades of e.e. cummings).  I have been fortunate enough to receive a copy, and finished the book on Thanksgiving Day. 

Before I gave my impressions, I decided to pass the book onto a friend to read, for his impressions.  As some of you may be aware, I am not religious in the traditional sense of the word.  I have a belief in a Higher Power, the details of which I choose to keep to myself.  While my relationship with my Higher Power is of paramount importance to me, it does not manifest itself inside organized religion in any fashion.  Outside of the occasional wedding or funeral or ceremonial event important to a friend (or AA meetings), I never set foot in religious structures.  My friend, on the other hand, considers himself a Christian, and is a devoted churchgoer.  I would go so far as to term him a conservative Christian.  He is also the type of Christian who lives what he believes, so I thought his viewpoint would be useful to me.

Let's start with my take:

honest conversations is a passionate tale.  shush now tells the story of controversy inside of a mainstream church, which arises out of the decision of a gay male couple to join the church.  The story is told from the perspective of the associate pastor of the church, Zoe,  who is willing to put her career on the line in advocating that the church accept the gay couple.  This is not, as one might imagine, a universally admired position.  Her pastor, torn by his understanding of doctrine, and also by fears related to his own position, is skeptical that hers is the correct position.  Some of the congregants have chosen to take a position passionately in opposition to Zoe's position.  The church is in danger of being irrevocably split.  As if that weren't enough, Zoe is ambivalent about the need for a relationship in her own life, an ambivalence which is tested at the controversy unfolds. 

The book opens with a conversation between Zoe and the pastor, John.  Here is a snippet which will give you a flavor of how that goes:

John walked in and smiled at me.  I smiled back and motioned to the empty seat across the table from me.  He came and sat down, immediately opening his briefcase and smacking his Bible down on the table between us.  "You didn't bring yours," he asked.

"I know well enough to always bring a gun to a gunfight," I said.  "It's in my purse, like usual."

shush now does not take the easy path in telling this story.  While Zoe's position is the one she would have us support, she does not blithely dismiss the concerns of the other side.  In her telling, there are no perfect people.  The characters are drawn with shades of goodness and of weakness.  Even her "villain", long-time church member Tilly Halliwell, truly believes herself to be acting in the best interests of the church.  What is the church called to do?  To accept those who it believes are deliberately sinning as members, in order to minister to them, or to keep the church free of those who would deliberately sin? 

Now, the answer is clear to me.  I don't even think that homosexuality is a sin.  But this book is intended for an audience which struggles with that question, not for me.  It was here that my friend came in handy.  I asked him for his take.  He told me not only did the controversy ring true, but that his own congregation has suffered from it.  A lesbian couple came to the church, which raised all sorts of ruckus.  After two weeks, the couple stopped coming.  shush now looks at how church actions like this can damage devout Christians who find themselves to be gay.  Here is Kyle, the member of the gay couple raised as a Christian, describing his torment which had driven him from the church before:

"And then I couldn't take it anymore.  I couldn't stand hating myself.  I couldn't stand trying to win myself back into God's graces.  I couldn't stand being in a church every Sunday where I knew that all the other parishioners thought I was going to burn in Hell for a sin I wasn't aware of having committed.  They treated me like the plague, because if I was attracted to other boys that meant God had cursed me.  And you know what?"

"What?" Evan and I said in unison.

"Every time I read the Bible the only people I see God cursing are the hypocrites."  Kyle choked back tears again, "and I wasn't a hypocrite.  I was a scared little kid that only wanted to please everyone else and never even thought of what he wanted, until I wanted Milo.  And if I had to choose between a God that cursed me and a boy that looked like a god, well, what do you think a sixteen year old boy would choose?"

shush now raises some important issues in this book.  Should homosexuality be considered in a different class from other sins?  If church members gossip, drink to excess, if a heterosexual couple not yet married wishes to join, are these people somehow different or better than homosexuals called to church?  My Christian friend found that point to be the most compelling.  shush now also asks whether we are called to love first or to judge first.  I know my answer to that question.  Love first, last, and always.  The cornerstone of her argument comes from 1st John 4:

We love because he first loved us.  If anyone says "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar.  For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.  And he has given us this command: whoever loves God must also love his brother. 

This book is shot through with love in all its forms, inherently inconvenient and messy.  Husbands and wives, parishioners and church, parents and children, lovers, even those who aren't looking for it. are touched.  And above all, God's love and presence.  One of my favorite passages in the book is related to the latter:

It is a proven fact that major events in life are never spaced at reasonable intervals.  Life tends to go on in long meandering phases of banality after banality, followed by seasons of shear[sic] insanity where so much happens you feel it could fill up years of your life.  Sometimes it's good somethings piled on one another, more often it's bad.  This is God's way of reminding you that he is God and you are mortal and you depend on him to not become a drooling idiot.

There are also moments where bad is layered on bad layered on bad with an icing of Good, which is God being merciful and reminding you that even though he's in charge and you desperately need him, he wants you to be happy.

I won't reveal too much more about what shush now has written.  The ending is not an ending per se.  All the loose ends are not neatly tied up.  More of the story is yet to be told.  Such is life.  The greater question is whether there is an audience for this message.  I say yes.  Some churches do not need to be told to accept gay members.  Other churches will remain adamant against it.  But there is a large number of churches who struggle between love and fear, faith and doubt, doctrine and message.  Devoted Christians who are unsure.  This book takes a position on that struggle, and it is well worth reading.  Drop shush now a line, if you belong to one of those churches.  Spend a little time and money to explore this struggle with her.  You will not regret it.

Came across this, and thought my neighborhood might be interested.  It's a transcript of an interview Obama did in 2004. 

Food for thought.

My life began with a miracle.  My mother has Rh-negative blood.  Deborah, my sister, who was the first-born child, was a difficult pregnancy for my mother.  My brother Brian was a blue baby, kept alive initially through the intervention of a ventilator.  After his birth, my mother's doctor advised my parents not to attempt any more children.  The pregnancy would be too arduous for my mother, and the likelihood of her carrying another fetus to full term was spider-thread thin.

Mom became pregnant again anyway.  But as the June delivery date approached, her obstetrician was very concerned.  After one final pre-delivery exam, the doctor called my parents into her office, and asked them to sit down.  She advised them that the examination had confirmed her worst fear; their baby was stillborn.  As my parents sat numbly, the obstetrician called and scheduled a Caesarian procedure, so that my mother's life would not be further endangered by this lump of inert matter festering inside of her.

When the obstetrician cut my mother open, there I was; not only alive, but perfectly healthy.  I am told that doctors came from all over Northern California to gaze at me, wondering How? and Why?.

The first question's answer may lie at the heart of God's universe.  Perhaps two lines of the time-space continuum somehow brushed against each other.  One family exactly like mine happily expecting the best outcome was crushed under the tragedy of an unanticipated burden of grief.  While my family's shadow tiptoed across dimensions, snatching away for themselves joy which had been intended for others. 

On some level,the latter question lay at the very center of my being for many years.  But the day finally came when God answered it.

Scott and Kay were getting married.  I knew Scott through my membership in Alcoholics Anonymous.  When I had first come into the fellowship, staggering with fear and desperation, Scott had gone out of his way to make me feel welcome.  He was not alone in that, but Scott was part of a select group which folded me into their midst as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do.  Scott had met Kay as a result of being a member of AA.  Not that he met Kay in a meeting.  That does happen; the phrase one often hears is "Boy meets girl at AA campus".  Kay was the administrator of a Lutheran church which rented a room to AA members in which to hold a meeting.  One month, Scott had agreed to chair the meeting.  As such, he took on the responsibility for coming early to set up.  While doing so, he began chatting up Kay.  One thing led to another, and soon they were dating.  Not long after, Scott announced to his friends that he and Kay were going to drive across country together, camping along the way.  I remember thinking to myself that they would return either mortal enemies or engaged.  I was right.

So, here I was one night, after their wedding ceremony, dancing along with others around a bonfire, as my friend Chris chanted pagan hymns.  Scott and Kay had elected to hold their wedding at a spiritual retreat center in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.  Unlike a typical wedding, the guests did not go home after the reception, which had been a pot luck meal prepared by family and friends.  Some guests, including myself, had arranged for rooms in the retreat center.  Other guests had set up tents in a large meadow a short dirt road away from the center, screened from it by a line of closely planted tall trees.  It was in the center of that meadow that we few were dancing.  (Most of the others had gone to sleep earlier, after a rousing round of music and singing.)

Although I am not pagan, my experience over the years in AA has left me with a sense of acceptance and tolerance for however another may choose to reach for that stream of pure light which is God.  So it is perhaps not surprising that, having bade good night to my friends, as I walked back to the retreat center by myself, I felt a door opening in my soul.

My hint that this was a special night manifested itself through the presence of fireflies.  I will not digress to my earlier history.  Suffice it to say that there had been a time before when, as I walked in darkness along the banks of the Mississippi River, fireflies had heralded the presence of God to me.  That night in the Poconos, fireflies surrounded me as I walked, and I resolved not to immediately return to my room.  Instead, I continued on the road past the retreat center, and down a hill through a grove of trees.

My first stop was inside a wooden reconstruction of an early Irish Christian church.  I stepped in, closed the door, and sat down on a bench rough-hewn from a log.  In utter darkness and silence, I asked God to speak to me.  Then I stood up, left the church, and continued down the hill.  There was a circle of stones at the bottom of the hill.  The owners of the retreat center had constructed a miniature henge.  I stepped between the stones, and strode to the standing rock in the center.  Placing my back against the cool dampness of the rock, I looked up at the sky.

Up there in the mountains far from any town, the heavens were teeming with stars.  God, I prayed, if what I feel is truly your presence, show me.  I concentrated on a particular section of the sky, and waited.  Within seconds, a shooting star flashed precisely where I was looking.  I walked back up the hill, and lay down in a grass field right next to the retreat house.  I looked back up at the stars.  God, tell me what to do, I said.  Do you want me to change careers?  Should I make a commitment to a religion?  Should I just love other people?  As that last word escaped my lips, a shooting star larger and brighter than any I had seen before or have seen since streaked across the whole of the night sky.  Stunned into silence, I stood up, walked into the retreat center and to my room.  I got into bed, closed my eyes, and fell into perfect slumber.

The next morning, when I arose, questions crowded my mind.  How could I tell if I was loving properly?  What if what I thought was love was really codependence?  Such is the mind of Man.

Ever since that night, I have endeavored to follow God's instruction for me.  When I get bogged down in Why? or How?, it becomes more difficult.  Sometime I forget altogether what my purpose is.  But then God places another of his precious children, writhing in pain from the bondage of self, squarely in front of me.  I put down my own mirror, and drawing on that infinitely pure and powerful light, a tiny speck of which resides in all of us, I love God's child.  And in that moment, I know this thing we call Life is merely one step along that shimmering path we all traverse.  Never lost, never abandoned, never alone.  In the words of my childhood faith, And Love is reflected in love. 

Perhaps some of you reading what I have written are finding that hard to believe right now.  Don't worry.  When you are ready once again, you will find that connection to the pure light which you have temporarily misplaced.  In the meantime, know that I love you.  Truly.  It's my job.